The town of Chatham, New Jersey may not be well-known now, but in the early 20th century, it was home to the training camp of many championship boxers. This camp was run by a woman known as Madame Bey, an immigrant from Turkey who had previously worked in Washington with her husband for diplomatic duties and also had aspirations to be an opera singer. Instead, life led her and her husband to Chatham and the development of a boxing camp.

The story of Madame Bey and many of the championship fighters she called “her boys” is captured in this book by Gene Pantalone. Two aspects of the story will grab the attention of the reader immediately. One is the successful business Madame Bey runs at a time when there were very few female entrepreneurs. The second is the sheer number of legendary fighters who trained at her camp. From Mickey Walker, the welterweight champion who was as famous for his art as well as his fists, to Max Schmeling, the German heavyweight champion, the camp became known as one where champions would train.

Pantalone weaves stories about the fighters who would train there along with Madame Bey’s story as well. The bulk of the book is about her boys, with some of the best writing and research done on Walker (who Madame Bey called her favorite) and Gene Tunney. The camp thrived despite competition in the area as word of mouth from the fighters was very good.

Many don’t think of boxing as a sport that will elicit emotions of compassion, there is a passage in the book that captures that as well, and it is one of my favorite parts of the book. The camp was heavily damaged by a fire and Madame Bey did not have the funds or enough insurance to completely rebuild. However, many boxers who were training there pitched in to rebuild the complex and she was back in the training business within months. The love for her by these fighters to do this for her was amazing. The reader will be captivated by this and many other passages of emotion as well as fighting.
While lengthy and occasionally a slow read, the research and detail presented paint a great picture of the sport and the fighters of that era. This book is not only recommended for boxing fans, history buffs and readers who just want a story about a successful woman in business will also enjoy this one.

I wish to thank Archway Publishing for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I gave this book 3 stars. I thought it was a biography of Madame Bey, but in fact it is basically a history of boxers who trained in rural New Jersey camps. There is nothing wrong with that, but only about a third of the book was about the admirable Madame Bey, her husband and their amazing life together. I have to admit that the boxers' stories were surprisingly very interesting, although I was not enthralled by the detailed accounts of some of the fights. The writing was okay, not great but certainly readable and straightforward. The author obviously did a lot of research and organized his material very well. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of New Jersey or in boxing.

This is a biography about Miss Hranoush Sidky Bey (aka Madame Bey), someone who I’d never even heard of but was compelled to read about based on the book’s summary.

Madame Bey’s accomplishments were many. She was well educated, spoke seven languages, was an exceptional singer and protégé of a famous opera singer, and a socialite wife of a Turkish diplomat. But after a life-changing family business failure, she accepts an offer to take over a fledgling boxing camp, entering an arena typically reserved for tough guys. She knew nothing about boxing and ended up managing many world champion boxers and Boxing Hall of Fame inductees.

Madame Bey was a passionate and fiery woman ahead of her time. Although I am not a boxing fan, I was captivated by her life experiences and discovering the backgrounds of famous fighters. Chapters such as “Show Me a Man Who Never Lost”, “Homicide Hank in a Hurricane”, “Death, a Carnival, and a Baer in the Woods” were so creatively named that they propelled me to read on. I really enjoyed this one even though it could be a bit slow going with too much detail at times. However, I commend author Gene Pantalone for his tremendous research.
p.s. Also posted on Twitter (which goes directly from Goodreads so do not include a link below)

This book caught my eye on NetGalley and I picked it up, not because I myself am a boxing fan (I have a hard time watching it) but because my husband is. He's also a history buff, so checking out a book about the history of a sport he enjoys, as a possible future gift to him, seemed a no-brainer. And I was interested in the hook: a boxing training camp in the New Jersey countryside in the 1920's and 30's, run by a Turkish woman, Hranoush Sidky Bey, who was the wife of a former Turkish diplomat, an educated woman who was a talented mezzo-soprano opera singer.

This book was both more and less than I anticipated. The length (over 500 pages) and amount of detail in it about various boxers' careers and fights speaks to the amount of time and research that went into it. Clearly it was a labor of love for Gene Pantalone. Just as clearly, however, it is not a book for anyone who isn't truly interested in the minutiae of the boxing world between the world wars. The amount of detail in it is mind-numbing for a non-fan, and I ended up skimming most of the second half.

While the first few chapters are about Madame Bey's life and how she came to be running a boxing camp (a happy accident, more or less), once the fighters start arriving at her New Jersey farm in force, most of the rest of the book is about them. And there are some great names in the bunch: Max Schmeling, Gene Tunney, Mickey Walker, Primo Carnera and other champion boxers trained at her camp.

The writing style is prosaic, with a fair number of awkwardnesses, like: "Outside the arena, the affable, smiling, boyish-looking Lou Ambers was unthinkable of possessing such cruelty toward another person. Inside the arena, he was ruthless, unforgiving, with a focus of destruction of his opponent." Still, there are some fascinating stories in it about many boxers who are important to the history of the sport, and Pantalone has doubtless done boxing history a favor in gathering together these stories and so much additional information.

In the end, I'm probably not going to be presenting my husband with a copy of this book: it's primarily an ebook, which he doesn't read, and the paperback is over $30. But otherwise I'm sure he'd be interested in looking through it.

This book was provided by Net Galley for free in return for a fair review. I found the book very enjoyable and an ideal book for boxing fans. While the book is about Madam Bey and her boxing camp that trained many of boxing's greats, it is told primarily by telling about each of the boxers and their fights, personalities, interests, and experiences. I was surprised how immersed I became in this book, as I read it in 2 days!

Review posted on Goodreads & Amazon