Few writers anywhere can equal John Lardner in the treatment of sports and in this book. Mr. Lardner describes one of the most colorful and fantastic periods of sporting history beavy-weight boxing from 1910 to 1930. It is a story of the last millionaire boxers of their manager and of the other characters on the fringe of the sport.

Those were the days when the heavyweight champion outshone the President in the public eye, when Firpo, after meeting Calvin Coolidge, remarked to friends, "'Who was that fellow?"

Lardner describes the brutal Dempsey-Willard fight in 1919, under a Toledo sun at 114°; the fight of Dempsey with Carpentier, Orchid Man, , "body beautiful," which grossed $1,789,238; the career of Battling Siki, the "Black Candide" from Hell's Kitchen, who dressed like an ambassador and was murdered on West Forty-first Street; the four bloody minutes of the Dempsey fight with Firpo the Argentinian who arrived in New York with a cardboard suitcase, extra black suit, change of celluloid collar and pair of boxing trunks and is today worth five million dollars, Gene Tunney's auto graphing party with Hugh Walpole and the check for one cool million he received for his fight with Dempsey.

It adds up to one whale of a sports story.