 First Edition | |
| Author | Jonathan Eig |
|---|---|
| Country | United States of America |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Biography |
| Set in | United States of America |
| Publisher | Simon & Schuster |
Publication date | October 3, 2017 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover, paperback) |
| Pages | 640 |
| ISBN | 9781471155956 (first edition) |
Ali: A Life is a biography written by American biographer Jonathan Eig. It was first published in 2018 by Simon & Schuster. The biography is about Muhammad Ali. [1] [2] [3]
Ali: A Life is a biography, chronicling the life of Muhammad Ali, who was previously known as Cassius Clay. Jonathan Eig wrote the book after conducting interviews with 500 people who knew Ali. [4] [5]
In 2019 Men's Health named Ali: A Life the 23rd best sports book of all time. [3] In 2020, Esquire called Ali one of the 35 best sports books ever written. [6] In a review, Joyce Carol Oates of The New York Times noted that "...As Muhammad Ali's life was an epic of a life so Ali: A Life is an epic of a biography." [2] It was a finalist for the 2017 NAACP Image Awards, William Hill Sports Book of the Year. [7] [8] It was a finalist for the 2018 Plutarch Award. [9] It won the 2018 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing [10] [11] [12] It also won the 2018 The Times Biography of the Year. [13] It won the overall Sports Book of the Year, for the 2018 British Sports Book Awards. [14] Thomas Hauser, Ali's previous biographer, wrote a more critical review identifying factual errors, inaccuracies about Ali's boxing achievements, and for failing to capture what made Ali an inspiration. [15]
Philip Milton Roth was an American novelist and short story writer. Roth's fiction—often set in his birthplace of Newark, New Jersey—is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophically and formally blurring the distinction between reality and fiction, for its "sensual, ingenious style" and for its provocative explorations of American identity. He first gained attention with the 1959 short story collection Goodbye, Columbus, which won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. Ten years later, he published the bestseller Portnoy's Complaint. Nathan Zuckerman, Roth's literary alter ego, narrates several of his books. A fictionalized Philip Roth narrates some of his others, such as the alternate history The Plot Against America.
The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction is awarded annually by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation to the authors of the year's best works of fiction by living American citizens. The winner receives US$15,000 and each of four runners-up receives US$5000. Finalists read from their works at the presentation ceremony in the Great Hall of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. The organization claims it to be "the largest peer-juried award in the country." The award was first given in 1981.
Joyce Carol Oates is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published 58 novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and non-fiction. Her novels Black Water (1992), What I Lived For (1994), and Blonde (2000), and her short story collections The Wheel of Love (1970) and Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories (2014) were each finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. She has won many awards for her writing, including the National Book Award, for her novel them (1969), two O. Henry Awards, the National Humanities Medal, and the Jerusalem Prize (2019).
George Saunders is an American writer of short stories, essays, novellas, children's books, and novels. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, McSweeney's, and GQ. He also contributed a weekly column, American Psyche, to The Guardian's weekend magazine between 2006 and 2008.
The Years of Lyndon Johnson is a biography of Lyndon B. Johnson by the American writer Robert Caro. Four volumes have been published, running to more than 3,000 pages in total, detailing Johnson's early life, education, and political career. A fifth volume is expected to deal with the bulk of Johnson's presidency and post-presidential years. The series is published by Alfred A. Knopf.
Diane Helen Middlebrook was an American biographer, poet, and teacher. She taught feminist studies for many years at Stanford University. She wrote critically acclaimed biographies of poets Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, and jazz musician Billy Tipton.
Adam Haslett is an American fiction writer and journalist. His debut short story collection, You Are Not a Stranger Here, and his second novel, Imagine Me Gone, were both finalists for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. He has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the American Academy in Berlin. In 2017, he won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
Claudia Rankine is an American poet, essayist, playwright and the editor of several anthologies. She is the author of five volumes of poetry, two plays and various essays.
Darin Strauss is a best-selling American writer whose work has earned a number of awards, including, among numerous others, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Strauss's 2011 book Half a Life, won the 2011 NBCC Award for memoir/autobiography. His most recent book, The Queen of Tuesday, came out in August, 2020. It is currently nominated for the Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize.
Stacy Madeleine Schiff is an American former editor, essayist, and author of five biographies. Her biography of Vera Nabokov won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in biography. Schiff has also written biographies of French aviator and author of The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, colonial American-era polymath and prime mover of America's founding, Benjamin Franklin, Franklin's fellow Founding Father Samuel Adams, ancient Egyptian queen Cleopatra, and the important figures and events of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692–93 in colonial Massachusetts.
Ilyasah Shabazz is an American author, most notably of a memoir, Growing Up X, community organizer, social activist, and motivational speaker, and the third daughter of Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz.
Jabari Asim is an author, poet, playwright, and professor of writing, literature and publishing at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts. He is the former editor-in-chief of The Crisis magazine, a journal of politics, ideas and culture published by the NAACP and founded by historian and social activist W. E. B. Du Bois in 1910. In February 2019 he was named Emerson College's inaugural Elma Lewis '43 Distinguished Fellow in the Social Justice Center. In September 2022 he was named Emerson College Distinguished Professor of Multidisciplinary Letters.
Jonathan Eig is an American journalist and biographer. He is the author of six books, the most recent being King: A Life (2023), a biography of Martin Luther King Jr.
Fiona Ruth Sampson, is a British poet and writer. She is published in thirty-seven languages and has received a number of national and international awards for her writing. A former musician, Sampson has written on the links between music and poetry, and her work has been set to music by several composers. She has received several prizes for her literary biographies and poetry. Notably, Sampson received a MBE for services to literature in 2017.
John Blake Bailey is an American writer and educator. Bailey is known for his literary biographies of Richard Yates, John Cheever, Charles Jackson, and Philip Roth. He is the editor of the Library of America omnibus editions of Cheever's stories and novels.
Biographers International Organization (BIO) is an international, non-profit, 501 (c)(3) organization founded to promote the art and craft of biography, and to further the professional interests of its practitioners. The organization was founded in 2010 by a committee of noted biographers, led by James McGrath Morris, who served as BIO's first Executive Director. The president of BIO as of 2019 is Linda Leavell. The executive director as of 2020 is Michael Gately.
The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo is a 2012 biography of General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas written by Tom Reiss. The book presents the life and career of Dumas as a soldier and officer during the French Revolution, as well as his military service in Italy during the French Revolutionary Wars and later in Egypt under Napoleon. Reiss offers insight into slavery and the life of a man of mixed race during the French Colonial Empire. He also reveals how Dumas's son – author Alexandre Dumas – viewed his father, who served as the inspiration for some of his novels, including The Count of Monte Cristo (1844) and The Three Musketeers (1844).
Citizen: An American Lyric is a 2014 book-length poem and a series of lyric essays by American poet Claudia Rankine. Citizen stretches the conventions of traditional lyric poetry by interweaving several forms of text and media into a collective portrait of racial relations in the United States. The book ranked as a New York Times Bestseller in 2015 and won several awards, including the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, the 2015 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry, and the 2015 Forward Prize for Poetry Best Collection.
Ruth Franklin is an American literary critic. She is a former editor at The New Republic and an Adjunct professor at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. Her first biography, Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography and was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2016.
Rebecca Donner is a Canadian-born writer. She is the author of All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days, which won the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography, the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography, and The Chautauqua Prize She was a 2023 Visiting Scholar at Oxford, and is currently a 2023-2024 Fellow at Harvard.