A Meeting of Giants
Mailer’s intimate record of Muhammad Ali and George Foreman’s titanic battle
Howard L. Bingham (1939–2016) photographed Ali—then Cassius Clay—at a press appearance in Los Angeles in 1962. A year later, Ali knighted him his “personal photographer,” inaugurating a lifelong friendship and over a million photographs of The Champ both in and outside of the ring. His work was featured in magazines including Life, Time, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, and Ebony.
Native New Yorker Neil Leifer began photographing sports events as a teenager. Over 160 of his pictures have appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated and over 40 of his photographs have graced the cover of Time. He has published 17 books, and was one of two principal photographers in TASCHEN’s tribute to Muhammad Ali, GOAT—Greatest Of All Time, and the illustrated edition of Norman Mailer’s The Fight.
Norman Mailer (1923–2007) was one of the 20th century’s most influential writers, and one of America’s most renowned and controversial literary figures. The best-selling author of a dozen novels and 20 works of nonfiction, he also wrote plays, screenplays, television miniseries, hundreds of essays, two books of poetry, and a collection of short stories. A two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, he lived in Brooklyn, New York, and Provincetown, Massachusetts.
J. Michael Lennon is Emeritus Professor of English at Wilkes University and the late Norman Mailer’s archivist and authorized biographer. He is the author of the authorized biography Norman Mailer: A Double Life and editor of Selected Letters of Norman Mailer.
ISBN 978-3-8365-9149-2
Edition: English