Beyond Glory : Joe Louis Vs. Max Schmeling, And A World On The Brink - 05 edition

David Margolick is a longtime contributing editor at Vanity Fair where he writes about culture the media and politics. He served as national legal affairs editor at The New York Times where he wrote the weekly At the Bar column for seven years. He is the author most recently of Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song. This is his fourth book. He lives in New York City. From the Hardcover edition.

CHAPTER 1 Just Off the Boat Five years earlier on the morning of April 14 1933 the North German Lloyd liner Bremen steamed into New York Harbor with Max Schmeling aboard. The setting was spectacular--the mighty vessel after its five-day crossing making its way toward the Statue of Liberty with the towers of lower Manhattan beckoning--but scarcely more epic at least in the world of sports than the events about to unfold. Schmeling would soon attempt something that had never been done: to regain the heavyweight crown. And his prospects looked good; after all many believed he should never have lost it. Schmeling twenty-seven years old had been coming to the United States for five years now and the arrival ritual had grown routine. Meeting him aboard the ship would be the usual mob of fight reporters who had commandeered a cutter to bring them there: all ten New York City newspapers had at least one boxing writer as did the wire services and there were emissaries from Boston Philadelphia Newark and Chicago to name just a few other cities with boxing correspondents of their own. Then there would be the photographers and newsreel boys who would put Schmeling through the same staged scenes and make him utter the same wooden dialogue for the cameras. The previous June Schmeling had lost the title in a much-criticized decision to Jack Sharkey. ''We wuz robbed!'' his fiery outlandish manager Joe Jacobs had immortally declared afterward. But now Schmeling with characteristic determination had set out to win it back. And why not? He had already defied the odds three years earlier when in an equally disputed fight he'd become the first European ever to win the heavyweight title. A personable sort Schmeling had long since come to know most of the reporters by name. They were friendly irreverent types--smart alecks--likely to ask an impertinent question or two but not to be too persistent or obnoxious about it; whatever edge they had was certain to be dulled by the good German beer Schmeling always brought with him. The floating press conference would then pull into the pier where he would be greeted by a mob of fight fans coming to show their support or simply to glimpse a celebrity. Schmeling could easily have been unpopular; he'd won the title under the most debatable circumstances spoke English with a heavy accent and came from a country with which America had been at war only fifteen years earlier. After he'd beaten Sharkey for the title he'd dragged his feet on a promised rematch offending Americans and Germans alike. But when he lost the crown he'd been a gentleman picking up an aura of martyrdom. Though he revealed only so much of himself there always appeared to be something endearingly earnest about him. And then there was the good fortune of his physical appearance. Schmeling looked uncannily like the man who epitomized boxing's golden era the legendarily hard-hitting and much-missed Jack Dempsey who'd retired only a few years earlier after producing all five of boxing's million-dollar ''gates''--that is fights where ticket sales went into seven figures. Schmeling had the same build the same wavy dark slicked-down hair the same heavy brows. Schmeling's style in the ring though was not the slashing overwhelmingly aggressive assault Dempsey favored but something cooler slower more methodical--''Teutonic'' as it was often described. And outside the ring he was as self-contained and calculating as Dempsey was gregarious. Dempsey was promoting Schmeling's upcoming fight on June 8 in Yankee Stadium against a promising young California heavyweight named Max Baer and was among those greeting Schmeling. The next day's papers would be filled with pictures of the two men together wearing nearly identical suits

''Absorbing. . . . Fascinating. . . . Margolick describes all this so vividly that you almost feel you were there sharing in the joy of sweet revenge.'' Ian BurumaThe New York Review of Books ''Even if you've never seen a boxing matchBeyond Gloryis an irresistible read. For fans it is indispensable. . . . Over the last 150-odd pages my pulse raced; by the book's end I felt as if my ears were ringing with the roar that swept through Yankee Stadium bleachers on the night of their rematch.'' Allen BarraLos Angeles Times Book Review ''A valuable addition to a growing library of books on sports and culture. . . .Beyond Gloryis historical reportage a heavyweight of a book that is likely to be the definitive chronicle of its subject.'' Joyce Carol OatesThe New York Times Book Review ''A fascinating look at a historical era through the prism of sports.'' Marta SalijThe Detroit Free Press