Jacobs Beach

The Mob, the Garden and the Golden Age of Boxing

Kevin Mitchell, Mike Stanton

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Paperback

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English

Hamilcar Publications
08 January 2020

Boxing

""Brings to life the fight world of that era. Mr. Mitchell's account is full of memorably drawn scenes, and the stories we haven't heard before make Jacobs Beach a cigar-chomping read.""--Wall Street Journal

""The value of Mitchell's book lies not only in bringing back to life a lost era. He also shows us how the blood, sweat, and toil of the ring has been distilled into hard-won wisdom passed down through the generations--the connective tissue of the sweet science.""--From the Foreword by Mike Stanton, author of the award-winning Unbeaten: Rocky Marciano's Fight for Perfection in a Crooked World

Gangsters have always infected fight game. At the end of the First World War, through Prohibition, and into the 1930s, the Mob emerged as a poisonous force, threatening to ravage the sport. But it was only when cutthroat Madison Square Garden promoter Mike Jacobs, chieftain of a notorious patch of Manhattan pavement called Jacobs Beach, stepped aside that the real devil appeared former Murder, Inc. killer and underworld power broker Frankie Carbo, a man known to many simply as Mr. Gray.

And Carbo wasn't alone. Along with a crooked cast of characters that included a rich playboy and an urbane lawyer, he controlled boxing through most of the 1950s, with the help of a diabolical deputy, Francis Blinky Palermo, who did much of Mr. Gray's dirty work, reportedly drugging fighters and robbing them blind. Not until 1961, when Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy shipped Carbo and Palermo to jail for twenty-five years, did it all come crashing down.

Enriched by the recollections of some of the men who were there, Kevin Mitchell's Jacobs Beach offers a gripping, noirish look at boxing and organized crime in postwar New York City and reveals the fading glamour of both.

By: Kevin Mitchell
Foreword by: Mike Stanton
Imprint: Hamilcar Publications
Country of Publication: United States
Edition: 2nd ed.
Dimensions: Height: 226mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 25mm
Weight: 454g
ISBN: 9781949590029
ISBN 10: 194959002X
Pages: 288
Publication Date: 08 January 2020
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Kevin Mitchell is the boxing and tennis correspondent for The Observer and The Guardian. He is the author of War, Baby, which was shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year, the co-author of Frank Bruno's autobiography Frank, which won the Best Autobiography category of the British Sports Book Awards, and author of Jacobs Beach: The Mob, the Garden and the Golden Age of Boxing (Hamilcar Publications 2019). Mike Stanton (Foreword) is the author of Unbeaten: Rocky Marciano's Fight for Perfection in a Crooked World, The Prince of Providence: The Rise and Fall of Buddy Cianci, America's Most Notorious Mayor, which was a New York Times bestseller. He is an associate professor of journalism at the University of Connecticut, having previously headed the investigative team at the Providence Journal, where he shared a Pulitzer Prize. He lives in Rhode Island with his wife and two children.

Reviews for Jacobs Beach: The Mob, the Garden and the Golden Age of Boxing

Brings to life the fight world of that era. Mr. Mitchell's account is full of memorably drawn scenes, and the stories we haven't heard before make Jacobs Beach a cigar-chomping read. --Wall Street Journal This is as much a history of twentieth-century boxing as it is a true-crime story; it will please fight enthusiasts and mafia maven equally --Library Journal But as Kevin Mitchell shows in this wonderfully evocative book, at the very peak of influence boxing was hopelessly tainted by corruption and gangsterism. The so-called 'Golden Age' was dominated by the base alloy of the mob's racketeering.--The Telegraph