Mark Kriegel - The Good Son

Praise for The Good Son

Compelling... Kriegels superb biography makes it plain that unlike many of his boxing brethren who lose their fortune and footing in retirement, Mancini has continued stepping forward with all the grace and integrity you would expect from a very good son, and the pride of Youngstown.

The Boston Globe

Masterful... Well-crafted and impeccably researched... [It] should enhance Kriegels status as the best sports biographer we have today.

The Buffalo News

Not only does the book examine Mancinis life, it reveals his soul... Kriegel gives you all of it. And more... The amount of reporting done by Kriegel to tell Kims side of the story is impressive. Thats part of what makes this book special... The cast of characters in the book is fascinating.

Bobby Cassidy, Newsday

The best writer on sports that we have.

Charles P. Pierce, Esquire

The book proves true Kriegels contention that boxing works better in the world of popular culture than it does as, well, boxing... This is Kriegel at his best.

Ed Graney, Las Vegas Review Journal

An ode to father-son relationships, it describes the joys of winning a title belt, but also the agony of watching an opponent expire across the ring.

Kurt Rabin, The Free Lance-Star (Fredericksburgh, VA)

Honestly, its simply not possible to write a better booksports, nonsports, fiction, nonfictionthan The Good Son, Mark Kriegels remarkable biography of Boom Boom Mancini, which is by equal turns uplifting, heartbreaking, cautionary, and redemptive. And impossible to put down.

Mike Vaccaro, New York Post columnist

Sportswriting at its best, which is what weve come to expect from Mark Kriegel. But its also much, much more. Here is the story not just of the rise and fall of a great prizefighter from a hard-luck industrial townrendered, throughout, with tremendous heartbut of fathers and sons (and brothers), of Americas hunger for mythic heroes, of the tragic collision of two lives. Its a slender yet epic book, as graceful, layered, and achingly intimate as the finest novel.

Jonathan Mahler, author of Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning

Its easy to say The Good Son will go down as one of the great boxing books of all time. But in telling the story of Ray Boom Boom Mancini, Mark Kriegel has accomplished something beyond sports. His book is, put simply, a masterpiece; an ode to father-son relationships, to the drive and makeup of champions; to what it is to experience the high of a world championship and the low of watching an opponent die in the ring. Theres a reason Kriegel is one of Americas elite biographers. The Good Son is spectacular.

Jeff Pearlman, New York Times bestselling author of Sweetness: The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton

Our American literary tradition happily disregards the intellectuals and cherishes the sportswriters. As we should, for the great sportswriter combines the fans love of American culture with the scribes intuition of tragedy. Or, as Red Smith, Damon Runyon, or Bill Heinz might have put it: Kriegel does for Boom Boom what Margaret Mitchell did for the Civil War.

David Mamet

As told by Mark Kriegel, the true tale of Boom Boom Mancini is one of blood and spirit, of the ghosts bequeathed from fathers to sons, from pugilists to their progeny. If The Good Son is a sports book, its the best Ive ever read. Either way, in any genre, it is masterful storytelling.

David Milch

Raging Bull was a great movie because it wasnt just about Jake LaMotta. It explored the generic soul of a fighter. The Good Son isnt just about Ray Mancini. Its a look into a fighters soul.

Thomas Hauser, The Ring

One of my favorite biographers of this century, Mark Kriegel, has written with his usual aplomb a great story depicting the journey of this American hero... The author captures that period in prizefighting when someone like Mancini could be groomed with methodical precision to become a world champion... Kriegel always provides the flavor and the atmosphere thick with language and smoke of his subjects storyline... Its an important biography.

David Avila, TheSweetScience.com

Entertaining... Kriegels cinematic stylequick cuts, lots of dialogue, crisp characterizationworks well in a story that in its early stages will remind you of the Rocky films.

Kirkus Reviews

Kriegel is a meticulous researcher and gifted interviewer, and, in this stirring biography, the joy and tragedy experienced by the Mancini family is palpablenever more than in the account of a meeting between Kims son and Ray 30 years after Kim died at Rays hand. Kriegel picks his subjects carefully and does them justice. Can there be higher praise for a biographer?

Booklist, starred review

Kriegels smoothly written biography tells the story of a rust belt hero whose boxing career was marred by tragedy in the ring... as a saga of two families dealing with hardship and violent death, this boxing history is completely engaging.

Publishers Weekly

Ray and Boom, 1994. Copyright Arlene Schulman

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For my brother, Eric Bruce Kriegel

The longer it went, this stubborn accrual of brutalities, the more it thrillednot just the millions watching at homebut his fellow celebrities at ringside. One could see Sinatra transfixed, his admiration palpable. Bill Cosby left his seat to volunteer advice in the champions corner.

This was Americas champion: symbolically potent, demographically perfect. And during this brief moment in American life the public observed little distinction between flesh and fable, between Boom Boom Mancini and Rocky Balboa.

Hey, people would ask, when you gonna kick that Mr. Ts ass?

But against almost every expectation, this fight was even better than a movie. Each passing round became an homage to the champions father, who had been a fighter himself. I never took a step back, he liked to tell his son.

The challenger, for his part, had no father to speak of, a source of great embarrassment back in his native Korea. But his manner of combat, the eagerness with which he endured abuse, seemed to gentle the condition of his birth, as if hed descended from the Hwarang knights who famously admonished against retreat.

He was enchanted, said an old friend.

By now, both fighters were purplish and quilted with bruises. And as the champion went wearily to his corner, he wondered what the fuck Bill Cosby was doing there and why he was speaking in that Fat Albert voice. Was this a dream?

Whats he got to do? wondered the champions corner man. Kill this kid?

One of the television announcers had seen it before. And between rounds, he issued a muttering prophesy: Something bads going to happen...

Almost three decades later, Ray Mancini mumbles a prayer as a waiter sets the plate before him. Red sauce, pink sauce, white sauce, or grilled. It matters not. Mancinis devotional rituals do not change.

The regulars at table twenty-four enjoy the whole bit, from mannerism to mantra, the way it ends with Ray pressing fingers to his lips. But, more than that, they envy his capacity to believe.

Fucking Rayll believe anything, they say.