The Gloves

In his last year of eligibility, Robert Anasi, age thirty-two, decided to fight in the Golden Gloves tournament, the premier event in amateur boxing. "The gym becomes a way of life," he explains, and so it does for the reader, as Anasi ushers us into the world of training and competition, of friendly rivalry, of artistry and violence. He tells his story not as a journalist on assignment but as a man in the midst of one of the great adventures of his life, and in his hands "a dying blood sport is reincarnated as a metaphor for redemption under flawed circumstances" (Nita Rao, The Village Voice).