This book is about my adventures as a boxer.

The first part of this book (chapters 1-6) describes how I got interested in boxing as a way to build masculinity and create myself as a whole man. The second section (chapters 7 to 11) describes various environments in which I took boxing lessons, ranging from fitness clubs to community centers. Each one showed me a different side of boxing.

The third section (chapters 12 to 18) outlines my progress through a series of boxing coaches. Some had a lot of experience in the ring, others very little. I learned from each one of them, and as I moved on, I discovered more about my manhood and my mission. I put aside basic fears and discovered the joy and freedom of being a beginner. I also look at some popular ideas about boxing as an agent of change and as a form of self-expression. I look at fear, and also at safety concerns and other matters that might be keeping you from climbing into the ring.

The last section (chapters 19-22) looks perceptions of boxing in the art of the famous American painter George Wesley Bellows (d. 1926) and explains why these dark views of the sport matter to boxers living one hundred years after Bellows was working. The book concludes with a chapter on Jack Dempsey, whom Bellows painted twice. Dempsey wrote a book about his own boxing experiences and is a wonderful model of a man who understood the importance of writing, something Dempsey grasped even as a boy of 7 who learned about boxing from his older brothers.

The book ends with list of books, articles, and websites that will help to guide your boxing adventures.

Other books by Allen Frantzen here.