Beyond glory - David Margolick

In 1938, a match was to be fought between two rival boxers - Max Schmeling and Joe Louis. After his win in 1936 against Louis, Schmeling had become the toast of Nazi Germany and now in his corner were Hitler and Goebbels, along with millions of Germans for whom Schmeling symbolised not just national pride but Aryan supremacy. Joe Louis, the ferocious young black boxer, had in his corner almost the entire black community of the US, not to mention many in the Caribbean and Africa, the young Nelson Mandela among them. Alongside the blacks were Jews everywhere, including those trapped in Hitler's Europe. And, to a degree unprecedented in 1930s America, there was a huge population of the white community who hoped that a black man would knock out a white man. Beyond Glorytells this classic story which pulses with energy and captures the two fighters and the passions they aroused in a world that was about to change for ever.