Raging Bull: My Story

In prose as straightforward and at times as brutal as his style in the ring, former middleweight champion Jake LaMotta wove together an unforgettable autobiography: first published in 1970, Raging Bull was violent, candid, primitive, smart, and altogether powerful. It still is. His story, adapted for the screen in 1980 by Martin Scorsese in the Oscar-winning film starring Robert De Niro, is filled with anger--at his father for beating him, at the neighborhood he grew up in, at the petty criminal he became, at the Mob that tried to keep him from the title because he wouldn't take a dive--and real candor about the dive he did take (out in the real world when his boxing career was over). While most of LaMotta's anger was self-directed, he harnessed enough of it to power him to 83 victories in 106 fights, and a two-year hold on a championship belt. His recounting of his ring wars with Sugar Ray Robinson and Marcel Cerdan remain as convincingly primal on the page as they were in the arena.