From one of the main innovators of New Journalism, Norman Mailer's book, The Fight, is the true story of a confrontation between two of the greatest boxers in the world, both inside and outside the ring, published in the Penguin Modern Classics series.

Mailer’s The Fight focuses on the 1974 Heavyweight World Championship in Kinshasa, Zaire. Muhammad Ali faced George Foreman in the ring. Foreman’s genius utilized silence, calmness, and foresight. He had never been defeated. His hands were his instrument, and "he kept them in his pockets like a hunter with his rifle in a velvet treasure." Together, the two men created boxing history in an explosive meeting of two great minds, two iron wills, and monumental egos.

“If any boxers ever showed that boxing was an art of the twentieth century, it was Ali,” says Norman, and his success in this masterful book is of a similar level, proving that writing about sports can also be an art of the twentieth century,” states George Dyer, New Statesman. “Perhaps no one has written better about boxing than Mailer,” adds The Guardian.