NONFICTION:  Two Powerful Lives, One Fateful Friendship.


This is an unprecedented, insightful biography of the relationship between the twentieth century’s greatest athlete and a television icon, revealing how they made the wide world of sports as sensational as their larger-than-life personalities.


Muhammed Ali and Howard Cosell were must-see TV long before it became ubiquitous. Individually interesting, together they were mesmerizing. They were profoundly different--young and old, black and white, a Muslim and a Jew, Ali barely literate, Cosell an editor of his university’s law review. Yet they had in common forces that made them unforgettable: both were unprecedented performers who covered enormous insecurities by demanding, loudly and often, public acclaim. Theirs was an extraordinary alliance that produced drama, comedy, controversy, and a mutual respect that helped shape both men’s lives.


Dave Kindred, who is uniquely equipped to tell the Ali-Cosell stories after nearly four decades of intimate working relationships with both men, recreates their unlikely connection in ways never before attempted. From the first Ali-Cosell meeting in 1962 through Ali’s conversion to Islam and refusal to be inducted into the U.S. army (the right to do so which Cosell publicly supported), Kindred explores both the heroics that created the men’s upward trajectories and the demons that brought them to sad later lives. Kindred draws on his experiences with Ali and Cosell, new reporting, and interviews with key personalities--including the families of both men. In the process, Kindred breaks new ground in our understanding of these two unique men. The book presents Ali not as a mythological character but as a man in whole, and it shows Cosell not in caricature but in faithful scale. With vivid scenes, poignant dialogue, and new interpretations of historical events, this is a biography that is novelistically engrossing—a richly evocative portrait of the friendship that shaped two giants and changed sports and television forever.