Only in boxing could a name like that be considered tough

Ok, so I saw the preview for the movie with the same name. I'm not quite sure what to think about this. I can tell this is no ROCKY right off the bat. Really, come on. This is a book based off of a true story, that they are NOW making into a movie. So...why didn't we just leave it at ROCKY. He had all those things, did it WAY before, and had a cool name.
They are lucky I SAW the preview. If I had heard about it, well... I just don't know what I would think. As I said before, only in boxing could a name like "Cinderella Man" be considered tough. Later

howardtuttleman.com

America Loves The Underdog

Braddock was facing a man who literally killed two men in the ring. And yet, in the interest of feeding his family, he not only took the fight, but he was determined to win.
This is an amazing story everyone should take the time to read. I would say if you were a fan of Seabiscuit, you should definitely be a fan of Cinderella Man, too.
Anyone who loved this book will find a heartwarming story in "Prose From A Grandson To A Senior Fellow" as well.

There are second acts to American lives

F. Scott Fitzgerald once said that there were no second acts to American lives. Yet, a fellow Irishman (one much less gloomy) proved him very, very wrong.

This book is the homage that James J. Braddock has always deserved. Braddock's amazing story has been slowly fading from public memory, as well as the memory of modern boxing fans, steadily over the years. This book puts things right.

Author, Jeremy Schaap, has written a Godsend of a book for Braddock fans, and his clean, direct style is perfectly suited to telling this story. If Schaap were a boxer, he would be referred to as a cagey, "cute" fighter; meaning that it might appear that he isn't doing much, but what he does counts and he will be there at the end of the fight with his glove raised.

To put it another way, there is nothing prosy in Schaap's writing; but he really knows the way to hit the right spots. Like any very good writer, he recognizes true moments of drama and plays these moments with a pure economy of words that come at you from the blue. Bang! Suddenly I found myself very moved and didn't even see it coming.

James J. Braddock was in so many ways the perfect product of the Great Depression. He was a washed-up fighter, his best years behind him. He had been cleaned out by the depression, desperately trying to feed his family by taking odd jobs at the docks in New Jersey, even going on relief (which so humiliated him he wouldn't tell anyone, not even his mother). Yet dock work had made him lean and tough, so when his second chance came, the hard knocks of life had prepared him.

People loved him not because he was white, or Irish. Americans loved him because he was like them - all of them - and he represented a hope. He had been crushed and humiliated by life, yet he did not quit. He literally fought his way back. One of the most telling moments in the book, described beautifully by the author, was when Braddock walked into the pubic relief office. He had the amount that he had been given in cash in his pocket, and he wished to pay it back.

While this book is a pleasure for the mainstream reader, hard-core fight fans will have nothing to complain about either. His descriptions of the fights of Braddock's career make it plain the author knows his boxing as well. As an unexpected bonus, Schaap has portraits of many other fighters that entered Braddock's sphere; among them Primo Carnera, Max Bear and the great light-heavy, Tommy Laughran.

This book is a long-needed and wonderful portrait of a champion, as well as an important addition to boxing literature.