Books: Pain & Punishment

BOXING IN ART AND LITERATURE—William D. Cox—Reynal & Hitchcock ($5).

When Aristotle in The Nicomachean Ethics pointed out that boxers find "the crown and the honors" of victorious combat pleasant, but that "receiving the blows they do is painful and annoying to flesh and blood," he expressed an attitude toward pugilism that has been held by most of the writing men since his day. The 37 authors whose fragmentary observations are included in Boxing in Art and Literature seem as a rule to approach it with a strange air of mingled respect and disdain,...

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