ESPN boxing blog: Four Kings by George Kimball “terrific”

George Kimball gives Bernard Hopkins a copy of his book, Four Kings: Leonard, Hagler, Hearns, Duran and the Last Great Era if Boxing, at the Pavlik-Hopkins Pre-Fight Press Conference

ESPN Fight Credential: Pavlik vs Hopkins blog had some laudatory things to say about the “Pavlik–Hopkins and the Era of the Four Kings” panel discussion held at Caesars Palace on Saturday October 18. Reporter Don Steinberg filed three blog entries about the panel. Here’s one:

The guest panelists who discussed George Kimball's terrific book "Four Kings" shared some awesome inside stories.

Emmanuel Steward on Tommy Hearns' loss to Marvin Hagler in 1985: "The night we lost that fight was the most painful night of my life."

Bob Arum on Hearns's 1984 knockout of Roberto Duran: "The best knockout I've ever seen."

Larry Merchant said he always knew how concerned Hagler was about an opponent by seeing how many quarters of a pound under 160 Hagler weighed in at. Steward told how he got Leonard drunk to talk him into fighting Hearns into a 1989 rematch for $12 million.

Bottom line: Check out the book. -- Don Steinberg (read all three ESPN blog entries)

Purchase Four Kings, by George Kimball, at McBooks.com

George Kimball’s Four Kings: Boxing’s Golden Era

Four Kings
Leonard, Hagler, Hearns, Duran and the Last Great Era of Boxing

By George Kimball

Their names are legendary: Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Thomas "Hit Man" Hearns, and Roberto Duran. They were exceptional boxers endowed with unique combinations of power and speed. They matured in the 1980s and fought each other as middleweights. With unforgettable courage and skill, they ruled the ring and ushered in the last Golden Age of boxing.

Veteran sports journalist George Kimball takes an authoritative look at the rivalries that fueled this great era in sports history. The result is a fast-paced, blow-by-blow account of four extraordinary adversaries and a remarkable boxing epoch.

“George Kimball cooks up some compelling nostalgia by recounting an era when great American fighters bestrode the planet. A former Phoenix sportswriter and long-time Boston Herald scribe (and current Phoenix contributor), he knows the game and, more important, the characters who inhabit it.” --Mark Jurkowitz, The (Boston) Phoenix (read the full boxing book review).

Purchase Four Kings at McBooks.com

From the Depths author Gerry Doyle interviewed on Notes from the Handbasket blog

Octoberguest! Interview with Gerry Doyle

by Laura Benedict, Notes from the Handbasket

I've owed thriller novelist Gerry Doyle a guest spot for a long time. His debut book, From the Depths, came out early last November--just a month after my own debut. Debut writers always go to the head of the line at the Handbasket. Newbies need all the exposure and support they can get!

Gerry's an editor for the Chicago Tribune's Metro section, but From the Depths takes place far from the Midwest. He brings new energy to the techno-thriller with CIA forensic scientist Dr. Christine Meyers, who must work with the Navy SEALS to discover what killed the entire crew of a defecting North Korean sub.

This past summer at Thrillerfest, From the Depths was one of the five finalists for the International Thriller Writer's Best Debut Novel award.

Today he's in the Handbasket to answer a few questions.

Welcome, Gerry!

As a career journalist, what was the instigating factor in your jump into fiction? And thriller fiction at that?

The instigating factor for my jump into fiction is the same as that for my jump into journalism: I just love writing. I've been writing fiction since the time I could pick up a crayon, and my love of the written word was what ultimately nudged me into journalism. Writing a book was almost an accident: An idea that just started gathering momentum as I put it on the page. All of a sudden it was a novel! The thriller genre is one that I think just about all of my work fits into. I tend to launch writing projects from ideas: What if? Why? How? And in the course of answering them, tense and precarious situations tend to unfold.


Who first encouraged you to write? (read the full interview)


Purchase From the Depths, by Gerry Doyle, at McBooks.com