Champions of the Ring: The Lives and Times of Boxing's Heavyweight Heroes

It is a cliche that the heavyweight division is the glamour class of boxing, and so a champ-by-champ history will surely appeal to aficionados of the Sweet Science. In brief, chronologically arranged profiles, Britisher Suster does a fine job of recreating the champions, from John L. Sullivan (1858-1918) to Riddick Bowe and Lennox Lewis, giving details of their best fights and, more intriguing, what he believes were their mental attitudes at various stages in their careers (e.g., Sonny Liston seems to have thought Muhammad Ali insane at the time of their first fight). Suster doesn't hesitate to flay the U.S. for its poor treatment of Jack Johnson because of his fondness for white women and of Ali because he wouldn't fight in Vietnam and, as an outsider, can enjoy the irony of the diffident black Floyd Patterson being considered the great white hope against a mouthy Ali recently converted to Islam. He also has fun with ""the alphabet boys,"" the WBC, WBA, IBF and WBO, who make it possible to have four heavyweight champions simultaneously. Annoying are his occasional condescending lapses into black English, (as in ""he was the baddest man and could whup anybody""). But on balance, this virtual encyclopedia of boxers, with its full-page photos of the champs, is a lively read. Photos. (May)