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Iron Ambition: My Life with Cus D'Amato
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Penguin Publishing Group 2017
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Description
From the former heavyweight champion and New York Times bestselling author comes a powerful look at the life and leadership lessons of Cus D’Amato, the legendary boxing trainer and Mike Tyson’s surrogate father.

“[Iron Ambition] spells out D'Amato's techniques for building a champion from scratch.” – Wall Street Journal
 
When Cus D’Amato first saw thirteen-year-old Mike Tyson spar in the ring, he proclaimed, “That’s the heavyweight champion of the world.” D’Amato, who had previously managed the careers of world champions Floyd Patterson and José Torres, would go on to train the young Tyson and raise him as a son. D'Amato died a year before Tyson became the youngest heavyweight champion in history.
In Tyson’s bestselling memoir Undisputed Truth, he recounted the role D’Amato played in his formative years, adopting him at age sixteen after his mother died and shaping him both physically and mentally after Tyson had spent years living in fear and poverty. In Iron Ambition, Tyson elaborates on the life lessons that D’Amato passed down to him, and reflects on how the trainer’s words of wisdom continue to resonate with him outside the ring. The book also chronicles Cus’s courageous fight against the mobsters who controlled boxing, revealing more than we’ve ever known about this singular cultural figure.
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Format:
Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read
Street Date:
05/30/2017
Language:
English
ISBN:
9780698413092
ASIN:
B01KGZVNMC
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Citations
APA Citation (style guide)

Mike Tyson. (2017). Iron Ambition: My Life with Cus D'Amato. Penguin Publishing Group.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)

Mike Tyson. 2017. Iron Ambition: My Life With Cus D'Amato. Penguin Publishing Group.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)

Mike Tyson, Iron Ambition: My Life With Cus D'Amato. Penguin Publishing Group, 2017.

MLA Citation (style guide)

Mike Tyson. Iron Ambition: My Life With Cus D'Amato. Penguin Publishing Group, 2017.

Note! Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2022. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy.
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Date Added:
Jun 12, 2018 18:46:09
Date Updated:
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title
Iron Ambition
fullDescription
From the former heavyweight champion and New York Times bestselling author comes a powerful look at the life and leadership lessons of Cus D’Amato, the legendary boxing trainer and Mike Tyson’s surrogate father.

“[Iron Ambition] spells out D'Amato's techniques for building a champion from scratch.” – Wall Street Journal
 
When Cus D’Amato first saw thirteen-year-old Mike Tyson spar in the ring, he proclaimed, “That’s the heavyweight champion of the world.” D’Amato, who had previously managed the careers of world champions Floyd Patterson and José Torres, would go on to train the young Tyson and raise him as a son. D'Amato died a year before Tyson became the youngest heavyweight champion in history.
In Tyson’s bestselling memoir Undisputed Truth, he recounted the role D’Amato played in his formative years, adopting him at age sixteen after his mother died and shaping him both physically and mentally after Tyson had spent years living in fear and poverty. In Iron Ambition, Tyson elaborates on the life lessons that D’Amato passed down to him, and reflects on how the trainer’s words of wisdom continue to resonate with him outside the ring. The book also chronicles Cus’s courageous fight against the mobsters who controlled boxing, revealing more than we’ve ever known about this singular cultural figure.
reviews
      • premium: True
      • source: Publisher's Weekly
      • content:

        Starred review from May 15, 2017
        In this tender and disturbing hybrid of memoir and biography, former heavyweight boxing champion Tyson examines one of the most unusual characters in boxing history. The story begins in 1979 with boxing trainer Cus D’Amato watching Tyson, then a 13-year-old gangster, batter a former pro in a sparring session. At the time, it had been over 20 years since D’Amato guided Floyd Patterson to a title and almost as long since his exile to pugilistic Siberia (aka upstate New York). The resentful street kid’s rage and power reinvigorated D’Amato, and seven years later he helped Tyson become the youngest heavyweight champion in boxing history. Tyson’s narrative alternates between recollections of his discipleship with D’Amato and narration of the manager’s earlier years, including his upbringing in the Bronx and his battles with the Mafia, which controlled boxing in the decades after WWII. D’Amato, a brilliant autodidact whose training methods incorporated Zen, hypnotism, and the psychoanalytic practices of Wilhelm Reich, had forged other champions before Tyson, only to lose them through an odd mixture of paranoia and principle. This book is no hagiography, and descriptions of D’Amato’s brutal psychological manipulation of damaged teenagers like Tyson makes for unpleasant reading. As hypercritical and manipulative as D’Amato could be, he nevertheless drew remarkable accomplishments from boys others had forgotten. Tyson’s love for D’Amato is more than apparent, but it doesn’t lead him to downplay his teacher’s myriad faults.

      • premium: True
      • source: Kirkus
      • content:

        April 15, 2017
        The boxing champion, infamous for biting and beating, reveals his soft side in this memoir of his longtime mentor and trainer.Constantine D'Amato (1908-1985), known to the world as Cus, was a tough ex-fighter who developed a style called "peek-a-boo," in which a boxer guards the face and head from the blows otherwise likely to be rained down upon them. He had a soft side as well; it was D'Amato who discovered Tyson (Undisputed Truth, 2013) in a reform school and trained him, directing Tyson's aggression into a somewhat more productive venue and giving him the self-confidence he never had: "For the first time in my life someone was telling me that there was no one better than me." D'Amato, writes Tyson, was obsessed with boxing from childhood on, and his encyclopedic knowledge of the sport and its practitioners made him the man to see for anyone wanting to get into the game. Not surprisingly, that included a lot of shady types, and Tyson is forthright about how mobbed-up the New York boxing world was when he was getting his start, though some fearless trainers and fighters tried to buck the system; of one, he writes, "he seemed like a nice guy--until he got drunk and did things like throw beer bottles at Mafiosi." Tyson also marvels at D'Amato's fairness to his fighters, expressed in part by a formula that allowed a boxer to make money even if a promoter didn't. He writes respectfully and affectionately, though some of the old toughness hangs on. Pondering how many requests he gets for photos, he writes, "back in the '70s taking any kind of pictures around strangers was a no-no. You didn't even say 'Hi' to people you didn't know. Motherfucker would start beating on you and leave you in a coma on the street." A belated but welcome homage to a boxing legend who died shortly before Tyson's career took off. Fans of the sweet science will want to have a look.

        COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

      • premium: True
      • source: Library Journal
      • content:

        February 1, 2017

        The former heavyweight champion and New York Times best-selling memoirist recalls trainer Cus D'Amato and everything he taught Tyson about the one-two punches delivered by sports and life.

        Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

      • premium: True
      • source: Library Journal
      • content:

        June 1, 2017

        In 2013, former heavyweight boxing champion Tyson, with coauthor Sloman, published Undisputed Truth, a nearly 600-page memoir. Now they are back with another lengthy reminiscence focusing (somewhat) more on Tyson's guardian/trainer/manager, Cus D'Amato. There is repetition between the books, but both Tyson (a fearsome brawler with admitted low self-esteem) and D'Amato (a genius at psychological motivation) are complex enough to warrant a comprehensive look. Tyson bobs and weaves between exhaustive descriptions of D'Amato's warfare with the International Boxing Club of New York, which along with the Mob virtually monopolized the sport until the late 1950s. Included are D'Amato's techniques of simultaneously building up and breaking down his budding champion. In the end, this is a story of how two men's demons contributed to the salvation of both men's lives. VERDICT Boxing fans able to dedicate time to this work will find it worth the effort. [See Prepub Alert, 1/9/17.]--Jim Burns, formerly with Jacksonville P.L., FL

        Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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shortDescription
From the former heavyweight champion and New York Times bestselling author comes a powerful look at the life and leadership lessons of Cus D’Amato, the legendary boxing trainer and Mike Tyson’s surrogate father.

“[Iron Ambition] spells out D'Amato's techniques for building a champion from scratch.” – Wall Street Journal
 
When Cus D’Amato first saw thirteen-year-old Mike Tyson spar in the ring, he proclaimed, “That’s the heavyweight champion of the world.” D’Amato, who had previously managed the careers of world champions Floyd Patterson and José Torres, would go on to train the young Tyson and raise him as a son. D'Amato died a year before Tyson became the youngest heavyweight champion in history.
In Tyson’s bestselling memoir Undisputed Truth, he recounted the role D’Amato played in his formative years, adopting...
sortTitle
Iron Ambition My Life with Cus DAmato
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My Life with Cus D'Amato
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