About the Author

Joseph Monninger is the author of eight novels and two memoirs. He has written for Sports Illustrated, American Heritage, Scientific American, and the Boston Globe. He is a two-time recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in New Hampshire.

Reviews

“[The] strength of this exceptional book is in the thoughts the author is brave enough to attribute to the fighters who were involved in that unlikely bout, and to the crowd that witnessed it, and to the much larger crowd that listened to the fight on the radio. It takes a writer with flair and courage to extract from the shocking knockdown early in that fight the unstated reason so many people passionately paid attention to the event . . . the promise, however brief and fragile, of a crazy surprise that changes everything.”
—Bill Littlefield, The Boston Globe
 
“Joseph Monninger’ s Two Ton provides a highly detailed and exciting description of the 1939 heavyweight title fight between Joe Louis and Orange, New Jersey native “Two Ton” Tony Galento. Monninger’s real achievement is not the tale of the fight itself, but rather of the circumstances that lead up to it, and its explanation of how one chunky, heavyset bartender with a far-from-average left hook could rise to fight for the world championship.”
—BrickCityBoxing.com
 
“A championship match-up between Italian-American boxer Tony Galento and legend Joe Louis is the focus here, but also the lens through which this brisk and entertaining history looks at the state of the nation in the 1930s . . . Most compelling throughout, however, is Monninger's presentation of the gluttonous, fun-loving Galento . . . Monninger artfully revives ‘Two Ton Tony’.”
—Kirkus Reviews