War in the Ring
Joe Louis, Max Schmeling, and the Fight between America and Hitler
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War in the Ring presents a riveting nonfiction book for kids about a boxing match that represented the growing tensions between the United States and Nazi Germany in the lead up to World War II. Joe Louis was born on an Alabama cotton patch and raised in a Detroit ghetto. Max Schmeling grew up in poverty in Hamburg, Germany. For both boys, boxing was a path out and a ladder up. Little did they know that they would one day face each other in a pair of matches that would capture the world's attention. Joe grew into a symbol of inspiration to a nation of Black Americans hoping to carve a slice of the 'American Dream' in a racially fractured country. Max, on the other hand, became a Nazi symbol for the superiority of the Aryan race. The battles waged between Joe and Max still resonate, and the cultural implications of the international sensation continue to reverberate far past the ring.
John Florio
John Florio is the author of the historical crime novels Sugar Pop Moon and Blind Moon Alley. With Ouisie Shapiro, he co-authored the nonfiction books One Nation Under Baseball and One Punch from the Promised Land, as well as the young adult books Doomed and War in the Ring. Florio has written for the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the Nation, and ESPN. He holds an MFA from the University of Southern Maine, an MA from New York University, an MBA from St. John’s University, and is pursuing doctoral writing studies at the University of Glasgow. Florio is on the faculty of the Stonecoast MFA creative writing program at the University of Southern Maine; he and Shapiro are married and live in Brooklyn, NY.
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