THE MAGNIFICENT RUBE

This biography of George Lewis (Tex) Rickard borrows excitement from his life, for it is filled with dime novel elements, and gives credit to the man who took prize fighting out of the gutter through his own square dealing. A chore boy at ten, a trail rider at eleven, a cowboy in his teens, Tex was married and marshal of his Texas town in his early twenties; his wife and baby's death and the opening of the Alaskan gold mines sent him north where professional gambling took the place of gold hunting. Parlaying his luck, he made a South African jump after non-existent diamonds and through chance, in Goldfield, the staging of the Nelson-Gans fight brought him into the cut-throat world of promotion. Almost a hayseed, he made his way through the tricks of the sporting fraternity with dignity and reserve, winning many friends and a few enemies. The great fights he produced, his relations with associates, partners -- and the fighters, the building of the new Madison Square Garden, the fine angles of state boxing laws, of contracts and financial arrangements -- are a fast moving background to his sensational success. It's a solid tribute to a great sporting man and a crackling picture of the world he made his own. A man's market here.