King Of The World, by David Remnick (Picador, £6.99 in UK)

Taken into the febrile years surrounding the civil rights movement in America and filtered through the eyes of the greatest boxer to have taken to the ring, Cassius Clay (later to become Muhammad Ali), King Of The World places the former heavyweight champion in a social context which explains the man as much as the athlete. The former Olympic gold medallist, who beat the monstrous and inexplicable part-time Mafia leg-breaker, Sonny Liston, in 1964 to become the most charismatic champion of the world then set about destroying his career by aligning himself with Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad, two emerging black segregationists. A transcendent boxer and an entertainer whose humour often masked an extremism which unsettled not only white but pacifistic black America, Ali was finally nailed for his principled refusal to accept the draft and fight in the Vietnam war. Pulitzer prizewinner David Remnick floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee. Sharp, clever, nimble - just like Ali at the height of his power.