Читать книгу Slaughter in the Streets. When Boston Became Boxing’s Murder Capital онлайн

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Some might say, and did say, that these men got what they deserved. Most of them had crossed over to the dark side and were involved in crime: petty larceny, illegal gambling, fencing stolen goods, narcotics, burglary, murder—you name it. Some of these men were used and manipulated by high-level gangsters and Mafiosi. To coin a phrase, they lived by the sword and died by the sword. They were the embodiment of that old-school term “palooka,” a loser, of sorts, whose life seems destined for a brutal demise.

That these men were wayward souls is hard to deny, but they were also once somebody's little boy, somebody's brother, uncle, or father. All of them started out with a dream, which was to rise up out of humble circumstances—out of the gutter—and find fame and glory through the sport of boxing.

The historical fact that the city of Boston has seen more than its share of this breed—boxers who became intertwined with the criminal underworld—is the literary gold that author Don Stradley mines so beautifully in this book. There are moments of triumph in the ring, and some failures; Stradley is right to focus as much on the boxing careers (often misbegotten) of these men as well as their criminal associations and habits. They lived hard lives and died horrible deaths, and some might even surmise that their lives are better off forgotten. But even the lowliest of lives has much to reveal to us about the city in which these men toiled.