Twelve Rounds to Glory: The Story of Muhammad Ali, and: Muhammad Ali: Champion of the World (review)

Cooper went back to school for a year, tagging around after a handful of students at Walter Payton College Preparatory High School in Chicago and coaxing revelations about their interests, activities, and aspirations. Rather than an interview-style report, however, he spins his discoveries into a monthly survey of how everybody's getting by, with cuts from scene to scene as swift as a prime-time hospital or cop drama. Readers meet Daniel, an African-American student with his sights set on Harvard and a career in politics; soccer star Emily, whose year-end makeover does nothing to soften her fierceness on the field; Diana, the first in her Latino family to have a shot at college; Anais, perplexed about whether to pursue her passion for dance in a college program or with a troupe; and Aisha, a Muslim girl who seldom forms friendships since her family is constantly on the move. Not all are high achievers—there's Zef, whose dysfunctional sleep habits get him booted from Payton and relegated to an alternative program through a community college; and Anthony, whose complicated love life and petty drug dealing leave him no room for study, only a post in the cafeteria from which he seldom moves. Cooper maintains a reportorial distance from his subjects and an unfailingly nonjudgmental perspective, and he displays a keen eye for what really matters at the moment, from college acceptance letters to the sartorial challenges of winter footwear in Chicago. Teeny gray-tone vignettes punctuate the text and extend Cooper's impressionistic take on high-school life. No dates are mentioned, but references to the White Sox World Series, Christmas season at Marshall Field's (now, oh-so-sadly, Macy's), and Dick Cheney's hunting accident place this unmistakably in the 2005-6 academic year, a freshness date that's certain to expire pretty soon. All the more reason to get this title into circulation quickly.