Raging Bull

by Jake LaMotta, Joseph Carter, Peter Savage, et al.

Book Overview

Meet Jake La Motta: thief, rapist, killer. Raised in the Bronx slums, he fought on the streets, got sent to reform school, and served time in prison. Trusting no one, slugging everyone, he beat his... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0553139819
• ISBN13: 9780553139815
• Release Date: January 1981
• Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell
• Length: 248 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A Page Turner - More Like A Page Pounder

A Page Turner - More Like A Page Pounder Reading this book I felt like Sugar Ray Fighting La Motta - couldn't put it down - OK - that's a stretch, but you get the idea. I could not put this book down. It reads like a bull charges. A little bit of wind up - I'd say the first 19 pages - then it's a charging bull. Jake's story is much more than what the movie shows and is different. As we all know and heard so many times - the book is always better than the movie and again it's very true here - the book is Jake's exact story not changed one hair for Hollywood. It's such an intense, real and gritty story. It starts off in Jake's childhood as a tuff Bronx kid taking a beating from his father and the world - and as he got older the beatings continue and get worse - the biggest beatings coming from himself. La Motta is brutally honest and doesn't try to hide anything or paint himself in a special light. It's a powerful and straightforward look at his life, his heart and a candid look at the sport of boxing back then. It's a great book, you'll pound through the pages like a raging bull.

Packs the Same Wallop as La Motta's Ring Punch

Jake La Motta made a good living punching people in the ring, rising in 1949 to the world middleweight championship. He packs the same wallop in his book "Raging Bull," the basis for the powerful 1980 film which was directed by Martin Scorsese and earned Robert De Niro an Oscar for Best Actor.La Motta paints a brutally vivid picture of a youngster and young man growing up in a brutal Bronx jungle. The fighter they called "The Bronx Bull" writes about seeing rats in the cellar of the tenament where he grew up that were the size of cats. The neighborhood in which he grew up was so tough that he had thousands of fights, explaining that by the time he laced on gloves and became a boxer such conflict had become totally routine. To La Motta a fight was as commonplace as anyone else brushing their teeth, a simple, elementary part of life. He writes about his early life of crime, including the beating of one man he thought he had killed. In perhaps the most dramatic sequence of the book he reveals how he had lived in morbid fear of being apprehended for murder and in guilt for the act itself, after which he was shocked when the man he was convinced he had killed surfaces. Unaware that La Motta was his attacker, the man surfaces in Detroit to wish the fighter luck as he prepares for his winning title bout against champion Marcel Cerdan of France. The man explains that he was hurt badly but finally recovered, and is in town to wish someone from his old neighborhood luck in his title pursuit. The raw power of the lightning narrative, along with its brutally realistic truth, makes "Raging Bull" one of the all- time great sports books, a true American classic.

Gripping

Jake Lamotta's autobiography describes his life from childhood, including reform school, through his career in the ring and a bit beyond. The story is gripping! Lamotta describes not only with brutal honesty, but with true insight, his aspirations, his shortcomings and the effects his actions had on those around him. Equally impressive is the writing style. Even if written with the contribution of others, the style is lucid and riveting and I kept having to remind myself that this is a story written by a (brawling) boxer. It does fade a bit at the end but the book is a clear winner. One of the best sports books I have ever read.

Even Better than The Movie

The Movie was Incredible but the Book is Even Better.WHen You Read About Jake La Motta it's Really Something else.this Book is Very Honest.His Battles with Sugar Ray Robinson are True EPICS.A MUST READ ON A MAN WHO BATTLED IN & OUT OF THE RING.

Raw, unflinching memoir of pain and redemption -

Raging Bull is an awesome retrospective. Through a childhood of abject poverty, crime and pain, La Motta harnessed his evil intentions sufficiently (for a time, at least) to win the Middleweight boxing championship. When such a title meant something.Covering his rise, fall and redemption - LaMotta's voice speaks with blatant honesty. His life has been indeed been fascinating, painful and poignant.