Floyd Patterson delivered a number of knockout punches during his Hall of Fame career, but it might have been the fights he won outside the ring that made him great. Born in 1935, he overcame poverty and prejudice to become the youngest world heavyweight champion in history--and he would later become the first man to regain the crown after losing it. Muhammad Ali called Patterson the most skillful fighter he ever faced.

This first complete biography of the former heavyweight champion covers Patterson's meteoric rise as a boxer while giving equal attention to his life away from sport, including his work as a civil rights activist in the 1960s. Joining Ali and Joe Frazier as boxers who used their celebrity to bring attention to social issues, he became an icon of the movement.