Denny Harrington (1849-1911) was a thief, a thug, a drunk, a dock labourer and a very well known pugilist, who was arrested, by my count, at least 35 times 👊🏻🍺 Come for the getting pissed and jumping on sailors, stay for throwing a bowl onto a cop's head: grapplingwithhistory.com/2025/04/15/t...

One of these rich dudes invested in a food company with all proceeds going to kids in need. The other started Sundance Institute, boosting the lives of countless artists. Hey modern rich dudes, don't be a typical greedy AI crypto-prick, be like these two.

Firing a Black woman for quoting Kirk’s horrific statements about Black women is insane. It seems the Washington Post would rather perform politeness (and demand that the people Kirk harmed do it too) that tell the truth: karenattiah.substack.com/p/the-washin...

I reviewed Declan Ryan’s boxing-infused poetry collection Crisis Actor for Heavy Feather Review. Look at this great cover! heavyfeatherreview.org/2025/09/11/c...

Oh hell yeah

Put a stake through his heart and garlic round his neck to make sure he never comes back.

Enjoyed #AThousandBlows + looking forward to season II (SOON)? Want to know about the real Hezekiah Moscow, Alec Munroe & Sugar Goodson? There are some options! Please visit my blog (scroll, or check The Cast List page)! Or buy my book! Out Autumn '26, details soon 🥊🤜🏻 www.grapplingwithhistory.com

Let’s kick off a new semester & season with my 240th #ScholarSunday thread of great public scholarly writing & work, podcast episodes, new & forthcoming books from the last week. Add more below, please share as widely as possible, & enjoy, all! 🗃️ americanstudier.substack.com/p/scholarsun...

The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke. This is not normal. Donald Trump isn't a strongman, he's a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.

All the good storylines are already taken.

The Plain Dealer Cleveland, OH 1947

Newspapers in the 1920s were doing somnething.

In 2026, I’ll have a story collection building off the world of Sailor Steve Costigan!

Slow weeks for boxing, and with the year about 3/4 of the way over, I’m taking a moment to gather myself. Here are links to everything I’ve published online so far this year. A 🧵

A few of the books picked up from the local library’s book sale.

Just a reminder that fascists, authoritarians, dictators of all stripes destroy archives— books, museums, databases, &c— because those things provide windows onto a plurality of other ways we might organize the world. And so preserving, defending, and spreading that knowledge harms those regimes.

My latest article, a look at the highly unusual Patterson-Rademacher matchup — the only time a fighter went for the title in his professional debut! www.thefightcity.com/aug-22-1957-...

Went to the local library book sale, got these selections from my triumvirate North Star — Mailer, Roth, and Oates.

The Department of Justice hired a former Jan. 6 defendant who was caught on tape urging rioters to "kill" police. The department calls him a "valued member" of the administration.

At one point, Tyson weeps because he realizes he can't defeat Sonny Liston even in his imagination.

And I’m sure that $500 million will go to people who are homeless, hungry, and in need? Definitely not tax rebates for the ultra rich. Definitely not. Fuck these people. Fuck them all.

and here's David Mamet revealing that getting snubbed by Terry Gross is what radicalized him into conservatism

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari at the Sphere

A few years ago, I started visiting the graves of boxers and making posts on Twitter about the fighters I'd visited. I've gotten a little out of practice, but I'm getting back into it. First up is IBHoFer Lou Brouillard.

Here it is, my 234th #ScholarSunday thread of great public scholarly writing & work, podcast episodes, new & forthcoming books from the last week. Add more below, please share as widely as possible, & enjoy, all! 🗃️ americanstudier.substack.com/p/scholarsun...

I've seen this cartoon shared around before on other social media sites, but hadn't looked into the life of Ed Dunkhorst, "The Human Freight Car," until today. A thread 🧵

Here it is, my 233rd #ScholarSunday thread, full of so much awesome public scholarly writing & work, podcast episodes, new & forthcoming books from the last week. Add more below, please share as widely as possible, & enjoy, all! 🗃️ americanstudier.substack.com/p/scholarsun...

Great, eerie reporting about an ICE job fair: "The deportation officer applicant pool was, I felt, shockingly diverse—one might say it looked like America. The whole place looked and felt like America."

Stopped by the bookstore today

One way to understand your own condition is to write something and spend a long time revising it. In revising you teach yourself. You find your own information buried in your body. It is still alive until you are not. —Fanny Howe, RIP

100 years ago today, the Scopes Monkey Trial began in Dayton, TN. The ironies, hypocrisies, & larger debates captured by the trial, the law it was testing, & the figures & communities it featured tell us so much about our moment & attacks on educators. 🗃️ www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2025/07/cons...

When looking at the history of women’s boxing ahead of #TaylorSerrano3 I wondered how many women have been featured on the cover of The Ring magazine. I was a little surprised by the answer. A thread 🧵

"Women’s boxing represents the center and circumference of the sport right now, to paraphrase Percy Shelley. In a sport (in)famously blighted by the venal corruptions of lesser men, the Taylor-Serrano trilogy stands defiantly as the root and blossom of the sweet science."

Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano have defied the odds, exceeded expectations, and set a new standard for women’s boxing.​

No sport celebrates a trilogy quite the way boxing does. To preview #TaylorSerrano3 I spoke to @boxingjones.bsky.social about the legacy of women’s boxing that informs this weekend’s Madison Sq Garden mega-card. www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2025/07/the-...

Illustrations from Japanese fireworks catalogues (ca. 1880s) — https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/japanese-fireworks-cataloguesFireworks #Fireworks appeared in Japan sometime around 1600 and were called hanabi — a combination of the kanji “fire” and “flower”.

I don’t think anyone is prepared for what they just did w/ ICE. This is not a simple budget increase. It is an explosion - making ICE bigger than the FBI, US Bureau of Prisons, DEA,& others combined. It is setting up to make what’s happening now look like child’s play. And people are disappearing.

Tilting at the Pittsburgh Windmill: 100th Anniversary of Harry Greb vs Mickey Walker Thanks to Fights Around the World for allowing me to suss out the details of this historic match. @abeg718.bsky.social fightsatw.com/tilting-at-t...

School teachers have to struggle to get supplies for their classrooms and pay out of their own pockets to provide basic items and tools, meanwhile ICE that is of no value to society is given $140 billion of your tax dollars to terrorize school children and communities.

Greb vs Walker was a real-life dream-fight. The Toy Bulldog versus the Pittsburgh Wildcat. July 2 will mark the centennial anniversary of the match. To celebrate, I’ll have an in-depth look at the fight over at Fights Around the World. @abeg718.bsky.social

It's incredible that neither the president nor VP was here. The politicization of all facets of American life is coming from the White House. No other American president would have failed to pay their respects. www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/...

If you look around at everything and all you have to complain about is Zohran Mamdani, you’re probably an asshole.

If you use AI to create your art, your story, your whatever, I immediately know you don’t care about making things — you only care about selling them.

Hot take: people should be able to call the police to verify if they think they’re being kidnapped by men in masks who won’t identify themselves in unmarked cars without it being a “resisting” crime

A quick Top Ten boxing films so far this century. The two I added were CHUCK (2016) an ASSAULT IN THE RING (2008), which the NY Times didn’t have in their database.

#OTD in @PoliceGazette 1895: English and American women compete in a game of (American) football in Watervliet, New York. The English side won.

Just to be crystal clear: bombing Iran is completely illegal.

Have you read "Resurrecting the Champ" by J.R. Moehringer? You can thank me later.

I would be a fool not to comment on this cover photo by Kareem Trayyar. It’s a shot of the basketball courts at the Manzanar. Worth contemplating as we see the erosion of due process and the rise in violent and racist displacement.