Wrecking Machine: A Tale of Real Fights and White Collars - Brossura

Wade, Alex

Brossura

ISBN 10: 1416522530 ISBN 13: 9781416522539

Casa editrice: Simon & Schuster, 2006

Riassunto

Alex Wade is a respectable professional man, with a responsible white-collar job. But once in a while he puts on his gloves, steps into a boxing ring and hits another man in the face while trying to avoid getting hit in return. Welcome to the world of the 'Real Fight Club', where lawyers, surveyors and City traders swap their pinstripes for mouthguards and experience the kind of adrenaline rush that only unarmed combat can bring. But what drives these largely middle-class, often affluent men to invite a punch to the head? For Alex Wade it became a way of addressing his own demons, and facing up to the fact that, despite the respectable veneer, his first three decades had been marked by a tendency to violence and self-destruction. As he describes in this gripping and moving memoir, it was only through a world of organised violence that he truly came to know himself.

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Recensione:

'I feared the fight-club clichés about the savage essence beneath the civilised veneer . . . But Wade – Fleet Street lawyer and journalist – resists cod lyricism, preferring a candid approach. He details the part that disorganised violence and drink played in the messiness of his life, and how he discovered the compensatory pleasures of organised violence'
GQ Magazine
'Brutally honest . . . Reconciliation, both professional and personal, and relocation, both physical and mental: these are the themes of a book which purports to be about boxing but is more centrally concerned with an intelligent and articulate man's attempt to understand why he was destroying his life' DAILY TELEGRAPH
‘The language of boxing has given much to the description of advocacy in our courts ... The similarities of the two skills are exploited by Alex Wade in his book Wrecking Machine, an entertaining account of his experiences as a solicitor and boxer on the ‘White Collar’ circuit of lawyers and City types.’ Marcel Berlins
Guardian 14/06
'A brutally honest, soul-searching expose of his own masculinity . . . WRECKING MACHINE is a brilliant book . . . flawlessly written and far too honest . . . a confessional memoir of the most haunting kind' Ian T. Smith FOLIO MAGAZINE

‘You might have thought that Alex Wade was indulging in a work of fiction when he wrote WRECKING MACHINE, his account of trading blows with fellow lawyers, bankers and City types in the white-collar boxing ring. In this gripping story, he reminds us of how close the world of litigation and pugilism is . . . Wade enthralls with accounts of his fights . . . a moving story of how Wade achieved perspective in his life through fighting, although the touching sensitivity of descriptions of the people and the sport sometimes sit uneasily with the mindless brutality of what happens in the ring’
John Cooper, THE TIMES
‘Every now and then a sports book comes out of nowhere and grabs you by the collar. This is one such book . . . The success of the book is down to its honesty and irresistible story telling . . . A superb book.’
Frank Graham, SUNDAY TIMES, Sunday Times Book of the Week

L'autore:

Alex Wade is a freelance journalist and lawyer who advises several national newspapers on legal issues. He lives with his family in Cornwall.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Simon & Schuster
• Data di pubblicazione: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1416522530
• ISBN 13: 9781416522539
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 336