Review: Prizefighting and Civilization: A Cultural History of Boxing, Race, and Masculinity in Mexico and Cuba, 1840–1940, by David C. LaFevor

Inspired in part by his graduate research and his experience training in both Mexico and Cuba, David C. LaFevor presents a transnational study of boxing and its impact on the formation of Mexican and Cuban identities from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries in his book Prizefighting and Civilization. In the tradition of Elliott Gorn’s landmark work The Manly Art (1986), a foundational work on prizefighting prior to the turn of the twentieth century, and Louis Moore’s I Fight for a Living (2017), which highlights African American boxers over the same time frame, LaFevor’s work expands the scope further to include Mexico and Cuba in a broader North American prizefighting culture. The author grounds this dual analysis in theoretical frameworks associated with the cultural turn, focusing mostly on print-media sources, but also fortifies each chapter with archival research and relevant secondary literature. He traces the introduction...