A Flame of Pure Fire: Jack Dempsey and the Roaring ’20s by Roger Kahn

In A Flame of Pure Fire, Roger Kahn captures the life of heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey, one of America’s first great sports icons, and the turbulent, glittering era that made him a legend. From his rise from a Colorado mining town to his reign as world champion, Dempsey embodied the raw energy and ambition of the 1920s. Kahn paints a vivid portrait of a man whose brutal grace in the ring mirrored the restless spirit of the Jazz Age, a time of ambition, glamour, and reinvention. This sweeping biography intertwines Dempsey’s battles in and out of the ring with the roaring pulse of a nation forging its modern identity.