Winner of the 2018 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing Winner of The Times Sports Biography of the Year “As Muhammad Ali’s life was an epic of a life soAli: A Life is an epic of a biography . . . pages in succession its narrative reads like a novel—a suspenseful novel with a cast of vivid characters.” – Joyce Carol Oates,New York Times Book Review   Muhammad Ali was born Cassius Clay in racially segregated Louisville, Kentucky, the son of a sign painter and a housekeep