cover image Ali: The Movie and the Man

Ali: The Movie and the Man

Michael Mann, Gregory Allen Howard. Newmarket Press, $22.95 (176pp) ISBN 978-1-55704-510-2

Monique Greenwood runs a bed and breakfast, owns a restaurant and a coffee shop and is editor-in-chief of Essence. In Having What Matters: The Black Woman's Guide to Creating the Life You Really Want, the superwoman offers feel-good advice for ""sistahs."" Readers will feel compelled to listen to her; after all, she started at ""ground zero"" and worked her way up to the top. She tells how she did it and adapts her story to a self-help format in nine chapters, among them ""A Great Career,"" ""Financial Freedom,"" ""A Sexy Soul Mate"" and ""Leaving the World a Better Place."" (Morrow, $25 256p ISBN 0-688-17509-0) Inspirational in its own way, Ali: The Movie and the Man is the official companion to the film starring Will Smith as Muhammad Ali. The book features an introduction by director Michael Mann and writings about Ali by Norman Mailer, George Plimpton, David Remnick and others, along with movie stills and archival photos of the smug, playful and energetic fighter and performer. Readers, filmgoers and boxing fans will appreciate this volume, which is not only an homage to the man whose famous phrase ""I am the greatest!"" still rings true, but also a tribute to Mann's film.