And now comes the latest twist to the Ali saga, yet more revisionism. In "Ghosts of Manila: The Fateful Blood Feud Between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier," author Mark Kram turns a sharp eye to what he calls the "Ali myth." "Current hagiographers have tied themselves in knots trying to elevate Ali into a heroic, defiant catalyst of the anti-war movement, a beacon of black independence," writes Kram, who covered Ali during 11 years at Sports Illustrated. "It's a legacy that evolves from the intellectually loose sixties, from those who were in school then and now write romance history." In a fascinating narrative, Kram posits instead that Ali, duped by Muslims, was a Chauncey Gardiner figure straight from the pages of Jerzy Kosinski's "Being There": "For his every utterance, heavy breathing from the know-nothings to the trendy tasters of faux revolution ... Seldom has a public figure of such superficial depth been more wrongly perceived -- by the right and the left."

Kram's devastating, contrarian critique takes on a fawning intelligentsia; Norman Mailer (with whom Kram once tussled at a cocktail party), Bryant Gumbel and Howard Cosell are among those on the receiving end of Kram's often lethal blows. For all the deification of Ali -- during a recent appearance with Kram on HBO's "On the Record With Bob Costas," Spike Lee called Ali "Our shining black prince; to black people, he was like God" -- Kram's original reporting reminds us that Ali had a very real victim, a black man in his own right: his archnemesis Joe Frazier, still deeply wounded today by how Ali, a former friend, turned his own people against him. Time and again, Ali called Frazier a "gorilla" and an "ugly, dumb Uncle Tom"; if Kram's story does nothing else, at least it will remind a baby-boomer press corps smitten with Ali that the fighter's rhetoric was more than mere shtick, that it caused real damage.

Kram amply documents the dark side of Ali's personality. Beyond that, his is the latest, and most complete, dissenting voice to the "Ali as social force" school of thought. According to Mike Marqusee's "Redemption Song: Muhammad Ali and the Spirit of the Sixties," black conservative commentator Stanley Crouch praises Ali's athletic gifts but considers the fighter's stand against the Vietnam War the action "of a dupe ... not to be taken seriously." Professor Gerald Early, editor of "The Muhammad Ali Reader," posits that Ali "hadn't a single idea in his head ... [his] reasons for not wanting to join the army were never terribly convincing."

Maya Angelou reads from "The Heart of a Woman"