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What: “Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight: Cassius Clay vs. the United States of America”

Authors: Howard Bingham and Max Wallace

Publisher: M. Evans and Co.

Price: $21.95

For the faithful Muhammad Ali reader, it’s all here, not only Ali’s epic, years-long battle with the federal government over his Vietnam War-era draft status, but Bingham and Wallace plow new ground with Ali’s early relationship with the Nation of Islam (it dates to his high school years in Louisville, Ky.), the evolving relationship between Ali and Joe Louis, and the reasons more African Americans did not support Ali’s stand against the Vietnam War.

Most compelling is the authors’ portrait of Ali, effectively kicked out of boxing, without an income, struggling in exile before it was discovered Ali would be a smash delivering speeches at universities.

Early in his exile, in Chicago, Ali sometimes pumped gas at a South Side service station owned by a friend, Eugene Dibble. Shortly after Ali’s 1965 indictment for draft evasion, Dibble told the authors, Ali showed up at his garage.

“I was amazed,” Dibble said. “He didn’t have a dollar to buy gasoline. He was absolutely broke. He’d been robbed blind by his so-called friends.”

Ali also took a job as a sparring partner for British boxer Joe Bugner, who was training in the United States.

“We paid him $1,000,” Bugner said. “He seemed glad to oblige. I know he was broke because he tried to sell me a portable radio gadget for $1,200.”

The authors, in well-organized fashion and in great detail, spell out the government’s case and legal strategy against Ali and what led to the stunning 1971 decision by the Supreme Court which on an 8-0 vote reversed Ali’s conviction for draft evasion.

Early in the book, the authors muff one. In describing then-Cassius Clay’s 1963 decision over Doug Jones, only the fact that Clay missed his prediction (a fourth-round knockout) is mentioned.

Fact is, many who saw that fight insist to this day Jones should have been awarded the decision.