Raging Bull: My Story

by Jake LaMotta, Peter Savage, Joseph Carter

Meet Jake La thief, rapist, killer. Raised in the Bronx slums, he fought on the streets, got sent to reform school, and served time in prison. Trusting no one, slugging everyone, he beat his wife, his best friends, even the mobsters who kept the title just out of reach. But the same forces that made him a criminal—fear, rage, jealousy, self-hate, guilt—combined with his drive and intelligence to make him a winner in the ring. At age twenty-seven, after eight years of fighting, he became Middleweight Champion of the World, a hero to thousands. Then, at the peak of success, he fell apart and began a swift, harrowing descent into nightmare. Raging Bull , the Bronx Bull's brutally candid memoir, tells it all—fights, jails, sex, money—surpassing, in hard-hitting prose, even the movie that immortalized it.

Genres: Sports, Nonfiction, Biography, Memoir, Film, Media Tie In, Autobiography

222 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1970

Reviews

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

A remarkably good book about a remarkably bad man. I've heard it said that you wind up rooting for LaMotta by the end of the book. I did not have that reaction. I disliked him the entire time - a thief, murderer, rapist, wife beater is not exactly a sympathetic figure. But the memoir is brutally honest (if at times self-pitying) and well-written. The story is a compelling look at the self-loathing and masochism that drove LaMotta to become one of the greatest boxers of all-time (and one of the few men to ever defeat Sugar Ray Robinson). While I did not root fo LaMotta, I did find myself intrigued by him as a person and remained interested the entire way through the book. Highly recommended!

[Jack Burrowes · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5, deffo the best autobiography I’ve read. Ceeeemon the bronx bull.

[Clint Mccoy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very intense. This is one of my favorite books.

To state the obvious:There is a movie based off of it with the same name and the movie followed this book closely.

But, I kind of wish the movie had included the character "Pete" instead of molding Joey & Pete together... Anyway this was hard to put down. Glad he didn't hold back too much on the details of what went down in his life and it wasn't one of those "pity me" stories.

I'm being vague about the details here. If you like the sport of boxing then this is a must read.

[Jonny Burke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don’t mess with this wise guy

[Ryan Lally · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Now, sometimes, at night, when I think back, I feel like I’m looking at an old black-and-white movie of myself. Why it should be black-and-white, I don’t know, but it is. Not a good movie, either, jerky, with gaps in it, a string of poorly lit sequences, some of them with no beginning and no end.”

"Raging Bull" chronicles the rise and fall of "The Bronx Bull", Jake LaMotta, who came from a harsh, poverty-stricken, youth of crime in the Bronx to become middleweight champion of the world, only to ultimately careen back into chaos. It is told with a savage honesty that crackles off the page at its best moments. His journey is fraught with paranoia, jealousy and brutal acts of violence, both inside and outside the ring. LaMotta, despite his rapacious demeanor (or maybe because of it) has a knack for telling a story and he holds nothing back here (this can make for some uncomfortable reading in parts). Such intense levels of jealousy, anger and self loathing could prove difficult to curate in fiction and still retain a level of credulity. This is what makes LaMotta such an interesting narrator, he is a deplorable, utterly flawed man but he his brutally honest about it.

[Nij · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I could rate this 10 stars I would I rlly took me time reading that last paragraph of the book purely because I just didn’t want it to end

[Harry Powell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Would not want to give a wise crack to Jake La Motta

[Rural Soul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Apparently it took me 10 years to see the movie because I wanted to read the book first.
Ironically it's only second time in my life that I couldn't find an ebook for an english book. And both times I had to buy hard copies from America.

This guy was insane. Who confesses a murder and rape in a book? The book was just an ordinary base for spectacular performances of De Niro and Pesci.

[david-baptiste · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating book, in that its story is the Ur-Text for the Scorcese film, as well as being a classic in its own right as an a boxing book and a book on different levels, structures, groups & institutions of power as they play their parts in LaMotta's quest for power in the ring. The film turns the story into a Catholic allegory which transforms the Raging Bull from the realization that "I'm not an animal" into the Man of the Theater and Language who goes on stage to recite poetry by the greats as well as himself. The book has many strange redemptive moments of its own, especially one that opens and closes the tale. LaMotta--with Peter Maas--has a lighter touch than Scorcese, with a lot of laughter pervading some of the really tawdry and grim episodes.
LaMotta's book is one of the pioneering works of a new form of sports writing that developed in the 1960's, in which the athlete themself has the a self awareness and sense of the meanings of their careers and personas which before it had usally been up to sports writers and the writers influenced by them to create. Books like LaMotta's, Jim Brosnan's Pennant Race and others, Jim Bouton's Ball Four and the non-stop genius with language of Muhammad Ali changed the landscape for sports coverage and sports writing.

[Christine]

I got this book from the SF library and to be honest, I'm like a little afraid to touch it. Like picking it up with my thumb and index finger like with my hand in the o.k. sign, but it's not o.K. because this book just looks filthy. Not unlike it hasn't been sitting in the back of an aspiring boxer or two's locker underneath their gloves, and crusty, sweat crusted warm-ups. Maybe a jock-strap? Boxers must wear some sort of protective device on their jewels. Of course most boxers probably wouldn't fight that dirty... at least up until Mike Tyson bit off part of Evander Holyfield's ear. Nothing is very sacred anymore is it.

So yah, but Jake LaMotta. I'llbe reading about Jake Motta.

[Agatha · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is a brutally honest memoir by Jake LaMotta, the Bronx Bull and legendary boxer. One cannot help but root for Jake to turn things around in his life, but his chances just kept running out. With a little bit of luck, fate, talent, and chance, he eventually becomes a champion boxer. This book is successful because it has the typical equation of boy finding his way out of a rough and troubled childhood and becoming a hero in some sense. Overall, an interesting read.

[Trey R · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book back in high school, and the story and the writing are gripping, and made me want to be a writer. You can smell the diapers boiling in the tentaments, you can feel the pain of the poverty, the violence of relationships, and then of course there is the boxing. The movie might be a classic, but this book, like most books movies are based on, is superior to the screenplay.

[Rogers · Rating 5 out of 5]

An autobiography whose brutality matches the author's fights with Sugar Ray Robinson. Many sports writers have said they can watch the movie version only once, and can't add it to their list of greatest sports movies. This list would include most people working for ESPN.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a surprising read. You think he'd be a asshole, but he's quite earnest and genuinely regretful.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

The basis for the movie starring Academy Award winner Robert Deniro. The movie tracks closely with the book.

[Chris S · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great book (and brilliant film). I expected to dislike La Motta, but as it progresses you end up rooting for the guy.

[Frank · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's only after one reads this that they realize the iconic movie is actually a rather poor treatment. The book is that good.

[Miles Watson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This autobiography reads like a well-written pulp fiction crime novel, and no wonder: the notorious "Raging Bull," Jake La Motta, was as much a crook as a boxer. Indeed, this terse little memoir has more robbery, larceny, rape, bribery, depravity and assault in it than any three detective novels set in the era in which the La Motta fought. Not since Errol Flynn's tell-all MY WICKED, WICKED WAYS have I read such an warts-and-all, honest-in-spirit confessional from a public figure. La Motta depicts himself as a brutalized boy growing up in a filthy Bronx slum (he vividly describes the stench of his tenement housing, abetted by the foul practice of boiling dirty diapers on the stove, as well as the dog-sized rats) in which the brutality of the Mob was balanced by the near-equal savagery of the NYPD. Learning how to box in reform school, he blazed a bloody trail on the boxing circuit and handed the legendary Sugar Ray Robinson his first-ever defeat, but was denied a title shot until he agreed to throw a fight so Mafia fatcats could get rich on crooked bets. And of course, when he finally won the middleweight title and attendant glory, he quickly cratered his marriage, career, finances and everything else so thoroughly that he ended up on a chain gang in Florida. The fact is that La Motta was so tormented by a robbery gone horribly wrong, in which he savagely beat a bookie to death with a lead pipe, that he "fought like he didn't deserve to live" and basically shit on everyone in his life -- his wives, his brother, his best friend -- every chance he got. The loathsome creature portrayed by De Niro in RAGING BULL is perhaps even uglier in his own words than he seems through Scorsese's lens: a jealous, self-hating, pathologically violent beast who didn't quite understand the difference between rape and sex and whose main virtue was a mule-like refusal to bend his knee to the Mafia. The salvation of this book lies in the fact that you cannot possibly despise La Motta more than he does; you cannot hold him up to greater scrutiny, ridicule and attack than he has. Flynn came to believe that he had wasted his life and talents in a mindless pursuit of pleasure, but exhibited very little if any remorse for the damage he'd done to others; La Motta makes it clear that he at least had the decency to truly hate himself. If you want a beautifully ugly depiction of poverty, the mob, and the tormented life of a pro fighter who could lick any opponent save himself, you cannot beat this book, whose only real weakness is an unrealistically phony happy ending.

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Conocí a Jake LaMotta gracias a la película de Raging Bull. Me intrigó tanto el personaje, lo perdido que parecía estar y lo caótica que era su mente, que necesitaba saber más sobre él.

El libro está narrado en primera persona. Jake LaMotta escribe realmente bien. Te mete en su vida, te cuenta en profundidad cosas que, por desgracia o por fortuna, ha tenido que vivir, te presenta a su familia y a sus amigos, en especial a Pete y a Vikkie, que están perfectamente retratados.
Los capítulos se me pasaban volando, estaban llenos de tensión y a veces me costaba creer que no fuera ficción. Porque todo es MUY intenso. Los diálogos de 10.

He simpatizado mucho con Jake, a pesar de todas las barbaridades que contaba. Ha tenido experiencias realmente duras, y no ha sido ningún santo. Pero él lo sabe, y lo cuenta con sinceridad. Ya con cierta distancia, es capaz de admitirlo y hablar de las cosas, buenas y malas, con mucha naturalidad. Eso es lo que más me ha gustado.

Desde su infancia a su paso por el reformatorio, sus comienzos en el boxeo y su ardua lucha para lograr el título, para conseguir reconocimiento. Su dignidad y su orgullo, su principio ético de querer ganar el título de campeón por sus propios méritos sin tener que depender o contar con la mafia. Y su resignación y desconsuelo al ver que era imposible.

Ver como toca fondo es desalentador. Ver como pasa de la pobreza a la riqueza, y de nuevo la pobreza (en todos los sentidos) por sus malas decisiones y por su mala cabeza, es trágico. Este libro me hizo llorar, hizo que me interesara por el personaje, que lo entendiera, que me preocupara por él. A pesar de todo lo malo que haya podido hacer a lo largo de su vida. Aquí y allá puedes ir leyendo sus consejos de vida (uno muy importante y repetido en numerosas ocasiones; no te fíes de nadie), y puedes entender cómo piensa y cómo ha llegado a pensar así.

Que haya logrado conectar tanto con Jake hace que toda la lectura haya merecido la pena. Dos días me ha durado el libro, y he disfrutado cada página. Uno de mis favoritos. Una vida muy intensa, un hombre muy sincero. Gran combinación para un libro.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

All I knew of Jake La Motta I learned from Martin Scorsese's Oscar award-winning black-and-white, Raging Bull, a Hollywood adaptation of La Motta's autobiography.

La Motta was real bad, but he was also real, and not just real in the flesh-and-blood nonfiction sense.

As the back cover synopsis tells you, he was a thief, he was a rapist, and he assaulted men inside and outside the ring.

He was also "champ," having become the Middleweight Champion of the World at the age of 27.

La Motta was from the Bronx. Following his abusive father's boyhood advice to "Hit 'em first, and hit 'em hard" in the ring later earned him the the fight moniker "Raging Bull."

La Motta estimated he threw down in over one thousand street fights before ever becoming an amateur boxer, first enrolling in the sport at a reformatory school he was sentenced to for attempted burglary. Because of the promise he showed in the ring, the mob approached him early about management. The mob quite literally owned and ran the sport at the time. La Motta's rage didn't belong to anybody but him and the opponents he faced in the ring, and he rebuffed the mob at every turn - that is until the mob deprived him of a title shot for several years until he agreed to throw a fight in exchange for the opportunity.

La Motta abused his wives as much as he abused alcohol. Like I said, he was not a good person. And, yet, all the reviews that head-sceatchingly say you'll root for the guy were right. There's no justification for the many, many wrongs he committed, but you do get this rough and brutally honest account of a man who tried to course-correct his life through sport and spoke plainly about topics men rarely do (and champions never do), like sexual impotence. I'm thoroughly convinced that if La Motta hadn't found boxing, he would've either died a juvenile delinquent or committed a hundred-fold more criminal atrocities.

A hard-hitting memoir from a man with a granite chin and a double-time beating heart of rage

4 out of 5

[Dylan Ford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jake LaMotta is a pretty big dickhead. Admitted Attempted murderer, rapist, and domestic abuser, nothing is sympathetic about him. The one thing he had going for him, his unwillingness to give into the mob and make a career his own way, which isn’t a lot to begin with is thrown away as well when he bribes the mob and throws a fight to get a championship fight. The fact he still had a career of any kind after admitting to everything he did in this book is disgusting and, unfortunately, symbolic of the US’s long time dismissal of sex abuse victims in favor of celebrities.

However, I still say this book is worth reading. The book is out of print, perhaps rightfully so, but buying the book used means no one involved in the production of the book gets any profits which is good, and LaMotta is dead so he definitely won’t profit. The book definitely shows the basic human instinct of believing you are a good person no matter how objectively bad you are. LaMotta makes excuse after excuse, pitifully trying to justify his horrible, selfish, and violent life choices. Additionally the beginning section about his childhood shows a view in how the cycle of abuse can be perpetuated. Additionally, the Pete in the novel having a similar upbringing but breaking through it to become a better person is a more inspiring story than LaMottas, and provides a bit of light in an otherwise incredibly depressing story.

[Erik Prime · Rating 3 out of 5]

The life story of the Raging Bull in his own words. Jake La Motta grew up in the Bronx during the Great Depression and ended up in a reform school by the time he was sixteen. On page one, he admits that he was “a goddamned good-for-nothing bum kid.” Later in the book, he confesses to various despicable crimes including rape and attempted murder.

When he was released from the prison-like reformatory, he channeled his nasty temper and violent nature into the world of boxing. He turned pro in 1941 at the age of nineteen and became known as a bruising slugger with an iron jaw. By the time he retired in 1954, the Bronx Bull had amassed an impressive record of 83 wins, 19 losses, and 4 draws. He was married a total of seven times and died in a nursing home in Florida at the age of 95.

The manuscript is written in a simple, no-nonsense style, and the dialogue is peppered with as many “youse guys” and “dem bums” as you would expect from a book penned by a man who grew up in the Bronx during the 1920’s and 30’s.

The 1980 film adaptation directed by Marine Scorsese is an all-time classic and earned Robert De Niro an Academy Award for Best Actor.

[Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a brutal, compelling book and also proof you don't need to like the protagonist of an autobiography to find it fascinating. If you thought the movie may have exaggerated some of the bad aspects of his personality it will come as a shock to find out he was actually even worse!

Following Jake from his early years the book does offer insight as to why he turned out as he did, but it certainly doesn't excuse some of his frankly horrific actions. What it does is give an insight into the mind of a man who can drive himself to such excess both in and out of the ring. It's no exaggeration to say he took punishment like few boxers before or since. The reasons he forced himself to take such beatings at times makes, like much of this book, for fascinating but slightly disturbing reading

[Mike Seaman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this as part of a plan to read the books that my favorite film adaptations are based on. Raging Bull's text is fragmented due to the interview style. LaMotta recounts a lot bad stories, as one might expect, and it seems he did so many regrettable things that he can only offer up remorse for some of them. Like the film, boxing itself is symbolic of the man, who fought everyone, including himself, 24 hours a day. No one delivered beatings to Jake LaMotta worse than LaMotta himself (well, maybe his father). 218 pages of a man who destroys nearly everyone around him.

I'm not clear on how trustworthy of a narrator LaMotta is, but it feels genuine enough to believe you're getting decent reflections of the truth.

[John Lyman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Phenomenal story, although I’m not a boxing fan, this was a great read. The idea that he had killed and I wasn’t aware of it was surprising but it added a kind of surprise ending when it was revealed that he wasn’t. He definitely sounds like a terrible person, at least for the first 40 years of his life, or so. I look forward to watching the movie again. I’m glad he wrote the book.

[Gerard Perry · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's rare to find an author who is as unflinchingly honest in his portrayal of his own turpitude. Even though it was probably written by the man credited as his co-author, the fact that Jake LaMotta allowed this to be published reflects a bracing honesty that you don't see among current memoirists, who actually invent fictional scenarios which didn't happen in order to make themselves seem more noble than they are in reality.

His story is worth reading, even though the brutality and depravity of his life make for some very difficult reading. Of particular interest, IMO, is his reflections on his dealings with the mafia, who exerted an outsized influence over the outcome of boxing matches during his life-time. Although I was never much of a fan of the cinematic adaptation of this work, I would recommend reading Raging Bull to anyone with an interest in autobiographies that present the ugly reality of an unredeemed life.

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

What starts off as an interesting insight into the growth of a monster turns into a repetitive, at times slightly confusing story of self-pity and barely anything done for redemption. For once, the film did it better.

[Casey De · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't typically like memoirs or autobiographies, but this one definitely stood out. A former champ, rapist and murderer, Jake Lamotta has seen it all, and he tells it all like it was. A terrific book, almost better then the movie.

[Freddie Barr-Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pretty good read. Incredibly honest and ... pulls no punches. If anything they made him less bad in the film version.

[Sahil Hussain · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5