Bill Kauffman reviews Jason Kelly's "Shelby's Folly: Jack Dempsey, Doc Kearns, and the Shakedown of a Montana Boomtown." How a small town's publicity stunt— getting Jack Dempsey to defend his ...

Before fighting Jack Sharkey on the comeback trail in 1927, Dempsey trained in the hills outside Ojai, Calif. He chopped trees, carried rocks, and did calisthenics to drop more than 20 pounds.

When Dempsey’s then-manager Jack ‘Doc’ Kearns confessed that the gloves were loaded in a Sports Illustrated excerpt of Kearns’ biography in 1964 (it was published posthumously, as Kearns ...