In a life story that reads stranger than fiction Gene Tunney was a boy from a blue collar Irish family and raised in Greenwich Village in NYC. He did well at school, got a job as a clerk in a shipping office, then, with the advent of World War I. joined the US Marine Corp and served in France until the Annistice. But Tunney's fighting was all done in the boxing ring and he returned home as the champion of the American Expeditionary Force. His old job gone, Tunney became a professional boxer and set his sights on Jack Dempsey, the famed and feared heavyweight champion of the world. In 1926 he stunned the sporting world when he upset the Manassa Mauler to take the world title. A year later, he survived the legendary 'Battle of the Long Count' with Dempsey to retain his crown and receive a million-dollar purse. In 1928 he retired as undefeated champion and a millionaire to marry the beautiful heiress to the Carnegie steel fortune.

As successful in business as the boxing ring, the Marine private became a captain of industry. His circle of friends included distinguished figures from all walks of life and eventually included the President himself. From his youth a voracious reader, he sought the company of such writers as Thornton Wilder and George Bernard Shaw and he was also a lover of opera. While Jack Dempsey was America's hero in those Roaring Twenties, Gene Tunney was the guy who beat him - twice! This his amazing life story.