Norman Mailer (1923–2007) was one of the 20th century’s greatest and most influential writers, as well as one of America’s most renowned and controversial literary figures. The best-selling author of a dozen novels and 20 works of nonfiction, he also wrote stage plays, screenplays, television miniseries, hundreds of essays, two books of poetry, and a collection of short stories. A two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, he lived in Brooklyn, New York, and Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Howard L. Bingham (1939–2016) first met Muhammad Ali-then Cassius Clay-at a press appearance in Los Angeles in 1962. A year later, Ali knighted him his “personal photographer,” inaugurating a lifelong friendship and over a million photographs of The Champ both in and outside of the ring. Bingham also shot a significant portfolio of 1960s urban riots as well as portraits of other public figures as disparate as Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Malcolm X, and President Gerald Ford. His work was featured in magazines including Life, Time, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, and Ebony.

Native New Yorker Neil Leifer began photographing sports events as a teenager. Over 160 of his pictures have appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated and over 40 of his photographs have graced the cover of Time. He has published 17 books, and was one of two principal photographers in TASCHEN’s tribute to Muhammad Ali, GOAT-Greatest Of All Time, and the illustrated edition of Norman Mailer’s The Fight.