A. J. Liebling - Legacy

Legacy

• Liebling's papers are archived at Cornell University.

• In 1995, the Boxing Writers Association of America created the A.J. Liebling Award. The first class of honorees included longtime Washington, D.C. sportswriters Sam Lacy and Shirley Povich.

• In 2002, Sports Illustrated named The Sweet Science, a collection of Liebling's essays on boxing, the number one sports book of all time.

• In 2008, the Library of America published a volume of Liebling's World War II writings. The book includes the essays The Road Back to Paris, Mollie and Other War Pieces, Normandy Revisited, as well as his uncollected war journalism.

• The journalist and sportswriter William "Bill" Heinz called Liebling "the best essayist."

• Labeled Chicago as the "Second City". It became a nickname for the city.

• The Library of America selected Liebling's 1955 New Yorker story “The Case of the Scattered Dutchman” for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime writing, published in 2008.

• Friend and fellow New-Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell inherited Liebling's book library after his death, and recalls Liebling's once having used bacon as a bookmark.