Davis Miller

Who is Davis Miller?

Davis Miller is an American author, notable for a series of works combining reportage and autobiography. His best-known books are The Tao of Muhammad Ali and The Tao of Bruce Lee, both of which have been critically acclaimed bestsellers in the United Kingdom and Japan. His story "My Dinner with Ali," was judged one of the twenty best magazine stories of the 20th Century.

The Tao of Muhammad Ali has been developed into an opera for the Washington National Opera by composer D. J. Sparr. Along with Pulitzer Prize-winning librettist Mark Campbell, Davis Miller wrote the libretto for the opera, which will receive its world premiere in June 2013 at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The title of the opera is Approaching Ali.

Miller's stories have been anthologized in The Beholder's Eye: America's Finest Personal Journalism, The Best American Sports Writing of the Century, The Muhammad Ali Reader, and The Best American Sports Writing 1994, among other anthologies.

Miller's first book, The Tao of Muhammad Ali: a fathers and sons memoir, was published in hardcover in December 1996 by Warner Books. The Tao of Muhammad Ali was published in the United Kingdom in February 1997 by Vintage; it reached number one on several English bestseller lists, including those of the Independent and of the Observer, as well as bestseller lists in both Ireland and Scotland. Miller wrote a radio play of The Tao of Muhammad Ali, which was broadcast in six parts in January 1998 by BBC Radio 4. The Tao of Muhammad Ali was also a bestseller in Japan. It was judged the Best Nonfiction Book of 1997 by book reviewers at several of Japan's largest newspapers, including Yomiuri Shimbun and Asahi Shimbun, among others. In Italy, it won the thirty-sixth annual Premio Bancarella prize for best sports book published in 1999.