Damian Baldet's Pugilist is a dark, often hilarious, sometimes disturbing exploration of a modern man's search for vindication in a society with no formal code of honor. Through personal anecdotes and confessions, interviews with his grandfather, a boxer in Marseille and fighting member of the French Underground, and imaginings of Alexander Hamilton's last days before his fatal duel with Aaron Burr, Pugilist surfs themes of bravery and cowardice, violence and paralysis and offers refreshing insight into a subject rarely examined with such candor.