A history of how the McMahon's came to rule New York. I'm only 100 pages in and this thing is fantastic. A gritty, detail-heavy look at all the politics, unexpected shoot-fights, double-crosses and back-stabbings that characterized wrestling from 1880's onward.

 

Think Boardwalk Empire of the WWE. If anything on the subject could ever be an HBO mini-series, this is it.

 

Amazing to see so many parallels to more modern eras. Too many to list, but one I just read was of feud between Dano O'Mahoney, the charismatic, fair-haired, Irish-American superman and Ali Baba; "short and squat with good muscle development and a pointed mustache, he was a standout performer but an unlikely title holder."

 

Huh...

 

 

Hornbaker, whose NWA book was also epic, manages to research so deeply that it is as if guys from the 1920's and 1930's are speaking on a shoot tape. He knows their every detail and motivation.

 

It's great so far.

 

I really enjoyed the book as well. My only complaint with Hornbaker is that his histories always become thin on the details after the 1960s, and I'm a huge fan of 70s wrestling. But his info on everything before then is fantastic

As a real historian and teacher I generally feel like the 60's are as far back as you can go and really analyze what happened and what its impact is. I think we have just reached a point where you can really talk about what Watergate meant and did.

 

Whether that's Hornbaker's thoughts I cannot say.

With Hornbaker I think he is just much more interested in the early 20th century than the last few decades of it

I'm a history teacher. I think you can accurately research and re-tell the history of any era if enough primary sources exist, especially if they are meticulously kept and cataloged. The appendix and bibliography of this book suggest Hornbaker took full advantage of that fact. It's a true work of scholarship.

Re-tell yes. Analyze no

I wish the book had endnotes or footnotes, but that's the historian in me. I liked it better than the NWA book in terms of flow and organization, though it had less material that I think was super insightful on the grand scale. I also think it would have been better served being two books, and you could argue it's sort of mistitled. That said as a whole it is a book I would strongly encourage people to buy and read. It really serves to debunk many of the popular myths about the business, and does an excellent job illustrating the centrality of television to the nationalization of pro wrestling.