National Wrestling Alliance, Tim Hornbaker

I've been reading this book over the past few weeks, and I'm just about finished. Weird book, in that overall I think it was a good book and had a lot of interesting stuff I didn't know but the structure of the book drove me nuts. Just horribly put together, as the author decided rather than trying to create a narrative that carries through in some sort of order, it would just be a series of chapters with different themes. The problem is there is unbelievable overlap between the chapters, so you'll read the same thing 2, 3 or even 4 times in the same book, like it was a selection of articles rather than a specifically drafted book. It also starts with more interesting stuff and then the second half has a bunch of profiles of wrestlers you already know about or promoters that don't seem particularly important. So I ended up very frustrated, obviously.

With that said, I was frustrated specifically because there is a lot of interesting stuff here about the foundation of the NWA, various territorial battles, double crosses in the first half of the 20th century, early successful programs and so forth. Very well researched book. So I overall recommend it, but with reservations.