Growing up in the '70s and '80s in Wisconsin, my brothers and I lived for the weekly broadcast of "All-Star Wrestling" on the local TV station. I remember struggling with the antenna to get the best picture and being horrified when the show was moved to Sunday mornings, and we might miss all or part of it depending on what church service mom was going to make us go to. I love comic book superheroes, and professional wrestlers seemed to be those characters and their villains come to life on the TV screen. It was a coming-of-age moment to realize that the wrestling matches were just as fictional as the latest issue of Superman.

I picked this book up for a nostalgic wallow, and it served the purpose well. There is lots of coverage of the American Wrestling Association that I grew up with and also the WWF, the rise of which coincided with the drop-off of my interest in wrestling. Mind you, this is a pretty high-level overview, starting with Gilgamesh and the ancient Greeks and ranging forward quickly through the centuries with most of the 400+ named wrestlers only appearing in a panel or two.

The middle of the book drags a bit as the history of wrestling in Mexico, Japan and the United Kingdom are each given a chapter. Alas, my interest in wrestling is too provincial to care about anything happening outside the U.S. Fortunately, the back half of the book deals with the era I lived through and what happened after I stopped following the One True Sport.

Fun stuff. ( )