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Book Review: Under the Black Hat: My Life in the WWE and Beyond

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Years ago, I was a big wrestling fan. Name me a guy in their late 30s/early 40s who was not a Hulkamaniac back in the 1980s and 1990s and and I’ll show you someone who is not telling the truth. Former and current wrestling fans of any age will know the name Jim Ross. At nearly 70 years old, Ross has been in the professional wrestling industry for nearly 50 years. And during that time, he has collected a wide set of stories and experiences that he shares in his new book, Under the Black Hat: My Life in the WWE and Beyond.

One part of this book that stuck with me was the deep humiliation and insult that Ross suffered at the whims of Vince McMahon. Time and time again, Ross recounts how he was put into on-air positions that he found humiliating and that he was uncomfortable with from the start. It actually becomes painful and frustrating to read the on-going embarrassment that he has to deal with just to be able to do his job. As someone who watched some of these acts take place on television, they never seemed to make sense to me and never really fit in with any of the other stories that were going on. They all just seemed oddly out of place and disconnected from everything else on the show.

And, well, that is exactly what you learn when reading this book. Namely, that McMahon and his writers had a penchant for making Ross feel terrible. In other words, they enjoyed watching him get degraded on television. Again, it becomes brutal to read how, over and over again, Ross was put into a position that made him feel uncomfortable and that he felt obligated to participate in to be “in” with the wrestlers and the boss. This is the stuff of a modern day harassment lawsuit.

However, the part of the book that stayed with me the most was the beautiful tributes that Ross gives to his now-passed wife. She was his rock during these turbulent times and always reassured him when he would go back to the promotion. It sounds like the relationship that most people dream of finding – a man and a woman who truly understand and appreciate one another. For that part and for the love that these two shared, it was painful to read about how her passing in the book and the reader can feel the raw emotion that Ross is dealing with due to that major loss in his life.

At some point later in the book, Ross talks about his connection with Tony Khan and his new, upstart wrestling company called All Elite Wrestling (AEW). This is the show that Ross now finds himself announcing on each week and he appears to be having fun and enjoying himself while doing it. The comments about AEW are a nice way to end an emotional roller coaster that is much more a story about his abuse by McMahon and a love letter to his late wife for supporting him than anything else. If you are or were a wrestling fan, then I think that you will enjoy reading this book.

Book Review: Random Family

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The first thing that you need to know about this book is that it must be read in an active manner. In other words, since the information in this book is based on observations generated during academic research, it is like you are reading cleaned up field notes. You will need to pay close attention to what is going on in order to keep pace with the different individuals, their relationships, their family connections, their preferences, and so much more.

And that is what Random Family is all about – how hectic and random life can be for folks living at a certain income level and under certain economic conditions. At a time in our country when we are seriously considering shifting scarce dollars from police departments to other, community-based resource initiatives, the story of Cesar, Coco, Lourdes, Jessica, and everyone else in the book is more relevant than ever before. Author Adrian Nicole LeBlanc writes about these individuals, their histories, their intertwined families, and how they make it through life, one day at a time.

Cesar’s story was one that I found particularly engaging. He winds up in jail for a few different reasons, not the least of which was murdering his best friend (accidentally). Coco falls in love with him (at age 15!) before he is locked away. Coco has two children with Cesar (and three children by other men; totaling four girls and one boy in all) and much of LeBlanc’s story weaves into how this blended family struggles to survive. They live in one place, get evicted, stay with friends, get kicked out, etc. It is incredibly difficult for Coco to put down roots for her family for a variety of reasons not the least of which is the tenuous struggle that they are engaged in as non-contributors to an economy that insists on a clean record for participation.

At times, it becomes frustrating for the reader because you just want to reach out and find a way to help the family.

Back to Cesar – he fits the archetype that you hear about so often on the news and in documentaries. That is, he lives the typical life of a young male in an urban neighborhood, but there are real consequences to being so aggressive in trying to prove one’s masculinity. He is a man who is both left alone to grow up on his own and then essentially left to rot in a penal system that does not help him grow and mature as they should. Again, the reader becomes frustrated with this element of the ethnography because you want to just find a way to help Cesar and his expanding family by guiding them to make certain choices over others. But that is what ethnographies are for, right? To show the world how people live and survive in their environment.

Ten years after the book was published, LeBlanc was interviewed by the New Yorker as an update to her initial ethnography. For those of you who have read Random Family, I recommend reading this interview. It provides a little bit of insight into LeBlanc’s approach to recording notes, though it generally does not give an update on the individuals that you meet in the book. Still, as soon as I was done reading the book, I searched the internet for some sort of update on the people that you learn so much about during Random Family. Sadly, I could not find an update on these folks, but then again – that is the way that a book like this one is supposed to work.

You read it, learn about their lives, and then it is over.

Book Review: The Wolves of Winter

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Last year (late 2018, to be specific), I discovered a fun literary magazine called f(R)iction. What I like best about f(R)iction is that they highlight new and emerging authors, which are often the types of authors who are writing the works that I like to read, but can never easily find. Seriously, have you ever tried to go out and find a good new fiction author to read? It’s difficult! In one issue of the magazine, they highlighted The Wolves of Winter by Tyrell Johnson and after reading the small bit in the magazine, I was hooked!

The main plot of this book is that there is a worldwide epidemic that essentially ended civilization as we know it. The book follows a family that is doing their best to make life work out for them in the Yukon and, in particular, it follows the experiences of a young girl as she tries to live whatever life is leftover after civilization came to an end. Johnson goes out of his way to bring you into the desperation and seeming hopelessness of this new world and he tells this story though the eyes of these few remaining humans. It is a story that we sometimes see in movies and sometimes on television shows, but Johnson brings that story of despair to life in the written form.

While the family thinks that they are alone in the wilderness (with one big, burly, creepy neighbor living nearby), they soon find out that there are others who are still alive out there in this otherwise dead world and that not all of them have the most noble intentions. What struck me about Johnson’s writing on this theme is that he painted a very dreary, hopeless vision of the life that this family was living, but then when he introduced the outside world there were vibrant sparks of hope that glittered throughout the remainder of the remaining narrative. That’s the type of impact that Jax has on this story; for the family living in the wilderness, Jax is the beginning of the unraveling of their understanding of the end of the world. In other words, if Jax is out there (and the people hunting him), then maybe there is something, some bit of the world, that survived what they believed was the apocalypse.

Every once in a while, Johnson takes you back to the way the world was before the epidemic took over. As you might imagine, the longer the book goes on, the more the reader learns about some of the most compelling plot points that span from the pre-epidemic world to the post-epidemic world. We learn about how the epidemic spread, how the government tried to take control, how there was research going on into a vaccination and possibly a cure – all of the things that you might imagine in this genre and dealing with this type of content. What makes this all compelling in this story, though, is how the characters are woven into the larger narrative.

And that is what is fun about reading Johnson’s The Wolves of Winter. The story shifts from despair to action/adventure and excitement to, ultimately, hopefulness. Johnson does all of this by weaving the characters that you know (remember, these are likely the last people alive) into a story that starts as small as a log cabin and expands to, potentially, the entire planet. If your are into new writers and you are into well-told stories about the apocalypse, then check out Tyrell Johnson’s The Wolves of Winter!

Book Review: The Final Reality by Stephen Martino

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Over the years, I have reviewed the first and second books in author Stephen Martino’s Alex Pella trilogy. For information on the two books that predate the one reviewed here, I encourage you to go back and read those two reviews or – better yet – go read the books themselves.

The Final Reality is a captivating, fast-paced action/thriller that pits two geniuses against each other with the fate of the world in the balance. If you have not read the first two books in the Alex Pella trilogy, then you are missing out on one of the most powerful displays of what this world’s future may look like under unchecked authoritarian regimes. What is frightening is that the early footprints of these regimes are readily evident in today’s geopolitical landscape. National debts rising out of control, a desire to disrupt the spread of free thought and free speech, being instantly shut down when trying to keep massive corporate and/or governmental structures in check – all of these are the building blocks of the world that The Final Reality‘s two geniuses inhabit and fight to control. On the one hand, you have Julius Windsor – the would-be good guy if everyone only just listened to him and his brilliance. On the other hand, you have Alexander Pella – the three-steps-ahead foil to Windsor’s every move. If you have read the first two novels in the series, then you know who these two men really are (genetically, that is) and knowing that bit of information makes every interaction between these two that much more exhilarating.

What Martino does better than anyone else in this genre is integrate actual legend and folklore along with biblical narrative in a post-contemporary vision of the future. In The Final Reality, you can expect to read a high action thriller that includes Bible-based references on the location of the Creation story’s Garden of Eden in the same scene that you will read about fantastical flying airships from millennia ago – that’s right… millennia! And that was one of the fun parts of reading this book – being brought (again) into this world that Martino creates that has layers upon layers of fascinating stories yet to be told.

Even though The Final Reality is the final novel in the Alex Pella series, the world that is created through the end of this story is one that is ripe for new legends to be built on, new heroes to emerge, and new tales to tell. I would not be surprised to see Martino return to this world in the future to tell the story of the new/old continent Mu or to talk about the devastation wrought by the shifting tectonic plates (another utterly fascinating element of the story, for those of you keeping track). This is one of the most brilliant aspects of Martino’s writing; namely, that he writes a story wherein millions of people around the world are lost in major global catastrophes related to shifting tectonic plates and yet he is able to keep the focus of the story on Windsor and Pella and their epic struggle for dominance in this new world. Taking massive, global struggles for power and embodying them in a battle between two individuals makes for a great story.

Here’s an official trailer for the novel:

Once again, Martino brings his gripping style of storytelling to a world that includes romance, humor, intelligent banter, and glimpses of the science fiction-fueled future earth that may yet come to pass. If you are heading in to some vacation time and you want a fun, page-turning thrill ride to keep you busy (and maybe give you some insight into what the world may become), then The Final Reality is the book for you.

Book Review: One Year Lived by Adam Shepard

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If you have read this blog for a long time, then you know that I used to make a habit out of reading and reviewing all manner of books. In fact, I posted so many reviews and they were so well-read that publishers and authors would contact me to read their new works and post reviews of them on the blog. Well, years ago a gentleman named Adam Shepard contacted me asking if I would be interested in reviewing his book, One Year Lived. I said yes and then… I promptly did very little to meet that obligation. My apologies, Adam.

It is not that I did not begin reading the book. Rather, it is that I stopped reading new books and reviewing them on this blog for a number of reasons. However, after rediscovering this book on my Nook a few weeks ago, I recommitted myself to reading it and I am so glad that I did. Years ago, I remember thinking, “What could I possibly get out of this book that is going to be worth the effort?” Years later (now), I am glad to have read a thoughtful, yet fun travel diary prepared by Adam as he spent one year traveling to different parts of the world. What ultimately drew me into the book was the way that Adam told his story as he went from one country to the next. His story is written in a manner of new discovery – finding out about the peculiarities of new cultures through the eyes of someone experiencing them for the first time.

And throughout that discovery is humor. The humor of what happens when you do not speak the same language as the people whose country that you are in, the humor of what happens when you work to speak with your girlfriend’s family when they speak a totally different language, the humor of what happens when you lose rock, paper, scissors and have to go knuckle deep in a bull (oh yeah, it happened, people). Mixed with bigger issues like endemic racism and poor economic conditions, Adam manages to bring a lighthearted approach to telling this story. And while not all of the stories are uplifting (the story about how Adam quit on his basketball trainer Jack, for example), they tend to convey larger lessons to the reader.

Some of the highlights that I made while reading the book include: Adam’s walking through the Mayan ruins and thinking, “Eh, these are satisfactory,” is kind of what I think my reaction would be; recognizing that the poor kids that he was helping did not view their lot in life as impoverished, but rather that they were just having fun and going about their daily business; the frightening issue that Adam ran into with his passport in Honduras (this would be my nightmare); the bullfighting in Nicaragua (crazy); visiting with Flora Herras; noticing the racist signals in a house in Australia; meeting Raf in the Philippines (this was one of my favorite stories in the book, honestly, since I often work with folks that I only know as names on a screen); and the awe-inspiring power of walking through Auschwitz.

As someone who has done a lot of traveling (domestically, admittedly) and engaged in a great deal of charity and volunteer work, I appreciated one of the comments that Adam made towards the end of the book. He notes that he did not go on this trip to meet himself and he was happy before he left on his first leg of the journey. And he did not go on this trip to become more fulfilled or to become more mature. Rather, he just wanted to explore, to investigate, to see the world for himself. That is a great takeaway for anyone who is wondering why they should go out and try something new – not because you are going to grow or change or become the master of a new skill, but rather to go out there to live life. I love it.

In terms of criticisms for the book, my only real criticism is not of the book, but rather the circumstances that most young people find themselves in today when they approach the age that Adam was when he took off on this journey. Somewhere in the book, Adam notes that he graduated from college debt-free (putting aside any other debts that Adam incurred, which he discusses) and I think that is a key distinction in his ability to make this trip versus many of the young people graduating from college today (or who have graduated in recent years). With student loan debt so high, there is likely a generation of individuals who just cannot afford to make this type of investment in cultural exploration. Lord knows that I could not have afforded to do this type of trip at that age (even though I am more than making up for it now in my travels across the country) and I wonder how many people could make this type of journey while saddled with significant student loan debt. Not many, I imagine. Adam does, however, give a bit of insight into how he was able to put the money aside for making this trip (essentially, be frugal).

Oh, and the most fulfilling part of the book came after reading it, when I went to Adam’s website and stumbled across the fact that he did, in fact, get the girl in the long-run. What an awesome postscript to a fun travel diary. If you’re looking for something fun that weaves humor with discovery with a journey around the world, then give One Year Lived a try. I think you will enjoy it as much as I did!