You''ll love this action-packed, lavishly illustrated look back at the Golden Age of Professional Wrestling-the greatest stars of the mighty Mid-Atlantic, the WCW and WWE. John Hitchcock shares his vivid memories attending live matches and television broadcasts from Greensboro during the 1960s on through the 1990s. You''ll read about wrestlers on their way up and on the way down: Ric Flair, Dusty Rhodes, Arn Anderson, Johnny Valentine, Wahoo McDaniel, Rip Hawk, Terry Funk, Ernie Ladd, Johnny Weaver, the Four Horsemen, Klondike Bill, even the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling! "They were a staple during grappling''s heyday in Greensboro, N.C., and routinely appeared in front of thousands of jeering fans at arenas throughout the Jim Crockett-run territory. Unlike their "Four Horsemen" contemporaries, though, this roguish group was comprised of vocal ringside fans who occupied a prominent spot at the Greensboro Coliseum during the 1980s and early ''90s. Long before the days of "smart fans" and "cool heels," there was "Front Row Section D." "Hitchcock relishes all the memories of attending live matches and television broadcasts during the 1960s on through the ''90s, and there are plenty of photos and clippings to go along with the stories. Long-forgotten stars live on the pages of this book, and there are laughs galore on every one of them as readers relive some of the Mid-Atlantic glory days through Hitchcock and his eclectic cast of characters. "Like those long-revered shows of the past, this book is well worth the price of admission." -Mike Moneyham, Charleston Post & Courier "Front Row Section D is a collection of stories Hitch has been honing for many years, stories that he lived while running his mouth from the front row at (mostly) Jim Crockett Promotion wrestling shows at the Greensboro Coliseum. Hitch is a world class heckler, and, as he straightforwardly explains, used his Fine Arts degree to help him design signs to take to the shows. "Hitch, never shy about talking himself up, oddly never writes that he''s responsible for the sea of doofuses carrying signs to every TV wrestling show, looking to get on the air. In the ''80s Crockett Promotions taped a lot of their TV in our area, and Hitch and his friends (like, you know, me) were the shows because we were right up front with those signs. It got to where I would rush home from work on Saturdays to check my VCR to see if we got on the air for yet another week. "There''s also the single most caustic, least respectful chapter in any wrestling book on the biggest wrestling star of the day, Hulk Hogan, and how he left the Greensboro Coliseum with his tail between his legs and and a plastic fist on his head, not to be seen for years and years. "Hitch isn''t just some asshole aggravating the crap out of people working for a little ving just like everybody else. The best serious chapter of the book is his appreciation of the great U.S. Champion Johnny Valentine. There are personal profiles of Rip Hawk, a gross story about the lengths Brute Bernard would go to protect kayfabe, and an account of the famed U.S. Title Tournament. Hitch also tells the story of how the Front Row was instrumental in the organic origin of Ric Flair, Tully Blanchard, Ole Anderson, and Arn Anderson becoming the Four Horsemen, a story Horsemen manager J. J. Dillon has verified on the PWTorch Livecast." - Bruce Mitchell, Pro Wrestling Torch "Hitchcock is a born storyteller. You can easily imagine him weaving these yarns to customers at his store or to friends at Denny''s after the matches, and this book is the better for it. It''s not really a history of the so-called "sport" in Greensboro, though reading about some of the stars and feuds of the past will bring back memories for longtime fans. It''s more a memoir, bringing you into this group of friends who got a peek into wrestling''s inner circle and had a good time doing it." Jay Reddick, GSO News & Record

Named by The New York Times as "a knowing, respectful and caring look at heartland America" and containing a new foreword by legendary player Bob Plump, this is a book every basketball lover should own. The best of Phillip Hoose's classic writings are included here with a fresh look on Indiana's favorite and most beloved sport. A new edition of a well-known Indiana classic, Hoosiers profiles some of the world's most famous basketball players and coaches—Larry Bird, Bobby Plump, Damon Bailey, Steve Alford, Stephanie White, and Bob Knight among them—along with Indiana towns, schools, and programs. The ultimate book for the diehard fan, Hoosiers: The Fabulous Basketball Life of Indiana explores Hoosier hysteria in all its glory.

Best known as an acclaimed novelist, Beryl Bainbridge is also a former actor. Expelled from school in Liverpool at the age of fourteen, she determined to tread the boards, joining the Liverpool Playhouse Theatre Company as an assistant stage manager. Here she received a unique form of education, reading Shakespeare and Ibsen, and eventually graduating from the role of a dog to the part of a boy mathematical genius for which she had to have her hair cut. Later she appeared in two early episodes of Coronation Street as Ken Barlow's girlfriend.

Includes the Report of the Mississippi River Commission, 1881-19 .

In a domed granite chamber deep beneath the Giza Plateau, a proto-pyramidical beacon pulses a warning into the cosmos for millennia while dark spectral forces conspire to terminate the signal by removing its infinite power, the golden ellipse. * * * In 1944, a German spy unwittingly looted the golden ellipse, but in the fog of world war, it ended up in the hands of a brash American fighter pilot who buried the prized contraband in the desert before his paranormal demise on a daring air raid in the south of France. * * * In 2044, a young couple fresh off a space tourism touchdown in Toulouse is hijacked from their honeymoon onto a heart-pounding odyssey to locate the legendary gold relic and restart the beacon’s signal before time runs out. It’s just the fate of the world. No pressure. Book One in THE POWERS THAT BE trilogy, THE GOLDEN ELLIPSE, is an epic sci-fi action adventure introducing Rachel and Owen Haig—intrepid newlyweds in a tech-driven near-future world of 2044 replete with AI and humanoid replicants. Their perilous quest culminates in a harrowing pitch-black descent beneath the Giza Plateau, where fates collide as alien invaders tear open Earth’s skies. Drawing parallels between the Great Pyramid's mysterious origin and Fermi's paradox, The Golden Ellipse is an epoch-spanning story rich in history and paranormal intrigue with an eclectic cast of 3-dimensional characters, gritty dialogue, dark humor, and a clandestine organization known simply as The Powers That Be, chartered to foster humankind's destiny in a crowded universe. Includes an excerpt from THE LOST SHIP The Powers That Be Book Two

Performance and Professional Wrestling is the first edited volume to consider professional wrestling explicitly from the vantage point of theatre and performance studies. Moving beyond simply noting its performative qualities or reading it via other performance genres, this collection of essays offers a complete critical reassessment of the popular sport. Topics such as the suspension of disbelief, simulation, silence and speech, physical culture, and the performance of pain within the squared circle are explored in relation to professional wrestling, with work by both scholars and practitioners grouped into seven short sections: Audience Circulation Lucha Gender Queerness Bodies Race A significant re-reading of wrestling as a performing art, Performance and Professional Wrestling makes essential reading for scholars and students intrigued by this uniquely theatrical sport.

Why watch TV when you can read about it? Featuring more than 600 previously unpublished photos, TVparty! offers fascinating, untold stories from TV's golden age.