Ballyhoo! The roughhousers, con artists, and wildmen who invented professional wrestling

Jon Langmead's Ballyhoo! examines professional wrestling's origins in the late 19th and early 20th centuries within a cultural milieu of carnivals, con artists, criminality, hucksters, and anyone who fooled, swindled, or cheated people to make money. Langmead argues that when wrestling became "worked" (choreographed), it became more popular and mainstream. However, professional wrestling never shed its huckster and carnival past because it was compelled to preserve the most important trade secrets of the industry's worked performances. Promoter Jack Curley is featured as the influential figure who created the first forms of worked wrestling. The business created several economic cartels run by strongman promoters who increasingly competed for markets, talent, and the benefit of promoting the world heavyweight champion. The author points out that wrestling became "real" when worked contests became shoot (legitimate) fights over which promoters would get the booking rights to the world heavyweight champion. The infamous "double-cross" came into wrestling parlance when worked matches became legitimate fights. Ballyhoo! outlines the beginnings of staples in modern wrestling, including the advent of baby faces (good wrestlers) and heels (bad wrestlers), personal story lines, and the role of women wrestlers in a hyper-masculine business. Superbly written and cited, Ballyhoo! is a wonderful addition to the growing historiography of professional wrestling. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. --Christopher L. Stacey, Louisiana State University at Alexandria

The story of professional wrestling certainly did not begin with WrestleMania or Vince McMahon's WWE. Its history, as seen in Langmead's Ballyhoo!, is as colorful and controversial as its contemporary version. The story centers around promoter Jack Curley, whose vision for the sport played an outsize role in its proliferation during the turbulent time period from the turn of the century through the 1930s and beyond. Wrestling evolved, survived, thrived, and sometimes languished amid the Great Depression and all the legal tanglings of a sport that straddled being organized and anything but. In that early era, the tenets of modern wrestling were cultivated, including the reliance on race-based tropes that would remain prevalent through the next century's dawning. With Ballyhoo!, Langmead has crafted a history of a sport (or is it entertainment?) that feels definitive and engrossing. The book also fulfills the promise of its subtitle, introducing a large cast of wholly unique characters that rounds out this entirely bombastic read.