Cover Image: Sisterhood of the Squared Circle

Sisterhood of the Squared Circle

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Member Reviews

"Sisterhood of the Squared Circle" is a book that I looked forward to reading because I love books about the history of sports, particularly wrestling. This encyclopedic take on the way that women have influenced wrestling since the beginning, starting in carnivals and surviving to become main events at pay per view matches, shows the longevity and need of females in wrestling. I enjoyed the first half of the book the most because it focuses on those legends that made the Diva era and the current era of wrestling what it is today. The stories of the legends, told one by one with short biographies, feuds, and deaths, are well worth the price of the book. Toward the second half, it starts to get more and more repetitive and faceless. When I would look up the wrestlers on the internet, the old pictures and matches on Youtube (which is highly recommended to make this experience even better), I was really interested in the beginnings through the mid-2000s. The wrestlers in the last section of the book seemed all the same to me, that the descriptions that Laprade was using were starting to wear thin, and by the end of the book, I was a little ready for it to be over. Having said that, I wondered to myself whether the structure of going chronologically was the best bet. There seemed to be places where the information was backtracking and I was rereading the things I had already read. This made the last fifth of the book just something to get through.

Having said all of this, I really enjoyed most of "Sisterhood of the Squared Circle" and it does highlight the most important aspect of the world of wrestling: It might be fun to watch the men wrestle, but it doesn't mean a thing if the women are not there as well.

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This is a very detailed history of women wrestlers. The book is organized in a chronological fashion and begins in the late 1800s with women who wrestled in sideshows and circuses. Each woman has her own section and it has a little bit of information on her personal life, but mainly focuses on her wrestling career. It lists promoters, opponents, and wrestling organizations of each era. I buy for the wrestling section for a public library and would need to wait and see what the “extras” are in the printed book. If this book has a good number of quality photos and an index, I would buy it. In the ARC there were just 4 tiny pictures at the end of the book and no index. I received the ARC at least 6 months before publication and assume that the final book will have several improvements.

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As a casual WWE fan, I really enjoyed reading about the women of wrestling. I have recommended this book to my fellow lady WWE supporters!

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