The first two thirds of Ringmaster were exactly what I wanted, a detailed history of "Vinnie Lupton" and how he went from a podunk North Carolina town to being the biggest name in professional wrestling. A bigger name than any of his wrestlers. I have a decent knowledge of wrestling history but this book had many details and stories that were new to me, and I enjoyed the hell out of it.

The final third of the book knocked a star off my rating. When Vince McMahon becomes the character Mr McMahon the book seems to lose it's focus and instead turns into a recap of what is happening during the broadcasts. Of course there has to be some of that in a book like this but it seemed for chapters at a time I was reading about old episodes that I'd rather have just pulled up on youtube and watched. Maybe there really wasn't much of a difference at that point between man and character, but the backstage stuff that made the first part of the book so interesting is nearly gone. I also would have appreciated the history of the last twenty years (when I became a wrestling fan) but I can't fault the book for that, since it had to end somewhere. Just a little disappointing.

Despite my major complaint about the ending, the first part was so good that I definitely recommend it. I hope that maybe there can be a sequel someday more along the lines of the first half of the book but dealing with the years after this book ends. Give Vince the major biography treatment, the Robert Caro treatment. I want to know everything about this crazy bastard.

Ringmaster was an amazing book! I am not a wrestling fan, but my brother was when we were growing up in the late 1990s/early 2000s, so this book felt super nostalgic.

I would highly recommend reading this if you're looking for a book that balances investigative journalism, business corruption and some WWE nostalgia. The facts uncovered in this book were MIND boggling. The Trump connections were wild (and news to me!).

I was given a free ARC in exchange for this honest review. The publication date is 3/28/2023! Put this book on your radar--it's worth the read!

Ms. Reisman has written an incredibly well written and researched book about Vince McMahon and the growth of professional wrestling.

It's a biography of Vince McMahon, the poor kid from North Carolina who didn't meet his father until he was 12, and his takeover of the empire from his father and ultimately the consolidation of wrestling in the US and Canada into the WWE. But it's also about the men and women, the wrestlers, who were part of the creation but were used and discarded along the way.

The book repeatedly refers to "kayfabe," the pro wrestling term for the fake feuds and moves in the ring that are both food for the 'marks' (the believers) and the 'smarts' (the people who know it's fake but keep watching). One wonders whether Vince McMahon has engaged in kayfabe for so long that his life has become one long 'worked shoot.

I had read "True Believer," Ms. Reisman's biography of Stan Lee and found this much better. One wonders if it's not because she had more distance and less emotional engagement with wrestling (despite having been a fan in her teens) than comic books.

This honest review was given in gratitude for an advanced reader copy from #Net Galley.

I am an avid pro-wrestling fan, so I knew I had to give this book a chance. I thought the early sections of the book were particularly excellent, learning about McMahon's childhood and how he broke into the business with his father. This was the highlight of the book for me because I learned much about aspects of his life I did not originally know.

The pacing of the book was great for a majority of the book. The way Riesman reported the stories was engaging. There is just so much history to cover, it's interesting that he decided to end by the late 90's, but it also made sense for what he was trying to accomplish. This is the most thorough biography of Vince McMahon I have ever read. The only reason I did not give it 5 stars was the ending chapters became a little convoluted and the ending was very condensed. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed it and I look forward to reading his Stan Lee biography!

Like many others, I found my way into Wrestling fandom in the aftermath of the massive publicity generated by the first Wrestlemania. I had previously looked down my nose at Wrestling as being some ridiculous distraction that idiots and hillbillies thought was real. But the relentless attention that Wrestlemania received, and the fact that my best friend, who was no idiot or hillbilly, was a fan, wore me down. Before I knew it, I was regularly watching the weekend programming, and attending live events at Madison Square Garden with my friend, our parents, and my Mom's co-workers.

And I've remained a fan or Wrestling, on and off, until this day. My tastes now tend to favor AEW over the goofy and cartoonish WWE, but I'll be in front of my TV in April, watching this year's "Showcase of The Immortals", Wrestlemania.

Through it all, Vince McMahon has been there. Like most other casual fans, I knew him only as the odd-looking (My Mother used to call him "Baseball-Head"), awkward "announcer" who seemed totally unsuited for the job, and was usually larger and more pumped-up than the competitors. Imagine our shock when we learned that this man OWNED the company! (It explained A LOT.)

Steroid scandals, murder, rape, assaults, abuse.....nothing that has happened in WWE has been able to stick to Vince McMahon. Recently, it looked like he was going to crawl off and remain in the shadows after more sexual assault allegations and financial impropriety came to light, leading to his resignation, but the man came roaring back and took control of the company again, ousting his own Daughter, and now stands poised to make a fortune by selling his company, in a final "Fuck you!", to the Saudis.

Abraham Riesman's RINGMASTER didn't hold many surprises for me....I've read and seen a lot about Vince's life already. It did confirm my belief that he is a loveless piece of shit who would sell out anybody to ensure that he comes out on top. He seems to have driven his children out of the WWE, and his relationship with his Wife looks to be purely one of mutual greed.

Riesman draws some direct lines between McMahon's behavior and his friendship with Donald Trump, implying that the former President learned a lot from Vince's amorality, and applied it in his political life. I bounced back and forth between thinking this was hype and exaggeration, and fully buying into it. Your mileage may vary, but I can see how Vince's fuck you attitude and refusal to ever back down and apologize have gone from shocking behavior decades ago, to de rigueur now.

Is Vince really responsible for the ugliness of America today...? I was surprised to discover how much the McMahon's contributed to Trump and his bogus charities, to his campaigns, and how his connection to Saudi Arabia (Getting $40 million paydays for each event WWE runs there) went completely overlooked as a massive conflict of interest, considering that Linda McMahon was serving in Trump's cabinet. The closeness between McMahon and Trump, if accurate, is also an eye-opener.

Even if you feel like you know everything about "Mr. McMahon", Riesman's book is well-written and entertaining, but you'll feel like you need a shower by the time you're done.

Professional wrestling grew from a popular but regional entertainment option to a world-wide entertainment spectacle under the leadership of Vince McMahon. There has been much written about him, his enterprise that currently uses the moniker WWE and many of the wrestlers that were employed by McMahon. This book on McMahon by Abraham Riesman is most complete account of the rise of WWE and also the life of McMahon.

The title of the book is the only part of the book that was disappointing to me. From that title, it sounds like a reader might expect more about McMahon and his wife Linda’s involvement in American politics – everything from his friendship and connections with former President Donald Trump to Linda’s runs for the U.S. Senate under the Republican Party representing Connecticut. While Riesman does touch on those topics at brief moments through the book and a bit more detail in the epilogue, that isn’t the main focus of the book.

Instead, that focus is on Vince McMahon’s life, how he became interested in the business of wrestling and how he gained control of the now-WWE from his father. While the elder Vince did not play much of a role in raising Vince Jr. his influence was shown in how the company was thereafter run. Riesman does a fine job of portraying McMahon fairly, showing all sides of his complex character.

That includes his dealings with wrestlers, whom he names for both real and stage names. It doesn’t matter whether one’s favorite wrestler during their biggest stage of popularity, Riesman discusses how McMahon made handshake deals or promises that were (mostly) broken. This includes very popular performers like Hulk Hogan (who was actually “stolen”, using Riesman’s words, from a smaller regional wrestling association), Rowdy Roddy Piper, Stone Cold Steve Austin or Andre the Giant. Women wrestlers like the Fabulous Moolah are included and even McMahon’s family, such as when his daughter Stephanie was part of the storyline.

Riesman also paints a very good picture of the wrestling business, with frequent use of the word “kayfabe” to continually distinguish what was real and what was staged. He talks about the differences in fans who thought there was genuine competition (“marks”) and those who knew it was fake but enjoyed as artform (“smarts”). This is important to consider when reading about McMahon’s career with the business as he eventually became part of the show as a heel without being an actual wrestler.

Whether it is the many controversies involved in the WWE (the name, steroids, blatant racism and sexism, the alleged rape of a female referee), the actual biography of McMahon or the stories of many wrestlers, any reader with interest in the wrestling industry should pick up this book about the biggest name to ever be involved in the entertainment business of professional wrestling.

I wish to thank Atria Books for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Atria Books for an advanced copy of this biography on one of the last of the big time impresarios, one who came from humble beginnings and changed an industry, entertainment and in many ways the way the world looks at itself.

In the world of professional wrestling, unlike the land of the Oz, all attention is paid to the man behind the curtain. Up until recently one man sat in what in wrestling terms was the "Gorilla Position", video monitors views from all over the arena, a headset to yell at the commentators at the announce table what to say to the people at home, or to give orders to the referee who helped to control the motions of the sports superstars, as wrestlers are called, in a 20 foot ring, performing in front of sold out crowds. Every second was planned, every motion, every word scripted by writers, under this man's auspices, Vincent Kennedy McMahon. For over 40 years McMahon controlled the hearts, minds, matches and lives of WWE superstars, making careers, dashing hopes, making and losing money. McMahon fought literally and figuratively for his spot at the top of Professional Wrestling, leaving a lot of carnage in his wake, bodies, damaged, broken or gone before their time, reputations ruined, and an industry that reached heights never thought possible, a pale shadow of what it was when he began. Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America by biographer Abraham Riesman is an American story about a man born with a lot of disadvantages pulling himself to the top of an industry, changing the world as we knew it.

Vince Lupton was born in North Carolina, of parents who soon divorced. Vince's mother remarried quickly and young Vince never met his real father until he turned twelve. Vincent James McMahon a boxing and wrestling promoter big in the Washington D. C. area and New York, especially Madison Square Garden. After graduating Vince began to work with his fathers, whose name Vince now took, starting small and working up to announcing. Soon he and his wife were promoting shows in Cape Cod where he gained experience in both working at a venue and the power that politics can play in business, something that stayed with him. In the early 80's Vince pushed his father to sell his company to Vince, and slowly began to expand his empire, Titan sports into other wrestling territories, something really had not been done before. Vince bought television shows, wrestlers, announcers, territories, and began to hire the best people to make his shows stand out. Vince worked with MTV, promoting rock and wrestling, and offering grand pay-per-view extravaganzas. Vince brought a new Attitude Era to wrestling, one that would sound take his business bigger than even he thought, but changing a form of entertainment that had endured for almost 100 years before Vince, for ever.

Vince McMahon is not a good man, at all. Abraham Riesman does a very good job of covering this in a book that is as probably as close to the truth as any book about wrestling could ever be. Professional wrestling is based on secrets, a lie about the way the matches are figured. The risks are real, the action is real, the results are preplanned. Everyone lies from the biggest champions to the job guys who get tossed around the ring to prove a champion's skill. Riesman, like his book on Stan Lee does a great job of trying to get to the truth, when the story has become fact. Not just a history on Vince, this is a history of America, not waning to face the real strong story, but to create a story that sounds good, that people can all get behind and believe. Riesman is a very good author, and even better understands the power of living a life of untruth and how that effects everything in life. Vince has hurt many, many many, people, covering up crimes, including murder, suicide, drug addiction, and just being an unpleasant person. To Vince it's "Just business, Pal". Something that we as a society are hearing quite a lot of from everyone in power.

Recommended for wrestling fans, and for people who want to see what trauma does to even the most successful. Nothing will ever be good enough for Vince, even selling the WWE for billions, as he has come back to do. There will always be another deal, something that he won't do. Vince will never have a clean finish, not one, two, three in the ring. And this book will tell you why.

This was great! I particularly enjoyed this as a wrestling fan, but I truly don't think you need to be in order to have fun with this book. The authors writing style immediately had me interested. Will be reccomending this one to all my fellow WWE watchers.

Vince McMahon is a fascinating individual and I think a definitive chronicle of his life can only be written after he's dead. With that said, Riesman's book is a great overview of his life so far. I understand that it's in vogue to look at everything through the prism of Trump, and McMahon has a history with the actual man, but I was less interested in that than the actual building of WWE. Not sure how much is new for diehard wrestling fans, but as someone who is a casual fan, it's a good primer.

Extremely well researched. Even if you've never watched a minute of professional wrestling, Riesman guides you through its entire history and explains all the major tropes and jargon. Hardcore wrestling fans will already be familiar with much here, but there are some fascinating scandals and incidents from the 70s and 80s that even some of them may not be aware of. Riesman makes interesting observations on wrestling's rising popularity over the years and how that ties into other cultural changes in America, but she also has a tendency to simply transcribe an entire promo or match commentary, which often feels tedious and doesn't add any new perspective. The book will mainly appeal to wrestling fans or anyone nostalgic for the Hulkamania! days of the 1980s, but it will be a tough sell to others.

As a lifelong wrestling fan, this is the book I have been waiting for. Ringmaster is an unauthorized biography of Vince McMahon, the former and now "disgraced" chairman who should have been disgraced long before his 2022 headlines. This book gets in to all of that.

As a wrestling fan, you begin to observe something interesting -- wrestling essentially gets this pass from pop culture. What happens in the wrestling world doesn't often permeate to the mainstream world. Because of that, it has often felt that some of the more troubling aspects of the industry and the man behind it gets a pass.

This book for me offered at least one place where there is accountability as McMahon grows Professional Wrestling into Sports Entertainment, while still trying to keep the inner workings withheld to "carny" culture.

Well-researched, with transparency as to where Riseman was getting his information from, this book mostly dives into Vince's early years into the development of WWE/WWF and it's rise to pop-culture. It does not go far past the rise of the Mr. McMahon character, though you will not feel that there is a lack of information or stories shared.

I think this is a must-read for every wrestling fan.

I received a digital advanced reader's copy of this book from NetGalley.

Just to set some context, I'm a casual wrestling fan at best, and I go through long stretches where I don't pay any attention at all. That said, I've always found Vince McMahon pretty interesting just because it seems so clear to me that he's not a particularly good person, but he also seems to inspire such deep loyalty in so many people. I was really excited to see a biography not produced by him or WWE.

My one real criticism would be that I think the "Unmaking of America" part is kind of overstating what's in the book. Riesman does detail how McMahon dirties up WWE and pro wrestling, especially during the Attitude Era and very briefly touches on unhappy parents and things like that, but they don't really spend a lot of time on that. And while the book does touch on Trump and his involvement with WWE over the years and the beginning of the McMahons using their money and power to influence government officials, I think what most people responding to that part of the title would be interested in doesn't really get discussed in detail until the coda at the end of the book. I got the impression from the title and summary that there would be much more about the cultural and political impact of McMahon/WWE than there ultimately was.

That said, that didn't really bother me personally. I just wanted a good biography of Vince McMahon and I got that. I really liked that Riesman focused on one chunk of McMahon's life and career, essentially the time frame between him taking over WWE from his father to the time when the Attitude Era really kicked in, WWE had really broken into mainstream culture, and the company had fully taken on McMahon's personality. It does mean we don't hear a lot from more contemporary wrestlers or hear much about the last 20 years in the company and we don't get a ton about McMahon's personal/working relationship with his kids, who were just starting to get involved in the company when the book ends, but being a more casual fan, I found Vince's takeover of the company, his ability to take other people's ideas and make them work better, and how weirdly out of step his humor and creative ideas often are, among other things, to be really interesting. Riesman does a good job of capturing who McMahon is (and who he *thinks* he is), and I think does that in a pretty objective way, often letting Vince's own words and interviews speak for themselves. A lot of the best stuff in the book involves Bret Hart. Even I, a casual fan, am pretty familiar with a lot of the Hart/McMahon stuff, but it does provide a really good throughline because let's face it, if anyone saw the best and worst of McMahon during this time period, it's definitely Hart. Of all the more contemporary wrestlers I can think of, he seems the most conflicted about who Vince ultimately is.

Anyway, definitely recommend this to wrestling fans or even just fans of pop culture in general, and I've already recommended it for purchase to the librarian at my branch in charge of nonfiction. If Riesman wanted to write another book in 20 years that gets into all the recent developments, I'd read it for sure.

Ringmaster by Abraham Riesman explores the stranger than fiction life of Vince McMahon, the now disgraced CEO of WWE. Using exclusive interviews with McMahon’s inner circle (and those unceremoniously ousted from it) the book, though unauthorized, provides unprecedented insight into the life of McMahon. The only drawback is its release date - a few more months of work and the author would have been able to add the fall of McMahon to this gripping story.

Very well researched book with lots of details I had no clue about. I watched wrestling on Saturday mornings with my dad and watched again in the late 90s early 2000s. So many details that really cleared up different eras for me.

Ringmaster by Abraham Riesman reads like a wrestling match: raucous, wild, loud but also well written and always engaging.

The story of Vince McMahon and the WWE is fascinating and Riesman allows readers to come on the wild ride that was McMahon and his creation of one of sports’s largest phenomena. This book is fantastic and as a person who liked but didn’t love wrestling this book shows just how crazy the story was and I highly recommend this to anyone interested in the behind the scenes of the WWE.

Really front-loaded, making certain significant events receive little more than cursory attention (the Benoit murders-suicide, for example), but this is an incredibly detailed and exhaustive look at VKM...even if some of the details are at times misrepresented. It is pro wrestling after all.

ARC provided for an honest review.

I was a yuppie fan of WWF wrestling in the late eighties early nineties—actually went to a live match. So I enjoyed this book very much. Well written and fast moving-it tells the story of Vince and the WWF from its inception to the present day. Full of behind the scenes stuff-it was just fascinating. And Vince , though not a nice guy at all, is nonetheless a fascinating character. If you have any interest in this subject , you won’t find a better book to take you behind the scenes and into the “real” world of professional wrestling. Highly recommended!

A pretty interesting very well researched book about an individual who helped shaped the lucrative wrestling industry. There was much information that I had no idea about him particularly his close friendship with Donald Trump.
This is a great book for anyone that wants to find out more about Vince and the entertainment venue that made him wildly wealthy.

Ringmaster is a thrilling, Caro-esque look at power and corruption, centered around a 3D heel you can’t stop reading about. The behind-the-scenes rise and fall of an American family empire, at your fingertips.

Ringmaster chronicles the rise of Vince McMahon, from his early life in poverty to working for his father to taking the WWF national and beyond.

I thought Riesman's book about Stan Lee was great so I got myself on the ARC list when the call went out. I read it in three long sittings.

First off, the Unmaking of America portion of the title is sensationalistic. Sure, Vince and Trump are friends and the McMahons worked to get pro wrestling deregulated and Vince manipulates the media but that's about all the Unmaking there is.

The format is similar to Riesman's Stan Lee book. Vince's early life as Vinnie Lupton is detailed, both from Vince's words and from the people who knew him, generating some conflicting stories. Vince didn't meet his biological father, Vince McMahon Sr, until he was 12 and took his name sometime after.

I've been a wrestling fan off and on for most of my life so I knew a lot of stuff about Vince's early days in the wrestling business but not nearly all of it. I didn't know the McMahons owned a hockey team or Vince was involved in Evel Kineval's Snake River Canyon jump, for instance.

Vince running the other promoters out of business is a well trodden road so there aren't a ton of pages spent on it other than the Georgia Championship Wrestling timeslot debacle. The sex scandals were detailed, like Vince allegedly raping female referee Rita Chatterson and all the ring boy unpleasantness. The death of Nancy Argentino was also detailed, forever derailing whatever Vince had planned for Jimmy Snuka in the longterm.

Once the first Wrestlemania hits, things are in full swing, including drug scandals, Vince and Hogan falling out, The Ultimate Warrior being a dick, Vince's various trials, and all that stuff. Vince's stint as a heel in the USWA was covered, something I've always wanted to know more about.

From there, the late 1990s and early 2000s are covered, Montreal Screwjob, Monday Night War, and Vince eating his two biggest competitors.

So what did I think? This wasn't exactly the book I was picturing, focusing primarily on Vince McMahon the person. I wouldn't have minded more backstage stuff or road stories but that's how I feel about most wrestling books. My opinion of Vince McMahon hasn't changed. I don't think he's a genius and the last good idea he had was turning heel in 1997. I also don't think he's a particularly good person. He does keep the wrestling business going on a national level, though.

It's a very well researched book. Riesman didn't skimp and consulted multiple sources on almost ever morsel of information. I don't feel like Riesman had an axe to grind and explored everything fairly. There was a lot more Bret Hart material, which is a plus in my book, and even that wasn't just shots at Vince. Like I said, I would have liked more backstage stuff but that's not the book Riesman was writing.

Anyway, this is an interesting look at Vince McMahon and his rise to power. Like the Stan Lee book, if you think Vince McMahon is a benevolent wrestling genius, you probably won't enjoy finding out about the realities of his rise to power and all the stuff he swept under the rug. Four out of five stars.