ARCHIVE 12/26/06: WRESTLING BABYLON to Launch at Black Oak Books, Berkeley, March 27

WRESTLING BABYLON to Launch at Black Oak Books, Berkeley, March 27

Tuesday, December 26th, 2006

WRESTLING BABYLON: Piledriving Tales of Drugs, Sex, Death, and Scandal – Irvin Muchnick’s highly praised book about pro wrestling behind the scenes – will launch with an author event at Black Oak Books in Berkeley, California, on Tuesday, March 27, at 7:30 p.m.

WRESTLING BABYLON is being published in March by ECW Press (http://ecwpress.com). Bestselling author, Sports Illustrated writer and National Public Radio commentator Frank Deford says, “Irv Muchnick knows wrestling like Anna Wintour knows fashion, and his intriguing collection of ring tales is written with passion and savage humor.” In the book’s foreword, ESPN personality and boxing historian Bert Randolph Sugar adds, “This is an industry with as much to say about our collective consciousness as theater, opera and athletics combined – and with WRESTLING BABYLON it has met its match.”

San Francisco Chronicle sports columnist Scott Ostler calls the book “the wrestling version of Alice in Wonderland: You fall into the hole and discover a world you never dreamed of. But Muchnick didn’t dream this stuff up, he dug it up.”

With stores in Berkeley and San Francisco, Black Oak Books is the Bay Area’s leading locally owned and operated independent bookseller. For more information about Black Oak and the acclaimed reading series at its Berkeley store at 1491 Shattuck Avenue (between Vine and Rose), visit http://blackoakbooks.com. To order WRESTLING BABYLON or other books from Black Oak, place a toll-free call to

1-800-378-BOOK (2665) or send an email message to blackoak@infoconex.com.

“We’re pleased to be introducing WRESTLING BABYLON to the literary world,” Black Oak events manager Lewis Klausner said. “Irv’s well-researched, well-written exploration of a wildly popular, but offbeat, dimension of American culture fits the mission of our stores and the eclectic tastes of our customers.”

Complete information on WRESTLING BABYLON and its author is at http://wrestlingbabylon.com. The WRESTLING BABYLON Blog is http://muchnick.net/babylon. Media contact: media@muchnick.net.

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