When I'm not busy trying to decipher some of the comments on the LAW's wrestling board, I like to read. I've recently read a couple of wresting books that I'd like to share with some of my fellow readers out there.

Released a few months ago, Gorgeous George: The Outrageous Bad-boy Wrestler Who Created American Pop Culture is a wrestling book that truly stretches across a mainstream reading audience. If it had been more scholarly in its approach, it could easily have been a textbook for a cultural studies class.

Author John Capouya presents the argument that George was a major cultural force because he shaped such influential talents as James Brown, Bob Dylan and Muhammad Ali and created the persona of the man we love to hate, and, more importantly, pay tons of money to express that hate.

He was also an essential part of the early success of television. He helped build the initial audience, instilling in them that it was better to have a TV in your living room rather than watching it in the front window of the department store down the street.

The book also has lots of good stuff for hardcore wrestling fans curious about rise of both George and the business in the '40s. He really did pave the way for today. If you think about it, it's really the first evidence of sports entertainment as we know it. The flash, the glamour, the second, and, yes, Michael Hayes, the use of entrance music. Where do you think Randy Savage got the idea to use Pomp and Circumstance to come to the ring? George had it all first.

Sadly, however, it also shows that George seems to have set the pattern for the wild partying that is still part of wrestling, even drinking himself to an early grave in 1963 at only 48 years old.

Unfortunately, that is also the perfect segue into the second book I want to talk about. Dungeon of Death: Chris Benoit and the Hart Family Curse is the second to focus on the Chris Benoit tragedy. Thankfully, it's a million miles away from Michael Randazzo's Ring of Hell, which read like a trashy Mafia novel wrapped in the a copy of Pro Wrestling Illustrated.

Rather than scandalize, author Scott Keith uses the Benoit case as a springboard to explore many of the other related deaths, attempting to come up with the most comprehensive list of wrestlers whose deaths we can truly blame on the business. He wraps all this around the idea of a curse that seems to have affected the Hart Family and friends such The British Bulldogs and Brian Pillman.

For hardcore fans, this book really doesn't hold a lot of new information or revelations. Keith comes to the same conclusions we do on the radio show every week: union, off-season, health insurance, a compassionate leader who doesn't want to burn his roster out. But maybe that's also the problem as well.

We all seem to know what's wrong. What we need is a way to get the changes made that are necessary to help the business survive and progress. We also need the right people in charge with the right frame of mind and willing to make the sacrifices needed to protect the talent properly. Finally, we also need a fan base that is understanding and willing to except certain changes, whether they be smaller guys wrestling, no dangerous gimmick matches or an off-season.

Now if somebody could figure all that out, we'd have something.