Shane Douglas Books

started out pretty good shows how Paul Heyman "Robbed Peter to pay Paul" and so on after awhile you forget who owes what and how much to who and really you stoping caring you just want it all to end really expected more i am sorry guys i really liked the ECW but in the end it sounds like E C DUH!

Great book about the true ecw, i read both books on ecw, the other being the rise and fall of ecw by wwe and i give this a slight upperhand because it seems to be slightly more straight foward, if you have to pick between the two, pick this one otherwise read them both! ECW ECW ECW!!

ECW is truly what this book says it is. EXTREME. As a fan of ECW wrestling, it tells and shows the true side of ECW. It tells readers what exactly is the ECW organization. Along with ECW, this book also tells what the Tri-State Wrestling organization was about, too. This book is great for someone who wants to learn a little bit more about wrestling and ECW. I hope this review was helpful to anybody who wants to learn more about wrestling. Thank you!

ECW! ECW! ECW! - A chant reserved only for the sadistic collection of wrestlers that represented the unique brand of Extreme Championship Wrestling between 1993 and 2001. Even years after the death of this company, many wrestlers are still living off the name they made for themselves performing in an ECW arena. In this book, Scott E. Williams sets out to tell the real story behind the hardcore revolution that was ECW. A company that was repeatedly raped and pillaged by the "big two" for many years, yet held its ground in the bloodiest battles of the wrestling war - that is until the Extreme soldiers grudgingly laid down their weapons in 2001 and threw in the towel.

ECW was always a complex beast. Current fans are under the impression that Paul Heyman was the backbone of the ECW's existence. But he will be the first to admit that the land of Extreme was not built by his vision alone. Scott E. Williams takes readers back to the beginnings of ECW, before it was "Extreme" and even before it was "Eastern." An astonishing look back at its humble beginnings as a struggling Philadelphia promotion called Tri-State run by Joel Goodhart, which had a very brief shelf life. A man by the name of Tod Gordon picked up the pieces and continued the tradition under the banner of Eastern Championship Wrestling. Eventually Paul Heyman came on board and the era of Extreme was born. That's all I will tell you, as you will have to check out the book to read all the fascinating accounts of what happened in between.

Many of the recollections of ECW alumni are a figurative drop-kick to the balls of WWE's revisionist history of ECW that was shoved unceremoniously down our throats during the months leading up to ECW's "One Night Stand" PPV and the release of WWE's "Rise & Fall of ECW" DVD in 2005. WWE is perhaps the only group of people who cannot handle the truth about ECW. But that's neither here nor there and is an insignificant detail in describing this book. All I will say is, when you're finished reading this book, you will know the truth behind Vince McMahon's claims that he secretly supported ECW financially throughout the years. Let me just say that you truly cannot believe everything you see or hear on TV.

The only complaint that I was left with at the end of this book is not really a complaint at all. The one thing that bothered me was that this book was almost TOO well written. Scott E. Williams used words that I've never seen before and utilized sentence structure that often had me reading certain paragraphs twice to grasp the concept. Scott is a wonderfully creative writer with moments of brilliance, but come on Scotty you're writing for wrestling fans, you got to dumb it down a little! That may as well be filed under compliment rather than complaint.

Rating: In conclusion, buy this book, purely for its mind-blowing original content. 9/10

Reviewed by Obsessedwithwrestling.com's Brad Dykens

Hardcore History is not a bad read as such. Lots of the quotes are fun, and you do get a feel for how important and exciting ECW was for action-starved hardcore fans in the early to mid 1990s. Scott Williams' research is a joke, though. He misses out key matches and angles, and gets others confused beyond belief. Anyone who really followed the company would spot these errors a mile off, and anyone else could check them in 30 seconds just by Googling show names. For the *real* history of ECW, John Lister's "Turning The Tables" is still the gold standard.

While generally excellent in detailing the rise and fall of ECW even better than the DVD, this book does have some missteps that mar it. As noted by others, devoting an entire chapter to Brian Pillman is baffling as he was just a blip in the history of the company and ignoring Austin and Foley is equally strange. However, what does hurt the otherwise excellent reporting is the anti-WWE and even anti-Heyman bias that sinks in, ignoring how great One Night Stand was and putting the focus on the "Hardcore Homecoming" shows, ignoring the fact that many wrestlers did both shows. It's one thing to hear Paul Heyman's heartfelt stories on keeping the company going, another to hear Shane Douglas call Benoit and Guerrero "footnotes" in ECW history and demand $100,000 to do One Night Stand.

That bias shows in the new paperback with the chapter on the WWE revival of the brand. Most of the stories sound like they came from second-hand sources and seem to go out of thier way making Vince McMahon sound more like his on-screen "Mr. McMahon" persona. There are no citations so it's hard to tell how much is true and how much is just rumor and speculation. They also ignore how Hardcore Holly won respect from ECW fans with the match where he fought on after suffering a hideous gash on his back.

Again, it's a great look at parts of ECW that were overlooked by WWE. But the bias and the decision to ignore some important elements and blow minor things up into major importance does hurt it. A good read but, unlike what Williams might like you to think, it's not the final word on the company.

Although I enjoyed this book as an alternative-perspective history of ECW, there are a few factual errors within... not many, but enough so that it makes me question the reliability of other information.

For example, in the chapter that talks about the first ECW PPV, Barely Legal, Hardcore History mentions that it opened with a match between the Dudley Boyz and the Eliminators for the ECW Tag Team titles. This much is correct; however, the book describes the match as being one in which Perry Saturn, with a legitimate broken leg, defied doctors' orders and actually worked the match (after he and John Kronus came out to the ring ostensibly to forfeit the belts to the Dudleys), even getting the pin in the match. While this incident did take place, it was not at Barely Legal - rather, it was at the next major ECW Arena show following the PPV, Wrestlepalooza '97, where it closed out the show. (The Barely Legal match was essentially a glorified squash of the Dudleys, meant primarily to showcase the Eliminators' incredible precision double-team work.)

In another section discussing the first ECW One Night Stand PPV, Francine is mentioned as coming out with Tommy Dreamer to be his manager that night. In reality, Dreamer came out with no manager, and Francine actually did a run-in where she attacked Dreamer during his match (leading to the surprise return of Beulah MacGillicudy to make the save).

There are also a few passages that ambiguously suggest things happened a bit later than they did in reality. For instance, the Blue World Order is first mentioned in a section detailing the events of early summer 1997, as if it began then, when in fact the BWO had all but run its course by that point, owing mostly to Stevie Richards needing time off for injury purposes. While the book doesn't actually say the BWO started at that point, the placement of this section certainly implies to someone who may not have lived through the ECW era that was the case.

Admittedly, I myself did not notice too many of these errors, as most of the book covers a time period where I was not able to follow ECW. However, the fact I can point out such errors in the sections I was familiar with make me call other areas of the book into question, which is probably not what author Scott E. Williams had in mind.

Setting these nitpicks aside, Hardcore History is an entertaining read, and does a credible job of painting a picture of what ECW was like behind the scenes, even if some of what happened in front of the cameras is slightly misrepresented. Fans of Paul Heyman might not appreciate it as much, since the book tends to paint a less-than-flattering picture of the man at times, but Williams really does try hard to be fair in his assessment of what he and his interview subjects percieved to be Heyman's strengths and weaknesses, both as a creative mind and a businessman.

There are some editorial decisions that may raise an eyebrow or two, such as devoting a full chapter to Brian Pillman's very short ECW tenure in 1996. While Pillman's attempts to work the entire industry were undoubtedly a landmark moment in the business, one of the first high-profile cases of kayfabe being well and truly broken in the public eye, the truth is that Pillman, with all due respect to his memory, appeared on only a couple of ECW shows, and his impact on the company was relatively minor in the end. This chapter would not at all be out of place in a book detailing the way the business changed during the '90s -- and in fact, should have been even longer in such a book -- but for a history of ECW it feels a bit weird to have more pages devoted to Pillman's antics than are used to tell the entire story of Barely Legal, undoubtedly one of the biggest watershed moments in the company's history.

Overall, I found Hardcore History to be a good, if flawed, retelling of some of what went on in ECW that the fans weren't necessarily privvy to. It should not, however, be taken as a complete and accurate account of ECW's history, but as a companion volume to some of the other ECW-themed books out there, it makes a good addition to your wrestling bookshelf. Worth checking out, but it should no more be the only book you buy about the history of Extreme Championship Wrestling than WWE's own book should be considered the definitive, unbiased history of the company.

This softcover version contains a new chapter focusing on WWE's 2006 relaunch of the brand, which will speak to any old-school ECW fan's frustration with the way WWE has treated this property since they brought it back. The entire six-month devaluation of the ECW brand under WWE's auspicies -- from a promising start in June to a December PPV that can only be described as a disaster of epic proportions -- is detailed in all its, er, "glory," as are Paul Heyman's clashes with Vince McMahon over the creative direction of the revived product.

Like most solution manuals, the explanations are weak. Nevertheless, it can be helpful when you get stuck on a problem.

Just wanted to say, the book is great, got the book within a highly reasonable time period. Wish I could have been able to pay for overnight shipping, but the book came within a week, so all in all not bad at all.

The book has a little bit of damage on the cover, but that is to be expected with a used book, in addition the damage may have been caused by shipping.

Great book, no complaints.

This book is an excellent source for my work. I would like to have a solution manual for this book that contain the solutions for the even exercises

This solutions manual has one redeeming factor - for the most part, the solutions are accurate.

However, this is where the benefit ends. The methods for solving the problems are severely abbreviated. Problems that may take 8-10 steps to solve are presented in 3-4 steps, with little reason presented. Often, the answers to the odd exercises in the textbook provide equal guidance. Save your money and get another reference (and a different textbook, if at all possible).

Professors and others who have already studied calculus may find the solutions manual to be adequate - of course, they have already been exposed to the material. So a subset of these folks may say such things as "if you cannot understand this, you are too dumb to do calculus". Thus, though they may be able to solve a calculus exercise, these arrogant ignoramuses are blind with respect to the beginning students needs, so their opinions are irrelevant to the situation. If one is trying to learn calculus, the last thing one requires is the triviality of arrogance. Since introductory textbooks and their associated solutions manuals should suit the ultimate purpose of promoting understanding, this manual fails.

The solutions manual, much like the inferior Stewart textbook (see my review of the text), often reads like a professor's "notes to myself" manual. Some "solutions" read thusly: 1. Restatement of problem 2. Statement of one or two intermediate steps 3. Solution. This book contains many such solutions, thereby providing breadth at the expense of depth.

Though it can be done, a beginning calculus student should not spend much time trying to fill in the blanks in the author's reasoning - he or she should be learning the subject of calculus. I recommend the George F. Simmons Calculus and Analytic Geometry text, or the Anton Calculus: A New Horizon text and its associated solutions manual. ...

I have noticed that most people are NOT happy with the solutions presented in this manual, I agree that some of the solutions may be rather short, but it is 10 times better than being left to the solutions in the back of the text. Bottom Line = It's better than nothing.