The Bottom Line
Only fans of the history of fitness and fighting skills would find these books a worthy addition to their wrestling libraries. Fans looking to find out about the history of the sport or about the career of Ed "Strangler" Lewis will be disappointed because these books do not cover those topics in-depth.
Pros
- These books are a part of wrestling history.
Cons
- The books are photo and illustration driven.
- You will not get a good understanding of Ed or wrestling from that era in these books.
Description
- This 8-volume set can be purchases as three separate books or in one set.
- Book 1, containing volumes 1-4, are on physical conditioning.
- Book 2, containing volume 5, is about self-defense.
- Book 3, which contains volumes 6-8, are about wrestling.
- The three books cost $26, $14, and $22 respectively.
- The entire set is available for $50.
- The entire set is 532 pages.
- The soft-cover books are 5 1/2" x 8 1/2".
Guide Review - Review of the Sandow-Lewis Library
Ed "Strangler" Lewis was a world champion in the 1920's and later went on to become the manager of Lou Thez. Billy Sandow was the manager of Lewis. In 1926, the two men wrote an eight volume set about training and fighting. This historical library has just been reprinted by Paladin Press.
The set up of the books are that there are pictures or an illustration with a description of the activity either below the photo or on the following page. There are very few pages of writing that are not descriptions of the photos.
The training volume features Ed's legendary training. However, these routines are terribly dated. One of the tools that he uses, the headlock dummy, looks like an early version of the Suzanne Somer's Thighmaster.
The self-defense book is very small and not worth the price of buying it separately. The wrestling portion of the library explains how to do the moves of the era.
