On these cold nights Aunt Thelma likes to read, so after finishing 'How to Lose Weight While Quilting,' she decided to read something of historical importance and picked up The Death of the WCW. (ECW Press).

The authors (Bryan Alvarez and R.D. Reynolds) quite logically look at the birth, rise, demise and death of this Ted Turner-backed organization, which for a few years gave fans a popular alternative to Vince McMahon's WWE.

The reasons for WCW's collapse are as many as the fall of the Roman Empire (well, maybe not that many), but the authors zero in on executives who had no sense of the wrestling business with bizarre ideas (such as having a hunchback wrestler a la Quasimodo) or just plain bad ideas (like a tag team called Posse consisting of two black men led to the ring by someone dressed as a Southern plantation owner), to men who did have wrestling sense (Eric Bischoff, Bill Watts and Vince Russo) but whose egos got in the way, to having the wrestlers themselves (with bigger egos) making matches (and we don't mean the kind you light cigarettes with), to huge wastes of money on contracts (like signing guys who were never seen on TV) or advertising (like taking out an ad to promote a Monday 'Nitro' program which appeared the following Thursday) to the eventual sale of the Turner empire to Time/Warner, which then sold WCW to AOL, thus removing Ted Turner, WCW's 'sugar daddy' and protector.

The book is sort of an 'Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the WCW But Were Afraid to Know' and is a must-read for fans who want to be taken behind the scenes as the authors name names, telling who said what and who did what. Plus it has what Aunt Thelma loves in books - color photos.