Steven Verrier – författare

Introduced in the Pacific Northwest in 1883, professional wrestling has a long and storied history in the region and has contributed significantly to Northwest culture. This entertaining account of the wrestling industry in Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia provides a detailed look at more than 130 years of events in the ring and behind the scenes. The author draws connections between developments in wrestling and the changing identity of the Pacific Northwest.

Few stones are left unturned in this account of the life of a champion professional wrestler old-time fans and wrestling historians remember well for his accomplishments in the ring, his run-’em-over approach to wrestling, his growly demeanor, and a razor-sharp wit he could unleash at will. Numerous people who knew Gene Kiniski firsthand—including boyhood friends and acquaintances in the Canadian prairie, fellow wrestlers and promoters who worked with him or against him, and people who became Kiniski’s friends after he left the ring—recount touching stories and memories of an athlete and entertainer who was known internationally to a generation of wrestling fans and to Canadians everywhere as Canada’s Greatest Athlete. In these pages, those who knew Kiniski best remember a giant of a man who impacted people around him even more than he impacted wrestling audiences in major centers in the United States, Canada, and Japan over the course of an outstanding career spanning well over three decades.

The United States has become increasingly polarized, although the concept of a two-party system is not new. This book traces the major parties' utter dominance--of the highest elected positions all the way down to "nonpartisan" political offices across the U.S.--from the founding of the Constitution through the 2020 presidential election. Even before the founding of the "modern" Republican Party in 1854 and the next 168-year era of Democratic-GOP dominance, the early decades of American nationhood were ruled in a similar manner by the two major parties of the day. This book is a comprehensive, fast-paced analysis of how the two-party system has grown to be such an affront to the ideals of the Founding Fathers and of the numerous Americans today who appear to accept it as a fact of life.

Decades after pulling up stakes, three sixty-something Canadians living in three different countries are drawn back to the town in which they spent their formative years and built their lifelong friendship. In Roots Revisited, they share their memories of the town that molded them and sent them on their way, and examine the effect of those hometown experiences on their adult lives out in the world. They go on to chronicle what has become of their hometown, and examine the effect the place has had on those who never left and on members of a younger generation deciding whether to leave or stay. Employing a variety of research methods and undertaking a broad interdisciplinary approach, the authors observe and trace key developments in their hometown over the past half century, examine how those developments pertain to the wider modern world, and illustrate how their journey reflects the experience of countless people who’ve left the towns and cities in which they grew up only to find, sometimes half a century later, that they’ve retained more of their hometown roots than they ever realized.