Lex Luger, wrestling megasensation and three-time world heavyweight champion, ruled the ring for years as “The Total Package.” Whether he was making a dramatic entrance from a helicopter, defeating champ Hulk Hogan, or sculpting a near-perfect physique, Lex was on top of his game. Yet backstage, he was wrestling with addictions to sex, drugs, and alcohol—things he clung to even when his mistress died suddenly of a drug overdose and Lex went to jail. There, Lex faced the truth: he was losing the fight for his life. And still awaiting him was his most brutal opponent yet, when the wrestling champ found himself helplessly paralyzed from the neck down. In Wrestling with the Devil, Lex Luger reveals never-before-told stories from his career, his struggle with personal demons, and how, through unexpected faith, grace, and redemption, he overcame all odds to fight the only battle that really matters.

A New York Times Editors’ Choice "A welcome addition to the vast literature produced by jailed writers across the centuries . . . [a] thrilling testament to the human spirit." —Ariel Dorfman, The New York Times Book Review "Wrestling with the Devil is a powerful testament to the courage of Ngũgĩ and his fellow prisoners and validation of the hope that an independent Kenya would eventually emerge." —Minneapolis Star Tribune "The Ngũgĩ of Wrestling with the Devil called not just for adding a bit of color to the canon’s sagging shelf, but for abolition and upheaval." —Bookforum An unforgettable chronicle of the year the brilliant novelist and memoirist, long favored for the Nobel Prize, was thrown in a Kenyan jail without charge Wrestling with the Devil, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's powerful prison memoir, begins literally half an hour before his release on December 12, 1978. In one extended flashback he recalls the night, a year earlier, when armed police pulled him from his home and jailed him in Kenya's Kamĩtĩ Maximum Security Prison, one of the largest in Africa. There, he lives in a prison block with eighteen other political prisoners, quarantined from the general prison population. In a conscious effort to fight back the humiliation and the intended degradation of the spirit, Ngũgĩ—the world-renowned author of Weep Not, Child; Petals of Blood; and Wizard of the Crow—decides to write a novel on toilet paper, the only paper to which he has access, a book that will become his classic, Devil on the Cross. Written in the early 1980s and never before published in America, Wrestling with the Devil is Ngũgĩ's account of the drama and the challenges of writing the novel under twenty-four-hour surveillance. He captures not only the excruciating pain that comes from being cut off from his wife and children, but also the spirit of defiance that defines hope. Ultimately, Wrestling with the Devil is a testimony to the power of imagination to help humans break free of confinement, which is truly the story of all art.

Plucked from his beloved Italian country-side, severed from his family, and placed on an ocean liner in the bay of Naples, Antonio Russo, just ten years old, embarks on the journey of his life. As he steps foot onto New York soil with not a word of English, his pockets stuffed with salami and provolone cheese and wearing a pair of shoes for the occasion, Antonio recalls the promise from his mother that in America he would find family members to take care of him and the trees blossoming with gold. This young Italian boy finds himself hit hard with a large dose of reality, obstacles at every turn. These obstacles would become the demons with which Antonio finds himself doing constant battle, but as fate would have it, he one day comes to realize that he is good at something. He finds by chance that he has a natural instinct and ability in the sport of wrestling. As his story unfolds, it would be the sport of wrestling that ignites a passion and guides him to the realization of his true potential, giving meaning to the struggle he and his family would endure in their journey from Southern Italy to the United States to create a better way of life.

Whether he was making a dramatic entrance from a helicopter, defeating champ Hulk Hogan, or sculpting a near-perfect physique, Lex Luger was on top of his game. Yet backstage, he was wrestling with addictions to sex, drugs, and alcohol-- things he clung to even when his mistress died suddenly of a drug overdose and Lex went to jail. There, Lex faced the truth: he was losing the fight for his life. And still awaiting him was his most brutal opponent yet, when the wrestling champ found himself helplessly paralyzed from the neck down. Luger reveals his struggle with personal demons, and how, through unexpected faith, grace, and redemption, he overcame all odds to fight the only battle that really matters.

This book shares pro-wrestler Ted Dibiase's passion for ministry, inspiring readers to serve God.

The life story of Sting (Steve Borden), a world wrestling superstar, his quest for superstardom, a world gone terribly wrong, and a life-changing answer when he thought all hope was lost--P. [126].