On My Radar (Monday Edition)

It's All Relative: Two Families, Three Dogs, 34 Holidays, and 50 Boxes of Wine (A memoir)
by Wade Rouse
Crown Publishing/Random House
Hardcover

“Laugh-out-loud hilarious. At first you laugh when you least expect to—and then,

somewhere along the way, you realize you’ve been laughing almost nonstop.”

—Detroit Free Press

Publisher Website


Author Website

Excerpt from It's All Relative

On My Radar (Friday Edition)

The Good Atheist
Dan Barker
Ulysses Press
Trade Paperback

Publisher Website

About the Author

Review of The Good Atheist

Podcast Interview with Dan Barker

On My Radar (Wednesday Edition)

Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports are Played and Games are Won
by Tobias J. Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim
Random House/Crown Archetype 


Publisher Website

Excerpt on sportsillustraed.cnn.com from Scorecasting

Book Website

Review of Scorecasting

Jon Wertheim on Twitter

On My Radar (Monday Edition)

J.D. Salinger: A Life
Kenneth Salinger
Random House
Hardcover


Publisher Website


Author Website


Salinger: A Life on Bookbrowse.com


Seattle Times Review of Salinger: A Life


TampaBay.com Review of Salinger: A Life

On My Radar (Random House Edition)

Escape From the Land of Snows: The Young Dalai Lama's Harrowing Flight to Freedom and the Making of a Spiritual Hero by Stephan Talty (Crown Publishing)

Publisher Website


Escape From the Land of Snows on Scribd



Escape From the Land of Snows on Facebook


Review of Escape From the Land of Snows

- - - - - - - - - -

Chinaberry Sidewalks by Rodney Crowell (Knopf)

Publisher Website

New York Times Excerpt from Chinaberry Sidewalks


Los Angeles Times Review of Chinaberry Sidewalks

Houston Chronicle Review of Chinabery Sidewalks






- - - - - - - - - -

Cocaine's Son by Dave Itzkoff (Villard)

Publisher Website

New York Times Review of Cocaine's Son

Dave Itzkoff Reads from Cocaine's Son 


Washington Post Review of Cocaine's Son


Cocaine's Son on Scribd

- - - - - - - - - -

Punching Out by Paul Clemens (Doubleday)

Publisher Website


Business Week Excerpt from Punching Out

Punching Out on Scribd

Public Radio talk with Paul Clemens 

On My Radar (St. Martins Edition)

St. Martins

Death and the Virgin Queen: Elizabeth I and the Dark Scandal that Rocked the Throne by Chris Skidmore

Book Website

Author Page

Author Official Website

Review of Death and the Virgin Queen

Review of Death and the Virgin Queen

- - - - - - - - - -

Vice: One Cop's Story of Patrolling America's Most Dangerous City by Sgt. John R. Baker and Stephen J. Rivele

Publisher Website

Kirkus Review on Vice by Sgt. John R. Baker 

- - - - - - - - - -

Suck it, Wonder Woman! by Olivia Munn and Mac Montandon
(trade paperback)

Publisher Website


Olivia Munn


Review of Suck it, Wonder Woman


Another Review of Suck it, Wonder Woman

- - - - - - - - - -

BMF: The Rise and Fall of Big Meech and the Black Mafia Family by Mara Shalhoup
(trade paperback)


Publisher Website


Book Website



Mara Shalhoup on Twitter



Review of BMF

On My Radar (Harper Collins Edition)

Here are some of the non-fiction books coming out this week from Harper Collins:

Late for Tea at the Deer Palace: The Lost Dreams of my Iraqi Family by Tamara Chalabi

Book Website

Review of Late for Tea at the Deer Palace



- - - - - - - - - -

Where Does the Money Go: Your Guided Tour to the Federal Budget Crisis by Scott Bittle and Jean Johnson (trade paperback)


Book Website



- - - - - - - - - -

Inventing George Washington: America's Founder, in Myth and Memory by Edward G. Lengel



Book Website



Review of George Washington by Edward G. Lengel




- - - - - - - - - -

Surviving a Shark Attack (On Land): Overcoming Betrayal and Dealing with Revenge by Dr. Laura Schlessinger

Book Website


Author Website

On My Radar (Penguin Edition)

  Penguin has a few books this week that look interesting:

First up is a book that you maybe surprised to find that I have an interest in reviewing: My Father at 100 by Ron Reagan.   Ronald Reagan is the president that made me a liberal Democrat.  While his demeanor may have been grandfatherly, his policies were as mean as Fitzgerald's Tom Buchanan.  There is no limit to the amount to the disgust I have for Ronald Reagan's politics.

However, this book is right in my strike zone because of the father-son connection.  Reagan's namesake, his son Ron, has written this as a 100th birthday gift to his dad.  Ron, who was usually at odds with his father on politics (sounds familiar), apparently doesn't shy from the negative as he tries to deliver a well-rounded story for the reader.

This book is getting a lot of press due to the author's assertion that his father had begun to show signs of Alzheimer's Disease when he was in office.  This assertion is not hard to believe for those of us who saw his performance that last couple of years.

Publisher Website 


Also out this week is Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal.  Ms. McGonigal believes that games can "solve real-world problems and boost global happiness."

The theme of her book seems to be that gamers are problem solvers who work together to solve virtual problems and that these skills can be used in the real world also.  The author also helped develop a genre of games which social problems can be solved by playing them.

From the author's website:

McGonigal persuasively argues that those who continue to dismiss games will be at a major disadvantage in the coming years. Gamers, on the other hand, will be able to leverage the collaborative and motivational power of games in their own lives, communities, and businesses. Written for gamers and nongamers alike, Reality Is Brokenshows us that the future will belong to those who can understand, design, and play games.

And finally, new in paperback this week is Winter of Our Disconnect: How Three Totally Wired Teenagers (And a Mother Who Slept with her iPhone) Pulled the Plug on Their Technology and Lived to Tell the Tale by Susan Maushart.

Some would argue the subtitle above constitutes child abuse, but I can see it as a great plot device for what is, according to the author, a tribute to Thoreau's Walden.  Any book which uses Henry David's masterpiece as its inspiration gets a look from me.  And since I love. love, love tongue-in-cheek memoirs, I'm betting this one will be one I'd like.

Book Website

On My Radar (Thursday Edition) New in Paperback

  There are a couple new non-fiction paperbacks on my radar this week.  These are books I didn't get in hardcover and still would like to read.

First up is The Other Wes Moore by...Wes Moore.  Published in paperback by Spiegel & Grau, if the plot to this book doesn't grab you, I don't know what will.

From the book website:

Two kids with the same name living in the same decaying city. One grew up to be a Rhodes Scholar, decorated combat veteran, White House Fellow, and business leader.  The other is serving a life sentence in prison for felony murder. Here is the story of two boys and the journey of a generation.

The second new paperback is The Promise by Jonathan Alter.  I originally talked about this book here.  Alter's book chronicles our President's first year in office.  The book reviews are probably split on party lines, but any serious political junkie should read it.  The Los Angeles Times has described Obama as "fascinating but strangely elusive," so perhaps it is books like this one which help us fill in the blanks on the current President.

I stand behind no one for my faith in Barack Obama.  He hasn't been perfect, but he stirs much fury and passionate hate from the right-wing, and for that reason alone I support him.  The book, published in paperback by Simon & Schuster should be read by anyone wanting a deeper understanding of the man and the office he holds.

On My Radar (Wednesday Edition)

Our Man in Tehran: Ken Taylor and the Iran Hostage Crisis
by Robert Wright

True-life spy stuff just enthralls me.  I'm not much for spy fiction, but when I know it really happened, I can't get enough.  Out this week from Harper Collins (Canada), is Our Man in Tehran: Ken Taylor and the Iran Hostage Crisis, written by Robert Wright.

The Ken Taylor in the title was the Canadian Ambassador to Iran. He secretly hid six American embassy staff members and successfully masterminded their exit from Iran.   It is revealed that Mr. Taylor actually was a spy for America, recruited by President Jimmy Carter.

It's just this kind of real-life thriller that keeps me on the edge of my seat and puts things in historical context.  I look forward to reading this book.

From the publisher website:

The world watched with fear in November 1979, when Iranian students infiltrated and occupied the American embassy in Tehran. As the city exploded in a fury of revolution, few knew about the six American embassy staff who escaped into hiding. For three months, Ken Taylor, the Canadian ambassador to Iran—along with his wife and embassy staffers—concealed the Americans in their homes, terrified that Ayatollah Khomeini would find out and exact deadly consequences.
      January 28, 2010, marks the 30th anniversary of an event that stunned the world, when Ken Taylor masterminded the exfiltration of the six diplomats from Tehran. Americans were held in thrall as Ted Koppel updated the nation on the fate of its hostages and the Canadians orchestrated an intrepid escape. Americans celebrated in the streets across the nation, raising banners that read “Thank you, Canada!”
      In Our Man in Tehran, Robert Wright, author of the award-winning national bestseller Three Nights in Havana, tells the story behind a major historical flashpoint, a story of cloak-and-dagger intrigue, the stuff of John le Carré and Frederick Forsyth made real.

Author website

On My Radar (Tuesday Edition)

There are a few books coming out this week that look interesting to me. First up is a book that is getting a lot of publicity, The Memory Palace by Mira Bartok.

The more you learn about Ms. Bartok, the more you wish you knew her. The plot of the book reads like fiction but is very, very real. Read the synopsis on the publisher website. I'll wait....

If that didn't entice you to want to know more, I don't know what would. As the old adage says, truth is stranger than fiction, and this book sounds like an amazing read.

Mira Bartok herself sounds like an intriguing person. She is the author of 28 children's books and also runs a blog, Mira's List, which helps artists find funding and residencies all over the world.

Mira Bartok on Twitter

Monday Review - Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love by Andrew Shaffer

Thank goodness I liked this book. Andrew Shaffer (pictured at left) is a twitter friend of mine, and there was a little bit of "Oh, crap! What if this book isn't very good?" panic before I read it.

Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love by the aforementioned Andrew Shaffer, is chock full of interesting gossip about some of the world's deepest thinkers. Henry David Thoreau, Aristotle and Bertrand Russell are but a few of the philosophers who get their embarrassingly dirty laundry aired in this diligently researched gem of a book.

If you like your humor tinged with intelligent, yet cheeky asides, then grab this book and read it somewhere laughing out loud won't get you hateful stares.

We learn such controversial facts like: Jean-Paul Sartre adopted his mistress as his daughter and Diogenes the Cynic liked to perform unspeakable acts in public. It is revealed that Henry Ward Beecher was way ahead of his time with his adulterous behavior as a minister of God. And, as I tweeted soon after starting the book, the opening chapter on Peter Abelard is worthy of a Hollywood screenplay.

Still, these men and women are revered for their brain power, if not their prowess at love. Love is a slippery thing for most of us. In a way, it is comforting to discover that the intricacies of love frustrated even these deep thinkers. To sum up the subject best, I turn to Friedrich Nietzsche, who protested, "Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent."

(Andrew wrote a guest post on this blog about why there aren't more women philosophers included in his book. His post appears here.)

Book Website

Author Website

Publisher Website

@andrewtshaffer

Guest Blogger Andrew Shaffer Talks About Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love

"A Note on Dead White Guys"

by Andrew Shaffer

Western philosophy has been dominated by Caucasian men for over two millennia. "Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love," unfortunately, follows in the footsteps of this grand tradition of bigotry and misogyny (only two of the 37 philosophers featured in the book are women, and all are Caucasian).

This wasn't my initial aim. It was, however, prompted somewhat out of necessity: English-language historians have not devoted significant space in their books to female and non-white philosophers. Where such records do exist, there's a dearth of biographical detail, making inquiries into their love lives exceptionally difficult.

Take, for instance, Hipparchia the Cynic. She was born in Athens in the fourth century, although no one thought to record the date of her death. Like several other female philosophers (Simone de Beauvoir and Hannah Arendt come to mind), she is romantically linked to a famous male philosopher -- in her case, Crates. For centuries, writers have told and re-told the story of Hipparchia and her husband having sex in public. While it's an amusing anecdote to illustrate the Cynic (aka "dog-like") lifestyle in ancient Greece, no firsthand accounts remain to verify such tall tales.

While there is an entire world of philosophy outside the hallowed halls of white males, perhaps it's for the best that their "failures at love" haven't been recorded. Who would want to share space with Louis Althusser (strangled his wife to death), Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (compared women to plants), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (flashed women in alleyways)?

- - - - - - -

Andrew Shaffer is a frequent Huffington Post contributor and creative director of Order of St. Nick, the greeting card company whose irreverent cards have been featured on the Colbert Report, NPR, and Fox News.

Andrew Shaffer's book Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love was released this week in trade paperback by Harper Perennial.

http://www.greatphilosophersbook.com

http://www.twitter.com/gr8philosophers

http://www.twitter.com/andrewtshaffer

Andrew also tweets under several hilarious alter-egos: @EvilWylie and @EmperorFranzen

Guest Review - Al Jaffe's Mad Life by Mary-Lou Weisman

Al Jaffe's Mad Life - A Biography by Mary-Lou Weisman, with illustrations by Al Jaffe (It Books/Harper Collins) published in hardcover, September 2010

Reviewed by Brent Sanders

Jaffe, who defined the Mad Magazine aesthetic as much as any artist or writer this side of Don Martin (I mean he did invent the trademark "fold-in," after all) has allowed his friend Mary-Lou Weisman to write his biography. And, it is an eye-opener, revealing, and, at times, downright heart-breaking.

First of all, there is relatively little furshlugginer humor here, few rib-tickling stories about what it is like to work for Mad. Nor is there a trove of anecdotes or revealing information about the men Jaffe worked (and played) with, ground-breaking cartoonists like his high school buddies Will Elder and Harvey Kurtzman. But that shouldn't scare one off, as the book tells a sad but wonderful and ultimately inspiring story.

The bulk of the book is focused on Jaffe's rather troubled childhood and adolescence, in which his mother rounded up he and his brothers, twice, and left America to go back to her native Lithuania, in the face of rising anti-Semitic sentiment (Jaffe is Jewish). It is almost harrowing to read, the four brothers being forced to adapt to what could easily be considered abusive parental behavior. But the way they keep finding fun and joy in the face of such adversity, and their ability to escape to the funny pages that ultimately gave Jaffe his life path, makes for a read more uplifting than one might think.

Also, there are only a couple photographs in the book, but dozens of illustrations by Jaffe, all of which depict his experiences. They add to the gentle hopefulness the story encourages. This is not the book I thought it would be, but I came away from it feeling grateful to have read it.

- - - - - - - - -
Brent Sanders previously reviewed Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original here.

Tuesday Review: My Reading Life by Pat Conroy

I am a stubborn and shallow reader who spurns most fiction. As such, I have never read Pat Conroy before. He recently released a non-fiction book, My Reading Life, and I am now a big fan. Much like Stephen King's On Writing, Conroy's book is probably as close to an autobiography as we will get. Also, like King's book, it has made me a fan and also means that I will put Conroy on the short list of fiction authors to try when I'm in the mood.

This books touches on many of the special times in his life where the written word has impacted him greatly. From the deep connection nurtured with his mother because of the shared love of discovering new authors to the most detailed analysis of Gone With the Wind, it's all here.

There is a chapter on the teacher who most influenced him. If we are lucky, we all have one of those. If this part of the book doesn't make you admire Gene Morris, the teacher, then you have no heart. Without Norris, there may not have been a Conroy.

On the trip through the book (and his life) Conroy discusses Charles Dickens and reveals a secret possibly previously unknown about his particular connection to A Christmas Carol. Also, there is a librarian who made a real impression on Conroy for unusual and sadly yet funny reasons.

There is a (now gone) Atlanta bookstore which figures prominently in Conroy's life as a writer. The description of visiting the site of the bookstore years after its closing is familiar to many of us.

I could go on and on, but I want to leave some for the reader to discover. Suffice to say this book is a wonderful companion on the journey we call reading. It's always nice to get to know an author and learn how they arrived at this point in their lives.

The Reading Life is a love story to reading and a marriage that will last.

- - - - -
My Reading Life is published by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday and is available in hardcover.

http://www.nanatalese.com

Guest Review - Thelonious Monk by Robin D.G. Kelley

Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original
by Robin D. G. Kelley (Simon & Schuster/Free Press)

Thelonious Monk, one of the twentieth century's most original musical artists, finally gets his biographical due.

Robin Kelley, in giving us such a finely-honed portrait, has also set a new standard in jazz biographies, cutting through the cheap mythology to give us a fully-fleshed bio that is far more interesting than the caricatured legend that stood in its place for years.

Monk did suffer from mental illness, and was subject to quirks and idiosyncrasies because of that. It did inform his music as well, but what Kelley has done is show us Monk the man and how his life and his music were intertwined. It is revealed that Monk was not merely some savant who effortlessly produced such amazing music, but a true artist and craftsman who worked to produce such an amazing body of work. As such, it also functions as a musical primer and guide to Monk's music.

And, in spite of the academic rigor, Kelley has produced not just such a steady and readable work, but one that is wonderfully evocative, far more so than such a footnote-laden book might tend to be. You can feel the atmosphere of the clubs, the homes and meeting places, even the social claustrophobia of America in the Jim Crow era.

Highly recommended.

Suggested background music for reading: Monk's 1957 masterpiece Brilliant Corners.

- - - - - - - - - - -

Today's guest review is by Brent Sanders, a friend for many years. In addition to being the best bass player in his town (and the shortest), he is a man of many passions. He loves sports, politics and sarcasm. It's no wonder we get along so well. Now if I could just shake him from his bad habit of choosing his favorite sports teams because of their proximity.