On My Radar (Friday Edition)

LOST IN SHANGRI-LA: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II
by Mitchell Zuckoff
Harper Books/Harper Collins
Hardcover

My review:

Mitchell Zuckoff has delivered a gripping and well-paced tale of survival. One minute they are admiring the scenery of a beautiful valley from their military plane and the next three survivors are forced to navigate the tangled underbrush where unknown dangers await.  This is a story of an unknown corner of history, and would make a great gift for anyone interested in World War II or narrative non-fiction in general.

From the publisher website:

On May 13, 1945, twenty-four American servicemen and WACs boarded a transport plane for a sightseeing trip over “Shangri-La,” a beautiful and mysterious valley deep within the jungle-covered mountains of Dutch New Guinea. Unlike the peaceful Tibetan monks of James Hilton’s bestselling novel Lost Horizon, this Shangri-La was home to spear-carrying tribesmen, warriors rumored to be cannibals.
But the pleasure tour became an unforgettable battle for survival when the plane crashed. Miraculously, three passengers pulled through. Margaret Hastings, barefoot and burned, had no choice but to wear her dead best friend’s shoes. John McCollom, grieving the death of his twin brother also aboard the plane, masked his grief with stoicism. Kenneth Decker, too, was severely burned and suffered a gaping head wound.
Emotionally devastated, badly injured, and vulnerable to the hidden dangers of the jungle, the trio faced certain death unless they left the crash site. Caught between man-eating headhunters and enemy Japanese, the wounded passengers endured a harrowing hike down the mountainside—a journey into the unknown that would lead them straight into a primitive tribe of superstitious natives who had never before seen a white man—or woman.
Drawn from interviews, declassified U.S. Army documents, personal photos and mementos, a survivor’s diary, a rescuer’s journal, and original film footage, Lost in Shangri-La recounts this incredible true-life adventure for the first time. Mitchell Zuckoff reveals how the determined trio—dehydrated, sick, and in pain—traversed the dense jungle to find help; how a brave band of paratroopers risked their own lives to save the survivors; and how a cowboy colonel attempted a previously untested rescue mission to get them out.
By trekking into the New Guinea jungle, visiting remote villages, and rediscovering the crash site, Zuckoff also captures the contemporary natives’ remembrances of the long-ago day when strange creatures fell from the sky. A riveting work of narrative nonfiction that vividly brings to life an odyssey at times terrifying, enlightening, and comic, Lost in Shangri-La is a thrill ride from beginning to end.

Author website

All Things Considered on NPR coverage

Review from bookingmama.net

On My Radar (Thursday Edition)

The Internet is a Playground: Irreverent Correspondences of an Evil Online Genius
by David Thorne
Tarcher/Penguin
Trade paperback

My review:

"Warning. Do not begin this book if you have anything important scheduled in the next several hours. Also, do not begin reading this book in a public place where you may be the victim of scorn for laughing so hard you snort. Please do not read this book at bedtime, as loss of sleep will result.  Further, please do not read this book if you have no sense of humor as this could cause uncomfortable body tremors and, for you, unusual happiness."

 From the publisher website:

From the notorious Internet troublemaker who brought the world the explosively popular "Next Time I'll Spend the Money on Drugs Instead", in which he attempted to pay his chiropractor with a picture he drew of a spider; "Please Design a Logo for Me. With Pie Charts. For Free," which has been described as one of the most passed-on viral e-mails of all time; and, most recently, the staggeringly popular "Missing Missy", which has appeared everywhere from The Guardian to Jezebel to Andrew Sullivan's The Daily Dish, comes this profoundly funny collection of irreverent Internet mischief and comedy.

Featuring all of Thorne's viral success, including "Missing Missy", The Internet Is a Playground culls together every article and e- mail from Thorne's wildly popular website 27bslash6.com, as well as enough new material, available only in these pages, to keep you laughing-and, indeed, crying-until Thorne's next stroke-of-genius prank. Or hilarious hoax. Or well-publicized almost-stint in jail (really).

Author website




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Out in paperback this week is Nathaniel Philbrick's THE LAST STAND.  I previewed this book when it was released in hardcover.

From the publisher website:

Little Bighorn and Custer are names synonymous in the American imagination with unmatched bravery and spectacular defeat. Mythologized as Custer's Last Stand, the June 1876 battle has been equated with other famous last stands, from the Spartans' defeat at Thermopylae to Davy Crockett at the Alamo.
In his tightly structured narrative, Nathaniel Philbrick brilliantly sketches the two larger-than-life antagonists: Sitting Bull, whose charisma and political savvy earned him the position of leader of the Plains Indians, and George Armstrong Custer, one of the Union's greatest cavalry officers and a man with a reputation for fearless and often reckless courage. Philbrick reminds readers that the Battle of the Little Bighorn was also, even in victory, the last stand for the Sioux and Cheyenne Indian nations. Increasingly outraged by the government's Indian policies, the Plains tribes allied themselves and held their ground in southern Montana. Within a few years of Little Bighorn, however, all the major tribal leaders would be confined to Indian reservations.
Throughout, Philbrick beautifully evokes the history and geography of the Great Plains with his characteristic grace and sense of drama. The Last Stand is a mesmerizing account of the archetypal story of the American West, one that continues to haunt our collective imagination.

Author website

New York Times review of The Last Stand

On My Radar (Wednesday Edition)

Spinning the Law: Trying Cases in the Court of Public Opinion
by Kendall Coffey
Prometheus Books
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

High-profile courtroom dramas fascinate our nation, especially when they concern the rich and famous. And while the American public has come to realize that the spin factor is a prime ingredient in political tactics and marketing campaigns, many are unaware of the strategies for shaping public opinion when it comes to major courtroom battles.

This behind-the-scenes analysis of media strategies presents an intriguing, often entertaining curriculum that they do not teach in law school or journalism classes. As the lead counsel in some of the country’s most notable cases and a savvy legal commentator with hundreds of television appearances, author Kendall Coffey brings a distinctive combination of depth as a legal practitioner and experience as a media analyst to this insightful, provocative, and practical book.

He begins with an historic election fraud trial, relying on his personal experience with the basics of law spin. He then guides the reader through an abbreviated, engrossing tour of spinning cases through the ages—including Socrates and Joan of Arc, as well as the Charles Lindbergh kidnapping case. Modern cases include the O. J. Simpson trial, the author’s own experiences in the international Elian Gonzalez controversy—and his thoughts on the possible overwhelming effect that that controversy had on Florida in the 2000 presidential election between Gore and Bush.

Coffey also examines the most famous cases of recent times—those of Michael Jackson, Kobe Bryant, Martha Stewart, Scott Peterson, Gordon “Scooter” Libby, and the shenanigans of impeached former Governor Rod Blagojevich.

Along the way, the author exposes many of the myths associated with the law, debunking assumptions about legal concepts ranging from circumstantial evidence and cooperating witnesses to so-called prosecutors’ vendettas.

Coffey’s many entertaining examples and explanations make this book ideal reading for everyone fascinated by celebrity legal problems but must reading for lawyers, public relations professionals, journalists, and media students.

Book website

Q & A with Kendall Coffey

Review of Spinning the Law

On My Radar (Tuesday Edition)

This is a Book
by Demetri Martin
Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

From the renowned comedian, creator, star and executive producer/multiple title-holder of Comedy Central's Important Things with Demetri Martin comes a bold, original, and rectangular kind of humor book.

Demetri's first literary foray features longer-form essays and conceptual pieces (such as Protagonists' Hospital, a melodrama about the clinic doctors who treat only the flesh wounds and minor head scratches of Hollywood action heroes), as well as his trademark charts, doodles, drawings, one-liners, and lists (i.e., the world views of optimists, pessimists and contortionists), Martin's material is varied, but his unique voice and brilliant mind will keep readers in stitches from beginning to end.

Author website 

Q & A with Demetri Martin


Excerpt on esquire.com

On My Radar (Monday Edition)

Rubber Balls and Liquor
by Gilbert Gottfried
St. Martins/Macmillan
Hardcover

From the publisher website:  (Warning: adult language --  if you are offended by words most of us use, don't complain to me.)

Nobody ever reads this part of the book. Somebody at the publishing house explained to me that it’s actually called the book flap. That sounded dirty, so I giggled for three hours. But it says in my contract that I have to write something over here in this tiny space, even though I don’t think anyone will notice. Some people might open up to the middle of the book and start flipping through pages, but nobody will read this part. In fact, I’ll bet anything that you’re not reading this part now. And if it turns out that you are . . . well, the guy in the bookstore is probably staring at you, saying, “Stop reading that book!” I guess there’s a reason bookstores are going out of business, left and right. Cheap fucks like you think it’s okay to stand in the aisles and read to your heart’s content. So for the sake of bookstores everywhere, buy this fucking book. I myself don’t care. I only care about the poor working man. Oh, and the sanctity of the written word. I care about that, too. And in my case, those written words, of course, include fuck, dick, and pussy.

 Author website

Gilbert Gottfried's twitter feed

(Me again.  The following clip has adult language.  Don't watch it and then complain to me.  You know how I get.)




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Stories I Only Tell My Friends
by Rob Lowe
Henry Holt/Macmillan
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

A wryly funny and surprisingly moving account of an extraordinary life lived almost entirely in the public eye.
A teen idol at fifteen, an international icon and founder of the Brat Pack at twenty, and one of Hollywood's top stars to this day, Rob Lowe chronicles his experiences as a painfully misunderstood child actor in Ohio uprooted to the wild counterculture of mid-seventies Malibu, where he embarked on his unrelenting pursuit of a career in Hollywood.
The Outsiders placed Lowe at the birth of the modern youth movement in the entertainment industry. During his time on The West Wing, he witnessed the surreal nexus of show business and politics both on the set and in the actual White House. And in between are deft and humorous stories of the wild excesses that marked the eighties, leading to his quest for family and sobriety.
Never mean-spirited or salacious, Lowe delivers unexpected glimpses into his successes, disappointments, relationships, and one-of-a-kind encounters with people who shaped our world over the last twenty-five years. These stories are as entertaining as they are unforgettable.

 Review on suite101.com

Review on time.com

Rob Lowe reads from Stories I Only Tell My Friends

Saturday Special: Harlan Ellison Edition

Yes, I do realize that I am breaking convention and posting fiction books two days in a row, but today's book is very special.  For those who don't know me, or haven't heard me mention it before, Harlan Ellison is a hero of mine.  I love the man and his work.  If you don't know about him, please do yourself a favor and do the homework.  He is Mark Twain and Jiminy Cricket combined.  He is a national treasure. 

Phoenix Without Ashes
by Harlan Ellison
IDW Publishing
Graphic novel - hardcover - Illustrated by Alan Robinson

From the publisher website:

Harlan Ellison, one of the Grand Masters of science fiction and a multiple Hugo-, Nebula-, and Edgar Award-winner, returns to his roots with the graphic novel, Phoenix Without Ashes. The year is 2785, and Devon, a farmer banished for challenging his community’s Elders, discovers a secret that changes everything he knew about the world, leading him on an adventure beyond his understanding and a quest to solve a mystery beyond his understanding before his entire world is destroyed in cataclysm.

 Harlan Ellison homepage


Harlan Ellison wikipedia page

Harlan Ellison wikiquotes

If you are a writer, you need to watch this video (link to youtube, embedding not available):

http://youtu.be/mj5IV23g-fE 

Fiction Alert - Nashville Author Bestselling Book Now in Paperback

Nashville author Adam Ross took the publishing world by storm soon after his book MR. PEANUT hit store shelves in June of 2010.  The book is now available in trade paperback and, despite our non-fiction focus here at BookSpin, hometown honor demands I give the book and author their due.

MR. PEANUT
by Adam Ross
Vintage/Random House
Trade Paperback

From the publisher website:

David Pepin has been in love with his wife, Alice, since the moment they met in a university seminar on Alfred Hitchcock. After thirteen years of marriage, he still can’t imagine a remotely happy life without her—yet he obsessively contemplates her demise. Soon she is dead, and David is both deeply distraught and the prime suspect.

The detectives investigating Alice’s suspicious death have plenty of personal experience with conjugal enigmas: Ward Hastroll is happily married until his wife inexplicably becomes voluntarily and militantly bedridden; and Sam Sheppard is especially sensitive to the intricacies of marital guilt and innocence, having decades before been convicted and then exonerated of the brutal murder of his wife.

Still, these men are in the business of figuring things out, even as Pepin’s role in Alice’s death grows ever more confounding when they link him to a highly unusual hit man called Mobius. Like the Escher drawings that inspire the computer games David designs for a living, these complex, interlocking dramas are structurally and emotionally intense, subtle, and intriguing; they brilliantly explore the warring impulses of affection and hatred, and pose a host of arresting questions. Is it possible to know anyone fully, completely? Are murder and marriage two sides of the same coin, each endlessly recycling into the other? And what, in the end, is the truth about love?

Mesmerizing, exhilarating, and profoundly moving, Mr. Peanut is a police procedural of the soul, a poignant investigation of the relentlessly mysterious human heart—and a first novel of the highest order.

 New York Times review


Author website


Interview with Adam Ross


Excerpt from Mr. Peanut on npr.org



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Adam Ross' new book LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, a collection of short stories, will be released on June 28, 2011.  We will interrupt normal programming to talk about that book during the week of release.

Thursday Review: ICE by Ice-T and Douglas Century

Ice-T, born Tracy Marrow, is perhaps best known today as Detective Odafin "Fin" Tutuola on NBC's Law & Order: SVU.  I, like many others, discovered him through his gangsta rap career.  I have always admired Ice because of what I perceived as a low-key relaxed manner and his hard work toward peace between warring gang sects.

Reading ICE: A Memoir of Gangster Life and Redemption -- From South Central to Hollywood (One World Books / Random House) serves to only strengthen my respect for this icon. 

Born in New Jersey, it is worthy to note than both of his parents died when he was young and he was shuttled from one nearby aunt then another in Los Angeles.  Never full of self-pity, the young Tracy never shed a tear over the loss of either parent.  "Even as a twelve-year-old kid, I knew I was going to have to make it on my own, and my survival instincts were kicking in," he admits.

He writes in detail how he was in school in South Central L.A. when the gangs really started to become more than a neighborhood problem.  He never formally joined any particular gang but does reveal he was "loosely aligned" with the Crips because of the school he attended.

It is sadly noted that many of his friends growing up are now dead or serving time.  However, unlike most of his friends, he never drank, smoked or did drugs. 

During his first semester at a trade college, his girlfriend became pregnant. Searching for a way to survive, Ice-T joined the army.  He was promised he could become an Army Ranger and get assigned to Hawaii, but only the Ranger part was true.  Later, coerced to steal by a dishonest officer, Ice was arrested and held to await trial.  Street-smart, he escaped from the cell and made his way to the airport and flew home to L.A. The officer, after a tongue lashing from Ice, manipulated the system to allow him to fly back to hawaii and face only a military reprimand.  It is important to note that this is evidence that Ice-T was always a hustler.  He points out the difference between a gangbanger and a hustler:  "...Gangbangers are about territory, power, and instilling fear in their enemies. Hustlers are about making money, twenty-four-hour scheming, always trying to get paid..."

After leaving the military, with a small family to support, Ice became adept at "pulling licks," a particular form of robbing jewelry stores.  Luckily for him (and for us) rap music was just starting to hit it big.  It wasn't long before he discovered he could make more money spinning records as a DJ than he could with the risky burglaries.

In a stroke of good luck and timing, he then was hired as the house DJ and emcee at the hot local club, which enabled him to meet and observe many new up and coming artists.  He had always been good at freestyling, even when he was younger, and he began writing rap songs based on the world  he saw around him.  His lyrics were harder, more realistic and violent than others.  It is for this reason that he is considered by many to be the first gangsta rapper.

Years after making his name in hip-hop, Ice found himself embroiled in the famous controversy over a song on a CD by his metal group Body Count.  The song, "Cop Killer," caused a huge uproar, inciting boycotts and non-stop media coverage.  Ice discusses this time in great detail and puts the facts in their place.

Obviously, his music career made him famous and wealthy but many people today only knew him as an actor.  This book is his story, in his words, of his journey from street kid to world-wise hustler.  He admits he's still a hustler today and hints that we are all hustlers in a sense.

As a long-time fan of Ice-T, I have enjoyed the public figure for a long time. Thanks to this book I now know how he became the man he is today.  I suggest this book for anyone who wants a primer on gang culture and rap history.  Also, Ice provides a list of 50 maxims to live by at the end of the book.  You could do a lot worse than listen to the advice of a street-smart hustler and survivor. 

Word.

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Publisher website

Co-author twitter feed

On My Radar (Wednesday Edition)

Epic: John McEnroe, Bjorn Borg, and the Greatest Tennis Season Ever
by Matthew Cronin
John Wiley & Sons
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

The epic 1980 Wimbledon final that ended with John McEnroe's defeat by his idol, Bjorn Borg, is considered one of the greatest tennis matches ever. The U.S. Open final later that year, when McEnroe got his revenge, is considered one of the greatest U.S. Opens ever. These two matches marked McEnroe's transformation from tennis player into an American icon, the high point of tennis's gigantic leap into the national consciousness, and the beginning of Borg's rapid and surprising decline. EPIC: John McEnroe, Björn Borg, and the Greatest Tennis Season Ever (Wiley; May 2011; $25.95; Cloth; 978-0-470-19062-3) takes you back to that amazing summer at the height of the golden age of tennis.

• Includes fascinating details about John McEnroe and Bjorn Borg both on and off the court, from grueling practice sessions to late-night partying
• Packed with stories and anecdotes of top tennis players and coaches, including Vitas Gerulaitis, Mary Carillo, Lennart Bergelin, and others
• Highlights a pivotal moment in the evolution of the game from quiet to loud, from wood to metal racquets, and from European to American dominance
• Written by veteran tennis writer and analyst Matthew Cronin

Whether you're a longtime tennis fan or a recent convert, EPIC will give you a deeper understanding of the game and of two of the most amazing players ever to have played it.

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Matthew Cronin (Moraga, California) is the main tennis columnist for Fox Sports, a senior writer for Inside Tennis magazine, and the chief writer for TennisReporters.net. He contributes regularly to Reuters and USTA.com and appears frequently as a tennis analyst on radio and televisions stations throughout the United States and abroad.

 tennisreporters.net 

1980 Wimbledon Final 4th Set Tiebreak (Part 1) youtube -- no audio


1980 Wimbledon Final 4th Set Tiebreak (Part 2) youtube -- no audio

On My Radar (Tuesday Edition)

If You Knew Suzy: A Mother, A Daughter, A Reporter's Notebook
by Katherine Rosman
Harper Perennial / Harper Collins
Trade Paperback

From the publisher website:

Faced with the loss of her mother, Suzy, to cancer at sixty, Wall Street Journal reporter Katherine Rosman longs to find answers to the questions that we all wrestle with after losing someone we love. So she does what she does best: she opens her notebook and starts investigating.
Thumbing through her late mother's address book, Rosman embarks on a cross-country odyssey, tracking down total strangers from whom she hopes to learn about a woman she once thought she couldn't know better. With a reporter's eye for detail and nuance, Rosman creates a vivid, unflinching, and unforgettable portrait of a privately remarkable mother and woman. In the process, Rosman tells a universal tale of loss and love, capturing the angst families confront when wading through the world of doctors and hospitals, the poignancy and pain that come as a life ends, and the humor that helps transform sadness into a new and powerful brand of happiness.

 Author website

Los Angeles Times review

Smith Magazine interview with the author




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The Anti-Romantic Child: A Story of Unexpected Joy
by Priscilla Gilman
Harper Books / Harper Collins
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

Priscilla Gilman had the greatest expectations for the birth of her first child. Growing up in New York City amongst writers, artists, and actors, Gilman experienced childhood as a whirlwind of imagination, creativity, and spontaneity. As a Wordsworth scholar, she celebrated and embraced the poet's romantic view of children—and eagerly anticipated her son's birth, certain that he, too, would come “trailing clouds of glory.” But her romantic vision would not be fulfilled in the ways she dreamed. Though Benjamin was an extraordinary child, the signs of his precocity—dazzling displays of memory and intelligence—were also manifestations of a developmental disorder that would require intensive therapies and special schooling, and would dramatically alter the course Priscilla had imagined for her family.
In The Anti-Romantic Child, a memoir full of lyricism and light, Gilman explores the complexity of our hopes for our children, our families, and ourselves, and the way in which experience can alter and lead us to reimagine those hopes and expectations. Using Wordsworth's poetry as a touchstone, she speaks intimately of her poignant journey through crisis and disenchantment to a place of peace and resilience. Through her courageous account, we discover how events and situations often perceived as setbacks can actually inspire and enrich us. Developing a supple and open mind is important, this book reminds us, not only with respect to our children but also with respect to our relationship with any person whose otherness is at first disorienting. As she goes beyond her family's trials and ultimate triumphs, Gilman illuminates the flourishing of life that occurs when we embrace the unexpected. The Anti-Romantic Child is an incredible synthesis of memoir and literature, one that resonates long after you finish the last page.

Yahoo News excerpt


Author's twitter feed

On My Radar (Monday Edition)

Reading My Father: A Memoir
by Alexandra Styron
Scribner/Simon & Schuster
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

PART MEMOIR AND PART ELEGY, READING MY FATHER IS THE STORY OF A DAUGHTER COMING TO KNOW HER FATHER AT LAST— A GIANT AMONG TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN NOVELISTS AND A MAN WHOSE DEVASTATING DEPRESSION DARKENED THE FAMILY LANDSCAPE.

In Reading My Father, William Styron's youngest child explores the life of a fascinating and difficult man whose own memoir, Darkness Visible, so searingly chronicled his battle with major depression. Alexandra Styron's parents—the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Sophie's Choice and his political activist wife, Rose—were, for half a century, leading players on the world's cultural stage. Alexandra was raised under both the halo of her father's brilliance and the long shadow of his troubled mind. A drinker, a carouser, and above all "a high priest at the altar of fiction," Styron helped define the concept of The Big Male Writer that gave so much of twentieth-century American fiction a muscular, glamorous aura. In constant pursuit of The Great Novel, he and his work were the dominant force in his family's life, his turbulent moods the weather in their ecosystem. From Styron's Tidewater, Virginia, youth and precocious literary debut to the triumphs of his best-known books and on through his spiral into depression, Reading My Father portrays the epic sweep of an American artist's life, offering a ringside seat on a great literary generation's friendships and their dramas. It is also a tale of filial love, beautifully written, with humor, compassion, and grace.

 Author website

Excerpt from Vanity Fair magazine

Miami Herald review

On My Radar (Friday Edition)

Chasing Shadows: A Special Agent's Lifelong Hunt to Bring a Cold War Assassin to Justice
by Fred Burton and John Bruning
Palgrave Macmillan
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

In July 1973, a gunman stepped from behind a tree and fired five shots, point blank, into Colonel Joe Alon, a kind, unassuming Israeli Air Force pilot. Sixteen-year-old Fred Burton was deeply shocked by this crime that rocked his sleepy suburban neighborhood of Bethesda, Maryland. As it turned out, Alon wasn’t just a pilot and family man—he was a high-ranking Israeli military official and hero of the Israeli Air Force.  The assassin was never found and the case was closed. As a State Department counterterrorism special agent, Fred Burton reopened the case and pursued the killer.  From swirling dogfights over Egypt and Hanoi to gun battles on the streets of Beirut, this action-packed history spans the globe and several fraught decades in our history. In its portrait of how power is used, misused, and sold to the most convenient bidder,Chasing Shadows spins a gripping tale of agents, double agents, terrorists, and heroes as Burton chases leads around the globe in an effort to solve this decades-old murder.

 Author bio 

Kirkus Review on Chasing Shadows



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On My Radar (Thursday Edition)

All I Know About Management I Learned From My Dog: The Real-Life Story of Angel, a Rescued Golden Retriever, Who Inspired the New Four Golden Rules of Management
by Martin P. Levin
Skyhorse Publishing
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

When 91–year–old legendary management guru Martin Levin decided to adopt a dog by the name of Angel, he thought he was in for an interesting experience, but not a challenging one. It didn't take long for him to learn that he was wrong. Very wrong. Following one of the guiding mantras of his life—never stop learning—Levin found that each day with his dog brought new insights. And as it turned out, his journey with Angel led him toward realizing the Four Golden Rules of Management:
·Rule 1: Trust and Leadership
·Rule 2: Communication
·Rule 3: Problem Solving and Decision Making
·Rule 4: Perseverance
In the end, Levin found that his Four Golden Rules of Management were so simple that even Angel understood them. Thus, if a manager can develop trust, it will lead to corporate excellence, provided he or she is able to communicate effectively, make the right strategic decisions, and, above all, persevere. Levin’s book is one to entertain, inspire, and educate business executives (and dog lovers).

 Excerpt on Scribd

Author website


Review on chicgalleria.com

On My Radar (Wednesday Edition)

The Best Advice I Ever Got: Lessons From Extraordinary Lives
by Katie Couric
Random House
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

What was the tipping point for Malcolm Gladwell? What unscripted event made Meryl Streep who she is? How did Mario Batali cook up his recipe for success? In this inspiration-packed book, Katie Couric reports from the front lines of the worlds of politics, entertainment, sports, philanthropy, the arts, and business—distilling the ingenious, hard-won insights of leaders and visionaries, who tell us all how to take chances, follow our passions, cope with criticism, and, perhaps most important, commit to something greater than ourselves.

Among the many voices to be heard here are financial guru Suze Orman on the benefits of doing what’s right, not what’s easy; director Steven Spielberg on listening rather than being listened to; quarterback Drew Brees on how his (literal) big break changed his life; and novelist Curtis Sittenfeld on the secrets of a great long-term relationship (she suggests marrying someone less neurotic than you); not to mention:

• Michael Bloomberg: “Eighty percent of success is showing up . . . early.”
• Eric Stonestreet: “Remember that the old lady who’s taking forever in line is someone’s grandma.”
• Joyce Carol Oates: “Read widely—what you want to read, and not what someone suggests that you should read.”
• Jimmy Kimmel: “When in doubt, order the hamburger.’”
• Apolo Ohno: “It’s not about the forty seconds; it’s about the four years, the time it took to get there.”
• Madeleine K. Albright: “Never play hide-and-seek with the truth.”

Along the way, Couric reflects on the good advice—and the missteps—that have guided her from her early days as a desk assistant at ABC to her groundbreaking role as the first female anchor of the CBS Evening News. She reveals how the words of Thomas Jefferson helped her deal with her husband’s tragic death from cancer, and what encouraged her to leave the security of NBC’s Today show for a new adventure at CBS.

Delightful, empowering, and moving, The Best Advice I Ever Got is the perfect book for anyone who is thinking about the future, contemplating taking a risk, or daring to make a leap into the great unknown. This book is for all of us, young or old, who want to see how today’s best and brightest got it right, got it wrong, and came out on top.

 

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Signs of Life: A Memoir
by Natalie Taylor
Broadway Books/Crown Publishing/Random House
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

“I know. I know. No one says it but I know…” —from Signs of Life
 
Twenty-four-year-old Natalie Taylor was leading a charmed life. At the age of twenty four, she had a fulfilling job as a high school English teacher, a wonderful husband, a new house and a baby on the way.  Then, while visiting her sister, she gets the news that Josh has died in a freak accident.  Four months before the birth of her son, Natalie is leveled by loss. 

What follows is an incredibly powerful emotional journey, as Natalie calls upon resources she didn’t even know she had in order to re-imagine and re-build a life for her and her son. In vivid and immediate detail, Natalie documents her life from the day of Josh’s death through the birth their son, Kai, as she struggles in her role as a new mother where everyone is watching her for signs of impending collapse.  With honesty, raw pain, and most surprising, a wicked sense of humor, Natalie recounts the agonies and unexpected joys of her new life.  There is the frustration of holidays, navigating the relationship with her in-laws, the comfort she finds and unlikely friendship she forges in support groups and the utterly breathtaking, but often overwhelming new motherhood.   When she returns to the classroom, she finds that little is more healing than the honesty and egocentricity of teenagers. 

Drawing on lessons from beloved books like The Color Purple and The Catcher in the Rye and the talk shows she suddenly can’t get enough of, from the strength of her family and friends, and from a rich fantasy life—including a saucy fairy godmother who guides her grieving—Natalie embarks on the ultimate journey of self-discovery and realizes you can sometimes find the best in yourself during the worst life has to offer.  And she delivers these lessons, in way that feels like she’s right beside you in her bathrobe and with a glass of wine--the cool, funny girlfriend you love to stay up all night with. 

Unforgettable and utterly absorbing, Signs of Life features a powerful, wholly original debut voice that will have you crying and laughing to the very last page.

 Q & A with the author

Review of Signs of Life

Author website

On My Radar (Tuesday Edition)

Malled: My Unintentional Career in Retail
by Caitlin Kelly
Portfolio/Penguin
Hardcover

I too had an unintentional career in retail.  Unlike Ms. Kelly's, mine lasted 20 years.  I should write a book about those two decades.  Empires would fall.

From the publisher website:

One woman's mid career misadventures in the absurd world of American retail.

After losing her job as a journalist and the security of a good salary, Caitlin Kelly was hard up for cash. When she saw that The North Face-an upscale outdoor clothing company-was hiring at her local mall, she went for an interview almost on a whim.

Suddenly she found herself, middle-aged and mid-career, thrown headfirst into the bizarre alternate reality of the American mall: a world of low-wage workers selling overpriced goods to well-to-do customers. At first, Kelly found her part-time job fun and reaffirming, a way to maintain her sanity and sense of self-worth. But she describes how the unexpected physical pressures, the unreasonable dictates of a remote corporate bureaucracy, and the dead-end career path eventually took their toll. As she struggled through more than two years at the mall, despite surgeries, customer abuse, and corporate inanity, Kelly gained a deeper understanding of the plight of the retail worker.

In the tradition of Nickel and Dimed, Malled challenges our assumptions about the world of retail, documenting one woman's struggle to find meaningful work in a broken system.

 Book website

Author website


Interview with the author


Caitlin Kelly's twitter feed

On My Radar (Monday Edition)

This Life is in Your Hands: One Dream, Sixty Acres, and a Family Undone
by Melissa Coleman
Harper Books/Harper Collins
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

Set on a rugged coastal homestead during the 1970s, This Life Is in Your Hands introduces a superb young writer driven by the need to uncover the truth of a childhood tragedy and connect anew with the beauty and vitality of the back-to-the-land ideal that shaped her early years.
In the fall of 1968, Melissa Coleman's parents, Eliot and Sue—a handsome, idealistic young couple from well-to-do families—pack a few essentials into their VW truck and abandon the complications of modern reality to carve a farm from the woods. They move to a remote peninsula on the coast of Maine and become disciples of Helen and Scott Nearing, authors of the homesteading bible Living the Good Life. On sixty acres of sandy, intractable land, Eliot and Sue begin to forge a new existence, subsisting on the crops they grow and building a home with their own hands.
While they establish a happy family and achieve their visionary goals, the pursuit of a purer, simpler life comes at a price. Winters are long and lean, summers frenetic with the work of the harvest, and the distraction of the many young farm apprentices threatens the Colemans' marriage. Then, one summer day when Melissa is seven, her three-year-old sister, Heidi, wanders off and drowns in the pond where she liked to play. In the wake of the accident, ideals give way to human frailty, divorce, and a mother's breakdown—and ultimately young Melissa is abandoned to the care of neighbors. What really happened, and who, if anyone, is to blame?
This Life Is in Your Hands is the search to understand a complicated past; a true story, both tragic and redemptive, it tells of the quest to make a good life, the role of fate, and the power of forgiveness.

 Author website

New York Times review

frozenyogurt.com review

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Bottom of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption, and Baseball's Longest Game
by Dan Barry
Harper Books/Harper Collins
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

On April 18, 1981, a ball game sprang eternal. What began as a modestly attended minor-league game between the Pawtucket Red Sox and the Rochester Red Wings became not only the longest ever played in baseball history, but something else entirely. The first pitch was thrown after dusk on Holy Saturday, and for the next eight hours the night seemed to suspend its participants between their collective pasts and futures, between their collective sorrows and joys—the ballplayers; the umpires; Pawtucket's ejected manager, peering through a hole in the backstop; the sportswriters and broadcasters; a few stalwart fans shivering in the cold.
With Bottom of the 33rd, celebrated New York Times journalist Dan Barry has written a lyrical meditation on small-town lives, minor-league dreams, and the elements of time and community that conspired one fateful night to produce a baseball game seemingly without end. Bottom of the 33rd captures the sport's essence: the purity of purpose, the crazy adherence to rules, the commitment of both players and fans. This genre-bending book, a reportorial triumph, portrays the myriad lives held in the night's unrelenting grip. Consider, for instance, the team owner determined to revivify a decrepit stadium, built atop a swampy bog, or the batboy approaching manhood, nervous and earnest, or the umpire with a new family and a new home, or the wives watching or waiting up, listening to a radio broadcast slip into giddy exhaustion. Consider the small city of Pawtucket itself, its ghosts and relics, and the players, two destined for the Hall of Fame (Cal Ripken and Wade Boggs), a few to play only briefly or forgettably in the big leagues, and the many stuck in minor-league purgatory, duty bound and loyal to the game.
An unforgettable portrait of ambition and endurance, Bottom of the 33rd is the rare sports book that changes the way we perceive America's pastime, and America's past.

Los Angeles Times review

bookslut.com review

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

On My Radar (Friday Edition)

Fire Season: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout
by Philip Connors
Ecco/Harper Collins
Hardcover

I am in the midst of reading this book.  It is a beautifullly written, well-thought-out meditation on life, work and the human condition.  I don't want it to end.  I want to learn to describe  what I am experiencing and learn to live in the moment as Connors has.

From the publisher website:

A decade ago Philip Connors left work as an editor at the Wall Street Journal and talked his way into a job far from the streets of lower Manhattan: working as one of the last fire lookouts in America. Spending nearly half the year in a 7' x 7' tower, 10,000 feet above sea level in remote New Mexico, his tasks were simple: keep watch over one of the most fire-prone forests in the country and sound the alarm at the first sign of smoke.
Fire Season is Connors's remarkable reflection on work, our place in the wild, and the charms of solitude. The landscape over which he keeps watch is rugged and roadless—it was the first region in the world to be officially placed off limits to industrial machines—and it typically gets hit by lightning more than 30,000 times per year. Connors recounts his days and nights in this forbidding land, untethered from the comforts of modern life: the eerie pleasure of being alone in his glass-walled perch with only his dog Alice for company; occasional visits from smokejumpers and long-distance hikers; the strange dance of communion and wariness with bears, elk, and other wild creatures; trips to visit the hidden graves of buffalo soldiers slain during the Apache wars of the nineteenth century; and always the majesty and might of lightning storms and untamed fire.
Written with narrative verve and startling beauty, and filled with reflections on his literary forebears who also served as lookouts—among them Edward Abbey, Jack Kerouac, Norman Maclean, and Gary Snyder—Fire Season is a book to stand the test of time.

 Cleveland.com review


The New York Observer review



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Girls Like Us: Fighting for a World Where Girls are Not for Sale, an Activist Finds Her Calling and Heals Herself
by Rachel Lloyd
Harper Books/Harper Collins
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

A deeply moving story by a survivor of the commercial sex industry who has devoted her career to activism and helping other young girls escape "the life"

At thirteen, Rachel Lloyd found herself caught up in a world of pain and abuse, struggling to survive as a child with no responsible adults to support her. Vulnerable yet tough, she eventually ended up a victim of commercial sexual exploitation. It took time and incredible resilience, but ?nally, with the help of a local church community, she broke free of her pimp and her past.
Three years later, Lloyd arrived in the United States to work with adult women in the sex industry and soon founded her own nonprofit—GEMS, Girls Educational and Mentoring Services—to meet the needs of other girls with her history. She also earned her GED and won full scholarships to college and a graduate program. Today Lloyd is executive director of GEMS in New York City and has turned it into one of the nation's most groundbreaking nonprofit organizations.
In Girls Like Us, Lloyd reveals the dark, secretive world of her past in stunning cinematic detail. And, with great humanity, she lovingly shares the stories of the girls whose lives she has helped—small victories that have healed her wounds and made her whole. Revelatory, authentic, and brave, Girls Like Us is an unforgettable memoir.

 huffingtonpost book review

books.gather.com review

On My Radar (Thursday Edition)

Knuckler: My Life with Baseball's Most Confounding Pitch
by Tim Wakefield with Tony Massarotti
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

At forty-four years old, Tim Wakefield is the longest-serving member of one of baseball’s most popular franchises. He is close to eclipsing the winning records of two of the greatest pitchers to have played the game, yet few realize the full measure of his success. That his career can be characterized by such words as dependability and consistency defies all odds because he has achieved this with baseball’s most mercurial weapon—the knuckleball.

Knuckler is the story of how a struggling position player bet his future on a fickle pitch that would define his career. The pitch may drive hitters crazy, but how does the pitcher stay sane? The moment Wakefield adopted the knuckleball, his career sought to answer that question. With the Red Sox, Wakefield began to master his pitch only to find himself on the mound in 2003 for one of the worst post-season losses in history, followed the next year by one of the most vindicating of championships. Even now, as Wakefield battles, we see the twists and turns of a major league career pushed to its ultimate extreme.

A remarkable story of one player’s success despite being the exception to every rule, Knuckler is also a lively meditation on the dancing pitch, its history, its mystique, and all the ironies it brings to bear.

 Boston Globe review

Boston Phoenix interview with Tim Wakefield

On My Radar (Tuesday Edition)

All That is Bitter and Sweet: A Memoir
by Ashley Judd with Maryanne Vollers
Ballantine/Random House
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

Ashley Judd is an award-winning film and stage actor known for her roles in both box-office hits and art-house gems, and the daughter and sister of country-music royalty. In 2002, drawing on a deep well of empathy, she found her true calling: as a humanitarian and advocate for those suffering in neglected parts of the world.

Asked why she was opting out of a successful career, walking away while she was one of the highest-paid women in Hollywood, Ashley herself could not provide an answer. She simply knew that after her first trip to the notorious brothels, slums, and hospices of southeast Asia, her own life depended on advocating on behalf of the vulnerable. Promising each new sister, “I will never forget you,” Ashley began writing extraordinary diaries—on which this memoir is based—expanding her capacity to relate to, and to share with a global audience, stories of survival and resilience.

Along the way, Ashley realized that the coping strategies she had developed to deal with her own emotional pain, stemming from childhood abandonment, were no longer working. Seeking in-patient treatment in 2006 for the grief that had nearly killed her, Ashley found not only her own recovery and an enriched faith but an expanded kit of spiritual tools that energized and advanced her feminist social justice work.

Now, in this deeply moving and unforgettable memoir, Ashley Judd describes her odyssey, as a left-behind lost child attains international prominence as a fiercely dedicated advocate. Her story ranges from anger to forgiveness, isolation to interdependence, depression to activism. In telling it, she resoundingly answers the ineffable question about the relationship between healing oneself and service to others.

 usatoday.com

ashley judd's website

On My Radar (Monday Edition)

BossyPants
by Tina Fey
Reagan Arthur/Hachette Book Group
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

Before Liz Lemon, before 

"Weekend Update," before "Sarah Palin," Tina Fey was just a young girl with a dream: a recurring stress dream that she was being chased through a local airport by her middle-school gym teacher. She also had a dream that one day she would be a comedian on TV.

She has seen both these dreams come true.

At last, Tina Fey's story can be told. From her youthful days as a vicious nerd to her tour of duty on Saturday Night Live; from her passionately halfhearted pursuit of physical beauty to her life as a mother eating things off the floor; from her one-sided college romance to her nearly fatal honeymoon -- from the beginning of this paragraph to this final sentence.

Tina Fey reveals all, and proves what we've all suspected: you're no one until someone calls you bossy.

(Includes Special, Never-Before-Solicited Opinions on Breastfeeding, Princesses, Photoshop, the Electoral Process, and Italian Rum Cake!)

 Los Angeles Times review

New York Times review

Slate.com review

On My Radar (Friday Edition)

Prodigal Father, Pagan Son: Growing Up Inside the Dangerous World of the Pagans Motorcycle Club
by Anthony "LT" Menginie & Kerrie Droban
Thomas Dunne Books/Macmillan
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

By the time he was thirteen, he already had attended thirteen funerals. 

            Abandoned by his mother, and with his father, “Mangy” Menginie—president of the Pagans Motorcycle Club, Philadelphia chapter—in jail, Anthony “LT” Menginie is raised inside the Pagans and inducted into a life of sex, violence, drugs, and organized crime.
            In Mangy’s absence, LT finds a father figure in the Saint, a club member who helps teach him the difference between the club members you respect…and those you fear. The author recounts the power struggles that occur when Mangy is released from jail and tries to resume his role as father and president. Soon all hell breaks loose when Mangy betrays the club by going over to the rival Hells Angels, helping to touch off the “Biker Wars” in Philadelphia. The chapter’s new president grooms LT to one day confront his father for his treachery. Faced with an impossible decision, LT has to decide where his loyalties lie.
            Prodigal Father, Pagan Son is a voyeuristic glimpse into the shocking and hypnotic underworld of notorious “one-percenter” biker clubs, hit men, drug dealers, and the other individuals who operate under no other rules than the “club code.” But more than this, Menginie’s story is the gritty and powerful true tale of surviving amid personal trials and tragedies, and of one man’s determination to escape to a better life.

 Kerrie Droban website

Review of Prodigal Father, Pagan Son