In My TBR Stack

Death in the City of Light: The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris
by David King
Broadway Books

Trade Paperback

From the publisher website:

Death in the City of Light is the gripping, true story of a brutal serial killer who unleashed his own reign of terror in Nazi-Occupied Paris. As decapitated heads and dismembered body parts surfaced in the Seine, Commissaire Georges-Victor Massu, head of the Brigade Criminelle, was tasked with tracking down the elusive murderer in a twilight world of Gestapo, gangsters, resistance fighters, pimps, prostitutes, spies, and other shadowy figures of the Parisian underworld.  

The main suspect was Dr. Marcel Petiot, a handsome, charming physician with remarkable charisma.  He was the “People’s Doctor,” known for his many acts of kindness and generosity, not least in providing free medical care for the poor.  Petiot, however, would soon be charged with twenty-seven murders, though authorities suspected the total was considerably higher, perhaps even as many as 150.

Who was being slaughtered, and why?  Was Petiot a sexual sadist, as the press suggested, killing for thrills?  Was he allied with the Gestapo, or, on the contrary, the French Resistance?  Or did he work for no one other than himself?  Trying to solve the many mysteries of the case, Massu would unravel a plot of unspeakable deviousness. 
When Petiot was finally arrested, the French police hoped for answers.

But the trial soon became a circus.  Attempting to try all twenty-seven cases at once, the prosecution stumbled in its marathon cross-examinations, and Petiot, enjoying the spotlight, responded with astonishing ease.  His attorney, René Floriot, a rising star in the world of criminal defense, also effectively, if aggressively, countered the charges.  Soon, despite a team of prosecuting attorneys, dozens of witnesses, and over one ton of evidence, Petiot’s brilliance and wit threatened to win the day.

Drawing extensively on many new sources, including the massive, classified French police file on Dr. Petiot, Death in the City of Light is a brilliant evocation of Nazi-Occupied Paris and a harrowing exploration of murder, betrayal, and evil of staggering proportions.

On My Radar: 7/27/12

The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments from Lives on the Road (Reprint)

by Paul Theroux
Mariner Books
Trade Paperback

From the publisher website:

“A book to be plundered and raided.” — New York Times Book Review

“A portal into a world of timeless travel literature curated by one of the greatest travel writers of our day.” — USA Today

Paul Theroux celebrates fifty years of wandering the globe in this collection of the best writing from the books that have shaped him as a reader and a traveler. Part philosophical guide, part miscellany, part reminiscence, The Tao of Travel contains excerpts from the best of Theroux’s own work interspersed with selections from travelers both familiar and unexpected:

Vladimir Nabokov         Eudora Welty
Evelyn Waugh          James Baldwin
Charles Dickens         Pico Iyer
Henry David Thoreau         Anton Chekhov
Mark Twain         John McPhee
Freya Stark         Ernest Hemingway
Graham Greene         and many others

“Dazzling . . . Like someone panning for gold, Theroux reread hundreds of travel classics and modern works, shaking out the nuggets.” — San Francisco Chronicle

On My Radar

A Freudian Slip is When You Say One Thing but Mean Your Mother: 879 Funny, Funky, Hip and Hilarious Puns
by Gary Blake
Skyhorse Publishing
Hardcover


From the publisher website:

Everyone delights in wordplay! When there’s a sale on tennis balls, it’s first come, first serve. Condoms should be used on every conceivable occasion. Why does the Pope travel so much? Because he’s a roamin’ Catholic. What is purple and 5,000 miles long? The Grape Wall of China! 

O-pun the door to 1,001 goodies that will have you howling or groaning, but certainly—like the surgery patient—in stitches.

Hotels, Hospitals and Jails by Anthony Swofford

I am currently in the middle of Anthony Swofford's tale of an ex-warrior coming to grips with an emotionally elusive father.  Let me say, Mr. Swofford knows how to write.  I did not read his previous memoir, Jarhead, nor see the movie, but this book has made me rethink that decision.

As someone who has strugged with the father-son dynamic for most of my life (as a son), I find this book revealing yet guarded and the words hit home more often than I expected.  Ex marine Swofford is traversing a minefield of a different sort in this book; one where he tries to avoid the explosive dangers his father has planted as well as the ones he wasn't trained to avoid by what every boy needs -- an involved dad.

Some people have wonderful parents who do everything right -- they are the one percent.  The rest of us claw through the tangled underbrush of pain and confusion, anger and hurt, gifted to us by parents who don't necessarily mean to do so. 

Where Anthony Swofford succeeds is in writing a story that could have been overly vitriolic and full of spitfire, but instead he keeps a controlled voice yet clearly expresses his anger.  In what could have been a difficult read, he instead provides us with the opposite: an honest, well-written, account of a man trying to make his way despite all the obstacles in his path.

They say to really write well, one must bleed on the page.  Thank goodness Swofford takes this advice.  It could easily have turned into a bloodbath, but instead is a steady trickle.  A bloodletting, if you will.

Highly recommended.

On My Radar

The Sinatra Club: My Life Inside the New York Mafia
by Sal Polisi and Steve Dougherty

Gallery Books / Simon & Schuster
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

The Mob was the biggest, richest business in America—too dangerous and too deadly to fail. Until it was destroyed from within by drugs, greed, and the decline of its traditional crime Family values.

And by guys like Sal Polisi.

He was born in Brooklyn—the same place that spawned Murder, Inc., Al Capone, and John Gotti, the future Mob godfather who became his friend. Polisi was raised on a family legacy that led him into the life he loved as a member of the Colombos, one of the New York Mob’s feared Five Families, and came of age when the Mafia was at the height of its vast wealth and power.

Known by his Mob name, Sally Ubatz (“Crazy Sally”), he ran an illegal after-hours gambling den, The Sinatra Club, that was a magic kingdom of crime and a hangout for up-and-coming mobsters like Gotti and the three wiseguys immortalized in Martin Scorsese’s GoodFellas—Henry Hill, Jimmy Burke, and Tommy DeSimone. For Polisi, the nonstop thrills of glory days spent robbing banks, hijacking trucks, pulling daring heists—and getting away with it all, thanks to cops and public servants corrupted by Mob money—were fleeting. When he was busted for drug trafficking, and already sickened by the bloodbath that engulfed the Mob as it teetered toward extinction, he flipped and became one of a breed he had loathed all his life—a rat.

In this riveting, pulse-pounding, and, at times, darkly hilarious first-person chronicle of his brazen crimes, wild sexual escapades, and personal tragedies, Polisi tells his story of life inside the New York Mob in a voice straight from the streets. With shocking candor, he draws on a hard-won knowledge of Mob history to paint a neverbefore- seen picture of the inner workings of the Mob and the larger-than-life characters who populated a once extensive and secret underworld that, thanks to guys like him, no longer exists.

***

I was always a street guy. I was into robbing and stealing and gambling and loan sharking. I wasn’t involved in the bigmoney sit-downs, the labor racketeering and construction company shakedowns, the Garment District and garbage and cement company kickbacks. . . . For guys like me and Fox, my blood brother and crime partner, the thing we loved about being in that life was the action, the excitement. . . .We were in it for the money, sure. But it was the danger, the thrills that made the life of crime something special.

A guy like John Gotti was different. He was far more ambitious than me and Fox. He wasn’t just in it for the rush and the riches. He wanted the power and the glory.

John Gotti’s tragedy, if you can call it that, was that he was born too late for the old-school gangster crown that he craved. He began his rise as the Mob was beginning to crumble; by the time he got to the top, the bottom had dropped out.

From the beginning, John was charismatic and smart. He just wasn’t cut out to be godfather. Once he became boss, he drove the bus right off the bridge. Or maybe it was the bus that drove him. Either way, I watched him go.

Here’s how it all happened.

On My Radar

It Could Have Been Yours: The Enlightened Person's Guide to the Year's Most Desirable Things
by Jolyon Fenwick & Marcus Husselby

Profile Books
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

Things you never knew you wanted - even if you could afford them

From Silvio Berlusconi's bed to Casanova's memoirs (the most expensive manuscript in history), via the Statue of Liberty's nose and an X-ray of Marilyn Monroe's chest, here is a remarkable record of some of the quirkiest, most unexpected and sometimes bizarre possessions that have changed hands in the last year - some costing millions, some only pennies (or even nothing at all). Ranging from rare historical artefacts (such as Marie-Antoinette's pearls) to the weirdly iconic (Elvis's medicine cabinet, anyone?), by turns ingenious, intriguing and witty, this is a brilliant and teasing insight into the culture of our time, packed with extraordinary things to amuse, inspire or amaze.

- - - - - - 

What is "On My Radar"?

I have worked in book retail for much of my adult life.  I am pretty well-versed in the way the business works, at least at the store level.

One of the things that has always bothered me is that there are many new books that come in and get shelved with no publicity whatsoever.  A lot of books, whether they are by a popular author, or have received some pre-release critical buzz, get prime placement in stores through “co-op” deals.  These are deals where book publishers pay retail outlets to place certain books in prime locations to guarantee they will be seen.

But many books don’t have this sort of push behind them.  This is where BookSpin comes in.
I do my best to find under the radar books and publicize them on my humble little blog.  Sometimes the books that catch my eye are also “popular” releases, but my focus is normally the ones that could easily be lost in the crowd.

Look at this way:  if a new book comes in and has no co-op support, it could easily be shelved in its section with only the spine showing.  What are the odds this book will be found?  BookSpin strives to be an outlet for getting the word to readers about these under the radar books, and therefore the ironic “On My Radar” was born.

On My Radar also serves as notice to publishers that these are the type of titles I am interested in and would love to review (hint, hint).

Also, a little bit more honesty here….I am disappointed how infrequently the publisher twitter accounts utilize the “@connect” button to search the mentions of their twitter names.  A “retweet” from a publisher can result in new followers for those of us out here doing our best to get the word out for them.

What I'm Reading Now

Klonopin Lunch: A Memoir
by Jessica Dorfman Jones
Crown Publishing

Hardcover

From the publisher website:

Gritty. Dirty. Hard-core. Transformative. Funny.  This is the real Sex and the City.

By her late twenties, Jessica Dorfman Jones had dutifully achieved everything she thought she was supposed to: marriage, law degree, high-paying job, nice apartment in Greenwich Village. But she was miserable and felt like she was living a life that wasn't hers. Desperate to change her status quo and figure out who she really was, Jessica went about the business of making a change by demolishing the life she knew. She threw her good-girl image aside and set out to unleash the very bad girl she had never before tried to be.

Embracing the deliciously debauched world of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, Jessica leaves behind her sweet and well-behaved husband for the ultimate bad-boy guitar player, starts her own band, and parties harder than she had ever thought possible. She starts a band, puts her job in jeopardy, and causes her friends and family no end of worry with her illicit behavior. And then, in the midst of her self-created chaos, the wildest thing of all happens. She figures out who she is, who she most definitely is not, and what might, if she's lucky, come next.

Klonopin Lunch is Jessica’s wickedly funny and uncensored journey down the rabbit hole and back out again, into a life that, at last, makes her truly happy.

Out This Week: American Gypsy

American Gypsy: A Memoir
by Oksana Marafioti
Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Trade Paperback

From the publisher website:

A vivid and funny memoir about growing up Gypsy and becoming American
Fifteen-year-old Oksana Marafioti is a Gypsy. This means touring with the family band from the Mongolian deserts to the Siberian tundra. It means getting your hair cut in “the Lioness.” It also means enduring sneering racism from every segment of Soviet society. Her father is determined that his girls lead a better, freer life. In America! Also, he wants to play guitar with B. B. King. And cure cancer with his personal magnetism. All of this he confides to the woman at the American embassy, who inexplicably allows the family entry. Soon they are living on the sketchier side of Hollywood.

What little Oksana and her sister, Roxy, know of the United States they’ve learned from MTV, subcategory George Michael. It doesn’t quite prepare them for the challenges of immigration. Why are the glamorous Kraft Singles individually wrapped? Are the little soaps in the motels really free? How do you protect your nice new boyfriend from your opinionated father, who wants you to marry decently, within the clan?

In this affecting, hilarious memoir, Marafioti cracks open the secretive world of the Roma and brings the absurdities, miscommunications, and unpredictable victories of the immigrant experience to life. With unsentimentally perfect pitch, American Gypsy reveals how Marafioti adjusted to her new life in America, one slice of processed cheese at a time.