In My TBR Stack:

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
by L. Frank Baum

Illustrated by Michael Sieben
Harper Design / Harper Collins
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is more colorful and enchanting than you remember in this gorgeous illustrated edition of L. Frank Baum’s classic, a remarkable interpretation by celebrated artist Michael Sieben.

 Journey back to a magical land rendered anew, and let Sieben’s stunning illustrations captivate your imagination as Dorothy Gale, her group of eccentric friends, and their sensational odyssey are brought back to life in this unique gift edition.

With art as fantastic and captivating as the characters they portray, Sieben’s depiction of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz will cast an unforgettable spell on you and your family; it’s a work to be cherished for generations. 

Book Description

 In this dazzling full-color gift edition, L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Ozis brought to life with specially commissioned illustrations by contemporary artist and designer Michael Sieben.

Follow the yellow brick road with Dorothy and her friends as they travel to the Emerald City in search of the great Wizard of Oz in this new, complete and unabridged edition of the classic tale that winds its way from Kansas to faraway places and back. From the land of the Munchkins to the deadly poppy field, from encounters with ferocious Kalidahs, Winged Monkeys, and Fighting Trees to battles with the Wicked Witches of the East and West, the magic of Baum's story is beautifully reimagined through the extraordinary art of Michael Sieben.

On My Radar:

Rich Food, Poor Food
by Jayson Calton, PhD & Mira Calton, CN
Primal Blueprint Publishing

From the publisher website:

Do you get confused while pouring over labels at the grocery store trying to
 determine the healthiest options? What makes one box of cereal better for you than another, and how are we suppose to decipher the extensive lists of mysterious ingredients on every package, and then determine whether they are safe or toxic to a your family’s health? With nearly 40,000 items populating the average supermarket today, the Rich Food, Poor Food – Grocery Purchasing System (GPS), is a unique guide that steers the consumer through the grocery store aisles, directing them to health enhancing Rich Food options while avoiding health detracting Poor Food ones. Rich Food, Poor Food is unique in the grocery store guide arena in that rather than rating a particular food using calories, sodium, or fat as the main criteria, it identifies the products that contain wholesome, micronutrient-rich ingredients that health-conscious shoppers are looking for, like wild caught fish, grass-fed beef, raw/organic cheese, organic meats, pastured eggs and dairy, organic produce and sprouted grains, nuts and seeds, while avoiding over 150 common unwanted Poor Food ingredients such as sugar, high fructose corn syrup, refined flour, GMOs, MSG, artificial colors, flavors and sweeteners, pesticides, nitrites/ nitrates, gluten, and chemical preservatives like BHA and BHT.

So while other food swapping grocery guides may give the green light to eating Kellogg’s Froot Loops with Sprinkles, Oscar Mayer Turkey Bologna and Hostess Twinkies based on their lower calories, sodium, and/or fat levels, you won’t find these heavily processed, food-like products identified as Rich Food choices in Rich Food, Poor Food. That doesn’t mean this guide to micronutrient-sufficient living leads readers to a boring culinary lifestyle. Quite the contrary! The Caltons offer Rich Food choices in every aisle of the store including desserts, snacks, sauces, hot dogs, and other fun foods!

This indispensable grocery store guide raises the bar on food quality as it takes readers on an aisle-by-aisle tour, teaching them how to identify potentially problematic ingredients, while sharing tips on how to lock in a food’s nutritional value during preservation and preparation, save money, and make homemade versions of favorite grocery store staples. Regardless of age, dietary preference or current health, Rich Food, Poor Food turns the grocery store and farmers market into a micronutrient pharmacy – filling the shopping cart with a natural prescription for better health and longevity.

On My Radar:

Memoir of the Sunday Brunch
by Julia Pandl

Center Point / Algonquin
Hardcover

About the book:

For Julia Pandl, the rite of passage into young-adulthood included mandatory service at her family’s restaurant, where she watched as her father—who was also the chef—ruled with the strictness of a drill sergeant.

At age twelve, Julie was initiated into the rite of the Sunday brunch, a weekly madhouse at her father’s Milwaukee-based restaurant, where she and her eight older siblings before her did service in a situation of controlled chaos, learning the ropes of the family business and, more important, learning life lessons that would shape them for all the years to come. In her wry memoir, she looks back on those formative years, a time not just of growing up but, ultimately, of becoming a source of strength and support as the world her father knew began to change into a tougher, less welcoming place.

Part coming-of-age story à la The Tender Bar, part win- dow into the mysteries of the restaurant business à la Kitchen Confidential, Julie Pandl provides tender wisdom about the bonds between fathers and daughters and about the simple pleasures that lie in the daily ritual of breaking bread. This honest and exuberant memoir marks the debut of a writer who discovers that humor exists in even the smallest details of our lives and that the biggest moments we ever experience can happen behind the pancake station at the Sunday brunch.  

Julia Pandl was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where she still lives and works. Memoir of the Sunday Brunch is her first book. When she is not writing and otherwise working, she moonlights as a stand-up comic.

On My Radar:

Whitey: The Life of America's Most Notorious Mob Boss
by Dick Lehr & Gerard O'Neill

Random House / Crown Publishing
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

From the bestselling authors of Black Mass comes the definitive biography of Whitey Bulger, the most brutal and sadistic crime boss since Al Capone. Drawing on a trove of sealed files and previously classified material, Whitey digs deep into the mind of James J. “Whitey” Bulger, the crime boss and killer who brought the FBI to its knees. He is an American original --a psychopath who fostered a following with a frightening mix of terror, deadly intimidation and the deft touch of a politician who often helped a family in need meet their monthly rent. But the history shows that despite the early false myths portraying him as a Robin Hood figure, Whitey was a supreme narcissist, and everything--every interaction with family and his politician brother Bill Bulger, with underworld cohorts, with law enforcement, with his South Boston neighbors, and with his victims--was always about him. In an Irish-American neighborhood where loyalty has always been rule one, the Bulger brand was loyalty to oneself.                 Whitey deconstructs Bulger's insatiable hunger for power and control. Building on their years of reporting and uncovering new Bulger family records, letters and prison files, Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neill examine and reveal the factors and forces that created the monster. It's a deeply rendered portrait of evil that spans nearly a century, taking Whitey from the streets of his boyhood Southie in the 1940s to his cell in Alcatraz in the 1950s to his cunning, corrupt pact with the FBI in the 1970s and, finally, to Santa Monica, California where for fifteen years he was hiding in plain sight as one of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted. In a lifetime of crime and murder that ended with his arrest in June 2011, Whitey Bulger became one of the most powerful and deadly crime bosses of the twentieth century. This is his story.

On My Radar:

The Soundtrack of My Life
by Clive Davis with Anthony Decurtis

Simon & Schuster
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

In this star-studded autobiography, Clive Davis shares a personal, candid look into his remarkable life and the last fifty years of popular music as only a true insider can.

In the history of popular music, no one looms as large as Clive Davis. His career has spanned more than forty years, and he has discovered, signed, or worked with a staggering array of artists: Whitney Houston, Janis Joplin, Simon and Garfunkel, Barry Manilow, Patti Smith, Lou Reed, Dionne Warwick, Carlos Santana, The Grateful Dead, Alicia Keys, Kelly Clarkson, Jennifer Hudson, and Aretha Franklin, to name a few. He has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, received a Lifetime Achievement Grammy, and hosted the world’s highest profile parties.

In this fully illustrated, personal account, Davis tells all, from becoming an orphan in high school and getting through college and law school on scholarships, to being falsely accused of embezzlement and starting up his own record company, J Records. His wealth of experience offers valuable insight into the evolution of the music business over the past half-century and into the future.

Told with Davis’s unmatched wit, frankness, and style, The Soundtrack of My Life exposes a trove of never-before-heard stories—some hilarious, others tragic, all revealing—that will captivate and inspire all music lovers.

In My TBR Stack:

Pigeon in a Crosswalk: Tales of Anxiety and Accidental Glamour

by Jack Gray
Simon & Schuster
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

From television producer Jack Gray comes a generational account of finding one’s way at work, at home, and even across the street. 

There are a lot of unforgettable characters in these pages: a loveable if possibly alcoholic dog; a set of grandparents who crush on Alex Trebek and obsess about death; Golden Girls and blue bloods, anchormen and Supreme Court justices; divas and wags—but the best character of all is the author himself. To read Jack Gray’s musings is to enter the company of a young man of titanic wit and talent. As he observes and echoes the fixations and neuroses of his generation and our times, he will make you squirm, guffaw, and ultimately marvel.

In My TBR Stack:

Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked
by James Lasdun

Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

          A true story of obsessive love turning to obsessive hate, Give Me Everything You Have chronicles the author’s strange and harrowing ordeal at the hands of a former student, a self-styled “verbal terrorist,” who began trying, in her words, to “ruin him.” Hate mail, online postings, and public accusations of plagiarism and sexual misconduct were her weapons of choice and, as with more conventional terrorist weapons, proved remarkably difficult to combat. James Lasdun’s account, while terrifying, is told with compassion and humor, and brilliantly succeeds in turning a highly personal story into a profound meditation on subjects as varied as madness, race, Middle East politics, and the meaning of honor and reputation in the Internet age.

First person to respond via email (above, right) will receive a free copy of this book from Farrar, Straus & Giroux and Book Dude.

On My Radar:

Days That I'll Remember: Spending Time with John Lennon and Yoko Ono
by Jonathan Cott
Knopf Doubleday / Random House
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

Jonathan Cott met John Lennon in 1968 and was friends with him and Yoko Ono until John's death in 1980. He has kept in touch with Yoko since that time, and is one of the small group of writers who understands her profoundly positive influence on Lennon. This deeply personal book recounts the course of those friendships over the decades and provides an intimate look at two of the most astonishing cultural figures of our time. And what Jonathan Cott has to say and tell will be found nowhere else.

In My TBR Stack:

Coolidge
by Amity Shlaes

Harper / Harper Collins
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

Amity Shlaes, author of The Forgotten Man, delivers a brilliant and provocative reexamination of America’s thirtieth president, Calvin Coolidge, and the decade of unparalleled growth that the nation enjoyed under his leadership. In this riveting biography, Shlaes traces Coolidge’s improbable rise from a tiny town in New England to a youth so unpopular he was shut out of college fraternities at Amherst College up through Massachusetts politics. After a divisive period of government excess and corruption, Coolidge restored national trust in Washington and achieved what few other peacetime presidents have: He left office with a federal budget smaller than the one he inherited. A man of calm discipline, he lived by example, renting half of a two-family house for his entire political career rather than compromise his political work by taking on debt. Renowned as a throwback, Coolidge was in fact strikingly modern—an advocate of women’s suffrage and a radio pioneer. At once a revision of man and economics, Coolidge gestures to the country we once were and reminds us of qualities we had forgotten and can use today.   

          Book Description

Calvin Coolidge, who served as president from 1923 to 1929, never rated highly in polls. The shy Vermonter, nicknamed "Silent Cal," has long been dismissed as quiet and passive. History has remembered the decade in which he served as a frivolous, extravagant period predating the Great Depression. Now Amity Shlaes, the author known for her riveting, unexpected portrait of the 1930s, provides a similarly fresh look at the 1920s and its elusive president. Shlaes shows that the mid-1920s was, in fact, a triumphant period that established our modern way of life: the nation electrified, Americans drove their first cars, and the federal deficit was replaced with a surplus. Coolidge is an eye-opening biography of the little-known president behind that era of remarkable growth and national optimism.

 Although Coolidge was sometimes considered old-fashioned, he was the most modern of presidents, advancing not only the automobile trade but also aviation, through his spirited support of Charles Lindbergh. Coolidge's discipline and composure, Shlaes reveals, represented not weakness but strength. First as governor of Massachusetts then as president, Coolidge proved unafraid to take on the divisive issues of this crucial period: reining in public-sector unions, unrelentingly curtailing spending, and rejecting funding for new interest groups.

Perhaps more than any other president, Coolidge understood that doing less could yield more. He reduced the federal budget during his time in office even as the economy grew, wages rose, tax rates fell, and unemployment dropped. As a husband, father, and citizen, the thirtieth president made an equally firm commitment to moderation, shunning lavish parties and special presidential treatment; to him the presidency was not a bully pulpit but a place for humble service. Overcoming private tragedy while in office, including the death of a son, Coolidge showed the nation how to persevere by persevering himself. For a nation looking for a steady hand, he was a welcome pilot.

 In this illuminating, magisterial biography, Amity Shlaes finally captures the remarkable story of Calvin Coolidge and the decade of extraordinary prosperity that grew from his leadership.

On My Radar: Simon & Schuster Edition

Long Shot
by Mike Piazza with Lonnie Wheeler
Simon & Schuster
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

Mike Piazza’s autobiography—the candid story of the greatest hitting catcher in the history of baseball, from his inauspicious draft selection to his Hall of Fame-worthy achievements and the unusual controversies that marked his career. 

Mike Piazza was selected by the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 62nd round of the 1988 baseball draft as a “courtesy pick.” The Dodgers never expected him to play for them—or anyone else. Mike had other ideas. Overcoming his detractors, he became the National League rookie of the year in 1993, broke the record for season batting average by a catcher, holds the record for career home runs at his position, and was selected as an All Star twelve times. 

Mike was groomed for baseball success by his ambitious, self-made father in Pennsylvania, a classic father-son American-dream story. With the Dodgers, Piazza established himself as baseball’s premier offensive catcher; but the team never seemed willing to recognize him as the franchise player he was. He joined the Mets and led them to the memorable 2000 World Series with their cross-town rivals, the Yankees. Mike tells the story behind his dramatic confrontation with Roger Clemens in that series. He addresses the steroid controversy that hovered around him and Major League Baseball during his time and provides valuable perspective on the subject. Mike also addresses the rumors of being gay and describes the thrill of his game-winning home run on September 21, 2001, the first baseball game played in New York after the 9/11 tragedy. Along the way, he tells terrific stories about teammates and rivals that baseball fans will devour. 

Long Shot is written with insight, candor, humor, and charm. It’s surprising and inspiring, one of the great sports autobiographies.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Gods of Mischief: My Undercover Vendetta to Take Down the Vagos Outlaw Motorcycle Gang
by George Rowe
Touchstone / Simon & Schuster
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

The high-octane, no-holds-barred, true story of a bad guy turned good who infiltrated one of the most violent outlaw motorcycle gangs in history to take them down. 

It’s the morning of March 9, 2006, hours before one of the largest motorcycle gang busts in United States history, and George Rowe can’t sleep. He keeps thinking about the past three years he spent as an informant for the ATF, working undercover with the Vagos, one of the most dangerous biker gangs in the country. His fiancée, a struggling heroin addict carrying their unborn child, is asleep next to him. She’s got no idea who he really is, what he’s done, or what’s about to happen. How in the hell, Rowe wonders, did it go so far and get so deep?

A gritty and harrowing memoir about human redemption and self-sacrifice, Gods of Mischief tells the story of the first private citizen to voluntarily infiltrate an outlaw motorcycle gang for the U.S. government. George Rowe, drug dealer, barroom brawler, and convicted felon, never thought he’d work for the feds. But when he watched the Vagos brutally and senselessly beat his friend everything changed. He decided to pay back his Southern California hometown by bringing down the gang that terrorized it. As “Big George,” a full-patched member of the Vagos, Rowe spent three brutal years juggling a double life—riding, fighting, and nearly dying alongside the brothers that he secretly hoped to put away for good. The road to redemption wasn’t an easy ride. Rowe lost everything: his family, his business, his home—even his identity. To this day, under protection by the U.S. government, Rowe still looks over his shoulder, keeping watch for the brothers he put behind bars. They’ve vowed to search for him until the day they die. 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

To Show and Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction
by Phillip Lopate
Free Press / Simon & Schuster
Trade Paperback

From the publisher website:

Distinguished author Phillip Lopate, editor of the celebrated anthology The Art of the Personal Essay, is universally acclaimed as “one of our best personal essayists” (Dallas Morning News). Here, combining more than forty years of lessons from his storied career as a writer and professor, he brings us this highly anticipated nuts-and-bolts guide to writing literary nonfiction. A phenomenal master class shaped by Lopate’s informative, accessible tone and immense gift for storytelling, To Show and To Tell reads like a long walk with a favorite professor—refreshing, insightful, and encouraging in often unexpected ways. 

In My TBR Stack:

The Lady and Her Monsters: A Tale of Dissections, Real-Life Dr. Frankensteins, and the Creation of Mary Shelley's Masterpiece

by Roseanne Montillo
William Morrow / Harper Collins
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

The Lady and Her Monsters by Roseanne Motillo brings to life the fascinating times, startling science, and real-life horrors behind Mary Shelley’s gothic masterpiece, Frankenstein. 

Montillo recounts how—at the intersection of the Romantic Age and the Industrial Revolution—Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein was inspired by actual scientists of the period: curious and daring iconoclasts who were obsessed with the inner workings of the human body and how it might be reanimated after death. 

With true-life tales of grave robbers, ghoulish experiments, and the ultimate in macabre research—human reanimation—The Lady and Her Monsters is a brilliant exploration of the creation of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley’s horror classic. 

Book Description 

The truly electric story of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, this book—printed with special ink—literally glows in the dark! 

Told with the verve and ghoulish fun of a Tim Burton film, The Lady and Her Monsters is a highly entertaining blend of literary history, lore, and early scientific exploration that traces the origins of the greatest horror story of all time–Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
Exploring the frightful milieu in which Frankenstein was written, Roseanne Montillo, an exciting new literary talent, recounts how Shelley's Victor Frankenstein mirrored actual scientists of the period. Montillo paints a rich portrait of Shelley and her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and their contemporaries and their friend Lord Byron. Intellectually curious, they were artists, poets, and philosophers, united in captivation with the occultists and daring scientists risking their reputations and their immortal souls to advance our understanding of human anatomy and medicine. 

These remarkable investigations could not be undertaken without the cutthroat grave robbers who prowled cemeteries for a supply of fresh corpses. The newly dead were used for both private and very public autopsies and dissections, as well as the most daring trials of all: attempts at human reanimation through the application of electricity. 

Juxtaposing monstrous mechanization and rising industrialism with the sublime beauty and decadence of the legendary Romantics who defined the age, Montillo takes us into a world where poets become legends in salons and boudoirs; where fame-hungry "doctors" conduct shocking performances for rabid, wide-eyed audiences; and where maniacal body snatchers secretly toil in castle dungeons.

On My Radar:

Phantom Hitchhikers and Other Urban Legends: The Strange Stories Behind Tall Tales
by Albert Jack

Perigee / Penguin
Trade Paperback

From the publisher website:

Have you heard the one about…  • Walt Disney’s frozen body?  • Coca-Cola owning Santa Claus?  • Alligators living in New York City sewers?       We all love a good story. But where do the urban legends, conspiracy theories, and old wives’ tales we hear every day really originate? Albert Jack explores the best, strangest, and funniest of the tales so many of us take as gospel, and uncovers some eye-popping true stories that are even more far-fetched than their mythical counterparts. From Robin Hood to JFK’s brain, from hamsters under carpets to mysterious travelers, you’ll never be short of a scary or bizarre anecdote again.

On My Radar:

Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws Who Hacked Ma Bell
by Philip Lapsley
Grove/Atlantic
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

 “If we hadn’t built blue boxes, there would have been no Apple.” —Steve Jobs 

Before smartphones and iPads, before the Internet or the personal computer, a misfit group of technophiles, blind teenagers, hippies, and outlaws figured out how to hack the world’s largest machine: the telephone system. By the middle of the twentieth century the telephone system had grown into something extraordinary, a web of cutting-edge switching machines and human operators that linked together millions of people like never before. But the network had a billion-dollar flaw, and once people discovered it, things would never be the same. 

Phil Lapsley’s Exploding the Phone traces the birth of long-distance communication and the telephone, the rise of AT&T’s monopoly, the creation of the sophisticated machines that made it all work, and the discovery of Ma Bell’s Achilles’ heel. Lapsley expertly weaves together the clandestine underground of phone phreaks who turned the network into their electronic playground, the mobsters who exploited its flaws to avoid the feds, and the counterculture movement that argued you should rip off the phone company to fight against the war in Vietnam.  

AT&T responded with “Greenstar,” an unprecedented project that would ultimately tap some thirty-three million telephone calls and record 1.5 million of them. The FBI fought back, too, especially when a phone phreak showed a confidential informant how he could remotely eavesdrop on FBI calls. Phone phreaking exploded into the popular culture, with famous actors, musicians, and investors caught with “blue boxes,” many of them built by two young phone phreaks named Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Soon, the phone phreaks, the feds, and the phone company were at war.  

Based on original interviews and declassified documents, Exploding the Phone is a captivating, ground-breaking work about an important part of our cultural and technological history. 

On My Radar:

Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and my Harrowing Escape
by Jenna Miscavige Hill
Harper Collins
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

Jenna Miscavige Hill, niece of Church of Scientology leader David Miscavige, was raised as a Scientologist but left the controversial religion in 2005. In Beyond Belief, she shares her true story of life inside the upper ranks of the sect, details her experiences as a member Sea Org—the church's highest ministry, speaks of her "disconnection" from family outside of the organization, and tells the story of her ultimate escape.  

In this tell-all memoir, complete with family photographs from her time in the Church, Jenna Miscavige Hill, a prominent critic of Scientology who now helps others leave the organization, offers an insider's profile of the beliefs, rituals, and secrets of the religion that has captured the fascination of millions, including some of Hollywood's brightest stars such as Tom Cruise and John Travolta.

In My TBR Stack:

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
by Susan Cain
Broadway / Random House
Trade Paperback

From the publisher website:

The book that started the Quiet Revolution 

At least one-third of the people we know are introverts. They are the ones who prefer listening to speaking; who innovate and create but dislike self-promotion; who favor working on their own over working in teams. It is to introverts—Rosa Parks, Chopin, Dr. Seuss, Steve Wozniak-- that we owe many of the great contributions to society. 

In Quiet, Susan Cain argues that we dramatically undervalue introverts and shows how much we lose in doing so. She charts the rise of the Extrovert Ideal throughout the twentieth century and explores how deeply it has come to permeate our culture. She also introduces us to successful introverts–from a witty, high-octane public speaker who recharges in solitude after his talks, to a record-breaking salesman who quietly taps into the power of questions. Passionately argued, superbly researched, and filled with indelible stories of real people, Quiet has the power to permanently change how we see introverts and, equally important, how they see themselves.

 Now with Extra Libris material, including a reader’s guide and bonus content.