In My TBR Stack:

Seeing What Others Don't: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights
by Gary Klein

Public Affairs
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Insights—like Darwin's understanding of the way evolution actually works, and Watson and Crick's breakthrough discoveries about the structure of DNA—can change the world. We also need insights into the everyday things that frustrate and confuse us so that we can more effectively solve problems and get things done. Yet we know very little about when, why, or how insights are formed—or what blocks them. In Seeing What Others Don't, renowned cognitive psychologist Gary Klein unravels the mystery. 

Klein is a keen observer of people in their natural settings—scientists, businesspeople, firefighters, police officers, soldiers, family members, friends, himself—and uses a marvelous variety of stories to illuminate his research into what insights are and how they happen. What, for example, enabled Harry Markopolos to put the finger on Bernie Madoff? How did Dr. Michael Gottlieb make the connections between different patients that allowed him to publish the first announcement of the AIDS epidemic? What did Admiral Yamamoto see (and what did the Americans miss) in a 1940 British attack on the Italian fleet that enabled him to develop the strategy of attack at Pearl Harbor? How did a "smokejumper" see that setting another fire would save his life, while those who ignored his insight perished? How did Martin Chalfie come up with a million-dollar idea (and a Nobel Prize) for a natural flashlight that enabled researchers to look inside living organisms to watch biological processes in action?

Klein also dissects impediments to insight, such as when organizations claim to value employee creativity and to encourage breakthroughs but in reality block disruptive ideas and prioritize avoidance of mistakes. Or when information technology systems are "dumb by design" and block potential discoveries. 

Both scientifically sophisticated and fun to read, Seeing What Others Don't shows that insight is not just a "eureka!" moment but a whole new way of understanding. 

In My TBR Stack:

Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies: On Myths, Morons, Free Speech, Football, and Assorted Absurdities
by Chris Kluwe
Little, Brown and Company

Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Hi. In your hands, right now, you hold the culmination of thousands of years of human intelligence, ingenuity, and brilliance. Now put your goddamn phone down and pay attention to my book. 

What is in my book, you ask? (I'm really glad you asked, by the way, because now I get to tell you.)
Time travel. Gay marriage. Sportsballing. Futuristic goggles that DO NOTHING.

Tiny brags from my publisher, stuff like: "This is an uproarious, uncensored take on empathy, personal responsibility, and what it means to be human."

Excessive brags about myself: "An extraordinarily clever, punishingly funny, sharp-tongued blogosphere star, NFL player, husband and father, one-time violin prodigy, voracious lifetime reader, obsessive gamer, and fearless champion of personal freedom." 

Oh, and also an essay on the Pope's Twitter account. Honestly, if that doesn't draw you in, there's no hope left for humanity. I also give my own funeral eulogy, in case you were hoping I'd go away and die now!

So please, join me in the glorious art of windmill tilting by reading this "collection of rousing, uncensored personal essays, letters, and stories" (I have no idea why that's in quotes).

Join the herd of Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies.

(You know you want to.) - See more at: http://hachettebookgroup.com/titles/chris-kluwe/beautifully-unique-sparkleponies/9780316236775/#desc

Book Tour Review

A Masque of Infamy: A Novel
by Kelly Dessaint
Phony Lid Books
Trade Paperback

by Book Dude

When I was asked to participate in the book tour for this novel, my inclination was to politely decline.  I explained to the delightful lady who asked for my participation that I primarily read nonfiction and didn't normally make time for fiction.

The few times I do dip my foot into the fiction pool is when the plot is unique or in some way appealing to me by piquing my curiosity. I re-read the synopsis of A Masque of Infamy and, for whatever reason, the curiosity factor kicked in.

Based to some degree on the writer's own story, A Masque of Infamy is a compelling and well-written coming of age story with a lot of fish out of water plot thrown in for good measure.  Our protagonist, Louis Baudrey, is forced to move to rural Alabama from the suburbs of Hollywood, California.

Louis is an endearing character, we forgive him his faults and pull for him to find peace and happiness as he navigates a world created by the less than savory adults around him.

One of the things that stands out about this book is Dessaint's gift of writing dialogue.  It would have been easy to make the words of the characters sound overly juvenile, but this is not the case.  I believe the words and wouldn't be surprised if they were very, very close to actual conversations.

A shocking plot twist propels Louis and his little brother into an even more chaotic life.  You can't help but pull for this profane, confused, yet proud high schooler to find a way out of the Hell of this life into a life of his own creation.

If you like coming of age stories and don't mind some "real" language you should support this small press book and give it your time.  You can pride yourself in finding a real diamond in the rough.

In My TBR Stack:

Junius and Albert's Adventures in the Confederacy: A Civil War Odyssey
by Peter Carlson

Public Affairs 
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

The thrilling true story of a pair of reporters swept up in the Civil War, captured, and thrown into jail, and their attempt to escape and return home to file their own extraordinary story 

Albert Richardson and Junius Browne, two correspondents for the New York Tribune, were captured at the Battle of Vicksburg and spent twenty months in horrific prisons before escaping and making their way to Union territory.

Their amazing, long-forgotten odyssey is one of the great escape stories in American history, packed with drama, courage, horrors and heroics, plus many moments of antic comedy. They must endure the Confederacy's most notorious prison; rely on forged passes and the secret signals of a covert pro-Union organization in North Carolina; trust a legendary guerilla leader; and ultimately depend on a mysterious, anonymous woman on a white horse to guide them to safety. They traveled for 340 miles, most of it on foot, much of it through snow, in twenty-six days.

This is a marvelous, surreal voyage through the cold mountains, dark prisons, and mysterious bands of misfits living in the shadows of the Civil War. 

Peter Carlson is the author of K Blows Top, which has been optioned into a feature film. For many years, he was a reporter and columnist for the Washington Post. He has also written for Smithsonianmagazine, American History magazine, and the Huffington Post. He lives in Rockville, MD.

In My TBR Stack:

Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception
by Claudia Hammond
Harper Perennial
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

Drawing on the latest research from the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and biology, writer and broadcaster Claudia Hammond explores the mysteries of our perception of time in her book Time Warped.

Why does life seem to speed up as we get older? Why does the clock in your head move at a different speed from the one on the wall? Why is it almost impossible to go a whole day without checking your watch? Is it possible to retrain our brains and improve our relationship with it?

In Time Warped, Claudia Hammond offers insight into how to manage our time more efficiently, how to speed time up and slow it down at will, how to plan for the future with more accuracy, and she teaches how to use the warping of time to our own benefit.

Book Description

Why does life speed up as we get older? Why does the clock in your head sometimes move at a different speed from the one on the wall? Time rules our lives, but how much do we understand it? And is it possible to retrain our brains and improve our relationship with it?

Drawing on the latest research from the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and biology, and using original research on the way memory shapes our understanding of time, the acclaimed writer and BBC broadcaster Claudia Hammond delves into the mysteries of time perception. Along the way, she introduces us to an extraordinary array of characters willing to go to great lengths in the interests of research, including the French speleologist Michel Siffre, who spends two months in an ice cave in complete darkness.

Time Warped offers insight into how to manage our time more efficiently, speed time up and slow it down at will, plan for the future with more accuracy, and, ultimately, use the warping of time to our own advantage.

In My TBR Stack:

Bad Boy: My Life On and Off the Canvas
by Eric Fischl and Michael Stone
Crown Publishing

Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

In Bad Boy, renowned American artist Eric Fischl has written a penetrating, often searing exploration of his coming of age as an artist, and his search for a fresh narrative style in the highly charged and competitive New York art world in the 1970s and 1980s. With such notorious and controversial paintings as Bad Boy and Sleepwalker, Fischl joined the front ranks of America artists, in a high-octane downtown art scene that included Andy Warhol, David Salle, Julian Schnabel, and others. It was a world of fashion, fame, cocaine and alcohol that for a time threatened to undermine all that Fischl had achieved.

In an extraordinarily candid and revealing memoir, Fischl discusses the impact of his dysfunctional family on his art—his mother, an imaginative and tragic woman, was an alcoholic who ultimately took her own life. Following his years as a student at Cal Arts and teaching in Nova Scotia, he describes his early years in New York with the artist April Gornik, just as Wall Street money begins to encroach on the old gallery system and change the economics of the art world. Fischl rebelled against the conceptual and minimalist art that was in fashion at the time to paint compelling portraits of everyday people that captured the unspoken tensions in their lives. Still in his thirties, Eric became the subject of a major Vanity Fair interview, his canvases sold for as much as a million dollars, and The Whitney Museum mounted a major retrospective of his paintings.  Bad Boy follows Fischl’s maturation both as an artist and sculptor, and his inevitable fall from grace as a new generation of artists takes center stage, and he is forced to grapple with his legacy and place among museums and collectors. Beautifully written, and as courageously revealing as his most provocative paintings, Bad Boy takes the reader on a roller coaster ride through the passion and politics of the art world as it has rarely been seen before.

In My TBR Stack:

The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking
by Brendan I. Koerner
Crown Publishing
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

In an America torn apart by the Vietnam War and the demise of sixties idealism, airplane hijackings were astonishingly routine. Over a five-year period starting in 1968, the desperate and disillusioned seized commercial jets nearly once a week, using guns, bombs, and jars of acid. Some hijackers wished to escape to foreign lands, where they imagined being hailed as heroes; others aimed to swap hostages for sacks of cash. Their criminal exploits mesmerized the country, never more so than when the young lovers at the heart of Brendan I. Koerner’s The Skies Belong to Us pulled off the longest-distance hijacking in American history.

A shattered Army veteran and a mischievous party girl, Roger Holder and Cathy Kerkow commandeered Western Airlines Flight 701 as a vague protest against the war. Through a combination of savvy and dumb luck, the couple managed to flee across an ocean with a half-million dollars in ransom, a feat that made them notorious around the globe. Koerner spent four years chronicling this madcap tale, which involves a cast of characters ranging from exiled Black Panthers to African despots to French movie stars. He combed through over 4,000 declassified documents and interviewed scores of key figures in the drama—including one of the hijackers, whom Koerner discovered living in total obscurity. Yet The Skies Belong to Us is more than just an enthralling yarn about a spectacular heist and its bittersweet, decades-long aftermath. It is also a psychological portrait of America at its most turbulent, and a testament to the madness that can grip a nation when politics fail.

In My TBR Stack:

On My Knees: A Memoir
by Periel Aschenbrand
Harper Perennial

Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

On My Knees is Periel Aschenbrand’s seriously funny follow-up to her debut memoirThe Only Bush I Trust Is My Own.

At the beginning of On My Knees, we find Periel chain-smoking her days away on a plastic-covered couch, watching reruns of Law & Order while she squats in her deceased grandmother’s apartment and adjusts to being alone for the first time in a decade. So begins a Dante-esque journey through the many rings of single-girl hell that includes crazy one-night stands; an unhealthy attachment to a dental hygienist; a run-in with Philip Roth; and, in the end, a trip to Israel and an encounter with a man who just might be the one.

Hysterical and heartfelt, On My Knees traces Periel’s riotous attempt to rebuild her life, her relationships, and her trademark confidence.

Book Description

A brash, bawdy, and downright ballsy ode to the ups and downs of life and love, On My Knees opens with Periel Aschenbrand—still reeling from a breakup with her longtime boyfriend—chain-smoking her days away on a plastic-covered couch and watching reruns of Law and Order while she squats in her dead grandmother's apartment in the East Village. 

Armed with her wicked wit and a motley cast of characters that includes her hovering Jewish mother, an eccentric uncle, and her neurotic best friend/wingwoman, Aschenbrand embarks on a Dante-esque journey through the many rings of single-girl hell involving crazy one-night stands; an unhealthy attachment to a dental hygienist; a run-in with Philip Roth; and, in the end, a trip to Israel and an encounter with the man who just might be the one. Hysterical and heartfelt, On My Knees traces Periel's attempt to rebuild her life, her relationships, and her trademark confidence in a story so riotous it would make Chelsea Handler blush.

In My TBR Stack:

Stories in Uniform: A Look at the Heroics, Sacrifices, and Triumphs of Our Soldiers
Reader's Digest
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

Stories in Uniform is a chronological retrospective of the best military pieces Reader's Digest has run; pieces that will make you weep, make your heart sing, inspire you, enrage you, and make you laugh. Beginning in World War I and continuing though to the war in Iraq, readers will follow soldiers into the trenches, peer in on emergency surgery taking place in the depths of the ocean, watch heroes carry the bodies of fallen brethren, trail Eisenhower for the three days leading up to D-Day, and be inspired as men and women rise above and beyond normal human limits to preserve our rights and save their friends. Stories include:

• A moving memorial to D-Day

• A tribute to one of the first African-Americans to serve as a Naval Officer

• A pilot rescued after his F-16 is shot down

• A soldier returns to the front after losing his foot in action

• An American soldier who takes a big risk to save a dying Afghan girl

This book gives a complete perspective on the hell that is war, the love that grows from camaraderie, the pride from accomplishing the impossible, the humor that springs from the military bureaucracy, and more.

In My TBR Stack:

You Don't Know Me But You Don't Like Me: Phish, Insane Clown Posse and my Misadventures with Two of Music's Most Maligned Tribes
by Nathan Rabin

Scribner / Simon & Schuster
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

When memoirist and head writer for The A.V. Club Nathan Rabin first set out to write about obsessed music fans, he had no idea the journey would take him to the deepest recesses of both the pop culture universe and his own mind. For two very curious years, Rabin, who Mindy Kaling called “smart and funny” in The New Yorker, hit the road with two of music’s most well-established fanbases: Phish’s hippie fans and Insane Clown Posse’s notorious “Juggalos.” Musically or style-wise, these two groups could not be more different from each other, and Rabin, admittedly, was a cynic about both bands. But once he gets deep below the surface, past the caricatures and into the essence of their collective cultures, he discovers that both groups have tapped into the human need for community. Rabin also grapples with his own mental well-being—he discovers that he is bipolar—and his journey is both a prism for cultural analysis and a deeply personal exploration, equal parts humor and heart.

In My TBR Stack:

The Joker: A Memoir
by Andrew Hudgins
Simon & Schuster

Hardcover

From the publisher website:

Since Andrew Hudgins was a child, he was a compulsive joke teller, so when he sat down to write about jokes, he found that he was writing about himself—what jokes taught him and mistaught him, how they often delighted him but occasionally made him nervous with their delight in chaos and sometimes anger. Because Hudgins’s father, a West Point graduate, served in the US Air Force, his family moved frequently; he learned to relate to other kids by telling jokes and watching how his classmates responded. And jokes opened him up to the serious, taboo subjects that his family didn’t talk about openly—religion, race, sex, and death. Hudgins tells and analyzes the jokes that explore the contradictions in the Baptist religion he was brought up in, the jokes that told him what his parents would not tell him about sex, and the racist jokes that his uncle loved, his father hated, and his mother, caught in the middle, was ambivalent about. This book is both a memoir and a meditation on jokes and how they educated, delighted, and occasionally horrified him as he grew.

(This is part one.  More parts available on youtube.)

In My TBR Stack:

Run, Brother, Run: A Memoir of a Murder in my Family
by David Berg
Scribner / Simon & Schuster

Hardcover

From the publisher website:

A searing family memoir of a tempestuous Texas boyhood that led to the vicious murder of the author’s brother As William Faulkner said, “The past is not dead, it’s not even past.” This observation seems especially true in matters of family, when the fury between generations is often never resolved and instead secretly carried, a wound that cannot heal. For David Berg, this is truer than for most, and once you read the story of his family, you will understand why he held it privately for so long and why the betrayals between parent and child can be the most wrenching of all. 

In 1968 David Berg’s brother, Alan, was murdered by Charles Harrelson, a notorious hit man and father of actor Woody Harrelson. Alan was only thirty-one when he disappeared; six months later his remains were found in a ditch in Texas. Run, Brother, Run is Berg’s story of the murder. But it is also his account of the psychic destruction of the Berg family by the author’s father, who allowed a grievous blunder at the age of twenty-three to define his life. The event changed the fate of a clan and fell most heavily on Alan, the firstborn son, who tried to both redeem and escape his father yet could not.

This achingly painful family history is also a portrait of an iconic American place, playing out in the shady bars of Houston, in small-town law offices and courtrooms, and in remote ranch lands where bad things happen—a true-crime murder drama, all perfectly calibrated. Writing with cold-eyed grief and a wild, lacerating humor, Berg tells us first about the striving Jewish family that created Alan Berg and set him on a course for self-destruction and then about the gross miscarriage of justice that followed. 

As with the best and most powerfully written memoirs, the author has kept this horrific story to himself for a long time. A scrappy and pugnacious narrator, Berg takes his account into the darkest human behaviors: the epic battles between father and son, marital destruction, reckless gambling, crooked legal practices, extortion, and, of course, cold-blooded murder. Run, Brother, Run is a raw, furious, bawdy, and scathing testimonial about love, hate, and pain— and utterly unforgettable.

On My Radar:

The Receptionist: An Education at the New Yorker
by Janet Groth
Algonquin Books / Workman Publishing
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

In 1957, when a young Midwestern woman landed a job at The New Yorker, she didn’t expect to stay long at the reception desk. But stay she did, and for twenty-one years she had the best seat in the house. In addition to taking messages, she ran interference for jealous wives checking on adulterous husbands, drank with famous writers at famous watering holes throughout bohemian Greenwich Village, and was seduced, two-timed, and proposed to by a few of the magazine’s eccentric luminaries. This memoir of a particular time and place is an enchanting tale of a woman in search of herself.

In My TBR Stack:

I Got Laid Off, Traveled, and Wrote This Story: Personal-ish Essays Inspired by a Month-Long Journey Through Europe
by Shari L. Hochberg
Trade Paperback

From the back of the book:

     In her debut collection of real-ish stories, Shari recounts her time spent over the course of a month in France and Italy after a semi-traumatic layoff from her advertising job in San Francisco.

     Her travels conjure up embarrassing, uncomfortable, and at times absurd tales of the past woven into the present as she roams the streets from Paris to Milan. From her childhood with a gynecologist father she dubs "The Vagina Whisperer" to fantasy visions of two well-known celebrities in a mad chase for her affection through Lake Como.

     Shari is unafraid to share her ridiculous stories of her childhood through her present adulthood. Personal details of ex-boyfriends are fair game as well as family members and some ill-mannered high school classmates during a reunion.

     I Got Laid Off...also introduces us to a charming Italian with whom Shari had her sights on for more than two decades and after an awkward rendezvous, attempts to seduce in Italy. 

     Shari's candid tales from accidentally ingesting marijuana brownies to an audacious and foolish rescue attempt of a young man from a Parisian hooligan will hopefully both delight readers and make them cringe.

On My Radar:

An Atheist in the Foxhole: A Liberal's Eight-Year Odyssey Inside the Heart of the Right-Wing Media
by Joe Muto
Penguin / Dutton

Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

The “Fox Mole”—whose dispatches for Gawker made headlines inBusinessweek, The Hollywood Reporter, and even on The New York Timeswebsite—delivers a funny, opinionated memoir of his eight years at the unfair, unbalanced Fox News Channel working as an associate producer for Bill O'Reilly.

Imagine needing to hide your true beliefs just to keep a job you hated. Now imagine your job was producing the biggest show on the biggest cable news channel in America, and you’ll get a sense of what life was like for Joe Muto. As a self-professed bleeding-heart, godless liberal, Joe’s viewpoints clearly didn’t mesh with his employer—especially his direct supervisor, Bill O’Reilly.
So he did what any ambitious, career-driven person would do. He destroyed his career, spectacularly. He became Gawker’s so-called Fox Mole.

Joe’s posts on Gawker garnered more than 2.5 million hits in one week. He released footage and information that Fox News never wanted exposed, including some extremely unflattering footage of Mitt Romney. The dragnet closed around him quickly—he was fired within thirty-six hours—so his best material never made it online. Unfortunate for his career as the Fox Mole, but a treasure trove for book readers.

An Atheist in the FOXhole has everything that liberals and Fox haters could desire: details about how Fox’s right-wing ideology is promoted throughout the channel; why specific angles and personalities are the only ones broadcasted; the bizarre stories Fox anchors actually believed (and passed on to the public); and tales of behind-the-scenes mayhem and mistakes, all part of reporting Fox’s version of the news.

On My Radar:

Outlaw: Waylon, Willie, Kris, and the Renegades of Nashville
by Michael Streissguth
It Books / Harper Collins

Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Outlaw by acclaimed author Michael Streissguth follows the stories of three legends as they redefined country music: Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson.

Streissguth delves into the country music scene in the late '60s and early '70s, when these rebels found themselves in Music City writing songs and vying for record deals. Channeling the unrest of the times, all three Country Music Hall of Famers resisted the music industry’s unwritten rules and emerged as leaders of the outlaw movement that ultimately changed the recording industry.

Outlaw offers a broad portrait of the outlaw movement in Nashville that includes a diverse secondary cast of characters, such as Johnny Cash, Rodney Crowell, Kinky Friedman, and Billy Joe Shaver, among others.

With archival photographs throughout, Outlaw is a comprehensive examination of a fascinating shift in country music, and the three unbelievably talented musicians who forged the way.

Book Description

Waylon Jennings. Willie Nelson. Kris Kristofferson. Three renegade musicians. Three unexpected stars. Three men who changed Nashville and country music forever.

By the late 1960s, Nashville, Tennessee, was firmly established as the center of the booming country music industry and home to what was known as the Nashville Sound, characterized by slick production and adherence to an increasingly overused formula. But the city was changing. Young people from all over the country were streaming into the bohemian West End and colliding with three trailblazing artists who would soon rock the foundations of Nashville's music business.

Surrounded by the street vibes of the West End's burgeoning underground scene and the outlaw protest tradition of Nashville's unlikely civil rights leaders and antiwar protestors, Waylon, Willie, and Kris began resisting the unspoken rules of Nashville's music-making machine and instead forged their own creative paths. Their music, personal and not easily categorized, was more in the vein of rock acts like the Allman Brothers and Bob Dylan, and it communi- cated a stark rawness and honesty that would influence artists of all genres for decades to come.

Studded with a diverse secondary cast including Johnny Cash, Rodney Crowell, Kinky Friedman, Billy Joe Shaver, and others, Streissguth's new book brings to life an incredible chapter in musical history and reveals for the first time a surprising outlaw zeitgeist in Nashville. Based on extensive research and probing interviews with key players, what emerges is a fascinating glimpse into three of the most legendary artists of our times and the definitive story of how they changed music in Nashville and everywhere.