Guest Review:

Fiction Review

Help for the Haunted: A Novel
by John Searles
William Morrow
Hardcover

Reviewed by Robin Ayers

John Searles’ new novel Help for the Haunted is a rare book, and a book that keeps you guessing.  It draws you in from the opening paragraph and is so in-depth with details that it feels as if you are there.  Searles creates a world that you will not want to leave.

It is 1989 and Sylvie and Rose Mason are the daughters of religious ghost hunters. Late one February night, the Masons are called to the town church in Dundalk, Maryland to meet Rose, who has run off again. Sylvie waits in the car, until a terrible noise urges her inside. Rose is not there, but a murderer is. Another shot rings out, and Sylvie awakens at the hospital with tinnitus, an orphan. Released into the care of her angry, wild older sister (who has finally turned up), Sylvie must try to come to terms with her new life and all that she never knew about her parents.

Elements of ghost hunting certainly led a spooky tone to the book but I didn't feel the “ghost story” plot-line was as prominent as the author quotes on the back cover would lend you to believe.  The heart of the story is Sylvie’s journey, a journey that leads Sylvie to the truth about her parents’ career and their dealings. This story does bounce back and forth from past to present, but don't let it aggravate you; it all comes together and makes for a great novel. It also may make you think; "do you really know your family". 

In My TBR Stack:

Murdoch's World: The Last of the Old Media Empires
by David Folkenflik
Public Affairs 
Hardcover

Rupert Murdoch is the most significant media tycoon the English-speaking world has ever known. No one before him has trafficked in media influence across those nations so effectively, nor has anyone else so singularly redefined the culture of news and the rules of journalism. In a stretch spanning six decades, he built News Corp from a small paper in Adelaide, Australia into a multimedia empire capable of challenging national broadcasters, rolling governments, and swatting aside commercial rivals. Then, over two years, a series of scandals threatened to unravel his entire creation.

Murdoch's defenders questioned how much he could have known about the bribery and phone hacking undertaken by his journalists in London. But to an exceptional degree, News Corp was an institution cast in the image of a single man. The company's culture was deeply rooted in an Australian buccaneering spirit, a brawling British populism, and an outsized American libertarian sensibility—at least when it suited Murdoch's interests.

David Folkenflik, the media correspondent for NPR News, explains how the man behind Britain's take-no-prisoners tabloids, who reinvigorated Roger Ailes by backing his vision for Fox News, who gave a new swagger to the New York Post and a new style to the Wall Street Journal, survived the scandals—and the true cost of this survival. He summarily ended his marriage, alienated much of his family, and split his corporation asunder to protect the source of his vast wealth (on the one side), and the source of his identity (on the other). There were moments when the global news chief panicked. But as long as Rupert Murdoch remains the person at the top, Murdoch's World will be making news.

Award-winning journalist David Folkenflik has been NPR's media correspondent since 2004. He previously covered media and politics for the Baltimore Sun and edited the 2011 book, Page One: Inside The New York Times and the Future of Journalism. He has covered Murdoch and News Corp extensively and has been a frequent commentator on the hacking scandal in both the U.S. and the U.K. Folkenflik lives with his wife, the radio producer Jesse Baker, and their daughter in New York City.

In my TBR Stack:

The Kennedy Half Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy
by Larry J. Sabato
Bloomsbury
Hardcover

John F. Kennedy died almost half a century ago—yet because of his extraordinary promise and untimely death, his star still resonates strongly. On the anniversary of his assassination, celebrated political scientist and analyst Larry J. Sabato—himself a teenager in the early 1960s and inspired by JFK and his presidency—explores the fascinating and powerful influence he has had over five decades on the media, the general public, and especially on each of his nine presidential successors.

A recent Gallup poll gave JFK the highest job approval rating of any of those successors, and millions remain captivated by his one thousand days in the White House. For all of them, and for those who feel he would not be judged so highly if he hadn’t died tragically in office, The Kennedy Half-Century will be particularly revealing. Sabato reexamines JFK’s assassination using heretofore unseen information to which he has had unique access, then documents the extraordinary effect the assassination has had on Americans of every modern generation through the most extensive survey ever undertaken on the public’s view of a historical figure. The full and fascinating results, gathered by the accomplished pollsters Peter Hart and Geoff Garin, paint a compelling portrait of the country a half-century after the epochal killing. Just as significantly, Sabato shows how JFK’s presidency has strongly influenced the policies and decisions—often in surprising ways—of every president since.

Among the hundreds of books devoted to JFK, The Kennedy Half-Century stands apart for its rich insight and original perspective. Anyone who reads it will appreciate in new ways the profound impact JFK’s short presidency has had on our national psyche.

In My TBR Stack:

The Men Who United the States: America's Explorers, Inventors, Eccentrics, and Mavericks, and the Creation of One Nation, Indivisible
by Simon Winchester
Harper Books
Hardcover


From the publisher's website:

Simon Winchester, the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Atlantic and the Professor and the Madman, delivers his first book about America: a fascinating popular history that illuminates the men who toiled fearlessly to discover, connect, and bond the citizenry and geography of the U.S.A. from its beginnings.

How did America become "one nation, indivisible"?  What unified a growing number of disparate states into the modern country we recognize today?  To answer these questions, Winchester follows in the footsteps of America's most essential explorers, thinkers, and innovators, such as Lewis and Clark and the leaders of the Great Surveys; the builders of the first transcontinental telegraph and the powerful civil engineer behind the Interstate Highway System.  He treks vast swaths of territory, from Pittsburgh to Portland, Rochester to San Francisco, Seattle to Anchorage, introducing the fascinating people who played a pivotal role in creating today's United States.

Throughout, he ponders whether the historic work of uniting the States has succeeded, and to what degree. Featuring 32 illustrations throughout the text, The Men Who United the States is a fresh look at the way in which the most powerful nation on earth came together.

New Nonfiction Hardcover:

Newton's Football: The Science Behind America's Game
by Allen St. John and Ainissa G. Ramirez, PH.D.
Ballantine Books
Hardcover


From the publisher's website:

Did you hear the one about the MacArthur genius physicist and the NFL coach? It’s not a joke. It’s actually an innovative way to understand chaos theory, and the remarkable complexity of modern professional football.

In Newton’s Football, journalist and New York Times bestselling author Allen St. John and TED Speaker and former Yale professor Ainissa Ramirez explore the unexpected science behind America’s Game. Whether it’s Jerry Rice finding the common ground between quantum physics and the West Coast offense or an Ivy League biologist explaining—at a granular level—exactly how a Big Mac morphs into an outside linebacker, Newton’s Football illuminates football—and science—through funny, insightful stories told by some of the world’s sharpest minds.

With a clear-eyed empirical approach—and an exuberant affection for the game—St. John and Ramirez address topics that have long beguiled scientists and football fans alike, including:

• the unlikely evolution of the football (or, as they put it, “The Divinely Random Bounce of the Prolate Spheroid”)

• what Vince Lombardi has in common with Isaac Newton

• how the hardwired behavior of monkeys can explain a head coach’s reluctance to go for it on fourth-down

• why a gruesome elevator accident jump-started the evolution of placekicking

• how Teddy Roosevelt saved football using the same behavioral science concept that Dreamworks would use to save Shrek

• why woodpeckers don’t get concussions

• how better helmets actually made the game more dangerous

Every Sunday the NFL shares a secret with only its savviest fans: The game isn’t just a clash of bodies, it’s a clash of ideas. The greatest minds in football have always possessed an instinctual grasp of science, understanding the big ideas and gritty realities that inform the game’s rich past, as well as its increasingly uncertain future.

Blending smart reporting, counterintuitive creativity, and compelling narrative, Newton’s Football takes gridiron analysis to the next level, giving fans a book that entertains, enlightens, and explains the game anew.

New This Week:

My Mistake: A Memoir
by Daniel Menaker
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Hardcover

Daniel Menaker started as a fact checker at The New Yorker in 1969. With luck, hard work, and the support of William Maxwell, he was eventually promoted to editor. Never beloved by William Shawn, he was advised early on to find a position elsewhere; he stayed for another twenty-four years.

Now Menaker brings us a new view of life in that wonderfully strange place and beyond, throughout his more than forty years working to celebrate language and good writing.

He tells us his own story, too—with irrepressible style and honesty—of a life spent persevering through often difficult, nearly always difficult-to-read, situations. Haunted by a self-doubt sharpened by his role in his brother’s unexpected death, he offers wry, hilarious observations on publishing, child-rearing, parent-losing, and the writing life. But as time goes by, we witness something far beyond the incidental: a moving, thoughtful meditation on years well lived, well read, and well spent. Full of mistakes, perhaps. But full of effort, full of accomplishment, full of life. 

In My TBR Stack:

Etched in Sand: A True Story of Five Siblings Who Survived an Unspeakable Childhood on Long Island
by Regina Calcaterra
William Morrow
Trade Paperback

Regina Calcaterra's memoir, Etched in Sand, is an inspiring and triumphant coming-of-age story of tenacity and hope.

Regina Calcaterra is a successful lawyer, New York State official, and activist. Her painful early life, however, was quite different. Regina and her four siblings survived an abusive and painful childhood only to find themselves faced with the challenges of the foster-care system and intermittent homelessness in the shadows of Manhattan and the Hamptons.

A true-life rags-to-riches story, Etched in Sand chronicles Regina's rising above her past, while fighting to keep her brother and three sisters together through it all.

Beautifully written, with heartbreaking honesty, Etched in Sand is an unforgettable reminder that regardless of social status, the American Dream is still within reach for those who have the desire and the determination to succeed.

New This Week:

Anything That Moves: Renegade Chefs, Fearless Eaters, and the Making of a New American Food Culture
by Dana Goodyear
Riverhead Books
Hardcover


New Yorker writer Dana Goodyear combines the style of Mary Roach with the on-the-ground savvy of Anthony Bourdain in a rollicking narrative look at the shocking extremes of the contemporary American food world.

A new American cuisine is forming. Animals never before considered or long since forgotten are emerging as delicacies. Parts that used to be for scrap are centerpieces. Ash and hay are fashionable ingredients, and you pay handsomely to breathe flavored air. Going out to a nice dinner now often precipitates a confrontation with a fundamental question: Is that food?

Dana Goodyear's anticipated debut, Anything That Moves, is simultaneously a humorous adventure, a behind-the-scenes look at, and an attempt to understand the implications of the way we eat. This is a universe populated by insect-eaters and blood drinkers, avant-garde chefs who make food out of roadside leaves and wood, and others who serve endangered species and Schedule 1 drugs - a cast of characters, in other words, who flirt with danger, taboo, and disgust in pursuit of the sublime. Behind them is an intricate network of scavengers, dealers, and pitchmen responsible for introducing the rare and exotic into the marketplace. This is the fringier of the modern American meal, but to judge from history, it will not be long before it reaches the family table. Anything That Moves is a highly entertaining, revelatory look into the raucous, strange, fascinatingly complex world of contemporary American food culture, and the places where the extreme is bleeding into the mainstream.

New This Week:

What If...: A Lifetime of Questions, Speculations, Reasonable Guesses, and a Few Things I Know for Sure
by Shirley MacLaine
Atria Books
Hardcover

“Sometimes I think that speculation is more fun than knowledge. I just turn the answers into more questions anyway.”

Beloved actress and bestselling author Shirley MacLaine contemplates a host of intriguing topics from the everyday to the esoteric in this all-new collection of ideas and observations, each of which begins with two simple, powerful words: What if? 

Taking this as her starting point, Shirley explores a wide range of matters—spiritual and secular, humorous and profound, earthbound and inter-galactic, personal and universal. From big questions about family, friendship, politics, war, and religion, her gaze lifts even higher. A famous trailblazer in making topics such as reincarnation and past-life therapy mainstream, Shirley now takes the lead in opening her mind to crucial questions about the existence of life on other planets, what that means for those of us on Earth, and about the true genetic ancestry of humankind. Along the way, she reflects on joining the talented cast of Downton Abbey, receiving the prestigious American Film Institute Lifetime Achievement Award, and introducing a new puppy into her formerly one-dog home. 

From Shirley’s “What if” questions emerges a striking portrait of a constantly curious woman who thrills to new ideas and discoveries—all while enjoying one of the most extraordinary and enduring careers in Hollywood. As Shirley says, “I like to think that I’m open to exploring anything, always questioning, trying to live free of preconceptions and blind certainties.” What if . . . captures the one and only Shirley MacLaine at her witty, acerbic, imaginative, and irresistible best.

New Nonfiction Hardcovers This Week:

Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion
by Robert Gordon
Bloomsbury USA
Hardcover

The story of Stax Records unfolds like a Greek tragedy. A white brother and sister build a monument to racial harmony in blighted south Memphis during the civil rights movement. Their success soon pits the siblings against each other, and the brother abandons his sister for a visionary African-American partner. Under integrated leadership, Stax explodes as a national player until, Icarus-like, the heights they achieve result in their tragic demise. They fall, losing everything, and the sanctuary they created is torn to the ground. A generation later, Stax is rebuilt brick by brick and is once again transforming disenfranchised youth into stellar young musicians.

Set in the world of 1960s and ‘70s soul music, Respect Yourself is a character-driven story of racial integration, and then of black power and economic independence. It’s about music and musicians—Isaac Hayes, Otis Redding, the Staple Singers, and Booker T. and the M.G.’s, Stax’s interracial house band. It’s about a small independent company’s struggle to survive in an increasingly conglomerate-oriented world. And always at the center of the story is Memphis, Tennessee, an explosive city struggling through volatile years. Told by one of our leading music chroniclers, Respect Yourself will be the book to own about one of our most treasured cultural institutions and the city that created it.

27: A History of the 27 Club through the Lives of Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse

by Howard Sounes

Da Capo Press

Hardcover

When singer Amy Winehouse was found dead at her London home in 2011, the press inducted her into what Kurt Cobain’s mother named the 27 Club. “Now he’s gone and joined that stupid club,” she said in 1994, after being told that her son, the front man of Nirvana, had committed suicide. “I told him not to….” Kurt’s mom was referring to the extraordinary roll call of iconic stars who died at the same young age. The Big Six are Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison of the Doors, Kurt Cobain and, now, Amy Winehouse. All were talented. All were dissipated. All were 27.

Journalists write about “the curse of the 27 Club” as if there is a supernatural reason for this series of deaths. Others invoke astrology, numerology, and conspiracy theories to explain what has become a modern mystery. In this haunting book, author Howard Sounes conducts the definitive forensic investigation into the lives and deaths of the six most iconic members of the Club, plus another forty-four music industry figures who died at 27, to discover what, apart from coincidence, this phenomenon signifies.

New Nonfiction Paperbacks This Week

Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time
by Jeff Speck
North Point Press
Trade Paperback

“Timely and important, a delightful, insightful, irreverent work . . . Should be required reading.” —The Christian Science Monitor

A Best Book of the Year according to Planetizen and the American Society of Landscape Architects

Jeff Speck has dedicated his career to determining what makes cities thrive. And he has boiled it down to one key factor: walkability.

Making downtown into a walkable, viable community is the essential fix for the typical American city; it is eminently achievable and its benefits are manifold. Walkable City—bursting with sharp observations and key insights into how urban change happens—lays out a practical, necessary, and inspiring vision for how to make American cities great again.

The Fat Lady Sang

by Robert Evans

it Books

Trade Paperback

From the legendary producer and author of the Kid Stays in the Picture - one of the greatest Hollywood memoirs ever written - comes a long-awaited second work with all the elements of a star-studded blockbuster; glamour and conflict, giddy highs and near-fatal lows, struggle and perseverance, tragedy and triumph.

Currently Reading:

Embrace the Chaos: How India Taught Me to Stop Overthinking and Start Living
by Bob Miglani
Berrett-Koehler
Trade Paperback

• Shows readers how they can find more joy and fulfillment amidst the chaos and confusion of modern life.
• Illustrated with funny and moving stories of the author’s experiences in India
• Based on Bob Miglani’s popular Embrace the Chaos blog and Facebook page (over 30,000 followers)

Like many of us, Bob Miglani felt overwhelmed and anxious. He worried constantly about his job, his finances, and his family’s future. Life seemed so uncertain and unpredictable, but the more he tried to control it, the more stress he felt. It was a chance invitation to India, the land of his birth, that finally freed him.

India, Miglani writes, is “the capital of chaos”: over a billion people living on one-third the space of the United States, a bewildering mix of different languages, religions, customs, cultures, and castes. And yet somehow things get done and people are generally happy. India made Miglani realize that you simply have to accept “the unpredictable, uncertain, imperfect, and complicated nature of life.” Instead of fighting it, Miglani learned to use his energy on what he could control—his own actions, words, and thoughts. However, thinking too much is just another way of trying to control the chaos. Instead of endlessly pondering possibilities, Miglani found it was better to take action, even imperfectly—to move forward, make mistakes, trust his intuition, find his purpose.

Throughout the book, Miglani tells funny and moving stories of his trips to India, the people he met there, and what each encounter taught him. What happens when you find yourself in an Indian village with no money and a plane to catch? How can an educated urban woman choose the man she is going to marry based on one or two meetings? What keeps a rural Indian health worker motivated despite the enormous need and such limited ability to help? What does trying to catch an insanely overcrowded Indian bus teach you about perfection?

Embracing the chaos, Miglani writes, “is a wonderfully freeing experience that opens us up to new, fresh possibilities. It leads us down paths we never would have walked on, introducing us to new people, new opportunities, and some of the best experiences in our life. It brings out strengths we never knew existed inside of us.” 

In Stores Now:

A book I'd love to read:


From Scratch: Inside the Food Network
by Allen Salkin
Putnam Adult
Hardcover


Big personalities, high drama - the extraordinary behind-the-scenes story of the Food Network, now about to celebrate its twentieth anniversary: the business, media, and cultural juggernaut that changed the way America thinks about food.

In October 1993, a tiny start-up called the Food Network debuted to little notice. Twenty years later, it is in 100 million homes, approaches a billion dollars a year in revenue, and features a galaxy of stars whose faces and names are as familiar to us as our own family's.

But what we don't know about them, and the people behind them, could fill a book.

Based upon extensive inside access, documents, and interviews with hundreds of executives, stars, and employees all up and down the ladder, Allen Salkin's book is an exhilarating roller-coaster ride from chaos to conquest (and sometimes back). As Salkin takes us inside the conference rooms, studios, homes, restaurants, and after-hours meetings, we see a salty Julia Child lording it over the early network performers; a fragile Emeril Lagasse staggering from the sudden public shock of cancellation; a very green Rachael Ray nearly burning down the set on her first day; a torn Tyler Florence accepting the Applebee's job he knows he can't refuse, but with a chill running down his spine; a determined Bobby Flay reinventing himself once again to survive.

Paula Deen, Tom Colicchio, Anthony Bourdain, Mario Batali, Jamie Oliver, Martha Stewart, Guy Fieri, Cat Cora: Salkin illuminates the people we thought we knew, and the ones we never knew about, in this irresistible story of  the intersection between business, television, pop culture, food -- and us.

In Stores Now:

Please support your local bookstore.  They need you more than Amazon does.



The New York Nobody Knows: Walking 6,000 Miles in the City
by William B. Helmreich
Princeton University Press
Hardcover

As a kid growing up in Manhattan, William Helmreich played a game with his father they called "Last Stop." They would pick a subway line and ride it to its final destination, and explore the neighborhood there. Decades later, Helmreich teaches university courses about New York, and his love for exploring the city is as strong as ever.

Putting his feet to the test, he decided that the only way to truly understand New York was to walk virtually every block of all five boroughs—an astonishing 6,000 miles. His epic journey lasted four years and took him to every corner of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island. Helmreich spoke with hundreds of New Yorkers from every part of the globe and from every walk of life, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former mayors Rudolph Giuliani, David Dinkins, and Edward Koch. Their stories and his are the subject of this captivating and highly original book.

We meet the Guyanese immigrant who grows beautiful flowers outside his modest Queens residence in order to always remember the homeland he left behind, the Brooklyn-raised grandchild of Italian immigrants who illuminates a window of his brownstone with the family's old neon grocery-store sign, and many, many others. Helmreich draws on firsthand insights to examine essential aspects of urban social life such as ethnicity, gentrification, and the use of space. He finds that to be a New Yorker is to struggle to understand the place and to make a life that is as highly local as it is dynamically cosmopolitan.

Truly unforgettable, The New York Nobody Knows will forever change how you view the world's greatest city.

New Nonfiction Hardcovers This Week:

Ingenious: A True Story of Invention, Automotive Daring, and the Race to Revive America
by Jason Fagone
Crown Publishing
Hardcover

In 2007, the X Prize Foundation announced that it would give $10 million to anyone who could build a safe, mass-producible car that could travel 100 miles on the energy equivalent of a gallon of gas. The challenge attracted more than one hundred teams from all over the world, including dozens of amateurs. Many designed their cars entirely from scratch, rejecting decades of thinking about what a car should look like.

     Jason Fagone follows four of those teams from the build stage to the final race and beyond—into a world in which destiny hangs on a low drag coefficient and a lug nut can be a beautiful talisman. The result is a gripping story of crazy collaboration, absurd risks, colossal hopes, and poignant losses. In an old pole barn in central Illinois, childhood sweethearts hack together an electric-powered dreamboat, using scavenged parts, forging their own steel, and burning through their life savings.  In Virginia, an impassioned entrepreneur and his hand-picked squad of speed freaks pool their imaginations and build a car so light that you can push it across the floor with your thumb. In West Philly, a group of disaffected high school students come into their own as they create a hybrid car with the engine of a Harley motorcycle. And in Southern California, the early favorite—a start-up backed by millions in venture capital—designs a car that looks like an alien egg. 

     Ingenious is a joyride. Fagone takes us into the garages and the minds of the inventors, capturing the fractious yet beautiful process of engineering a bespoke machine. Suspenseful and bighearted, this is the story of ordinary people risking failure, economic ruin, and ridicule to create something vital that Detroit had never pulled off. As the Illinois team wrote in chalk on the wall of their barn, "SOMEBODY HAS TO DO SOMETHING. THAT SOMEBODY IS US."

The Boy Detective: A New York Childhood
by Roger Rosenblatt
Ecco
Hardcover

The Washington Post hailed Roger Rosenblatt's Making Toast as a "textbook on what constitutes perfect writing," and People lauded Kayak Morning as "intimate, expansive and profoundly moving."  Classic tales of love and grief, the New York Times bestselling memoirs are also original literary works that carve out new territory at the intersection of poetry and prose. Now comes The Boy Detective, a story of the author's childhood in New York City, suffused with the same mixture of acute observation and bracing humor, lyricism and wit.

Resisting the deadening silence of his family home in the elegant yet stiflingly safe neighborhood of Gramercy Park, nine-year-old Roger imagines himself a private eye in pursuit of criminals. With the dreamlike mystery of the city before him, he sets off alone, out into the streets of Manhattan, thrilling to a life of unsolved cases. 

Six decades later, Rosenblatt finds himself again patrolling the territory of his youth: The writing class he teaches has just wrapped up, releasing him into the winter night and the very neighborhood in which he grew up. A grown man now, he investigates his own life and the life of the city as he walks, exploring the New York of the 1950s; the lives of the writers who walked these streets before him, such as Poe and Melville; the great detectives of fiction and the essence of detective work; and the monuments of his childhood, such as the New York Public Library, once the site of an immense reservoir that nourished the city with water before it nourished it with books, and the Empire State Building, which, in Rosenblatt's imagination, vibrates sympathetically with the oversize loneliness of King Kong: "If you must fall, fall from me."

As he walks, he is returned to himself, the boy detective on the case. Just as Rosenblatt invented a world for himself as a child, he creates one on this night - the writer a detective still, the chief suspect in the case of his own life, a case that discloses the shared mysteries of all our lives.  A masterly evocation of the city and a meditation on memory as an act of faith. The Boy Detective treads the line between a novel and a poem, displaying a world at once dangerous and beautiful.

Furious Cool: Richard Pryor and the World That Made Him
by David Henry and Joe Henry
Algonquin Books
Hardcover

Richard Pryor was arguably the single most influential performer of the second half of the twentieth century,and certainly he was the most successful black actor/comedian ever. Controversial and somewhat enigmatic in his lifetime, Pryor’s performances opened up a new world of possibilities, merging fantasy with angry reality in a way that wasn’t just new—it was heretofore unthinkable. 

His childhood in Peoria, Illinois, was spent just trying to survive. Yet the culture into which Richard Pryor was born—his mother was a prostitute; his grandmother ran the whorehouse—helped him evolve into one of the most  innovative and outspoken performers ever, a man who attracted admiration and anger in equal parts. Both a brilliant comedian and a very astute judge of what he could get away with, Pryor was always pushing the envelope, combining anger and pathos, outrage and humor, into an art form, laying the groundwork for the generations of comedians who followed, including such outstanding performers as Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, and Louis C.K.

Now, in this groundbreaking and revelatory work, Joe and David Henry bring him to life both as a man and as an artist, providing an in-depth appreciation of his talent and his lasting influence, as well as an insightful examination of the world he lived in and the influences that shaped both his persona and his art. 

This Land That I Love: Irving Berlin, Woody Guthrie, and the Story of Two American Anthems
by John Shaw
Public Affairs
Hardcover

 Near the end of the Great Depression and the beginning of World War II, a homeless Dust Bowl refugee named Woody Guthrie originally drafted "This Land Is Your Land" as an anthem that encompassed the tough realities of those dark times -- and as a rebuttal to Irving Berlin's "God Bless America."  But the song that Guthrie despised had its own complexities. Irving Berlin had risen from homelessness before becoming America's most successful songwriter, and penned his song partly in response to Hitler's rise overseas. 

In This Land That I Love, music-writer and composer John Shaw writes the dual biography of these beloved American songs, at the same time shedding new light on our patriotic musical heritage from "Yankee Doodle" and "The Star-Spangled Banner" to Martin Luther King's quotation of "My Country 'Tis of Thee" on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in August, 1963. Delving into the deeper history of war songs, minstrelsy, ragtime, country music, folk music, and African American spirituals, Shaw unearths a rich vein of half-forgotten patriotic and musical traditions. With the aid of new archival research, he uncovers new details about the songs' composition, including a never-before-printed verse for "This Land Is Your Land."  The result is a fascinating narrative that refracts and re-envisions America's tumultuous history through the prism of two unforgettable anthems.

This is the Story of a Happy Marriage
by Ann Patchett
Harper 
Hardcover

Blending literature and memoir, Ann Patchett, author of State of  Wonder, Run, and Bel Canto, examines her deepest commitments—to writing, family, friends, dogs, books, and her husband—creating a resonant portrait of a life in This is the Story of a Happy Marriage. 

This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage takes us into the very real world of Ann Patchett’s life. Stretching from her childhood to the present day, from a disastrous early marriage to a later happy one, it covers a multitude of topics, including relationships with family and friends, and charts the hard work and joy of writing, and the unexpected thrill of opening a bookstore. 

As she shares stories of the people, places, ideals, and art to which she has remained indelibly committed, Ann Patchett brings into focus the large experiences and small moments that have shaped her as a daughter, wife, and writer. 

The New York Times bestselling author of State of Wonder, Run, and Bel Cantocreates a resonant portrait of a life in this collection of writings on love, friendship, work, and art.
"The tricky thing about being a writer, or about being any kind of artist, is that in addition to making art you also have to make a living." 

So begins This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage, an examination of the things Ann Patchett is fully committed to—the art and craft of writing, the depths of friendship, an elderly dog, and one spectacular nun. Writing nonfiction, which started off as a means of keeping her insufficiently lucrative fiction afloat, evolved over time to be its own kind of art, the art of telling the truth as opposed to the art of making things up. Bringing her narrative gifts to bear on her own life, Patchett uses insight and compassion to turn very personal experiences into stories that will resonate with every reader. 

These essays twine to create both a portrait of life and a philosophy of life. Obstacles that at first appear insurmountable—scaling a six-foot wall in order to join the Los Angeles Police Department, opening an independent bookstore, and sitting down to write a novel—are eventually mastered with quiet tenacity and a sheer force of will. The actual happy marriage, which was the one thing she felt she wasn't capable of, ultimately proves to be a metaphor as well as a fact: Patchett has devoted her life to the people and ideals she loves the most.

An irresistible blend of literature and memoir, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage is a unique examination of the heart, mind, and soul of one of our most revered and gifted writers. 

New Nonfiction Paperbacks This Week:

How I Slept My Way to the Middle: Secrets and Stories from Stage, Screen, and Interwebs
by Kevin Pollak
Lyons Press
Trade Paperback

Kevin Pollak rose through the comedy club ranks at the feet of Don Rickles and Bill Cosby, Johnny Carson and George Carlin. Named one of Comedy Central’s Top 100 Stand-Up Comedians of All Time, he’s a killer impressionist—Falk, Shatner, Walken, Nicholson—a versatile actor with one of the most respected filmographies around, and an Internet pioneer. He’s done it all, and now he’s ready to spill the beans.

             Ballsy, hilarious, and revealing, How I Slept My Way to the Middle winningly combines never-before-heard stories featuring A-list entertainers with fan favorites and Kevin’s own thoughts about how he made it. He turned down his first invitation to do stand-up on The Tonight Show because he knew that he’d make a bigger impact if he sat on the couch next to Johnny. That huge risk—which paid off in spades—was just the beginning. Find out how he brought John Belushi to his knees, tortured Paul Reiser (twice), bamboozled Larry King, stole Alan Arkin’s soul, almost killed Warren Beatty, and sucked face with Robert DeNiro’s girlfriend. Now a new media entrepreneur, he’s laughing proof that if you follow your gut and believe in yourself, you can do anything you want—except have a rational conversation with Rip Torn, who’s an evil, paranoid $#!%.

Writing Is My Drink: A Writer's Story of Finding Her Voice (and a Guide to How You Can Too)
by Theo Pauline Nestor
Simon & Schuster
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"Theo Nestor is a writer who, I am positive, will be heard from," wrote Pulitzer Prize-winning author Frank McCourt, and hear from her we do in this enthralling memoir that doubles as a witty and richly told writing guide. Yet the real promise in Writing Is My Drink lies in Nestor's uncanny ability as a storyteller and teacher to make sure we'll also hear from you, the reader. Brimming with stories from her own writing life, and paired with practical "Try This" sections designed to challenge and inspire, this disarmingly candid account of a writer's search for her voice delivers charming, wise, and often hilarious guidance that will motivate writers at every stage of their careers.

The Ultimate Book of Impostors: Over 100 True Stories of the Greatest Phonies and Frauds
by Ian Graham
Sourcebooks
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Think You Know Who Your Friends Are?  

Think again... 

From Mata Hari to D. B. Cooper, history is littered with people pretending to be someone else. Some go undetected for years, cultivating their false identities so skillfully, even their spouses don't know. Other frauds go up in flames after one misstep. The Ultimate Book of Impostors presents the astonishing true stories behind over one hundred of the craziest and funniest phonies in history, including: 

•A fake French government official who managed to sell the Eiffel Tower—twice 

•One of the Wild West's toughest and more admired "male" stagecoach drivers, who was actually a woman! 

•An Israeli Mossad team that stole the identities of real British and Australian citizens to trap an unsuspecting target for assassination 

Packed with fun facts and outrageous accounts of fake pilots, phony princesses, imitation Indians, and serial sham artists, this irresistible book exposes the truth behind the world's wildest fraud—and why they did it—and reveals that even those we think we know best may not be exactly who they seem.