BookSpin Giveaway!

The Curmudgeon's Guide to Getting Ahead: Dos and Don't of Right Behavior, Tough Thinking, Clear Writing, and Living a Good Life
Charles Murray
Crown Business
Hardcover



Crown Publishing has graciously provided several copies of The Curmudgeon's Guide… to giveaway on BookSpin.  In order to enter to win, tweet to me your favorite curmudgeon OR simply retweet my tweets about the giveaway. My twitter name is @Book_Dude.  U.S. entries only, please.



From the publisher's website:

As bestselling author and social historian Charles Murray explains, at senior levels of an organization there are curmudgeons everywhere, judging your every move. Yet it is their good opinion you need to win if you hope to get ahead.

Among the curmudgeon’s day-to-day tips for the workplace:

• Excise the word “like” from your spoken English
• Don’t suck up
• Stop “reaching out” and “sharing”
• Rid yourself of piercings, tattoos, and weird hair colors
• Make strong language count

His larger career advice includes:

• What to do if you have a bad boss
• Coming to grips with the difference between being nice and being good
• How to write when you don’t know what to say
• Being judgmental (it’s good, and you don’t have a choice anyway)

And on the great topics of life, the curmudgeon urges us to leave home no matter what, get real jobs (not internships), put ourselves in scary situations, and watch Groundhog Day repeatedly (he’ll explain).

Witty, wise, and pulling no punches, The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Getting Ahead is an indispensable sourcebook for living an adult life.

On My Radar:

Will Not Attend: Lively Stories of Detachment and Isolation
Adam Resnick
Blue Rider Press
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Adam Resnick, an Emmy Award-winning writer for NBC’s Late Night with David Letterman, has spent his entire life trying to avoid interaction with people. While courageously admitting to being “euphorically antisocial” and “sick in the head,” he allows us to plunge even deeper into his troubled psyche in this unabashedly uproarious memoir-in-essays where we observe Resnick’s committed indifference to family, friends, strangers, and the world at large. His mind shaped by such touchstone events as a traumatic Easter egg hunt when he was six (which solidified his hatred of parties) and overwrought by obsessions, including one with a plastic shopping bag (which solidified his hatred for change), he refuses to be burdened by chores like basic social obligation and personal growth, living instead by his own steadfast rule: “I refuse to do anything I don’t want to do.”

Cut from a similar (if somewhat stranger) cloth as Albert Brooks or Louis C.K., Resnick is the crazy, miserable bastard you can’t help rooting for, and the brilliant Will Not Attend showcases this seasoned comedy writer at his brazenly hilarious best.

On My Radar:

The Lost Notebook: Herman Schultheis & the Secrets of Walt Disney's Movie Magic
John Canemaker
Weldon Owen
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

A technician at the Disney Studio in the late 1930s, Schultheis kept a covert scrapbook of special effects wizardry, capturing in photographs and text the dazzling, behind-the-scenes ingenuity of early Disney films. Later, when he mysteriously disappeared into a Guatemalan jungle, his notebook was forgotten ... and with it, the stories of how these beloved animated classics were made.

Miraculously unearthed in a chest of drawers in 1990, Schultheis's notebook is now available for all to see at the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco—and in this compelling and beautiful book. Part annotated facsimile of the scrapbook itself, part biography of the complicated, overly ambitious man who made it, The Lost Notebook is a goldmine for Disney and animation enthusiasts and a vivid, riveting account of one man's plight to make it big in early Hollywood.

First Look at John Canemaker's Amazing Disney History "The Lost Notebook" ( cartoon brew.com )

On My Radar:

Petty Theft
Pascal Girard
Drawn & Quarterly
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:


Pascal's in a bad place. He's out of work, he and his longtime girlfriend have just broken up, and when he goes out for a run to ease his frazzled nerves, he falls and injures his back so badly, he's strictly forbidden from running. What's an endorphin-loving cartoonist to do? In a bid to distract himself, Pascal throws himself into his other pleasure: reading. And while at the bookstore one day, he spies a young woman picking up his own book. But then she darts out of the shop without paying. Bemused, he decides to figure out why she did it.

Petty Theft is a comedy of errors, a laugh-out-loud account of a man on a mission, and a heavily fictionalized memoir about the addictiveness of book-ownership. Pascal Girard intermingles an all-too-true-to-life snapshot of contemporary relationships with slapstick trials and dryly funny tribulations in this delightfully readable book.

From the award-winning author of Reunion, Petty Theft is a deftly told, finely drawn contemporary romance that will keep book lovers on the edge of their seats from the first page until the book's denouement.

BookSpin Giveaway!

Bourbon: A History of the American Spirit
Dane Huckelbridge
William Morrow Books
Hardcover

William Morrow Books has graciously allocated several copies of BOURBON for giveaway.  What's even better is they are SIGNED copies!  To enter to win, retweet my tweets about the giveaway.  My twitter name is @Book_Dude.  U.S. entries only, please.



From the publisher's website:

Few products are so completely or intimately steeped in the American story as bourbon whiskey. As Dane Huckelbridge's masterfully crafted history reveals, the iconic amber spirit is the American experience, distilled, aged, and sealed in a bottle.

Bourbon's essential ingredient, corn, is indigenous to the Americas and had been fermented by its native peoples for centuries. At Jamestown, the earliest colonists applied their old-world distilling know-how to produce the first corn-based whiskey. After winning the American Revolution, George Washington turned his attention to establishing one of the new nation's largest distilling operations at his estate, Mount Vernon, making him a Founding Father of both the United States and American whiskey. Whiskey-swilling Scots-Irish immigrants had perfected bourbon's recipe in the rugged oak forests of the Appalachian frontier by the early nineteenth century. Kentucky-born Abe Lincoln received a liquor license in 1833 before turning his attention to politics; during the Civil War, soldiers on both sides liberally imbibed before, during, and after battle. Then, in cowboy saloons and gambling halls of the late-nineteenth century, bourbon put the wild in Wild West.

During the early twentieth century, Prohibition fa-mously sought to curtail America's drinking but instead expanded alcohol's reach as speakeasies run by gangsters and bootleggers welcomed women and made drinking more fashionable than ever. Bourbon-consumption reached record heights—both at home and abroad—as America came of age as a superpower after World War II and labels like Jack Daniel's and Jim Beam emerged as global brands on par with Coca-Cola. Just as bourbon fueled the novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, and Ernest Hemingway during the first half of the twentieth century, the 1960s and beyond saw rock-and-roll bands and country stars knocking back bottles of Old Grand-Dad and reclaiming bourbon's unruly reputation. Today the story has come full circle with a renewed appreciation of craft-distilled whiskey produced in small batches, much as it was 150 years ago.

Bourbon has been at turns rebellious and traditional, liberating and destructive, regional and global; to know it is to understand the American story. Crack open Bourbon, and come along for the ride.

In My TBR Stack:

Brothers Forever: The Enduring Bond Between a Marine and a Navy SEAL that Transcended Their Ultimate Sacrifice
Tom Sileo and Col. Tom Manion, USMC (Ret.)
DaCapo Press
Hardcover


From the book publicity:

Four weeks after Navy SEALs had killed Osama bin Laden, the President of the United States stood in Arlington National Cemetery. In his Memorial Day address, he extolled the courage and sacrifice of the two young men buried side by side in the graves before him: Travis Manion, a fallen US Marine, and Brendan Looney, a fallen US Navy SEAL. Although they were killed three years apart, one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, these two best friends and former roommates were now buried together—“brothers forever.”

Award-winning journalist Tom Sileo and Travis’s father, former Marine colonel Tom Manion, tell the intimate and

personal story of how these Naval Academy roommates defined a generation's sacrifice after 9/11, and how Travis and Brendan's loved ones overcame heartbreak to carry on in their memory. From Travis's incredible heroism on the streets of Fallujah to Brendan's anguished Navy SEAL training in the wake of his friend's death and his own heroism in the mountains of Afghanistan, Brothers Forever is a remarkable story of friendship, family, and war.

Parade magazine is running a feature on Travis and Brendan this weekend. You can read that article here.

In My TBR Stack:

Auto Biography: A Classic Car, an Outlaw Motorhead, and 57 Years of the American Dream
Earl Swift
It Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

An unforgettable ode to American car culture, award-winning author Earl Swift's wise, funny, and captivating narrative follows an outlaw-genius motor head as he attempts to restore an iconic 1957 Chevy from rusted-out wreck to gleaming, chromed work of American art—before the FBI closes in.

A classic '57 Chevy, in wretched shape: Its surviving paint is sun-bleached, salt-pocked, and cracked like a dry lakebed. Its engine hasn't turned over in years. Slumped among hundreds of other rusting hulks on a windswept patch of eastern North Carolina, the Chevy evokes none of the Jet Age optimism that made it the most beloved and instantly recognizable car to ever roll off an assembly line.

But for its unlikely rescuer—a felon arrested seventy-odd times, and a man who's been written off as a ruin himself—the Chevy isn't junk, it's a fossil of the twentieth-century American experience, of a people devoted to and forever changed by the automobile. For Tommy Arney, it's a piece of history, especially so because its decrepit skin conceals a rare asset: a complete provenance, stretching back more than fifty years through twelve previous owners. So, hassled by banks and the FBI, the Chevy's thirteenth owner embarks on a mission to save the car and preserve the long record of human experience it carries with it—before his own volatile demons doom him and the car.

Earl Swift's masterful narrative charts the shifting dreams and fortunes of the people who've gripped this endangered icon's steering wheel, and in the process captures America's strange and abiding relationship with the automobile as no book has before.

On My Radar:

Annals of Unsolved Crime
Edward Jay Epstein
Melville House
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

Edward Jay Epstein’s book on the Kennedy assassination Inquest: The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth was the first book on the case and an instant bestseller. After speaking to every member of the Warren Commission, Epstein concluded that enough remained uninvestigated that conspiracy theories would persist for years.

Ever since, Epstein has remained a skeptic — and a dogged investigator. Writing for the New Yorker and Vanity Fair, he has reported on dozens of famous crimes. His books include a dissection of Lee Harvey Oswald’s ties to Soviet intelligence (Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald), an account of Nixon-era crimes (Agency of Fear), a widely-respected study of the CIA (Deception: The Invisible War Between the KGB & the CIA), and a study of surveillance tapes of Dominique Strauss-Kahn (Three Days in May).

His method is simple: outline what is known and unknown, and show the plausible theories of the case. Where more than one theory exists, he shows the evidence for and against each. And when something remains to be proved, he says as much. In The Annals of Unsolved Crime, Epstein collects his investigations and adds dozens of new cases. From the Lindbergh Kidnapping to the JonBenet Ramsey case, from the Lincoln assassination and the death of Simon Bolivar to the demise of Marilyn Monroe, Epstein considers more than two dozen high-profile crimes and  their tangled histories to prove himself one of the most penetrating journalist in America.

BookSpin Giveaway!

JFK Jr., George, and Me: A Memoir
Matt Berman
Gallery Books
Hardcover


Gallery Books has graciously provided several copies of JFK Jr. George, and Me to give away on BookSpin.  To enter to win, tweet me at @Book_Spin with your choice of a non-politician that you would like to see run for president or just retweet my tweets about the book giveaway.  U.S. entries only, please.


From the publisher's website:

If George magazine was about “not just politics as usual,” a day at the office with John F. Kennedy Jr. was not just business as usual. John handpicked Creative Director Matt Berman to bring his vision for a new political magazine to life. Through marathon nights leading up to George’s launch; extraordinary meetings with celebrities including Barbra Streisand, Robert De Niro, and Demi Moore; and jokes at each other’s expense, Matt developed a wonderfully collaborative and fun-loving relationship with America’s favorite son.

They were an unlikely team: the poised, charismatic scion of a beloved political family and the shy, self-deprecating, artistic kid. Yet they became close friends and confidants. In this warm, funny, and intimate book, Matt remembers his brilliant friend and colleague—John’s approach to work, life, and fame, and most of all, his ease and grace, which charmed those around him.

More than any book before it, JFK Jr., George, & Me reveals the friendly, witty, down-to-earth guy the paparazzi could never capture. Matt opens the doors of John’s messy office to share previously untold stories, personal notes, and never-before-seen photos from the trenches of a startup magazine that was the brainchild of a superstar. John helped Matt navigate a world filled with celebrities, artists, beauty, style, competition, and stunningly tender egos. In turn, Matt shares the invaluable lessons about business and life that he learned from John. What emerges is a portrait of JFK Jr. as a true friend and mentor.

On My Radar:

The Price of Justice: A True Story of Greed and Corruption
Laurence Leamer
St. Martin's Griffin
Trade Paperback


From the publisher's website:

Don Blankenship, head of Massey Energy since the early 1990s, ran an industry that provides nearly half of America’s electric power. But wealth and influence weren’t enough for Blankenship and his company, as they set about destroying corporate and personal rivals, challenging the Constitution, purchasing the West Virginia judiciary, and willfully disregarding safety standards in the company’s mines—in which scores died unnecessarily.

As Blankenship hobnobbed with a West Virginia Supreme Court justice in France, his company polluted the drinking water of hundreds of citizens while he himself fostered baroque vendettas against anyone who dared challenge his sovereignty over coal mining country. Just about the only thing that stood in the way of Blankenship’s tyranny over a state and an industry was a pair of odd-couple attorneys, Dave Fawcett and Bruce Stanley, who undertook a legal quest to bring justice to this corner of America. From the backwoods courtrooms of West Virginia they pursued their case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and to a dramatic decision declaring that the wealthy and powerful are not entitled to purchase their own brand of law.

The Price of Justice is a story of corporate corruption so far-reaching and devastating it could have been written a hundred years ago by Ida Tarbell or Lincoln Steffens. And as Laurence Leamer demonstrates in this captivating tale, because it’s true, it’s scarier than fiction.

On My Radar:

Another Great Day at Sea: Life Aboard the USS George H.W. Bush

Geoff Dyer

Pantheon

Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

As a child Geoff Dyer spent long hours making and blotchily painting model fighter planes. So the adult Dyer jumped at the chance of a residency aboard an aircraft carrier. Another Great Day at Sea chronicles Dyer’s experiences on the USS George H.W. Bush as he navigates the routines and protocols of “carrier-world,” from the elaborate choreography of the flight deck through miles of walkways and hatches to kitchens serving meals for a crew of five thousand to the deafening complexity of catapult and arresting gear. Meeting the Captain, the F-18 pilots and the dentists, experiencing everything from a man-overboard alert to the Steel Beach Party, Dyer guides us through the most AIE (acronym intensive environment) imaginable.

A lanky Englishman (could he really be both the tallest and the oldest person on the ship?) in a deeply American world, with its constant exhortations to improve, to do better, Dyer brilliantly records the daily life on board the ship, revealing it to be a prism for understanding a society where discipline and conformity, dedication and optimism, become forms of self-expression. In the process it becomes clear why Geoff Dyer has been widely praised as one of the most original—and funniest—voices in literature.

Another Great Day at Sea is the definitive work of an author whose books defy definition.

BookSpin Giveaway!

The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames
Kai Bird
Crown Publishing
Hardcover

 Crown Publishing has graciously provided one copy of THE GOOD SPY for giveaway on BookSpin.  To enter to win, retweet my tweets about the book.  My twitter name is @Book_Dude.  U.S. entries only, please. 


BookDude Review:

THE GOOD SPY is a "don't-want-to-put-down" thriller.  We all have those books, fiction or nonfiction, that, while we are reading them, we are simultaneously casting the movie in our head.  We are picturing which Hollywood stars we would cast in the movie made from the book.  THE GOOD SPY is why I read nonfiction.  The story of Robert Ames demands to be told and is as well researched, as powerful, and as complex as any spy fiction ever written.  Buy this book; read this book.  Cast your own Hollywood version.

From the publisher's website:

The Good Spy is Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Kai Bird’s compelling portrait of the remarkable life and death of one of the most important operatives in CIA history – a man who, had he lived, might have helped heal the rift between Arabs and the West.

On April 18, 1983, a bomb exploded outside the American Embassy in Beirut, killing 63 people.  The attack was a geopolitical turning point. It marked the beginning of Hezbollah as a political force, but even more important, it eliminated America’s most influential and effective intelligence officer in the Middle East – CIA operative Robert Ames.  What set Ames apart from his peers was his extraordinary ability to form deep, meaningful connections with key Arab intelligence figures. Some operatives relied on threats and subterfuge, but Ames worked by building friendships and emphasizing shared values – never more notably than with Yasir Arafat’s charismatic intelligence chief and heir apparent Ali Hassan Salameh (aka “The Red Prince”). Ames’ deepening relationship with Salameh held the potential for a lasting peace.  Within a few years, though, both men were killed by assassins, and America’s relations with the Arab world began heading down a path that culminated in 9/11, the War on Terror, and the current fog of mistrust.

Bird, who as a child lived in the Beirut Embassy and knew Ames as a neighbor when he was twelve years old, spent years researching The Good Spy.  Not only does the book draw on hours of interviews with Ames’ widow, and quotes from hundreds of Ames’ private letters, it’s woven from interviews with scores of current and former American, Israeli, and Palestinian intelligence officers as well as other players in the Middle East “Great Game.”

What emerges is a masterpiece-level narrative of the making of a CIA officer, a uniquely insightful history of twentieth-century conflict in the Middle East, and an absorbing hour-by-hour account of the Beirut Embassy bombing.  Even more impressive, Bird draws on his reporter’s skills to deliver a full dossier on the bombers and expose the shocking truth of where the attack’s mastermind resides today.

In My TBR Stack:

Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution
Nathaniel Philbrick
Penguin
Trade paperback


From the publisher's website:

Boston in 1775 is an island city occupied by British troops after a series of incendiary incidents by patriots who range from sober citizens to thuggish vigilantes. After the Boston Tea Party, British and American soldiers and Massachusetts residents  have warily maneuvered around each other until April 19, when violence finally erupts at Lexington and Concord.  In June, however, with the city cut off from supplies by a British blockade and Patriot militia poised in siege, skirmishes give way to outright war in the Battle of Bunker Hill. It would be the bloodiest battle of the Revolution to come, and the point of no return for the rebellious colonists.

Philbrick brings a fresh perspective to every aspect of the story. He finds new characters, and new facets to familiar ones. The real work of choreographing rebellion falls to a thirty-three year old physician named Joseph Warren who emerges as the on-the-ground leader of the Patriot cause and is fated to die at Bunker Hill. Others in the cast include Paul Revere, Warren’s fiancé the poet Mercy Scollay, a newly recruited George Washington, the reluctant British combatant General Thomas Gage and his more bellicose successor William Howe, who leads the three charges at Bunker Hill and presides over the claustrophobic cauldron of a city under siege as both sides play a nervy game of brinkmanship for control.

With passion and insight, Philbrick reconstructs the revolutionary landscape—geographic and ideological—in a mesmerizing narrative of the robust, messy, blisteringly real origins of America. 

BookSpin Giveaway!

The Dylanologists: Adventures in the Land of Bob
David Kinney
Simon & Schuster
Hardcover

Simon & Schuster has graciously provided several copies of THE DYLANOLOGISTS for giveaway on BookSpin. To enter to win, tweet your favorite Bob Dylan song to me. My twitter name is @Book_Dude. U.S. entries only, please.


From the publisher's website:

Bob Dylan is the most influential songwriter of our time and, after a half century, he remains a cultural touchstone, an enigma, and the subject of endless fascination. From the moment he arrived on the music scene, he attracted an intensely fanatical cult following, and in the Dylanologists, Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist David Kinney ventures deep into this eccentric subculture to answer a question: What can Dylan's grip on his most enthusiastic listeners tell us about his towering place in American culture?

Kinney introduces us to a vibrant underground: diggers searching for unheard tapes and lost manuscripts, researchers obsessing over the facts of Dylan's life and career, writers working to decode unyieldingly mysterious songs, road warriors who meticulously record and dissect every concert. It's an affectionate mania, but as far as Dylan is concerned, a mania nonetheless. Over the years, the intensely private and fiercely combative musician has been frightened, annoyed, and perplexed by fans to try to peel back his layers. He has made at least one thing crystal clear: He does not wish to be known.

The story of Dylan's followers is also a revealing portrait of the artist himself. Here, reflected in the fans he inspired and the cultural movements he helped create, is every twist and turn in a career that has swerved from lefty activist to ultra-hip spokesman for a generation to woodsy recluse, from secular storyteller to fire-breathing Christian evangelist, from punch line to elder statesman. Dylan may refuse to explain himself to his followers, but their lives have become mirrors of his so profoundly are their stories intertwined. 

Told with tremendous insight, intelligence, and warmth, by turns funny and affecting. The Dylanologists is ultimately a book about our universal quest for meaning. It is populated by characters both legendary and obscure, from aging hippies to idealistic twenty somethings and everyone in between - a young woman who, stirred by Dylan, attends law school and becomes a public defender; a man who crams his New York City apartment with memorabilia, transforming it into a pilgrimage spot for Dylan fanatics; a woman inspired by her hero's redemptive music to go clean after years of drug use. Here is a joyous, soulful, and poignant exploration of the origins and meaning of fandom, the healing power of art, and the importance of embracing what moves you, whatever that may be.

On My Radar:

The Longest Road: Overland in Search of America, from Key West to the Arctic Ocean
Philip Caputo
Picador
Trade Paperback


From the publisher's website:

Standing on a wind-scoured island off the Alaskan coast, Philip Caputo marveled that its Inupiat Eskimo schoolchildren pledge allegiance to the same flag as the children of Cuban immigrants in Key West, six thousand miles away. And a question began to take shape: How does the United States, peopled by every race on earth, remain united? Caputo resolved that one day he'd drive from the nation's southernmost point to the northernmost point reachable by road, talking to Americans about their lives and asking how they would answer his question.

Caputo, his wife, and their two English steers made their way in a truck and classic trailer (hereafter known as "Fred" and "Ethel") from Key West, Florida, to Deadhorse, Alaska, covering sixteen thousand miles. He spoke to everyone from a West Virginia couple saving souls to a Native American shaman and taco entrepreneur. What he found is a story that will entertain and inspire readers as much as it informs them about the state of today's United States, the glue that holds us all together, and the conflicts that could pull us apart.

On My Radar:

Think Like A Freak: The Authors of Freakonomics Offer to Retrain Your Brain
Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
William Morrow
Hardcover


From the publisher's website:

The New York Times bestselling Freakonomics changed the way we see the world, exposing the hidden side of just about everything. Then came SuperFreakonomics, a documentary film, an award-winning podcast, and more.

Now, with Think Like a Freak, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner have written their most revolutionary book yet. With their trademark blend of captivating storytelling and unconventional analysis, they take us inside their thought process and teach us all to think a bit more productively, more creatively, more rationally—to think, that is, like a Freak.

Levitt and Dubner offer a blueprint for an entirely new way to solve problems, whether your interest lies in minor lifehacks or major global reforms. As always, no topic is off-limits. They range from business to philanthropy to sports to politics, all with the goal of retraining your brain. Along the way, you'll learn the secrets of a Japanese hot-dog-eating champion, the reason an Australian doctor swallowed a batch of dangerous bacteria, and why Nigerian e-mail scammers make a point of saying they're from Nigeria.

Some of the steps toward thinking like a Freak:

• First, put away your moral compass—because it's hard to see a problem clearly if you've already decided what to do about it.
• Learn to say "I don't know"—for until you can admit what you don't yet know, it's virtually impossible to learn what you need to.
• Think like a child—because you'll come up with better ideas and ask better questions.
• Take a master class in incentives—because for better or worse, incentives rule our world.
• Learn to persuade people who don't want to be persuaded—because being right is rarely enough to carry the day.
• Learn to appreciate the upside of quitting—because you can't solve tomorrow's problem if you aren't willing to abandon today's dud.

Levitt and Dubner plainly see the world like no one else. Now you can too. Never before have such iconoclastic thinkers been so revealing—and so much fun to read.

On My Radar:

Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation
Blake J. Harris
It Books
Hardcover


From the publisher's website:

A mesmerizing, behind-the-scenes business thriller that chronicles how Sega, a small, scrappy gaming company led by an unlikely visionary and a team of rebels, took on the juggernaut Nintendo and revolutionized the video game industry—in development as a feature film from Sony Pictures

In 1990, Nintendo had a virtual monopoly on the videogame industry. Sega, on the other hand, was just a faltering arcade company with big aspirations and even bigger personalities. But all that would change with the arrival of Tom Kalinske, a former Mattel executive who knew nothing about videogames and everything about fighting uphill battles. His unconventional tactics, combined with the blood, sweat, and bold ideas of his renegade employees, completely transformed Sega and led to a ruthless, David-and-Goliath showdown with Nintendo. Little did he realize that Sega's success would create many new enemies and, most important, make Nintendo stronger than ever.

The battle was vicious, relentless, and highly profitable, eventually sparking a global corporate war that would be fought on several fronts: from living rooms and school yards to boardrooms and Congress. It was a once-in-a-lifetime, no-holds-barred conflict that pitted brother against brother, kid against adult, Sonic against Mario, and the United States against Japan.

Based on more than two hundred interviews with former Sega and Nintendo employees, Console Wars is the tale of how Tom Kalinske miraculously turned an industry punch line into a market leader. Blake J. Harris brings into focus the warriors, the strategies, and the battles and explores how they transformed popular culture forever. Ultimately, Console Wars is the story of how a humble family man, with an extraordinary imagination and a gift for turning problems into competitive advantages, inspired a team of underdogs to slay a giant and, as a result, give birth to a sixty-billion-dollar industry.

On My Radar:

Dogfight at the Pentagon: Sergeant Dogs, Grumpy Cats, Wallflower Wingmen, and Other Lunacy from the Wall Street Journal's A-Hed Column
Wall Street Journal
Harper Perennial
Trade Paperback

Discover the story behind these and more in this delightful collection of the wild, the weird, and the wonderful, culled from The Wall Street Journal's popular and long-standing A-Hed column.

One of the The Wall Street Journal's most popular features for more than seventy years, the daily A-Hed column—named for a headline that looked like a letter A—has diverted readers from the more glum news of war, economic woe, natural disasters, and man-made malfeasance. Covering a wide range of lunacy and the unusual from across the nation and the world, the A-Hed continues to enchant longtime readers.

Now, the best A-Hed stories from recent years have been bundled into this entertaining volume. There are romantic tales, including the Japanese "infidelity phone" (it keeps trysts secret) and the story of "wingmen" and "wingwomen" who escort wallflowers to nightspots and maneuver them into the arms of prospective catches. Lovers of dogs, cats, and fish will learn how a Marine Corps bulldog got promoted to sergeant, how a grumpy cat acquired a Hollywood agent, and will be left wondering if a sixty-three-pound carp named Benson died of natural causes in England—or was the victim of foul play. Funny, moving, and charming, these stories will make you laugh and keep you entertained.

Guest Post

Throwback: A Big-League Catcher Tells How the Game is Really Played
Jason Kendall and Lee Judge
St. Martins Press
Hardcover


Guest post by author Lee Judge give insight as to what is really happening on the baseball diamond.

Borderline pitches 

If you do get a pitch on the black, you might move a little farther off the plate, just to see what the umpire will give you: how far will he go? Strike zones have changed a lot because of the technology involved. Umpires are now getting monitored on balls and strikes. They’ve got umpire supervisors at the games. But as a catcher, you go as far as you can: you gave me that pitch I’m going to move a little farther out and see if I can get this one. The hitter won’t like it. He’ll talk to the umpire too: “Where was that pitch? Are you kidding me, Bob? That ball’s out.” 

After that, I’m going farther out because Bob is now starting to get pissed at the hitter. I can be off the plate, but if the pitcher hits the glove? It’s a strike. If the hitter and the umpire start bitching at each other, I set up farther outside the zone. If the ball hits my glove, whether it’s in the zone or off the plate, I’m getting that call. 

It doesn’t really matter if the umpire is calling strikes off the plate as long as he’s being fair to both teams: if he calls it both ways—then it is what it is. But if the hitter talks shit, you keep moving out: farther and farther. A lot of the older players will start complaining: “Are kidding me? What the hell is going on?”  

If I’m behind the plate, I’ll just say: “Hey, keep calling that shit, Bob, it’s perfect.” 

Testing the rookies 

Here’s another situation a catcher can use to his advantage: umpires like to test the young guys. If you’re a rookie and you get rung up on a ball a foot outside, you shut up and get your ass back in the dugout. If you say anything, the umpire’s going to come right back at you: “What did you say?” 

All rookies get tested; they need to pay their dues and earn their stripes. If a borderline call does not go a rookie’s way, everybody watches to see how the rookie reacts: does he keep their mouth shut or act like a jackass? If a rookie shoots his mouth off, it gets around the league real quick—this dude’s act is tired, he thinks he’s bigger than the game—and everybody will be a little harder on him.  

Catchers can use that: if you know the umpires don’t like this kid, a catcher can make it worse. Set up off the plate and see if you get the call. If the kid says anything or shoots the umpire a dirty look, ask the umpire if he’s going to let the kid get away with that: “Bob, did you see what he just did? You gonna let him do that to you?” I’d egg the umpire on. I’d even do it if a rookie asked where a pitch was: “Bob, he’s got 30 days in the big leagues—you think he’s got enough time in to ask you where that pitch is?” 

After that, we’ll go off the plate even more. Trust me: Albert Pujols gets a different strike zone than Bryce Harper.

- - - - - - - - - - -

From the publisher's website:

America’s pastime has always left fans and amateur players alike yearning for the answers to questions about how pros play the game.

Jason Kendall is an All-Star catcher who has seen just about everything during his years with the Pittsburgh Pirates, Oakland Athletics, Chicago Cubs, Milwaukee Brewers, and Kansas City Royals. He’s a player’s player, a guy with true grit--a throwback to another time with a unique view on the game that so many love.

Reminiscent of such classics as BALL FOUR and MEN AT WORK, Jason Kendall and sportswriter Lee Judge team up to bring you the fan, player, coach, or curious statistician an insider’s view of the game from a player’s perspective.  This is a book about pre-game rituals, what to look for when a pitcher warms up between innings, the signs a catcher uses to communicate with the pitcher, and so much more.

Some of baseball wisdom you will find inside:

* What to look for during batting practice.

* The right way to hit a batter.

* Who’s a tough guy and who’s just posing.

* How to spot a dirty slide.

* Why you don’t look at the umpire while you’re arguing.

Based on Kendall’s 15 years of professional MLB experience, THROWBACK is an informative, hilarious, and illuminating look into the world of professional baseball—and in a way that no one has ever seen before.

BookSpin Giveaway!

A Nice Little Place on the North Side: Wrigley Field at One Hundred
George F. Will
Crown Archetype
Hardcover

Crown Publishing has graciously made several copies of A Nice Little Place on the North Side available to BookSpin readers as a giveaway.  To enter, please retweet my tweets about the giveaway.  My twitter name is @Book_Dude.  U.S. entries only.


Excerpt from A Nice Little Place on the North Side


From the publisher's website:

In A Nice Little Place on the North Side, leading columnist George Will returns to baseball with a deeply personal look at his hapless Chicago Cubs and their often beatified home, Wrigley Field, as it turns one hundred years old. Baseball, Will argues, is full of metaphors for life, religion, and happiness, and Wrigley is considered one of its sacred spaces. But what is its true, hyperbole-free history?

Winding beautifully like Wrigley’s iconic ivy, Will’s meditation on “The Friendly Confines” examines both the unforgettable stories that forged the field’s legend and the larger-than-life characters—from Wrigley and Ruth to Veeck, Durocher, and Banks—who brought it glory, heartbreak, and scandal. Drawing upon his trademark knowledge and inimitable sense of humor, Will also explores his childhood connections to the team, the Cubs’ future, and what keeps long-suffering fans rooting for the home team after so many years of futility. 

In the end, A Nice Little Place on the North Side is more than just the history of a ballpark. It is the story of Chicago, of baseball, and of America itself.

In My TBR Stack:

1000 Feelings for Which There Are No Names
Mario Giordano
Illustrated by Ray Fenwick
Penguin USA
Trade Paperback


From the publisher's website:

They amaze us and hurt us, bring us to tears and make us laugh, delight us and keep us up at night: feelings that we know only too well, but which have eluded the English lexicon for so long. In 1,000 Feelings for Which There Are No Names, author Mario Giordano catalogs those familiar emotions.

Perfect for cocktail parties, quiet reflection, daily inspiration, or travel entertainment, this delightful compendium is broken up into helpful sections that will fit your every mood, such as “Afternoon Feelings,” “Nerd Feelings,” “Heaven-help-me Feelings,” or the somewhat more nebulous “Tangerine Feelings.” Or try opening a page at random to help kiss writer’s block goodbye. Don’t forget to add your own feelings in the back of the book (before they get away!) and share with others.

In My TBR Stack:

Alex's Wake: A Voyage of Betrayal and a Journey of Remembrance
Martin Goldsmith
Da Capo Press
Hardcover


From the book jacket:

Alex's Wake is a tale of two parallel journeys undertaken seven decades apart. In the spring of 1939, Alex and Helmut Goldschmidt were two of more than 900 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany aboard the St. Louis, "the saddest ship afloat" (New York Times). Turned away from Cuba, the United States, and Canada, the St. Louis returned to Europe, a stark symbol of the world's indifference to the gathering Holocaust. The Goldschmidts disembarked in France, where they spent the next three years in six different camps before being shipped to their deaths in Auschwitz.

In the spring of 2011, Alex's grandson, Martin Goldsmith, followed in his relative's footsteps on a six-week journey of remembrance and hope, an irrational quest to reverse their fate and bring himself peace. Alex's Wake movingly recounts the detailed histories of the two journeys, the witnesses Martin encounters for whom the events of the past are a vivid part of a living present, and an intimate, honest attempt to overcome a tormented family legacy.

In My TBR Stack:

Reagan at Reykjavik: Forty-Eight Hours That Ended the Cold War
Ken Adelman
Broadside Books / Harper Collins
Hardcover


From the publisher's website:

A dramatic account of the historic 1986 Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Iceland—the turning point in the Cold War—by Ken Adelman, Reagan's arms control director and a key player in that weekend's world-changing events

In October 1986, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev met for a forty-eight-hour summit in Reykjavik, Iceland. Planned as a short gathering to outline future talks, the meeting quickly turned to major international issues, including SDI ("Star Wars") and the possibility of eliminating all nuclear weapons. Both men were at the height of their powers, and they had a rare opportunity to move toward peace. The meeting led to negotiations and concessions that neither side had predicted—and laid the groundwork for the most sweeping arms accord in history, adopted the following year, and the end of the Soviet Union a half decade later.

From his position as a participant in these historic events, Ken Adelman is able to reveal the motivations, relationships, and conversations that led to the summit's breakthroughs. His analysis as both a participant and historian provides an invaluable perspective on this uniquely significant episode.

Scrupulously researched and based on now-declassified documents, Reagan at Reykjavik tells the gripping tale of the weekend that changed the world. Adelman provides an honest, laser-etched portrait of President Reagan at one of his finest and most challenging moments—and, indisputably, one of the most significant triumphs of his presidency.

BookSpin Giveaway!

Delancey: A Man, a Woman, a Restaurant, a Marriage
Molly Wizenberg
Simon & Schuster
Hardcover

I read an advance reader's edition of this book and I loved it!  It is deeply personal, well-written and funny yet poignant.  I like the writer and the story.  I recommend this book.

Simon & Schuster has provided one copy of DELANCEY for a BookSpin giveaway.  If you'd like to be entered to win, tweet me with your favorite comfort food.  My twitter is @Book_Dude


From the publisher's website:

In this funny, frank, and tender new memoir, the author of the New York Times bestseller A Homemade Life and the blog Orangette recounts how opening a restaurant sparked the first crisis of her young marriage.

When Molly Wizenberg married Brandon Pettit, he was a trained composer with a handful of offbeat interests: espresso machines, wooden boats, violin-building, and ice cream–making. So when Brandon decided to open a pizza restaurant, Molly was supportive—not because she wanted him to do it, but because the idea was so far-fetched that she didn’t think he would. Before she knew it, he’d signed a lease on a space. The restaurant, Delancey, was going to be a reality, and all of Molly’s assumptions about her marriage were about to change.

Together they built Delancey: gutting and renovating the space on a cobbled-together budget, developing a menu, hiring staff, and passing inspections. Delancey became a success, and Molly tried to convince herself that she was happy in their new life until—in the heat and pressure of the restaurant kitchen—she realized that she hadn’t been honest with herself or Brandon.

With evocative photos by Molly and twenty new recipes for the kind of simple, delicious food that chefs eat at home, Delancey is a moving and honest account of two young people learning to give in and let go in order to grow together. 

BookSpin Giveaway!

The Outsider: A Memoir
Jimmy Connors
Harper Paperbacks
Trade Paperback

Harper Paperbacks have graciously allocated 3 copies of THE OUTSIDER for a BookSpin giveaway. If you'd like to enter to win, tweet to me your favorite tennis memory. My twitter name is @Book_Dude.


From the publisher's website:

The Outsider is a no-holds-barred memoir by the original bad boy of tennis, Jimmy Connors.

Connors ignited the tennis boom in the 1970s with his aggressive style of play, turning his matches with John McEnroe, Bjorn Borg, and Ivan Lendl into prizefights. But it was his prolonged dedication to his craft that won him the public’s adoration. He capped off one of the most remarkable runs in tennis history at the age of 39 when he reached the semifinals of the 1991 U.S. Open, competing against players half his age.

More than just the story of a tennis champion, The Outsider is the uncensored account of Connors' life, from his complicated relationship with his formidable mother and his storybook romance with tennis legend Chris Evert, to his battles with gambling and fidelity that threatened to derail his career and his long-lasting marriage to Playboy playmate Patti McGuire.  

When he retired from tennis twenty years ago, Connors all but disappeared from public view. In The Outsider, he is back at the top of his game, and as feisty, outspoken, and defiant as ever.

This autobiography includes original color photographs from the author.

BookSpin Giveaway!

Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?
Roz Chast
Bloomsbury USA
Hardcover


Bloomsbury USA has graciously provided one copy of this book for a BookSpin giveaway.  If you'd like to enter to win send me a tweet and let me know why you'd like to read Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?.

From the publisher's website:

In her first memoir, Roz Chast brings her signature wit to the topic of aging parents. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through four-color cartoons, family photos, and documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, Chast’s memoir is both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencing the life-altering loss of elderly parents.

When it came to her elderly mother and father, Roz held to the practices of denial, avoidance, and distraction. But when Elizabeth Chast climbed a ladder to locate an old souvenir from the “crazy closet”—with predictable results—the tools that had served Roz well through her parents’ seventies, eighties, and into their early nineties could no longer be deployed. 

While the particulars are Chast-ian in their idiosyncrasies—an anxious father who had relied heavily on his wife for stability as he slipped into dementia and a former assistant principal mother whose overbearing personality had sidelined Roz for decades—the themes are universal: adult children accepting a parental role; aging and unstable parents leaving a family home for an institution; dealing with uncomfortable physical intimacies; managing logistics; and hiring strangers to provide the most personal care. 

An amazing portrait of two lives at their end and an only child coping as best she can, Can We Talk about Something More Pleasant will show the full range of Roz Chast’s talent as cartoonist and storyteller.

What I'm Reading Now:

Rescue of the Bounty: Disaster and Survival in Superstorm Sandy
Michael J. Tougias and Douglas A. Campbell
Scribner
Hardcover

From the publishers website:

On Thursday, October 25, 2012, Captain Robin Walbridge made the fateful decision to sail Bounty from New London, Connecticut, to St. Petersburg, Florida. Walbridge was well aware that a hurricane was forecast to travel north from the Caribbean toward the eastern seaboard. Yet the captain was determined to sail. As he explained to his crew of fifteen: a ship is always safer at sea than in port. He intended to sail “around the hurricane” and told the crew that anyone who did not want to come on the voyage could leave the ship—there would be no hard feelings. As fate would have it, no one took the captain up on his offer.

Four days into the voyage, Superstorm Sandy made an almost direct hit on Bounty. The vessel’s failing pumps could not keep up with the incoming water. The ship began to lose power as it was beaten and rocked by hurricane winds that spanned eight hundred miles. A few hours later, in the dark of night, the ship suddenly overturned ninety miles off the North Carolina coast in the “Graveyard of the Atlantic,” sending the crew tumbling into an ocean filled with towering thirty-foot waves. The coast guard then launched one of the most complex and massive rescues in its history, flying two Jayhawk helicopter crews into the hurricane and lowering rescue swimmers into the raging seas again and again, despite the danger to their own lives. 

In the uproar heard across American media in the days following, a single question persisted: Why did the captain decide to sail? Through hundreds of hours of interviews with the crew members, their families, and the coast guard, the masterful duo of Michael J. Tougias and Douglas A. Campbell creates an in-depth portrait of the enigmatic Captain Walbridge, his motivations, and what truly occurred aboard Bounty during those terrifying days at sea.

Dripping with suspense and vivid high-stakes drama, Rescue of the Bounty is an unforgettable tale about the brutality of nature and the human will to survive.

In My TBR Stack:

In It For the Long Run: A Musical Odyssey
Jim Rooney
University of Illinois Press
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Inspired by the Hank Williams and Leadbelly recordings he heard as a teenager growing up outside of Boston, Jim Rooney began a musical journey that intersected with some of the biggest names in American music including Bob Dylan, James Taylor, Bill Monroe, Muddy Waters, and Alison Krauss. In It for the Long Run: A Musical Odyssey is Rooney's kaleidoscopic first-hand account of more than five decades of success as a performer, concert promoter, songwriter, music publisher, engineer, and record producer.

As witness to and participant in over a half century of music history, Rooney provides a sophisticated window into American vernacular music. Following his stint as a "Hayloft Jamboree" hillbilly singer in the mid-1950s, Rooney managed Cambridge's Club 47, a catalyst of the ‘60’s folk music boom. He soon moved to the Newport Folk Festival as talent coordinator and director where he had a front row seat to Dylan "going electric."

In the 1970s Rooney's odyssey continued in Nashville where he began engineering and producing records. His work helped alternative country music gain a foothold in Music City and culminated in Grammy nominations for singer-songwriters John Prine, Iris Dement, and Nanci Griffith. Later in his career he was a key link connecting Nashville to Ireland's folk music scene.

Writing songs or writing his memoir, Jim Rooney is the consummate storyteller. In It for the Long Run: A Musical Odyssey is his singular chronicle from the heart of Americana.

"Rooney is best known for producing records by people like John Prine, Townes Van Zandt and Nanci Griffith. . . . Fortunately for readers, he's also a gifted storyteller, with a humorous sense of perspective and wry self-awareness. Could you really ask for anything more from a musician's memoir?"--Nashville Scene

"A love letter to friendship and music."--The Tennessean

"Wonderful fellow with an interesting life equals great story."--John Prine

"Without Jim Rooney's early encouragement, I would not have a career."--Nanci Griffith

"I know how lucky I am to have connected with Jim all those years back when I was just starting out. He always had a way of lifting us all up out of the everyday.  We never forgot that we were trying to make music that'd help people get THROUGH the everyday, but, ironically, you have to get on up out of it for awhile in order to do that.  Jim always made that possible for me."--Iris DeMent

"As a singer and entertainer, record producer and song publisher, Jim Rooney has been right smack in the middle of so much authentic American music for over 50 years. His guiding hand has helped launch and expand the careers of a host of great artists and I can't imagine the arc of my own success without the benefit of Jim's natural musical integrity and generous support."--Pat Alger, member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Georgia Music Hall of Fame

“If it were not for Jim Rooney, I could have never negotiated my way through the jungle that is Nashville. We made two wonderful records together and had a blast doing them.”--Robert Earl Keen

Jim Rooney is a songwriter and Grammy winning record producer, and author of Bossmen: Bill Monroe & Muddy Waters and coauthor of Baby, Let Me Follow You Down. In 2009 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Americana Music Association.