BookSpin Excerpt

Szen Zone: Reaching a State of Positive Change
by Gary Szenderski
CreateSpace
Trade Paperback

Excerpt:

Introduction

My earlier book, The Book of Szen, is a compilation of stories written and shared over many years. The response was very positive and inspired and encouraged me to continue writing, and now, a few years later, the SZEN ZONE emerges. It contains lighthearted and positive narrative on life and its possibilities, with stories that cover the gamut from interesting to profound. The general overarching theme has been on change and all of the aspects of it - Creating, surviving, and managing change with the goal to recognize the power we have to become what we choose, both when we’re feeling in control and how to manage when we’re not in control.

In terms of how to go about reading this book, it is up to you. Open it anywhere and find a short story that may make your day or make you think. My own copy has dog-ears, postit notes and sections highlighted and underlined. I find it useful to review key ideas that remind me that change is constant and so is life and that our perspective makes a difference in how all of it unfolds. 

The SZEN ZONE focuses on identifying the lift-off point for creating positive change. Although everyone is different and it’s a very individual and sometimes internalized process, the principles in this book can help you establish the context and right frame of mind to embrace and manage change. After many years of professionally helping individuals and companies navigate change, I’ve observed how some changes seem

to take forever while unforeseen change can come right at you and in an instant move your world.

To that end, wherever you may find yourself at this moment, you will find an insight or example in this book to help you change course and take charge.

The files that they are drawn from will help guide you too. I’ve categorized them here:

Szenabling File – Ideas and insights to spark motivation

Szenippets – The end point of each story

Now & Szen – Memories and perspective recast

60 Word Szen Story – Stories to introduce the topic

Make Shift – Time to take charge

Szenippet: If I told you that change would be easy, you may not believe me. But if I said that it’s possible, you would cast your doubt aside. Once we see “it”, we can be “it.”

An Excerpt from: A Course in Creation

We are not our resume. Nor are we what we own or how we look or sound. We

Author Gary Szenderski

are not what others see when they look at us. We are not the title, or the paycheck, or the car or the house. We are not without power. We are not weak or limited. “Where” we are does not define who we are.

What all of us are, is how we end this sentence: I am…”____.” If we could take some time to consider how

often we sabotage our day or our thinking by finishing that sentence with a debilitating premise such as I am sick or tired or poor or alone etc. we could turn the moments of doubt and discomfort into something different, and better. To say to ourselves: I am strong, rich, powerful, healthy, alive and in love etc. are viable options too.

Creation takes place when we change the sentence. By listening to our inner voice within we can begin contemplating a grander presence and a new day and life. Filling in the blanks with a dream actually begins the process of bringing the dream to life. The pronouncement of I am “___” is whatever we want to be, or feel called to be; it is the key to change, which is where we find the seeds to create.

“I am” triggers thoughts, actions and events that will confirm what we believe. We literally live up to our own declarations of self. Change the script and everything changes with it. It’s a simple notion, and it works, and I am really happy that you let me share this with you. I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I have writing it.

In every seed of change is the power to create something new. To leave what was, close a door and move toward a new, better version of ourselves.

- - - - - -

Many thanks to Book Publicity Services for their involvement in obtaining this excerpt for BookSpin.

In My TBR Stack:

To Fool the Rain: Haiti's Poor and Their Pathway to a Better Life
by Steven Werlin
Ti Koze Press
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

To Fool the Rain tells the story of the women who use the Chermen Lavi Miyo program's help to change their families' lives.

 

"Werlin takes us on a riveting journey down narrow dirt paths and up steep ravines to introduce us to some of the courageous women in Haiti's Central Plateau who are climbing a staircase out of extreme poverty through Fonkoze's Cherman Levi Miyo program."

--Gerald Oriol, Jr.

Haiti's Secretary of State for the Integration of Persons with Disabilities

"Steven is able to capture so eloquently and respectfully, the day-to-day lives and struggles of these brave women. It is a prayer lifted on their behalf."

--Garcelle Beauvais

Actress, author, and talk show host

"To Fool the Rain should be required reading for anyone who has either dreamed or doubted that a poverty-free world is achievable, or wondered what it would actually take to realize that ideal."

--Alex Counts

Founder, Grameen Foundation

In My TBR Stack:

The Big Buddha Bicycle Race: A Novel
by Terence A. Harkin
Silkworm Books
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

The Big Buddha Bicycle Race transports the reader to upcountry Thailand and war-ravaged Laos late in the Vietnam War. On one level a cross-cultural wartime love story, it is also a surreal remembrance of two groups who have been erased from American history—the brash active-duty soldiers who risked prison by taking part in the GI anti-war movement and the gutsy air commandos who risked death night after night flying over the Ho Chi Minh Trail. 

Brendan Leary, assigned to an Air Force photo squadron an hour from L.A., has got it made—until the U.S. invades Cambodia and he joins his buddies (and a few thousand Southern California co-eds) who march in protest. First Sergeant Link ships him off to an obscure air base in upcountry Thailand, but even then Brendan figures he’ll be working in an air-conditioned trailer editing combat footage for the 601st Photo Squadron, a useful detour on his way to Hollywood. He expects to return unscathed from what he knows is a screwed-up war, only Brendan is wrong. 

The Rat Pack needs cameramen and Leary is soon flying at night over the Ho Chi Minh Trail in a secret air war that turns the mountains of Laos into a napalm-scorched moonscape. He realizes he is trapped, his heart and mind divided between awe at the courage of the warriors he flies with and pity for the convoys of Vietnamese soldiers he sees slaughtered on the ground. As his moral fiber crumbles, he is seduced by a netherworld of drugs, booze…and a strung-out masseuse named Tukada. The Big Buddha Bicycle Race is a last gasp of hope, a project he dreams up that will coincide with Nixon's arrival in China, win hearts and minds in rural Thailand—and make him and his underpaid buddies a pile of money. The start of the race is glorious! Entrants from every Thai and American unit on the base mean big bucks for Leary’s syndicate. Except there’s a problem. Tukada has disappeared and Leary’s sidekick insists her brother is a terrorist... 

On My Radar:

Smart Baseball: The Story Behind the Old Stats That Are Ruining the Game, the New Ones That Are Running It, and the Right Way to Think about Baseball
by Keith Law
William Morrow
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Predictably Irrational meets Moneyball in ESPN veteran writer and statistical analyst Keith Law's iconoclastic look at the numbers game of baseball, proving why some of the most trusted stats are surprisingly wrong, explaining what numbers actually work, and exploring what the rise of Big Data means for the future of the sport.

For decades, statistics such as batting average, saves recorded, and pitching won-lost records have been used to measure individual players' and teams' potential and success. But in the past fifteen years, a revolutionary new standard of measurement—sabermetrics—has been embraced by front offices in Major League Baseball and among fantasy baseball enthusiasts. But while sabermetrics is recognized as being smarter and more accurate, traditionalists, including journalists, fans, and managers, stubbornly believe that the "old" way—a combination of outdated numbers and "gut" instinct—is still the best way. Baseball, they argue, should be run by people, not by numbers.?

In this informative and provocative book, the renowned ESPN analyst and senior baseball writer demolishes a century's worth of accepted wisdom, making the definitive case against the long-established view. Armed with concrete examples from different eras of baseball history, logic, a little math, and lively commentary, he shows how the allegiance to these numbers—dating back to the beginning of the professional game—is firmly rooted not in accuracy or success, but in baseball's irrational adherence to tradition. 

While Law gores sacred cows, from clutch performers to RBIs to the infamous save rule, he also demystifies sabermetrics, explaining what these "new" numbers really are and why they're vital. He also considers the game's future, examining how teams are using Data—from PhDs to sophisticated statistical databases—to build future rosters; changes that will transform baseball and all of professional sports.

On My Radar:

Saul Goodman's Get Off the Grid!: Guide to Staying Off the Radar 
(as told to Steve Huff)
Thomas Dunne Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

So you want to disappear? Whether you got the fuzz on your back or a price on your head, Saul Goodman can help!

Big Brother’s got eyes everywhere—don’t pretend they’re not all watching you. Nowadays you’d better assume anything you do is already on the 24/7 news feed, but there are measures you can take. Darken your windows. Bash your smartphone. Cut up your credit cards. But first, buy this book. 

From the cunning counsel (me) who kept you out of the slammer with his handy manual Don’t Go to Jail!, here’s your escape plan for busting out of the prison of modern surveillance. You might be up to no good or you might be up to nothing at all—hey, it’s not my business, and let me tell you, it’s nobody else’s business, either. My business is making sure it stays your business. 

An unlisted phone number is no longer enough. I want to help you find your inner alias. I want to show you your dream safe house. I don’t want to hear about you on the Internet. Get Off the Grid! can do all of this and more. It’s your one down-to-earth guide on going to ground, and not just that: it’s the best vanishing act you’ll never see!

On My Radar:

Dig If You Will The Picture: Funk, Sex, God, & Genius in the Music of Prince
by Ben Greenman
Henry Holt
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Ben Greenman, New York Times bestselling author, contributing writer to the New Yorker, and owner of thousands of recordings of Prince and Prince-related songs, knows intimately that there has never been a rock star as vibrant, mercurial, willfully contrary, experimental, or prolific as Prince. Uniting a diverse audience while remaining singularly himself, Prince was a tireless artist, a musical virtuoso and chameleon, and a pop-culture prophet who shattered traditional ideas of race and gender, rewrote the rules of identity, and redefined the role of sex in pop music.

A polymath in his own right who collaborated with George Clinton and Questlove on their celebrated memoirs, Greenman has been listening to and writing about Prince since the mid-eighties. Here, with the passion of an obsessive fan and the skills of a critic, journalist, and novelist, he mines his encyclopedic knowledge of Prince’s music to tell both his story and the story of the paradigm-shifting ideas that he communicated to his millions of fans around the world. Greenman's take on Prince is the autobiography of a generation and its ideas. Asking a series of questions—not only “Who was Prince?” but “Who wasn’t he?” and “Who are we?”—Dig if You Will the Picture is a fitting tribute to an extraordinary talent.

In My TBR Stack:

Fitter Faster: The Smart Way to Get in Shape in Just Minutes a Day
by Robert J. Davis with Brad Kolowich, Jr.
AMACOM
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

I don’t have time . . . I’m too tired . . . I hate gyms . . . These are among the most common excuses for not exercising. But the truth is that getting in shape requires less time and effort than you might think.

Examining everything from pre-workout stretches to post-workout protein shakes, this science-backed book slices through fitness fads and misconceptions to reveal how you can exercise quickly and effectively. For example, is it best to exercise in the morning? Does aerobic activity burn more fat than weight lifting? You’ll also learn how to get and stay motivated, what equipment to buy (and what not to waste money on), which dietary supplements really help, and how to combat muscle soreness. Fitter Faster explains how to:

Find the right balance between cardio, strength, and stretching • Slash workout times with high-intensity interval training • Prevent boredom • Enhance fat-burning

The accompanying Fitter Faster Plan, developed with celebrity trainer Brad Kolowich, Jr., pulls everything together. Requiring as little as 15 minutes a day, these quick workouts maximize efficiency—allowing you to reap the greatest benefit in the shortest possible time…all without ever having to set foot in a gym.

With photographs illustrating each exercise routine, this eye-opening book will forever change the way you work out— and help you get fitter faster.

On My Radar:

Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign
by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes
Crown Publishing
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

It was never supposed to be this close. And of course she was supposed to win. How Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election to Donald Trump is the riveting story of a sure thing gone off the rails. For every Comey revelation or hindsight acknowledgment about the electorate, no explanation of defeat can begin with anything other than the core problem of Hillary’s campaign–the candidate herself. 

Through deep access to insiders from the top to the bottom of the campaign, political writers Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes have reconstructed the key decisions and unseized opportunities, the well-intentioned misfires and the hidden thorns that turned a winnable contest into a devastating loss. Drawing on the authors’ deep knowledge of Hillary from their previous book, the acclaimed biography HRC, Shattered offers an object lesson in how Hillary herself made victory an uphill battle, how her difficulty articulating a vision irreparably hobbled her impact with voters, and how the campaign failed to internalize the lessons of populist fury from the hard-fought primary against Bernie Sanders. 

Moving blow-by-blow from the campaign’s difficult birth through the bewildering terror of election night, Shattered tells an unforgettable story with urgent lessons both political and personal, filled with revelations that will change the way readers understand just what happened to America on November 8, 2016.

In My TBR Stack:

Infinite Tuesday: An Autobiographical Riff
by Michael Nesmith
Crown Archetype
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Michael Nesmith’s eclectic, electric life spans his star-making role on The Monkees, his invention of the music video, and his critical contributions to movies, comedy, and the world of virtual reality. Above all, his is a seeker’s story, a pilgrimage in search of a set of principles to live by. That search took Nesmith from a childhood in Dallas, where his single mother Bette invented Liquid Paper, to the set of The Monkees in Los Angeles; to the heart of swinging London with John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix; and to an unexpected oasis of brilliance in the Santa Fe desert, where his friendships with Douglas Adams and Los Alamos scientists would point him toward the power of the infinite and the endless possibilities of human connection. This funny, thoughtful, self-aware book is a window onto an unexpected life, inflected at every turn by the surprising candor and absurdist humor of an American original. Opening Infinite Tuesday is like stepping into the world of Michael Nesmith, where something curious is always unfolding, and where riffs on everything from bands to dogs to the nature of reality make for an endlessly engaging journey.

On My Radar:

When You Find Out the World is Against You: And Other Funny Memories About Awful Moments
by Kelly Oxford
Dey Street Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Kelly Oxford likes to blow up the internet. Whether it is with the kind of Tweets that lead Rolling Stone to name her one of the Funniest People on Twitter or with pictures of her hilariously adorable family (human and animal) or with something much more serious, like creating the hashtag #NotOkay, where millions of women came together to share their stories of sexual assault, Kelly has a unique, razor-sharp perspective on modern life. As a screen writer, professional sh*t disturber, wife and mother of three, Kelly is about everything but the status quo.

 Perfect for anyone who ever wished David Sedaris and Mindy Kaling would just finally write a book together already, When You Find Out the World is Against You is filled with the biting, wise, and laugh-out-loud insights that have won Kelly legions of fans. Whether she’s detailing her obsession as an eleven-year-old with going to camp so she can become a “kissing bandit,” exploring the bittersweet boredom that so often accompanies parenthood, calling out the insanity of a posse of internet poodle vigilantes, writing bracingly about the anxiety that has plagued her as long as she can remember or taking us to ride shotgun as she stalks her husband on an accidental date with another man, When You Find Out the World Is Against You is Kelly at her most honest and disarmingly funny best. Her comedic skill, down-to-earth voice, and bull’s-eye observations on the absurdity of modern life mean there is nothing quite like seeing the world through Kelly’s eyes.

On My Radar:

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
by David Grann
Doubleday
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, they rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.

Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. Her relatives were shot and poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more and more members of the tribe began to die under mysterious circumstances. 

In this last remnant of the Wild West—where oilmen like J. P. Getty made their fortunes and where desperadoes like Al Spencer, the “Phantom Terror,” roamed—many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. As the death toll climbed to more than twenty-four, the FBI took up the case. It was one of the organization’s first major homicide investigations and the bureau badly bungled the case. In desperation, the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including one of the only American Indian agents in the bureau. The agents infiltrated the region, struggling to adopt the latest techniques of detection.  Together with the Osage they began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history. 

In Killers of the Flower Moon, David Grann revisits a shocking series of crimes in which dozens of people were murdered in cold blood. Based on years of research and startling new evidence, the book is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, as each step in the investigation reveals a series of sinister secrets and reversals. But more than that, it is a searing indictment of the callousness and prejudice toward American Indians that allowed the murderers to operate with impunity for so long. Killers of the Flower Moon is utterly compelling, but also emotionally devastating.

Currently Reading:

The Phenomenon: Pressure, the Yips, and the Pitch that Changed My Life
by Rick Ankiel with Tim Brown
Public Affairs Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Rick Ankiel had the talent to be one of the best pitchers ever. Then, one day, he lost it.

The Phenomenon is the story of how St. Louis Cardinals prodigy Rick Ankiel lost his once-in-a-generation ability to pitch--not due to an injury or a bolt of lightning, but a mysterious anxiety condition widely known as "the Yips." It came without warning, in the middle of a playoff game, with millions of people watching. And it has never gone away.

Yet the true test of Ankiel's character came not on the mound, but in the long days and nights that followed as he searched for a way to get back in the game. For four and a half years, he fought the Yips with every arrow in his quiver: psychotherapy, medication, deep-breathing exercises, self-help books, and eventually, vodka. And then, after reconsidering his whole life at the age of twenty-five, Ankiel made an amazing turnaround: returning to the Major Leagues as a hitter and playing seven successful seasons.

This book is an incredible story about a universal experience--pressure--and what happened when a person on the brink had to make a choice about who he was going to be.

On My Radar:

Race and Social Change: A Quest, A Study, A Call to Action
by Max Klau
Jossey-Bass
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Recent events have turned the spotlight on the issue of race in modern America, and the current cultural climate calls out for more research, education, dialogue, and understanding. Race and Social Change: A Quest, A Study, A Call to Action focuses on a provocative social science experiment with the potential to address these needs. Through an analysis grounded in the perspectives of developmental psychology, adaptive leadership and complex systems theory, the inquiry at the heart of this book illuminates dynamics of race and social change in surprising and important ways. Author Max Klau explains how his own quest for insight into these matters led to the empirical study at the heart of this book, and he presents the results of years of research that integrate findings at the individual, group, and whole system levels of analysis. It's an effort to explore one of the most controversial and deeply divisive subject's in American civic life using the tools of social science and empiricism. Readers will:

• Review a long tradition of classic, provocative social science experiments and learn how the study presented here extends that tradition into new and unexplored territory
• Engage with findings from years of research that reveal insights into dynamics of race and social change unfolding simultaneously at the individual, group, and whole systems levels
• Encounter a call to action with implications for our own personal journeys and for national policy at this critical moment in American civic life

At a moment when our nation is once again bitterly divided around matters at the heart of American civic life, Race and Social Change: A Quest, A Study, A Call to Action seeks to push our collective journey forward with insights that promise to promote insight, understanding, and healing.

On My Radar:

Letterman: The Last Giant of Late Night
by Jason Zinoman
Harper Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

New York Times comedy critic Jason Zinoman delivers the definitive story of the life and artistic legacy of David Letterman, the greatest television talk show host of all time and the signature comedic voice of a generation.

In a career spanning more than thirty years, David Letterman redefined the modern talk show with an ironic comic style that transcended traditional television. While he remains one of the most famous stars in America, he is a remote, even reclusive, figure whose career is widely misunderstood. In Letterman, Jason Zinoman, the first comedy critic in the history of the New York Times, mixes groundbreaking reporting with unprecedented access and probing critical analysis to explain the unique entertainer’s titanic legacy. Moving from his early days in Indiana to his retirement, Zinoman goes behind the scenes of Letterman’s television career to illuminate the origins of his revolutionary comedy, its overlooked influences, and how his work intersects with and reveals his famously eccentric personality. 

Zinoman argues that Letterman had three great artistic periods, each distinct and part of his evolution. As he examines key broadcasting moments—"Stupid Pet Tricks" and other captivating segments that defined Late Night with David Letterman—he illuminates Letterman’s relationship to his writers, and in particular, the show’s co-creator, Merrill Markoe, with whom Letterman shared a long professional and personal connection.

To understand popular culture today, it’s necessary to understand David Letterman. With this revealing biography, Zinoman offers a perceptive analysis of the man and the artist whose ironic voice and caustic meta-humor was critical to an entire generation of comedians and viewers—and whose singular style ushered in new tropes that have become clichés in comedy today.

On My Radar:

Sunshine State: Essays
by Sarah Gerard

Harper Perennial
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

Sarah Gerard follows her breakout novel, Binary Star, with the dynamic essay collection Sunshine State, which explores Florida as a microcosm of the most pressing economic and environmental perils haunting our society.

In the collection’s title essay, Gerard volunteers at the Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary, a world renowned bird refuge.  There she meets its founder, who once modeled with a pelican on his arm for a Dewar’s Scotch campaign but has since declined into a pit of fraud and madness. He becomes our embezzling protagonist whose tales about the birds he “rescues” never quite add up. Gerard’s personal stories are no less eerie or poignant: An essay that begins as a look at Gerard’s first relationship becomes a heart-wrenching exploration of acquaintance rape and consent. An account of intimate female friendship pivots midway through, morphing into a meditation on jealousy and class.

With the personal insight of The Empathy Exams, the societal exposal of Nickel and Dimed, and the stylistic innovation and intensity of her own break-out debut novel Binary Star, Sarah Gerard’s Sunshine State uses the intimately personal to unearth the deep reservoirs of humanity buried in the corners of our world often hardest to face. 

In My TBR Stack:

Seasteading: How Floating Nations Will Restore the Environment, Enrich the Poor, Cure the Sick, and Liberate Humanity from Politicians
by Joe Quirk
Free Press
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Two-thirds of our globe is Planet Ocean, not Planet Earth.

Imagine a vast new source of sustainable and renewable energy that would also bring more equitable economies. A previously untapped source of farming that could produce significant new sources of nutrition. Future societies where people could choose the communities they want to live in, free from the restrictions of conventional citizenship. This bold vision of our near future as imagined in Seasteading attracted the powerful support of Silicon Valley’s Peter Thiel—and it may be drawing close to reality.

Our planet is suffering from serious environmental problems: coastal flooding due to severe storms caused in part by atmospheric pollution and diminishing natural resources among them. But the seas can be home to a new breed of pioneers, seasteaders, who are willing to homestead the Blue Frontier. Oil platforms and cruise ships already inhabit the waters; now it’s time to take the next step to full-fledged ocean civilizations. 

Joe Quirk and Patri Friedman show us how cities built on floating platforms in the ocean will work, and they profile some of the visionaries who are implementing basic concepts of seasteading today. An entrepreneur’s dream, these floating cities will become laboratories for innovation and creativity. Seasteading may be visionary, but it already has begun proving the adage that yesterday’s science fiction is tomorrow’s science fact. Welcome to seavilization.

In My TBR Stack:

The Day I Died
by Lori Rader-Day
William Morrow
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

From the award-winning author of Little Pretty Things comes this gripping, unforgettable tale of a mother's desperate search for a lost boy.

Anna Winger can know people better than they know themselves with only a glance—at their handwriting. Hired out by companies wanting to land trustworthy employees and by the lovelorn hoping to find happiness, Anna likes to keep the real-life mess of other people at arm’s length and on paper. But when she is called to use her expertise on a note left behind at a murder scene in the small town she and her son have recently moved to, the crime gets under Anna’s skin and rips open her narrow life for all to see. To save her son—and herself—once and for all, Anna will face her every fear, her every mistake, and the past she thought she'd rewritten.

On My Radar:

Ballplayer
by Chipper Jones with Carroll Rogers Walton
Dutton

Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Atlanta Braves third baseman Chipper Jones—one of the greatest switch-hitters in baseball history—shares his remarkable story, while capturing the magic nostalgia that sets baseball apart from every other sport.
 
Before Chipper Jones became an eight-time All-Star who amassed Hall of Fame–worthy statistics during a nineteen-year career with the Atlanta Braves, he was just a country kid from small town Pierson, Florida. A kid who grew up playing baseball in the backyard with his dad dreaming that one day he’d be a major league ballplayer.   
 
With his trademark candor and astonishing recall, Chipper Jones tells the story of his rise to the MLB ranks and what it took to stay with one organization his entire career in an era of booming free agency. His journey begins with learning the art of switch-hitting and takes off after the Braves made him the number one overall pick in the 1990 draft, setting him on course to become the linchpin of their lineup at the height of their fourteen-straight division-title run. 
 
Ballplayer takes readers into the clubhouse of the Braves’ extraordinary dynasty, from the climax of the World Series championship in 1995 to the last-gasp division win by the 2005 “Baby Braves”; all the while sharing pitch-by-pitch dissections of clashes at the plate with some of the all-time great starters, such as Clemens and Johnson, as well as closers such as Wagner and Papelbon. He delves into his relationships with Bobby Cox and his famous Braves brothers—Maddux, Glavine, Smoltz, among them—and opponents from Cal Ripken Jr. to Barry Bonds. The National League MVP also opens up about his overnight rise to superstardom and the personal pitfalls that came with fame; his spirited rivalry with the New York Mets; his reflections on baseball in the modern era—outrageous money, steroids, and all—and his special last season in 2012. 
 
Ballplayer immerses us in the best of baseball, as if we’re sitting next to Chipper in the dugout on an endless spring day.

In My TBR Stack:

Somebody with a Little Hammer: Essays
by Mary Gaitskill
Pantheon Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

From one of the most singular presences in American fiction comes a searingly intelligent book of essays on matters literary, social, cultural, and personal. Whether she’s writing about date rape or political adultery or writers from John Updike to Gillian Flynn, Mary Gaitskill reads her subjects deftly and aphoristically and moves beyond them to locate the deep currents of longing, ambition, perversity, and loneliness in the American unconscious. She shows us the transcendentalism of the Talking Heads, the melancholy of Björk, the playfulness of artist Laurel Nakadate. She celebrates the clownish grandiosity and the poetry of Norman Mailer’s long career and maps the sociosexual cataclysm embodied by porn star Linda Lovelace. And in the deceptively titled “Lost Cat,” she explores how the most intimate relationships may be warped by power and race. 

Witty, tender, beautiful, and unsettling, Somebody with a Little Hammer displays the same heat-seeking, revelatory understanding for which we value Gaitskill’s fiction.

In My TBR Stack:

A Fly Rod of Your Own
by John Gierach
Simon and Schuster
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

John Gierach, “the voice of the common angler” (The Wall Street Journal) and member of the Fly Fishing Hall of Fame, brings his sharp sense of humor and keen eye for observation to the fishing life and, for that matter, life in general.

John Gierach is known for his witty, trenchant observations about fly-fishing. In A Fly Rod of Your Own, Gierach once again takes us into his world and scrutinizes the art of fly-fishing. He travels to remote fishing locations where the airport is not much bigger than a garage and a flight might be held up because a passenger is running late. He sings the praises of the skilled pilots who fly to remote fishing lodges in tricky locations and bad weather. He explains why even the most veteran fisherman seems to muff his cast whenever he’s being filmed or photographed. He describes the all-but-impassable roads that fishermen always seem to encounter at the best fishing spots and why fishermen discuss four-wheel drive vehicles almost as passionately and frequently as they discuss fly rods and flies. And while he’s on that subject, he explains why even the most conscientious fisherman always seems to accumulate more rods and flies than he could ever need.

As Gierach says, “fly-fishing is a continuous process that you learn to love for its own sake. Those who fish already get it, and those who don’t couldn’t care less, so don’t waste your breath on someone who doesn’t fish.” From Alaska to the Rockies and across the continent to Maine and the Canadian Maritimes, A Fly Rod of Your Own is an ode to those who fish—and they will get it.

On My Radar:

The Foundling: The True Story of a Kidnapping, a Family Secret, and My Search for the Real Me
by Paul Joseph Fronczak
Howard Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

The Foundling tells the incredible and inspiring true story of Paul Fronczak, a man who recently discovered via a DNA test that he was not who he thought he was—and set out to solve two fifty-year-old mysteries at once. Along the way he upturned the genealogy industry, unearthed his family’s deepest secrets, and broke open the second longest cold-case in US history, all in a desperate bid to find out who he really is.

In 1964, a woman pretending to be a nurse kidnapped an infant boy named Paul Fronczak from a Chicago hospital.

Two years later, police found a boy abandoned outside a variety store in New Jersey. The FBI tracked down Dora Fronczak, the kidnapped infant’s mother, and she identified the abandoned boy as her son. The family spent the next fifty years believing they were whole again—but Paul was always unsure about his true identity.

Then, four years ago—spurred on by the birth of his first child, Emma Faith—Paul took a DNA test. The test revealed definitively that he was not Paul Fronczak. From that moment on, Paul has been on a tireless mission to find the man whose life he’s been living—and to discover who abandoned him, and why.

This is the story of Paul’s heart-wrenching and tortuous journey to solve both mysteries and finally learn the truth about his identity.

The Foundling is a touching and inspiring story about a child lost and faith found, about the permanence of families and the bloodlines that define you, and about the emotional toll of both losing your identity and rediscovering who you truly are.

On My Radar:

Nevertheless: A Memoir
by Alec Baldwin
Harper
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

One of the most accomplished and outspoken actors today chronicles the highs and lows of his life in this beautifully written, candid memoir.

Over the past three decades, Alec Baldwin has established himself as one of Hollywood’s most gifted, hilarious, and controversial leading men. From his work in popular movies, including Beetlejuice, Working Girl, Glengarry Glen Ross, The Cooler, and Martin Scorsese’s The Departed to his role as Jack Donaghy on Tina Fey’s irreverent series 30 Rock—for which he won two Emmys, three Golden Globes, and seven Screen Actors Guild Awards—and as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live, he’s both a household name and a deeply respected actor.

In Nevertheless, Baldwin transcends his public persona, making public facets of his life he has long kept private. In this honest, affecting memoir, he introduces us to the Long Island child who felt burdened by his family’s financial strains and his parents’ unhappy marriage; the Washington, DC, college student gearing up for a career in politics; the self-named "Love Taxi" who helped friends solve their romantic problems while neglecting his own; the young soap actor learning from giants of the theatre; the addict drawn to drugs and alcohol who struggles with sobriety; the husband and father who acknowledges his failings and battles to overcome them; and the consummate professional for whom the work is everything. Throughout Nevertheless, one constant emerges: the fearlessness that defines and drives Baldwin’s life. 

Told with his signature candor, astute observational savvy, and devastating wit, Nevertheless reveals an Alec Baldwin we have never fully seen before.

In My TBR Stack:

High Velocity Hiring: How to Hire Top Talent in an Instant
by Scott Wintrip
McGraw Hill Education
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Win the war for talent by building an army of ready-to-deploy candidates

An employee leaves and you post the open position. Resumes trickle in. You interview a few candidates. No one fits the bill. The next thing you know, three months have passed and that desk is still empty . . .

Nothing drives business success like a staff of talented, productive employees. So why accept a hiring process that fails you time and time again? 

Well, there’s one person who doesn’t: Scott Wintrip. And in High-Velocity Hiring, he provides the tools and systems for creating a hiring process designed for today’s fast-paced, talent-deficient landscape. Using the proven methods Wintrip has applied at some of today’s more forward-thinking companies, you’ll hire top employees faster—and smarter.   

High-Velocity Hiring replaces the old, worn-out way of hiring with the simple but revolutionary approach of actively cultivating top talent before positions open. The old way is slow and inefficient. Wintrip’s way is dynamic and proven-effective. You’ll enrich and maintain a flow of high-quality candidates, harness this flow by identifying the most talented people, and channel it into a pool of ready-to-hire prospective employees.

More than ever, hiring the best people requires foresight, planning, alertness, and decisive action. With High-Velocity Hiring, you have everything you need to seize the high-ground in the war for talent and maintain it for long-term growth and profitability. 

Today on BookSpin:

Finally Out: Letting Go of Living Straight
by Loren A. Olson, MD
Oak Lane Press
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

Dr. Loren A. Olson has frequently been asked two questions: How could you not know that you were gay until the age of forty? Wasn’t your marriage just a sham to protect yourself at your wife’s expense? In Finally Out, Dr. Olson vigorously answers both questions by telling the inspiring story of his evolving sexuality, into which he intelligently weaves psychological concepts and gay history. is book is a powerful exploration of human sexuality, particularly the sexuality of mature men who, like Dr. Olson, lived a large part of their lives as straight men —sometimes long after becoming aware of their same-sex attractions.