In My TBR Stack:

All the Gallant Men: The First Memoir By A USS Arizona Survivor
by Donald Stratton with Ken Gire 
William Morrow
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

At 8:10 a.m. on December 7, 1941, Seaman First Class Donald Stratton was consumed by an inferno. A million pounds of explosives had detonated beneath his battle station aboard the USS Arizona, barely fifteen minutes into Japan’s surprise attack on American forces at Pearl Harbor. Near death and burned across two thirds of his body, Don, a nineteen-year-old Nebraskan who had been steeled by the Great Depression and Dust Bowl, summoned the will to haul himself hand over hand across a rope tethered to a neighboring vessel. Forty-five feet below, the harbor’s flaming, oil-slick water boiled with enemy bullets; all around him the world tore itself apart. 

In this extraordinary, never-before-told eyewitness account of the Pearl Harbor attack—the only memoir ever written by a survivor of the USS Arizona—ninety-four-year-old veteran Donald Stratton finally shares his unforgettable personal tale of bravery and survival on December 7, 1941, his harrowing recovery, and his inspiring determination to return to the fight. 

Don and four other sailors made it safely across the same line that morning, a small miracle on a day that claimed the lives of 1,177 of their Arizona shipmates—approximately half the American fatalaties at Pearl Harbor. Sent to military hospitals for a year, Don refused doctors’ advice to amputate his limbs and battled to relearn how to walk. The U.S. Navy gave him a medical discharge, believing he would never again be fit for service, but Don had unfinished business. In June 1944, he sailed back into the teeth of the Pacific War on a destroyer, destined for combat in the crucial battles of Leyte Gulf, Luzon, and Okinawa, thus earning the distinction of having been present for the opening shots and the final major battle of America’s Second World War.

As the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack approaches, Don, a great-grandfather of five and one of six living survivors of the Arizona, offers an unprecedentedly intimate reflection on the tragedy that drew America into the greatest armed conflict in history. All the Gallant Men is a book for the ages, one of the most remarkable—and remarkably inspiring—memoirs of any kind to appear in recent years.

In My TBR Stack:

Baby Boomer Army Brat: A Memoir
by John Wagner
Kelly Books
Trade Paperback

From the author's website:

Baby Boomer Army Brat is the penetrating story of a boy who would become a teenage acne-riddled social outcast, and his coming-of-age within the unique subculture of an Army family. With warmth and energy, John shows a vivid slice of Americana foreshadowing the dramatic changes about to hit the baby-boomers and all of American society: the new civil rights laws, the psychedelic era, and above all the searing division of the Vietnam War.

John details many of the cruel, yet often hilarious, struggles of adolescence, from which he emerges with a core inner strength, although also full of doubts. John must try to forge his own values and beliefs in the midst of a constant inability to do anything right and ongoing criticism from his no-nonsense Army father. Baby Boomer Army Brat shows John trying to survive within the military culture, including sexual abuse from a predatory soldier. John must find his way through a minefield of: an ever-changing identity, overwhelming anxieties, seeking a spiritual path, and above all struggling to become authentic.
John was born shortly after World War II, when his dad was an officer in the Army Military Police. As an infant, his parents moved to many military bases across the US for a few months each, as his dad presented training courses for military corrections officials. The family then moved to bombed-out postwar Germany, where his dad was in charge of three Displaced Persons camps. His dad saw inhumane treatment of some DPs and had the courage to report it. In typical army fashion however, reminiscent of Abu Ghraib, the Army disciplined his father for communicating about the abuse, rather than the soldiers who were the abusers.

After the family returned from Germany, they lived for several years in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, the family hometown, while John’s dad served as an MP unit commander in Korea during that conflict. Then the family moved to army bases across the US: Fort Knox, Kentucky, Camp Chaffee, Arkansas (where Elvis Presley was inducted), and Fitzsimons Army Hospital, Colorado, until his dad retired. After retirement, they moved for the promised better life all retirees thought would exist in Florida but it didn’t work out that way. They returned to Aurora, Colorado, home of Fitzsimons Hospital, where the family would live for over 30 years.

Shortly after the war began, John’s mother became the first woman federal parole officer in the US. After the war, typical of many American women who had established careers on their own during the war, she gave up her independence to become a full-time mother. In this case, she became an “Army Wife,” raising six children, John being the eldest. Baby Boomer Army Brat not only is the story of John and his family but through his eyes we see the changes in society, including this change in the role of women.
With breathtaking immediacy, Baby Boomer Army Brat brings us right into the times of which he writes, through family stories and vignettes. We can see and fee, little by little, the times were indeed about to be a’ changin’.

Written with a confident hand, not only does Baby Boomer Army Brat foreshadow major societal changes, but John writes with courage and thoughtfulness about himself and his struggles without a touch of self-pity. He digs deep to reveal his own part in creating his own problems and shows he is not the “good kid” everyone imagines him to be.

This is the story of innocence and dreams, and of how that innocence and those dreams get changed or put away, little by little, as the society at large, and the military subculture, wears John and his family down. This story is for anyone, from a military family or otherwise, who dreamt good dreams. It is the story of all of us, the story of what happened and the story of how we perceive what happened. We see the threads of what would become the narratives of our lives. John’s voice is strong, clear, introspective, and passionate without ever being dogmatic. He definitely “has a take,” but he is the first to admit how off-base he might be.

On My Radar:

This Might Get a Little Heavy: A Memoir
by Ralphie May with Nils Parker
St. Martin's Press
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

There was a time when Ralphie May was one of the biggest standup comedians in the country, both by ticket sales and by tonnage. While some things changed—Ralphie lost half his body weight—others did not: he will be remembered as one of the most successful comics of his time. Completed just months before his untimely passing, in This Might Get a Little Heavy, Ralphie takes readers on a behind-the-scenes tour of his life and career, one that winds across the country, over obstacles, beyond heartbreak, and through the golden age of stand-up.

Raised in poor, rural, Arkansas by a single mom who struggled to make ends meet, Ralphie’s early years were the perfect breeding ground for the kind of pain and stress and adversity that only comedy can cure. Bitten by the comedy bug at a Methodist sleep-away camp when he was 12 years old, Ralphie seized a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity six years later at an open-mic in a pizza parlor. Mentored and inspired by legendary comedian Sam Kinison to move to Houston, where he got his start, Ralphie packed his bags and never looked back. A major headliner for over twenty-five years, in This Might Get A Little Heavy, Ralphie finally tells the world how a chubby poor kid from Clarksville went from Arkansas to Houston to Hollywood and beyond. Full of never before told stories from Ralphie’s life, This Might Get A Little Heavy will bust your gut, pull at your heart strings, and touch your soul.

On My Radar:

Natural Disaster: I Cover Them. I am One.
by Ginger Zee
Kingswell
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

ABC News chief meteorologist Ginger Zee pulls back the curtain on her life in Natural Disaster. Ginger grew up in small-town Michigan where she developed an obsession with weather as a young girl. Ginger opens up about her lifelong battle with crippling depression, her romances that range from misguided to dangerous, and her tumultuous professional path. This cyclone of stories may sound familiar to some-it's just that Ginger's personal tempests happened while she was covering some of the most devastating storms in recent history, including a ferocious tornado that killed a legend in the meteorology field. 

This book is for all the mistake makers who have learned to forgive others and themselves-even in the aftermath of man-made, or in this case Zee-made, disasters. It's a story that every young woman should read, a story about finding love and finding it in yourself.

Beloved by Good Morning America's audience, Ginger is a daily presence for millions. Zee's gained fame for her social media presence which is as unfiltered as Natural Disaster-from baby barf to doggy doo-doo. She's shattered the glass ceiling for women in meteorology, but admits here first, she's the one natural disaster she couldn't have forecast.

On My Radar:

The Blood of Emmett Till
by Timothy B. Tyson
Simon & Schuster
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

In 1955, white men in the Mississippi Delta lynched a fourteen-year-old from Chicago named Emmett Till. His murder was part of a wave of white terrorism in the wake of the 1954 Supreme Court decision that declared public school segregation unconstitutional. Only weeks later, Rosa Parks thought about young Emmett as she refused to move to the back of a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Five years later, Black students who called themselves “the Emmett Till generation” launched sit-in campaigns that turned the struggle for civil rights into a mass movement. Till’s lynching became the most notorious hate crime in American history.

But what actually happened to Emmett Till—not the icon of injustice, but the flesh-and-blood boy? Part detective story, part political history, The Blood of Emmett Till “unfolds like a movie” (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution), drawing on a wealth of new evidence, including a shocking admission of Till’s innocence from the woman in whose name he was killed. “Jolting and powerful” (The Washington Post), the book “provides fresh insight into the way race has informed and deformed our democratic institutions” (Diane McWhorter, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Carry Me Home) and “calls us to the cause of justice today” (Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, president of the North Carolina NAACP).

On My Radar:

The French Art of Not Giving a Shit: Cut the Crap and Live Your Life
by Fabrice Midal
Hachette Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Be calm… Stop stressing… Embrace the universe… Try yoga… Be fulfilled… and that’s an order! We’re overwhelmed with these sorts of commands, and we often torture ourselves to “try harder,” yet somehow we never feel we’ve done quite enough. It’s about time we stop pushing ourselves to do what we think we’re supposed to do, and instead simply allow ourselves to be angry, be tired, be silly, be passionate–to stop giving a shit, and just be.

An international bestseller (now in English for the first time), The French Art of Not Giving a Sh*t by Fabrice Midal explains why the key to true mindfulness is freeing ourselves from social and often self-imposed stresses–and highlights how we can embrace life more fully by giving ourselves a break. He gives readers permission to:

Stop obeying — you are intelligent
Stop being calm — be at peace
Stop wanting to be perfect — accept life’s storms
Stop rationalizing — let things be
Stop comparing — be you
Stop being ashamed — be vulnerable
Stop tormenting yourself — become your own best friend
Stop wanting to love — be benevolent

One of the world’s leading teachers of meditation and mindfulness, Midal offers us a new solution to the perennial problem of our too-much, too-fast modern life. It’s OK, he urges us, to say no. It’s fine to quit the things that don’t fulfill you. It’s necessary, in fact, to give ourselves a break and say, simply, c’est la vie. In The French Art of Not Giving a Sh*t, Midal gives each of us permission to stop doing the things that don’t make us happy … so we have room in our lives for the things that do. 

In My TBR Stack:

Recruit Rockstars: The 10 Step Playbook to Find the Winners and Ignite Your Business
by Jeff Hyman
Lioncrest Publishing
Trade Paperback

From the book publicity:

Ninety percent of business problems are actually recruiting problems in disguise. If you're filling your company's vacant positions with B-Players, you're playing with fire. Instead, hire Rockstars to build an organization with limitless potential. Recruit Rockstars shows you how to find, hire, and keep the best of the best. 

Top-tier executive recruiter Jeff Hyman has hired more than 3,000 people over the course of his career. Now, he reveals his bulletproof 10-step method for landing the best talent, based on data instead of gut feel. From sourcing and interviewing to closing and on boarding, you'll learn how to attract winners like a magnet and avoid the mistakes that result in bad hires. 

Assembling a team of driven and innovative Rockstars is the most powerful competitive advantage you can have in today's ever-changing business world. Recruit Rockstars will help you nail your numbers, impress your investors, and crush your competitors. 

Currently Reading:

Always Remember This Moment: A True Story About Life, Love, and Miracles. Lots and Lots of Miracles
by Charles Gardner
Pathbinder Publishing
Trade Paperback

After an idyllic childhood in Tennessee, Charles Gardner travelled the world and became a highly successful construction engineer. On the path of spirituality, he encountered many roadblocks and potholes that led to alcoholism, substance abuse, and beautiful women. An unexpected crisis, a near death experience, propelled Charlie to write a memoir as an inspiration to others, and show there are miracles every day and everywhere.

A life of adventure, love, and success stopped in its tracks, only to re-connect and return from certain death. Organs in failure and family close at hand, Charles Gardner left his body and his life as he knew it behind on a true course of miracles. The story is not over and the reader will be spellbound by this telling and spiritual memoir.

On My Radar:

The Grouchy Historian: An Old-Time Lefty Defends Our Constitution Against Right-Wing Hypocrites and Nutjobs
by Ed Asner and Ed. Weinberger
Simon and Schuster
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

In the tradition of Michael Moore, Ed Asner—a.k.a. Lou Grant from The Mary Tyler Moore Show—reclaims the Constitution from the right-wingers who think that they and only they know how to interpret it.

Ed Asner, a self-proclaimed dauntless Democrat from the old days, figured that if the right-wing wackos are wrong about voter fraud, Obama’s death panels, and climate change, they are probably just as wrong about what the Constitution says. There’s no way that two hundred-plus years later, the right-wing ideologues know how to interpret the Constitution. On their way home from Philadelphia the people who wrote it couldn’t agree on what it meant. What was the president’s job? Who knew? All they knew was that the president was going to be George Washington and as long as he was in charge, that was good enough. When Hamilton wanted to start a national bank, Madison told him that it was unconstitutional. Both men had been in the room when the Constitution was written. And now today there are politicians and judges who claim that they know the original meaning of the Constitution. Are you kidding?

In The Grouchy Historian, Ed Asner leads the charge for liberals to reclaim the Constitution from the right-wingers who use it as their justification for doing whatever terrible thing they want to do, which is usually to comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted. It’s about time someone gave them hell and explained that progressives can read, too.

Currently Reading:

In the Rearview Mirror: A Road Trip into the Heart of Another Country - America 1961
by Lee Livingston
Trade Paperback


Not so long ago, two carefree 18-year-olds hitchhiked across a country of wide-open highways and wide-open people. Ride with them on this nostalgic look back at "America of the Big Heart." It was 1961, before the deaths of JFK and MLK, before Vietnam. IndieReader calls their adventure out of adolescence into the beginning of responsibility: "A must read not only for the baby boomer generation, but great commentary on friendship, mental illness and, ultimately, the road towards redemption."


"A must read not only for the baby boomer generation, but a great commentary on friendship, mental illness, and, ultimately, the road towards redemption."

-- IndieReader

"Written proof that coming of age in the '60s was more fun that it is today. If you loved American Graffiti, chrome and big inch V8 engines, you'll love this."

-- Tony Swan, Car and Driver

"Exciting, warm, funny, touching and tragic. A can't miss trip for baby boomers of all ages looking to relive the innocent and guilty pleasures of the early '60s."

-- Bill Harris, Entertainment Tonight

In My TBR Stack:

The Saboteur: The Aristocrat Who Became France's Most Daring Anti-Nazi Commando
by Paul Kix
Harper Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

A scion of one of the most storied families in France, Robert de La Rochefoucald was raised in magnificent chateaux and educated in Europe's finest schools. When the Nazis invaded and imprisoned his father, La Rochefoucald escaped to England and learned the dark arts of anarchy and combat—cracking safes and planting bombs and killing with his bare hands—from the officers of Special Operations Executive, the collection of British spies, beloved by Winston Churchill, who altered the war in Europe with tactics that earned it notoriety as the “Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.” With his newfound skills, La Rochefoucauld returned to France and organized Resistance cells, blew up fortified compounds and munitions factories, interfered with Germans’ war-time missions, and executed Nazi officers. Caught by the Germans, La Rochefoucald withstood months of torture without cracking, and escaped his own death, not once but twice.

The Saboteur recounts La Rochefoucauld’s enthralling adventures, from jumping from a moving truck on his way to his execution to stealing Nazi limos to dressing up in a nun’s habit—one of his many disguises and impersonations. Whatever the mission, whatever the dire circumstance, La Rochefoucauld acquitted himself nobly, with the straight-back aplomb of a man of aristocratic breeding: James Bond before Ian Fleming conjured him.

More than just a fast-paced, true thriller, The Saboteur is also a deep dive into an endlessly fascinating historical moment, telling the untold story of a network of commandos that battled evil, bravely worked to change the course of history, and inspired the creation of America’s own Central Intelligence Agency.

In My TBR Stack:

When It's Never About You: The People-Pleaser's Guide to Reclaiming Your Health, Happiness, and Personal Freedom
by Ilene S. Cohen, Ph.D.
Harte & Co Publishing

From the book promotion:

Everyone loves a people-pleaser. They're always willing to help, to stay late, to fill in, to "go along." But if you're one of them, you often end up feeling violated, ignored, disrespected, and disconnected -- from life and others. Silently enduring the ongoing and relentless invalidation of who you are and what you want will reliably wreak havoc on your health and the health of your relationships.

Ready to put less "Yes" and more "You" in your life?

In When It's Never About You, psychotherapist Ilene S. Cohen uses real-world examples and activities to help you take a systemic look at people-pleasing. You'll learn:

• How to reclaim a strong and balanced sense of self -- while still being a "good person."
• How to break the harmful behavior patterns that keep you from being heard, listened to, and respected.
• Specific strategies for transforming yourself from selfless to "self-full."
• How to go from feeling "vanished" to being clearly differentiated.
• How to get what you want and need -- while actually earning even more respect from others.

Tired of disappearing from life? Ready for the "pleasing prescription?" When It's Never About You will give you the tools and confidence to put yourself first, while bringing the best YOU to those who depend on you!

On My Radar:

This is Not Fame: A From What I Re-Memoir
by Doug Stanhope
DaCapo Press
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Doug Stanhope has been drunkenly stumbling down the back roads and dark alleys of stand-up comedy for over a quarter of a century, roads laden with dank bars, prostitutes, cheap drugs, farm animals, evil dwarfs, public nudity, menacing third-world police, psychotic breaks, sex offenders, and some understandable suicides. You know, just for levity.

While other comedians were seeking fame, Stanhope was seeking immediate gratification, dark spectacle, or sometimes just his pants. Not to say he hasn’t rubbed elbows with fame. He’s crashed its party, snorted its coke, and jumped into its pool naked, literally and often repeatedly–all while artfully dodging fame himself.

Doug spares no legally permissible detail, and his stories couldn’t be told any other way. They’re weird, uncomfortable, gross, disturbing, and fucking funny.

This Is Not Fame is by no means a story of overcoming a life of excess, immorality, and reckless buffoonery. It’s an outright celebration of it. For Stanhope, the party goes on.

On My Radar:

They Call Me Supermensch: A Backstage Pass to the Worlds of Film, Food, and Rock 'n' Roll
by Shep Gordon
Ecco Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

An eye-popping peek into entertainment industry from the magnetic force who has worked with an impeccable roster of stars throughout his storied career.

In the course of his legendary career as a manager, agent, and producer, Shep Gordon has worked with, and befriended, some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry, from Alice Cooper to Bette Davis, Raquel Welch to Groucho Marx, Blondie to Jimi Hendrix, Sylvester Stallone to Salvador Dali, Luther Vandross to Teddy Pendergrass. He is also credited with inventing the "celebrity chef," and has worked with Nobu Matsuhisa, Emeril Lagasse, Wolfgang Puck, Roger Vergé, and many others, including his holiness the Dalai Lama. 

In this wonderfully engaging memoir, the charismatic entertainment legend recalls his life, from his humble beginnings as a "shy, no self-esteem, Jewish nebbisher kid with no ambition" in Oceanside, Long Island, to his unexpected rise as one of the most influential and respected personalities in show business, revered for his kindness, charisma—and fondness for a good time. 

Gordon shares riotous anecdotes and outrageous accounts of his free-wheeling, globe-trotting experiences with some of the biggest celebrities of the past five decades, including his first meeting with Janice Joplin in 1968, when the raspy singer punched him in the face. Told with incomparable humor and heart, They Call Me Supermensch is a sincere, hilarious behind-the-scenes look at the worlds of music and entertainment from the consummate Hollywood insider.

On My Radar:

Raiders of Rock: The Pursuit of Rock and Roll Memorabilia in America
by Stephen M. Shutts
Heritage Builders Publishing
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

“Send Lawyers, Guns & Money…The Pursuit of Rock-N-Roll Memorabilia in America” chronicles the true stories of Stephen “Elvis” Shutts, known as “The Indiana Jones of Memorabilia”. For twenty-five years, Stephen has pursued long lost Americana treasure of the music kind . . . authentic stage clothing, instruments, autographs, personal items, automobiles and awards of Elvis, Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, Hank Williams, Jimi Hendrix and Michael Jackson to name a few.

Living in Nashville afforded Stephen the capability to be amidst the hotbed of all things musical history treasures, acquiring from dumpsters, disgruntled music row executives and groupies to the stars. The journeys and acquisitions strung together unbelievable true tales of colossal finds, claims of ownership by corporate empires, lawsuits, death threats and even a bomb scare…all in the name of rock-n-roll.

Knowledge of music history, a resemblance to Elvis and a knack for not taking no as an answer thrust Stephen into the limelight touring with major recording artists Brooks & Dunn, Rascal Flatts, Kenny Chesney and ZZ Top to name a few. Years of touring with hillbilly rock-star company threw Stephen into the realms of the classic exploits of sex, drugs and rock-n-roll. The fantasy lifestyles of those he idolized and collected from afar had become fellow partners in his tabloid lifestyle inclusive of his own reality TV Series.

From the inner circles of the Elvis empire to Johnny Cash, “The Man in Black” himself and for every recording artist in between, Stephen eventually appraised, bought, sold and brokered 25 million dollars in authentic memorabilia worldwide requiring the assistance of lawyers, guns and money along the way.