On My Radar:

Hitchhike America
by Jon Lott
Bookbaby
Trade Paperback

From the book publicity:

In an age where cynicism and suspicion has replaced hope and trust, Jon Lott gives himself to the open road and the winds of chance.  Hitchhiking west across the United States, he meets more than two dozen drivers along the way, mountain men, hipsters, horse ranches, felons, and people looking for love, hope, drugs, and more. Beginning in Washington, D.C. and ending on the Pacific Coast, Hitchhike America honestly recounts the amazing journey exploring the United States and meeting new people, seeking to uncover the true soul of America.

Part memoir and part travel writing, Hitchhike America also acts as a new guide for hitchhikers, with wisdom and anecdotes to teach you the best hitchhiking and vagabonding practices for adventuring the United States on a tight budget and a loose schedule.

On My Radar:

Trump on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President
by Justin A. Frank, MD
Avery Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

No president in the history of the United States has inspired more alarm and confusion than Donald Trump. As questions and concerns about his decisions, behavior, and qualifications for office have multiplied, they point to one primary question: Does he pose a genuine threat to our country? The American Psychiatric Association’s Goldwater Rule constrains psychiatrists from offering diagnoses on public figures who are not patients and who have not endorsed such statements. But in Trump on the Couch Clinical Professor of Psychiatry Justin A Frank invokes the moral responsibility that compels him to speak out and present a full portrait of a man who presents us with a clear and present danger.

Using observations gained from a close study of Trump’s patterns of thought, action, and communication, Dr. Frank uncovers a personality riddled with mental health issues. His analysis is filled with important revelations about our nation’s leader, including disturbing insights into his childhood, his family, his business dealings, and his unusual relationship with alternative facts, including how

  *  The absence of a strong maternal force during childhood has led to Trump’s remarkable lack of empathy and disregard for women’s boundaries;
  *  His compulsion to polarize America has grown out of the way he perceives the world as full of deceitful and destructive persecutors;
  *  His inability to tolerate the pain of frustration has triggered his belief that omnipotence will finally remove it;
  *  His idiosyncratic use of language points to larger issues than even his tweets might suggest.

With our country itself at stake, Dr. Frank calls attention to the underlying narcissism, misogyny, deception, and racism that drive the President who endangers it. A penetrating examination of how we as a nation got here and, more important, where we are going, Trump on the Couch sounds a call to action that we cannot ignore.

In My TBR Stack:

The Poison Squad: One Chemist's Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the  Turn of the Twentieth Century
by Deborah Blum
Penguin Press
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

By the end of nineteenth century, food was dangerous. Lethal, even. “Milk” might contain formaldehyde, most often used to embalm corpses. Decaying meat was preserved with both salicylic acid, a pharmaceutical chemical, and borax, a compound first identified as a cleaning product. This was not by accident; food manufacturers had rushed to embrace the rise of industrial chemistry, and were knowingly selling harmful products. Unchecked by government regulation, basic safety, or even labelling requirements, they put profit before the health of their customers. By some estimates, in New York City alone, thousands of children were killed by “embalmed milk” every year. Citizens–activists, journalists, scientists, and women’s groups–began agitating for change. But even as protective measures were enacted in Europe, American corporations blocked even modest regulations. Then, in 1883, Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, a chemistry professor from Purdue University, was named chief chemist of the agriculture department, and the agency began methodically investigating food and drink fraud, even conducting shocking human tests on groups of young men who came to be known as, “The Poison Squad.” 

Over the next thirty years, a titanic struggle took place, with the courageous and fascinating Dr. Wiley campaigning indefatigably for food safety and consumer protection. Together with a gallant cast, including the muckraking reporter Upton Sinclair, whose fiction revealed the horrific truth about the Chicago stockyards; Fannie Farmer, then the most famous cookbook author in the country; and Henry J. Heinz, one of the few food producers who actively advocated for pure food, Dr. Wiley changed history. When the landmark 1906 Food and Drug Act was finally passed, it was known across the land, as “Dr. Wiley’s Law.” 

Blum brings to life this timeless and hugely satisfying “David and Goliath” tale with righteous verve and style, driving home the moral imperative of confronting corporate greed and government corruption with a bracing clarity, which speaks resoundingly to the enormous social and political challenges we face today.

On My Radar:

The King of Con: How a Smooth-Talking Jersey Boy Made and Lost Billions, Baffled the FBI, Eluded the Mob, and Lived to Tell the Crooked Tale
by Thomas Giacomaro and Natasha Stoynoff
BenBella Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

As a teenager, Tom Giacomaro began working in the mob-laden New Jersey trucking industry. A charming, brash-talking salesman with a genius-level IQ, he climbed the ranks and let his lust for money and relationships with New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Chicago crime families send him spiraling into a world of drugs and violence. Forced to go on the lam in South Africa and Europe, he returned a year later with millions of dollars’ worth of diamonds stuffed in his underwear. And that’s only the beginning.

In The King of Con, Tom details how he hashes out a deal with the FBI, agreeing to become a special crime informant in an effort to avoid jail time—only he somehow manages not to rat anyone out and, incredibly, continues his high-finance, white-collar scheming, luring celebrities and other high-profile contacts to invest multimillions in his new business ventures. When it all inevitably comes crashing down, Tom is thrown in prison for over a decade, yet, even behind bars, he’s able to get what he wants from anyone: the warden, the doctors, the guards, his fellow inmates . . . and he eventually finds a way to get released early.

Cowritten by journalist Natasha Stoynoff, The King of Con is the true story about a streetwise Jersey boy who talked and scammed his way to the top and became richer and more successful than his wildest dreams. It offers an unforgettable look into the life of a man who became hooked on living life to thrilling and dangerous excess, rubbing elbows with celebrities and crime bosses, until he was humbled by the FBI, by the US Attorney, and by life itself.

Now, Tom is back in his old New Jersey neighborhood. His old business cronies and mob contacts are calling, his palms are itching to make billions again, and the US Attorney’s office is watching. Will he stay on the straight and narrow, or will he steal back his crown of crime as the King of Con?

In My TBR Stack:

101 Things to Do With a Dead Body
by Jason Blake
Laki Press
Trade Paperback

From the book publicity:

It seems like every day people are finding themselves left with perfectly good dead bodies. Sure, perhaps they're a little bruised and they may even have some stretch marks. But what are the reasonable alternatives? Cremation? Yes, it's affordable but entirely environmentally-unfriendly in the era of climate change. Burial? That's at least $15,000 if done right. People fill obligated to come to the service, say nice things about people who may not have been nice, and then the body is buried semi-permanently, often on top of the bones of generations past. Do you really want to assist in making our world one big landfill of bodies? I think not.

This is the new millennium. Reduce, reuse, recycle. Don't let your dead body be a liability on your balance sheet. It's time to put it to use. If you're at a lack of creative ideas, this first volume will get your creative juices flowing so you can find the solution that's right for you. While the big lifestyle brands are focusing on centerpieces for your Thanksgiving table and reupholstering Grandma's antique chair, this book offers real solutions for real people like you and me. After reading 101 Things To Do With A Dead Body, you'll wonder, "How did I ever survive without this handy guide?" With a snicker, you'll realize that the other guy wasn't so lucky....

On My Radar:

The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War
by Ben Macintyre
Crown Publishing
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

If anyone could be considered a Russian counterpart to the infamous British double-agent Kim Philby, it was Oleg Gordievsky. The son of two KGB agents and the product of the best Soviet institutions, the savvy, sophisticated Gordievsky grew to see his nation’s communism as both criminal and philistine. He took his first posting for Russian intelligence in 1968 and eventually became the Soviet Union’s top man in London, but from 1973 on he was secretly working for MI6. For nearly a decade, as the Cold War reached its twilight, Gordievsky helped the West turn the tables on the KGB, exposing Russian spies and helping to foil countless intelligence plots, as the Soviet leadership grew increasingly paranoid at the United States’s nuclear first-strike capabilities and brought the world closer to the brink of war. Desperate to keep the circle of trust close, MI6 never revealed Gordievsky’s name to its counterparts in the CIA, which in turn grew obsessed with figuring out the identity of Britain’s obviously top-level source. Their obsession ultimately doomed Gordievsky: the CIA officer assigned to identify him was none other than Aldrich Ames, the man who would become infamous for secretly spying for the Soviets. 

Unfolding the delicious three-way gamesmanship between America, Britain, and the Soviet Union, and culminating in the gripping cinematic beat-by-beat of Gordievsky’s nail-biting escape from Moscow in 1985, Ben Macintyre’s latest may be his best yet. Like the greatest novels of John le Carré, it brings readers deep into a world of treachery and betrayal, where the lines bleed between the personal and the professional, and one man’s hatred of communism had the power to change the future of nations.

On My Radar:

Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World
by Tom Wright and Bradley Hope
Hachette Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

In 2009, with the dust yet to settle on the financial crisis, a baby-faced, seemingly mild-mannered Wharton grad began setting in motion a fraud of unprecedented gall and magnitude–one that would come to symbolize the next great threat to the global financial system. His name is Jho Low, a man whose behavior was so preposterous he might seem made up. 

An epic true-tale of hubris and greed, Billion Dollar Whale reveals how this young social climber pulled off one of the biggest heists in history–right under the nose of the global financial industry. Federal agents who helped unravel Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme say the 1MDB affair will become the textbook case of financial fraud in the modern age–and its fallout is already being credited for taking down the prime minister of Malaysia. With his yacht and private jet reportedly seized by authorities and facing money-laundering charges in Malaysia, an Interpol red notice, and an ongoing U.S. Department of Justice Investigation, Low has become an international fugitive.

For readers of Liar’s Poker, Den of Thieves, and Bad Blood, Billion Dollar Whale will become a classic, harrowing parable about finance run amok.

On My Radar:

The Gospel According to Luke
by Steve Lukather
Simon and Schuster
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

No one explodes one of the longest-held misconceptions of music history better than Steve Lukather and his band Toto. The dominant sound of the late ‘70s and ‘80s was not punk, but a slick, polished amalgam of rock and R&B first staked out on Boz Scaggs’ Silk Degrees. That album was shaped in large part by the founding members of Toto, who were emerging as the most in-demand elite session crew in LA, and further developed on the band’s self-titled multi-platinum debut. A string of massive hits followed for Toto while Lukather and bandmates David Paich, Jeff Porcaro, and Steve Porcaro also served as creative linchpins on some of the most successful and influential records of the era, including Michael Jackson’s Thriller.

In this incisive memoir, Lukather tells the complete Toto story. He also lifts the lid on what went on behind the closed studio doors, shedding light on the unique creative processes of some of the most legendary names in music: from Quincy Jones, Michael Jackson, Paul McCartney, Stevie Nicks, and Elton John to Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell, Bruce Springsteen, Don Henley, Roger Waters, and Aretha Franklin. Lukather’s extraordinary tale also encompasses the dark side of stardom and the American Dream. Frank, engaging, and often hilarious, The Gospel According to Luke is no ordinary rock memoir. It is the real thing.

On My Radar:

In Pieces
by Sally Field
Grand Central Publishing
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

One of the most celebrated, beloved, and enduring actors of our time, Sally Field has an infectious charm that has captivated the nation for more than five decades, beginning with her first TV role at the age of seventeen. From Gidget‘s sweet-faced “girl next door” to the dazzling complexity of Sybil to the Academy Award-worthy ferocity and depth of Norma Rae and Mary Todd Lincoln, Field has stunned audiences time and time again with her artistic range and emotional acuity. Yet there is one character who always remained hidden: the shy and anxious little girl within.

With raw honesty and the fresh, pitch-perfect prose of a natural-born writer, and with all the humility and authenticity her fans have come to expect, Field brings readers behind-the-scenes for not only the highs and lows of her star-studded early career in Hollywood, but deep into the truth of her lifelong relationships–including her complicated love for her own mother. Powerful and unforgettable, In Pieces is an inspiring and important account of life as a woman in the second half of the twentieth century.

On My Radar:

Passing for Human: A Graphic Memoir
by Liana Finck
Random House
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

In this achingly beautiful graphic memoir, Liana Finck goes in search of that thing she has lost—her shadow, she calls it, but one might also think of it as the “otherness” or “strangeness” that has defined her since birth, that part of her that has always made her feel as though she is living in exile from the world. In Passing for Human, Finck is on a quest for self-understanding and self-acceptance, and along the way she seeks to answer some eternal questions: What makes us whole? What parts of ourselves do we hide or ignore or chase away—because they’re embarrassing, or inconvenient, or just plain weird—and at what cost?

Passing for Human is what Finck calls “a neurological coming-of-age story”—one in which, through her childhood, human connection proved elusive and her most enduring relationships were with plants and rocks and imaginary friends; in which her mother was an artist whose creative life had been stifled by an unhappy first marriage and a deeply sexist society that seemed expressly designed to snuff out creativity in women; in which her father was a doctor who struggled in secret with the guilt of having passed his own form of otherness on to his daughter; and in which, as an adult, Finck finally finds her shadow again—and, with it, her true self.

Melancholy and funny, personal and surreal, Passing for Human is a profound exploration of identity by one of the most talented young comic artists working today. Part magical odyssey, part feminist creation myth, this memoir is, most of all, an extraordinary, moving meditation on what it means to be an artist and a woman grappling with the desire to pass for human.

In My TBR Stack:

College Beyond the States: European Schools That Will Change Your Life Without Breaking the Bank
by Jennifer Viemont
Global Ed Press
Trade Paperback

From the organization website:

Are you worried about how to pay for college? 

Are admissions requirements dictating your family’s lives? 

Are you concerned about your child’s job prospects after graduation?

If any of these questions resonate with you, it’s time to consider college in Europe.  

As a mother confronted by these issues, Jennifer Viemont took it upon herself to meticulously research, personally visit, and carefully consider the alternatives in continental Europe.

She found over 300 accredited universities offering high-quality bachelor’s degree programs taught entirely in English—no foreign language skills needed—for a fraction of what American schools charge.You’ll be amazed to find that, in many cases, the cost of earning an entire bachelor’s degree (including travel costs) is less than just one year of tuition at an American university. 

College Beyond the States details the top 13 European schools that offer:

• Reasonable tuition fees well below any US option
• Transparent and attainable admissions criteria
• An exceptional international student environment

Informative, empowering, and hopeful, College Beyond the States is an invaluable resource for both parents and students alike, and offers an appealing way to opt out of a system that no longer works for most families.

In My TBR Stack:

They Fought Alone: The True Story of the Starr Brothers, British Secret Agents in Nazi-Occupied France
by Charles Glass
Penguin Press
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

As far as the public knew, Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) did not exist. After the defeat of the French Army and Britain’s retreat from the Continent in June 1940, Prime Minister Winston Churchill created the top-secret espionage operation to “set Europe ablaze.” The agents infiltrated Nazi-occupied territory, parachuting behind enemy lines and hiding in plain sight, quietly but forcefully recruiting, training, and arming local French résistants to attack the German war machine. SOE would not only change the course of the war, but the nature of combat itself. Of the many brave men and women conscripted, two Anglo-American recruits, the Starr brothers, stood out to become legendary figures to the guerillas, assassins, and saboteurs they led.

While both brothers were sent across the channel to organize against the Germans, their fates in war could hardly have been more different. Captain George Starr commanded networks of résistants in southwest France, cutting German communications, destroying weapons factories, and delaying the arrival of Nazi troops to Normandy by seventeen days after D-Day. Younger brother Lieutenant John Starr laid groundwork for resistance in the Burgundy countryside until he was betrayed, captured, tortured, and imprisoned by the Nazis in France and sent to a series of concentration camps in Germany and Austria. Feats of boldness and bravado were many, but appalling scandals, including George’s supposed torture and execution of Nazis prisoners, and John’s alleged collaboration with his German captors, overshadowed them all. At the war’s end, Britain, France, and the United States awarded both brothers medals for heroism, and George would become one of only three among thousands of SOE operatives to achieve the rank of colonel. Yet, their battle honors did little to allay postwar allegations against them, and when they returned to England, their government accused both brothers of heinous war crimes.

Here, for the first time, is the story of one of the great clandestine organizations of World War II, and of two heroic brothers whose ordeals during and after the war challenged the accepted myths of Britain’s wartime resistance in occupied France. Written with complete and unrivaled access to only recently declassified documents from Britain’s SOE files, French archives, family letters, diaries, and court records, along with interviews from surviving wartime Resistance fighters, They Fought Alone is a real-life thriller. Renowned journalist and war correspondent Charles Glass exposes a dramatic tale of spies, sabotage, and the daring men and women who risked everything to change the course of World War II.

In My TBR Stack:

Lies
By T.M. Logan
St. Martin's Press
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Six days ago, Joe Lynch was a happily married man, a devoted father, and a respected teacher living in a well-to-do London suburb. But that was before he spotted his wife’s car entering a hotel parking garage. Before he saw her in a heated argument with her best friend’s husband. Before Joe confronted the other man in an altercation where he left him for dead, bleeding and unconscious.

Now, Joe’s life is unraveling. His wife has lied to him. Her deception has put their entire family in jeopardy. The man she met at the hotel has vanished. And as the police investigate his disappearance, suspicion falls on Joe.

Unable to trust the woman he loves, Joe finds himself at the mercy of her revelations and deceits, unsure of who or what to believe. All he knows is that her actions have brought someone dangerous into their lives—someone obsessed with her and determined to tear Joe’s world apart. 

What if your whole life was based on LIES?

New Release:

Football For A Buck: The Crazy Rise and Crazier Demise of the USFL
by Jeff Pearlman
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

The United States Football League—known fondly to millions of sports fans as the USFL—was the last football league to not merely challenge the NFL, but cause its owners and executives to collectively shudder. It spanned three seasons, 1983-85. It secured multiple television deals. It drew millions of fans and launched the careers of legends. But then it died beneath the weight of a particularly egotistical and bombastic owner—a New York businessman named Donald J. Trump. The league featured as many as 18 teams, and included such superstars as Steve Young, Jim Kelly, Herschel Walker, Reggie White, Doug Flutie and Mike Rozier. 

  

In Football for a Buck, the dogged reporter and biographer Jeff Pearlman draws on more than four hundred interviews to unearth all the salty, untold stories of one of the craziest sports entities to have ever captivated America. From 1980s drug excess to airplane brawls and player-coach punch outs, to backroom business deals, to some of the most enthralling and revolutionary football ever seen, Pearlman transports readers back in time to this crazy, boozy, audacious, unforgettable era of the game. He shows how fortunes were made and lost on the backs of professional athletes and also how, thirty years ago, Trump was a scoundrel and a spoiler. 

  

For fans of Terry Pluto’s Loose Balls or Jim Bouton’s Ball Four and of course Pearlman’s own stranger-than-fiction narratives, Football for a Buck is sports as high entertainment—and a cautionary tale of the dangers of ego and excess.

In My TBR Stack:

We Can Do It: A Community Takes on the Challenge of School Desegregation
by Michael T. Gengler
Rosetta Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

After Brown v. Board of Education, the South's separate white and black schools continued under lower court opinions, provided black students should choose to go to white schools. Not until 1968 did the NAACP Legal Defense Fund convince the Supreme Court to end dual school systems. Almost fifty years later, African Americans in Alachua County remain divided over that outcome.

A unique study including extensive interviews, We Can Do It asks important questions, among them: How did both races, without precedent, work together to create desegregated schools? What conflicts arose, and how were they resolved (or not)? How was the community affected? And at a time when resegregation and persistent white-black achievement gaps continue to challenge public schools, what lessons can we learn from the generation that desegregated our schools?