Coming Soon:

King of the Blues: The Rise and Reign of B.B. King

Street Date:  October 5th, 2021
by Daniel de Vise
Atlantic Monthly Press
Hardcover


From the publisher's website:

Riley “Blues Boy” King (1925-2015) was born into deep poverty in Jim Crow Mississippi. Wrenched away from his sharecropper father, B.B. lost his mother at age ten, leaving him more or less alone. Music became his emancipation from exhausting toil in the fields. Inspired by a local minister’s guitar and by the records of Blind Lemon Jefferson and T-Bone Walker, encouraged by his cousin, the established blues man Bukka White, B.B. taught his guitar to sing in the unique solo style that, along with his relentless work ethic and humanity, became his trademark. In turn, generations of artists claimed him as inspiration, from Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton to Carlos Santana and the Edge.

King of the Blues presents the vibrant life and times of a trailblazing giant. Witness to dark prejudice and lynching in his youth, B.B. performed incessantly (some 15,000 concerts in 90 countries over nearly 60 years)—in some real way his means of escaping his past. Several of his concerts, including his landmark gig at Chicago’s Cook County Jail, endure in legend to this day. His career roller-coasted between adulation and relegation, but he always rose back up. At the same time, his story reveals the many ways record companies took advantage of artists, especially those of color.

Daniel de Visé has interviewed almost every surviving member of B.B. King’s inner circle—family, band members, retainers, managers, and more—and their voices and memories enrich and enliven the life of this Mississippi blues titan, whom his contemporary Bobby “Blue” Bland simply called “the man.”

On My Radar:

The Case of the Vanishing Blonde: And Other True Crime Stories
by Mark Bowden
Atlantic Monthly Press
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Six captivating true-crime stories, spanning Mark Bowden’s long and illustrious career, cover a variety of crimes complicated by extraordinary circumstances. Winner of a lifetime achievement award from International Thriller Writers, Bowden revisits in The Case of the Vanishing Blondesome of his most riveting stories and examines the effects of modern technology on the journalistic process.

From a story of a campus rape at the University of Pennsylvania in 1983 that unleashed a moral debate over the nature of consent when drinking and drugs are involved to three cold cases featuring the inimitable Long Island private detective Ken Brennan and a startling investigation that reveals a murderer within the LAPD’s ranks, shielded for twenty six years by officers keen to protect one of their own, these stories are the work of a masterful narrative journalist at work. Gripping true crime from a writer the Washington Post calls “an old pro.”

On My Radar:

The Last Stone
by Mark Bowden
Atlantic Monthly Press
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

On March 29, 1975, sisters Katherine and Sheila Lyon, age 10 and 12, vanished from a shopping mall in suburban Washington, D.C. As shock spread, then grief, a massive police effort found nothing. The investigation was shelved, and mystery endured. Then, in 2013, a cold case squad detective found something he and a generation of detectives had missed. It pointed them toward a man named Lloyd Welch, then serving time for child molestation in Delaware.

As a cub reporter for a Baltimore newspaper, Mark Bowden covered the frantic first weeks of the story. In The Last Stone, he returns to write its ending. Over months of intense questioning and extensive investigation of Welch’s sprawling, sinister Appalachian clan, five skilled detectives learned to sift truth from determined lies. How do you get a compulsive liar with every reason in the world to lie to tell the truth? The Last Stone recounts a masterpiece of criminal interrogation, and delivers a chilling and unprecedented look inside a disturbing criminal mind.

In My TBR Stack:

Playing Through the Whistle: Steel, Football, and an American Town
by S.L. Price
Atlantic Monthly Press
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

In the early twentieth century, down the Ohio River from Pittsburgh, the Jones & Laughlin Steel Company built one of the largest mills in the world and a town to go with it. Aliquippa was a beacon and a melting pot, pulling in thousands of families from Europe and the Jim Crow south. The J&L mill, though dirty and dangerous, offered a chance at a better life. It produced the steel that built American cities and won World War II and even became something of a workers’ paradise. But then, in the 1980’s, the steel industry cratered. The mill closed. Crime rose and crack hit big.

But another industry grew in Aliquippa. The town didn’t just make steel; it made elite football players, from Mike Ditka to Ty Law to Darrelle Revis. Pro football was born in Western Pennsylvania, and few places churned out talent like Aliquippa. Despite its troubles—, maybe even because of them, —Aliquippa became legendary for producing football greatness. A masterpiece of narrative journalism, Playing Through the Whistle tells the remarkable story of Aliquippa and through it, the larger history of American industry, sports, and life. Like football, it will make you marvel, wince, cry, and cheer.

On My Radar:

I'd Know That Voice Anywhere: My Favorite NPR Commentaries
by Frank DeFord
Atlantic Monthly Press
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Frank Deford is one of the most beloved sports commentators in America. A contributing writer to Sports Illustrated for more than fifty years, he is also a longtime correspondent on Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel. 

These days, Deford is perhaps best known for his weekly commentaries on NPR’s Morning Edition. Beginning in 1980, Deford has recorded over two thousand commentaries, and in this collection he brings together the very best, creating a charming, insightful, and wide-ranging look at athletes and the world of sports.

In I’d Know That Voice Anywhere, Deford discusses everything from sex scandals and steroids to Americans’ perennial nostalgia for Joe DiMaggio and why, in a culture dominated by celebrity, sports is the only discipline on earth where popularity and excellence thrive in tandem. He considers the similarities between Babe Ruth and Winnie the Pooh, why football reminds him of Venice, and how the Olympics are like Groundhog Day—or like an independent movie filled with foreign actors you’ve never heard of. He considers the prevalence of cheating in the classroom among student-athletes and why academic whistle-blowers are castigated as tattletales, pens a one-size-fits-all sports movie script, and even delivers Super Bowl coverage in the style of Shakespeare. A rollicking sampler of one of NPR’s most popular segments, I’d Know That Voice Anywhere is perfect for sports enthusiasts—as well as sports skeptics—and a must-read for any Frank Deford fan. 

On My Radar:

I Will Find You: A Reporter Investigates the Life of the Man Who Raped Her
by Joanna Connors
Atlantic Monthly Press
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:


“This is it. My rape. I knew it was coming. Every woman knows. And now here it is. My turn.”
When Joanna Connors was thirty years old on assignment for the Cleveland Plain Dealer to review a play at a college theater, she was held at knifepoint and raped by a stranger who had grown up five miles away from her. Once her assailant was caught and sentenced, Joanna never spoke of the trauma again, until twenty-one years later when her daughter was about to go to college. She resolved then to tell her children about her own rape so that they could learn and protect themselves, and she began to realize that the man who assaulted her was one of the most formative people in her life.

Setting out to uncover the story of her attacker, Connors embarked on a journey to find out who he was, where he came from, who his friends were, and what his life was like. What she discovers stretches beyond one violent man’s story and back into her own, interweaving a narrative about strength and survival with one about rape culture and violence in America.

I Will Find You is a brave, timely consideration of race, class, education, and the families that shape who we become, by a reporter and a survivor.

“Is it possible to call the story of a violent rape and its haunting aftermath a thing of beauty? In the hands of Joanna Connors, this lucid, powerful memoir becomes its own form of redemption, as a seasoned reporter turns her gaze on her own life and that of her rapist's. I found this to be a profoundly moving, important, and, yes, beautiful book.”—Dani Shapiro, author of Still Writing    

On My Radar:

Barefoot to Avalon: A Brother's Story
by David Payne
Atlantic Monthly Press
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

In 2000, while moving his household from Vermont to North Carolina, author David Payne watched from his rearview mirror as his younger brother, George A., driving behind him in a two-man convoy of rental trucks, lost control of his vehicle, fishtailed, flipped over in the road, and died instantly. Soon thereafter, David’s life entered a downward spiral that lasted several years. His career came to a standstill, his marriage disintegrated, and his drinking went from a cocktail hour indulgence to a full-blown addiction. He found himself haunted not only by George A.’s death, but also by his brother’s manic depression, a hereditary illness that overlaid a dark and violent family history whose roots now gripped David, threatening both his and his children’s futures. The only way out, he found, was to write about his brother.

Barefoot to Avalon is Payne’s earnest and unflinching account of George A. and their boyhood footrace that lasted long into their adulthood, defining their relationship and their lives. As universal as it is intimate, this is an exceptional memoir of brotherhood, of sibling rivalry and sibling love, and of the torments a family can hold silent and carry across generations. Barefoot to Avalon is a brave and beautifully wrought gift, a true story not only of survival in the face of adversity but of hard-won wisdom.

On My Radar:

Straight to Hell: True Tales of Deviance, Debauchery, and Billion-Dollar Deals
by John Lefevre
Atlantic Monthly Press
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Over the past three years, the notorious @GSElevator Twitter feed has offered a hilarious, shamelessly voyeuristic look into the real world of international finance. Hundreds of thousands followed the account, Goldman Sachs launched an internal investigation, and when the true identity of the man behind it all was revealed, it created a national media sensation—but that’s only part of the story.

Where @GSElevator captured the essence of the banking elite with curated jokes and submissions overheard by readers, Straight to Hell adds John LeFevre’s own story—an unapologetic and darkly funny account of a career as a globe-conquering investment banker spanning New York, London, and Hong Kong. Straight to Hell pulls back the curtain on a world that is both hated and envied, taking readers from the trading floors and roadshows to private planes and after-hours overindulgence. Full of shocking lawlessness, boyish antics, and win-at-all-costs schemes, this is the definitive take on the deviant, dysfunctional, and absolutely excessive world of finance.

On My Radar:

The Spy's Son: The True Story of the Highest-Ranking CIA Officer Ever Convicted of Espionage and the Son He Trained to Spy for Russia
by Bryan Denson
Atlantic Monthly Press
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Investigative reporter and Pulitzer Prize finalist Bryan Denson tells the riveting and extraordinary true story of the Nicholsons—father and son co-conspirators who deceived their country by selling national secrets to Russia.

Jim Nicholson was one of the CIA’s top veteran case officers. By day, he taught spycraft at the CIA’s clandestine training center, The Farm. By night, he was a minivan-driving single father racing home to have dinner with his three kids. But Nicholson led a double life. For more than two years, he had met covertly with agents of Russia’s foreign intelligence service in locations around the world and turned over troves of classified documents, including the identities of hundreds of trainees. In 1997, Nicholson became the highest ranking CIA officer ever convicted of espionage. But his duplicity didn’t stop there.

While behind the bars of a federal prison, the former mole systematically groomed the one person he trusted most to serve as his stand-in: his youngest son, Nathan. In his early twenties, deeply depressed after suffering a serious injury during military training, Nathan was easy prey for his father. When Nicholson asked him to courier messages out of prison to his Russian contacts, Nathan saw an opportunity to not only make something of himself but to make his father proud by following him into the spy world.

The Spy’s Son is a fast-paced, thrilling account that takes readers inside the private meeting rooms of the FBI and CIA, into the intrigues of international cat-and-mouse espionage games, and behind the closed doors of a family struggling to stay together through the deepest of betrayals.