On My Radar:

The Broken Road: George Wallace and a Daughter's Journey to Reconciliation
by Peggy Wallace Kennedy
Bloomsbury Publishing
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Peggy Wallace Kennedy has been widely hailed as the “symbol of racial reconciliation” (Washington Post). In the summer of 1963, though, she was just a young girl watching her father stand in a schoolhouse door as he tried to block two African-American students from entering the University of Alabama. This man, former governor of Alabama and presidential candidate George Wallace, was notorious for his hateful rhetoric and his political stunts. But he was also a larger-than-life father to young Peggy, who was taught to smile, sit straight, and not speak up as her father took to the political stage. At the end of his life, Wallace came to renounce his views, although he could never attempt to fully repair the damage he caused. But Peggy, after her own political awakening, dedicated her life to spreading the new Wallace message-one of peace and compassion.

In this powerful new memoir, Peggy looks back on the politics of her youth and attempts to reconcile her adored father with the man who coined the phrase “Segregation now. Segregation tomorrow. Segregation forever.”

Timely and timeless, The Broken Road speaks to change, atonement, activism, and racial reconciliation.

In My TBR Stack:

The Geek's Guide to the Writing Life
by Stephanie Vanderslice
Bloomsbury
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

The desire to create, to write, to fulfil our artistic dreams is a powerful human need. Yet the number of people who make a living solely by their pen is actually quite small. What does that mean for the rest of us, the self-described writing geeks, who are passionate about writing and who still want to sustain successful literary lives? What does it really mean to find time to build a rewarding writing life while pursuing a career, being a partner or raising a family, in the distracted, time-deprived, 21st-century? In The Geek's Guide to the Writing Life, based on her Huffington Post blog of the same name, Stephanie Vanderslice shares the secrets and tools to developing a successful, rewarding writing practice in a way that inspires the reader to persevere through the inevitable lows and even the highs of a literary life, so that anyone can pursue the path to realizing their artistic dreams.

Author Stephanie Vanderslice

AUTHOR BIO

AUTHOR BLOG

HUFFINGTON POST ARTICLES BY STEPHANIE VANDERSLICE

My Favorite Books This Year:

In no particular order:



Mumbai New York Scranton 



Hidden Cities



Lost Cat



Run Brother Run



Overlay



Slow Getting Up

In my TBR Stack:

The Kennedy Half Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy
by Larry J. Sabato
Bloomsbury
Hardcover

John F. Kennedy died almost half a century ago—yet because of his extraordinary promise and untimely death, his star still resonates strongly. On the anniversary of his assassination, celebrated political scientist and analyst Larry J. Sabato—himself a teenager in the early 1960s and inspired by JFK and his presidency—explores the fascinating and powerful influence he has had over five decades on the media, the general public, and especially on each of his nine presidential successors.

A recent Gallup poll gave JFK the highest job approval rating of any of those successors, and millions remain captivated by his one thousand days in the White House. For all of them, and for those who feel he would not be judged so highly if he hadn’t died tragically in office, The Kennedy Half-Century will be particularly revealing. Sabato reexamines JFK’s assassination using heretofore unseen information to which he has had unique access, then documents the extraordinary effect the assassination has had on Americans of every modern generation through the most extensive survey ever undertaken on the public’s view of a historical figure. The full and fascinating results, gathered by the accomplished pollsters Peter Hart and Geoff Garin, paint a compelling portrait of the country a half-century after the epochal killing. Just as significantly, Sabato shows how JFK’s presidency has strongly influenced the policies and decisions—often in surprising ways—of every president since.

Among the hundreds of books devoted to JFK, The Kennedy Half-Century stands apart for its rich insight and original perspective. Anyone who reads it will appreciate in new ways the profound impact JFK’s short presidency has had on our national psyche.

On My Radar (Friday Edition)

"On My Radar" is a preview of new release non-fiction; it is not a review. In most cases I do not own the book but would love to review it.

American Pickers Guide to Picking
by Libby Callaway, Mike Wolfe, Frank Fritz and Danielle Colby

Hyperion
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

A true adventure story and the go-to guide for “picking” American treasures from anyone’s backyard, straight from the stars of History’s American Pickers

In these pages, professional treasure hunters Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz chronicle their road trips across the American countryside in search of “rusty gold” to buy and sell among the picking world’s one-of-a-kind characters. Whether you are a fan of the show or just like finding hidden riches, you will love seeing what Wolfe and Fritz dig up and enjoy meeting the devoted collectors, extreme stockpilers, and elite dealers who they encounter along the way.

Wolfe and Fritz do not deal in fine antiques. Their secondhand treasures are of the down-and-dirty and sometimes even bizarre variety, from old bicycles and vintage tools, to sun-bleached cars and handmade furniture, retired carnival games and unusual taxidermy. Assisted by Danielle Colby, who helps out at Antique Archaeology, Wolfe and Fritz buy on the cheap and then sell to dealers, art directors, interior designers, or anyone looking for a little bit of authentic Americana. The three now share their secrets to finding hidden gems, offering helpful hints that will show what average Americans can do to find the treasures that await them.

From American Pickers Guide to Picking:

Junk is Beautiful
When we knock on a door, 90 percent of the time the things we find are junk. But we don’t care about the odds; a picker never turns down an opportunity, no matter where it is. We’ve picked pickup trucks. We’ve picked flat beds. We’ve picked dumpsters. We even picked a Mercury Sable. We’re looking for the unusual, the impossible, the funky, the different, the bizarre—things we have never seen before. And we’ll go anywhere we have to go to find it.

No location is off-limits to a hard-core picker. And there’s plenty of things to be found at antique stores, thrift and consignment shops, flea markets, estate sales, and swap meets, and a lot of the tips in this book apply to finding treasures at these joints. But that’s not really the kind of picking we do anymore. We look outside the box to find our junk—a word we use almost like a term of endearment: to us: junk is beautiful.

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The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters, and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama
by Will Bunch
Harper Paperbacks
Trade Paperback

From the publisher website:

In The Backlash, Liberal columnist and Pulitzer Prize-winning political reporter Will Bunch goes behind the scenes of America’s new extreme right-wing minority to explore how their campaign of misinformation, their distortion of President Obama, and their collective fear of the future combine to pose a very real threat to our democratic system. From health care reform to immigration policies, The Backlash is a gripping investigation into the emerging voice of the dangerous American right wing.

Book Description 

They think Obama Isn’t an American citizen.
They think Obama wants to put Americans in Concentration Camps.
They think Obama is the Anti-Christ.
This isn’t just the Tea Party—Welcome to the Backlash.

The election of Barack Obama provoked unparalleled anger on the far right that eventually twisted important national discussions and pushed ideas from the conservative fringe into the mainstream media. In this gripping exposé, Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Will Bunch reveals the secrets behind the crusade against the president, exploring how forces like radical militia groups, the Tea Party, pro-gun zealots, and Glenn Beck have combined old-fashioned populist outrage with digital-age phobias to produce a wave of resentment that many have ridden straight to the bank. Pulling back the curtain on the paranoid politics of a new generation, Bunch exposes the opportunists who have embraced apocalyptic fearmongering, and shows how events such as the election of America’s first African-American president, the economic recession, and the rise of social networking have created a dangerous political moment that poses legitimate risks to democracy in America.

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Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans
by Wendell Potter
Bloomsbury Press

From the publisher website:

"My name is Wendell Potter, and for twenty years I worked as a senior executive at health insurance companies. I saw how they confuse their customers and dump the sick-all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors."-Senate testimony, June 24, 2009 

In June 2009, Wendell Potter made national headlines with his scorching testimony before the Senate panel on health care reform. This former senior VP of CIG NA explained how health insurers make promises they have no intention of keeping, how they flout regulations designed to protect consumers, and how they skew political debate with multibillion-dollar PR campaigns to mislead the press and public. Potter had walked away from a six-figure salary and two decades as an insurance executive because he could no longer abide the routine practices of an industry where the needs of sick and suffering Americans take a backseat to the bottom line-leading Michael Moore to call him "the Daniel Ellsberg of corporate America."

In Deadly Spin, Potter takes readers behind the scenes to show how a huge chunk of our absurd health care spending actually bankrolls a propaganda campaign and lobbying effort focused on protecting one thing: profits. Potter shows how relentless PR assaults play an insidious role in our political process anywhere that corporate profits are at stake-from climate change to defense policy. Deadly Spin tells us why- and how-we must fight back.

Praise for Deadly Spin:

"The health insurance industry's worst nightmare."-Portfolio.com

"A gripping indictment."-Kate Pickert, Time

"Wendell Potter is a straight shooter-and he hits the bulls-eye here with an exposé of corporate power that reveals why real health care reform didn't happen, can't happen, and won't happen until that power is contained."-Bill Moyers