New Nonfiction Paperbacks This Week

Thank the Liberals* For Saving America (and why you should)
by Alan Colmes
Hay House, Inc.

Trade Paperback

In Thank the Liberals, political commentator and Fox News radio host Alan Colmes explains how people who fight for liberal ideals help our country move forward. With his trademark humor and wit, Colmes walks readers through the founding of our nation and shows how America was based on a liberal idea. Our very founders were progressives, and it's progressives who have led America to be the country it is today. Through legislation, constitutional amendments, Supreme Court decisions, and the actions of grassroots Americans, we see that it is liberal efforts that are responsible for programs intrinsic to our American DNA-programs like Social Security, Medicare, assistance for the needy, and the government safety nets that have saved us during the recent economic downturn. 

Colmes's goal is to show not only where we are today, but also where we as a nation are going and how it is liberals who will get us there. The divide between conservative and progressive aims has gotten ever more stark, and it seems that many conservatives are trying to take us backward, revoking or rolling back hard-won rights and impeding progress, which at best keeps us stranded in the status quo. This continual push to the right is something liberals must fight, and fight they do. On everything from preserving the separation of church and state, to climate change, regulating immigration, caring for the poor, and making peace, not war, Colmes shows how liberals are leading the way. 

Thank the Liberals will open readers' eyes to some of the battles that will help define our nation as we move forward. Colmes boldly shows that as America progresses, it will become more liberal-just as it has done throughout history-and that this will enable us to continue to stand out as a beacon of freedom and democracy for the rest of the world.

On My Radar:

Falling Cars and Junkyard Dogs

by Jay Farrar
Soft Skull Press, Inc.
Trade paperback

From the publisher website:

In this collection of beautifully crafted autobiographical vignettes that encompasses everything from the people Jay Farrar has met and the places he’s journeyed over 20 years as a traveling musician, to his formative childhood experiences, to his parents’ cultural identity as Missouri Ozarks.

As a child, he marveled at the eccentric habits and mannerisms of his father, though it has taken over 40 years to fully appreciate his guidance. Recollections of Farrar’s father are prominent throughout the stories. Ultimately, it is music and musicians that are given the most space and the final word since music has been the creative impetus and driving force for the past 35 years of his life.

In writing these stories, he found a natural inclination to focus on very specific experiences; a method analogous to the songwriting process. The highlights and pivotal experiences from that musical journey are all represented as the binding thread in these stories—if life is a movie, then these stories are the still frames.

About the Author:

 JAY FARRAR has been a singer/songwriter for over 25 years. He was the founding member of legendary band Uncle Tupelo and has been performing with Son Volt since 1995. Two of his most recent projects were putting original music to the words and poetry of Jack Kerouac (2010) and Woody Guthrie (2012).

On My Radar (Tuesday Edition)

The Weasel: A Double Life in the Mob
by Adrian Humphreys
John Wiley & Sons

Hardcover

From the publisher website:

In the world of organized crime the bosses grab the headlines, as the names Capone, Gotti, Bonnano, Cotroni and Rizzuto attest. But a crime family has many working parts and the young mobster known as The Weasel was the epitome of a crucial, invisible cog-the soldier, the muscle, the driver, the gopher.

By a quirk of fate, Marvin Elkind-later The Weasel-was placed in the foster home of a tough gangster family, immersing him from the age of nine in a daring world of con men, cheats, bootleggers, loan sharks, bank robbers, leg breakers and Mafia bosses. During a Golden Age of underworld life in New York, Detroit and across Canada, The Weasel found himself working with a surprising cast of colourful characters. He befriended powerful gangsters by smuggling bottles of Scotch to their tables as a waiter at New York's famed Copacabana; he was pushed to be Jimmy Hoffa's chauffeur.

But his disenchantment with the broken promises of mob life brought him into another fraternity, one offering the same adrenaline rush, danger and dark comedy he craved. After a startling confrontation, he was embraced by law enforcement, and a cop with a reputation for results. Now a career informant, The Weasel learned he was a far better fink than he ever was a crook.

With his impeccable gangland pedigree, enormous girth, cold stare and sausage-like fingers adorned with chunky rings, no one questioned The Weasel's loyalty. The backroom doors were flung open and The Weasel slipped in, bringing undercover cops with him. For case after case over two decades, he worked for the FBI, U.S. Customs, Scotland Yard, RCMP, Ontario Provincial Police and other law enforcement agencies on three continents, trapping and betraying mobsters, mercenaries, spies, drug traffickers, pornographers, union fat cats and corrupt politicians.

With unflinching honesty, The Weasel and many of the undercover officers he worked with revealed their successes and failures to award-winning crime reporter and best-selling author Adrian Humphreys.

The Weasel is the riveting chronicle of a unique and engaging figure who lived a most dangerous and rare experience.

It is a story that was never supposed to be told.