Now in Paperback:

Dead Run: The Murder of a Lawman and the Greatest Manhunt of the Modern American West
Dan Schultz
St. Martin's Griffin
Trade Paperback (available 3/25/14)

From the publisher's website:

On a sunny May morning in 1998, three friends in a stolen truck passed through Cortez, Colorado on their way to commit sabotage of unspeakable proportions. Evidence suggests their mission was to blow up the Glen Canyon dam. Had they succeeded, the structure's collapse would have unleashed a 500-foot-high inland tsunami, surging across the American Southwest and pulverizing everything in its path—crashing through the Grand Canyon, overflowing Hoover Dam, washing away downstream communities and crippling the water supply of Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tucson, Los Angeles, and San Diego.

Instead, the truck was pulled over by an unsuspecting small town cop and the outlaws opened fire. After shooting him twenty times, they blasted their way past dozens of police cars and vanished into 10,000 square miles of the harshest wilderness terrain on the North American continent. The pursuit that ensued pitted the most sophisticated law enforcement technology on the planet against three self-trained survivalists. Seventy-five local, state, and federal police agencies; dozens of swat teams; U.S. Army Special Forces and more than five hundred officers from across the country followed the fugitives into a landscape only they could survive. 

Nine years later the last of the fugitives was finally accounted for, but what really happened to them remained shrouded in mystery. The first in-depth account of this sensational case, Dead Run is replete with overbearing local sheriffs, Native American trackers, posse’s on horseback, suspicion of police cover-ups, rumors of vigilante justice, and the blunders of the nation’s most exalted crime-fighters pursuing outlaws against the unforgiving backdrop of the Utah wilderness.

More than a thrilling crime story, Dead Run is also an examination of the seductive allure of outlaw culture in the West and how it continues to inform national attitudes toward guns, authority and unfettered freedom. Exhaustively researched, Dead Run offers a stunning portrayal of an enduring Wild West landscape, where the American spirit is most boldly and confusingly, even tragically, lived.

In My TBR Stack:

Must Win: A Season of Surival for a Town and its Team
by Drew Jubera

St. Martin's Press / Macmillan
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

Nestled amid cotton, pine and swamps, the Deep South outpost of Valdosta, Georgia has long drawn pilgrims from across the country to the home of the winningest high school football team in America. Christened by national media “Title Town, USA,” Valdosta has thrived on the continuity of dominance: sons still play in front of fathers and grandfathers, creased men in pickups still offer steak dinners as reward for gridiron glory, and Friday nights in the 11,000 seat stadium known as Death Valley still hold a central role in the town’s social fabric.

Now that place is in peril. As much as Valdosta is a romantic symbol of traditional American values, things are changing here just as they are in small towns everywhere. In Must Win, author Drew Jubera goes inside the country’s most famous football team to chronicle its dramatic 2010 season, a quest by a program that’s down but not out to regain past glory for both the team and the town it represents. This town, this school and these people have been rocked by forces that have hit the entire country, but they’re a long way from giving up. They still believe in the power of a game to overcome all.

With a new coach, a new optimism, and a kaleidoscopic cast that includes an aspiring rapper, a bee keeper’s son, the best athlete in the state, and heir to a pro legacy cut short by a crack dealer’s bullet, these Wildcats have been given one more chance. Must Win is the American story written across a bright, green playing field.

On My Radar: Monday Edition

Tasteful Nudes...and Other Misguided Attempts at Personal Growth and Validation
by Dave Hill
St. Martins Press

Hardcover


From the Book Jacket:

Dear ridiculously attractive person who just so happens to be holding Tasteful Nudes in his or her soft and supple yet commanding hands,

Hi. My name is Dave, and this is my very first collection of essays. As you can probably imagine, it pretty much has everything. In fact, if you like stories about stolen meat, animal attacks, young love, death, naked people, clergymen, rock 'n' roll, irritable Canadians, and prison, you have just hit a street called Easy because my book talks about all that stuff and a bunch of other stuff, too.

Getting back to that prison thing for a second—I can think of almost no better place to read my book than from within the confines of a correctional facility. For starters, you will definitely have the time. Also, cozying up with a good book in front of your fellow inmates is a great way to show them a softer side that for some reason no one ever wants to hear about in the yard.

Fear not, though, non-convicts, my book makes for a solid read outside of prison, too. At the beach, on the subway, while whitewater rafting, during couples counseling, under local anesthesia—I have personally seen to it that my book is totally readable in all these scenarios, as well as in most other scenarios out there today. It will make you laugh, cry, and maybe even think so much that you will forget all your problems while simultaneously creating a few new ones. In limited instances it has been known to cause severe dehydration and the occasional groin pull, but honestly I don’t know what that’s about. That said, it’s probably not a bad idea to keep a glass of water handy and really stretch things out before strapping yourself in for a literary thrill ride you will want to experience again and again until you are either dead or your eyesight fails completely, whichever comes first. In fact, if I end up being wrong about any of this stuff, you can kick me right in the privates. Also, I will send you a nice ham (serves twenty). In short, you really can’t lose on this one.

Your man,

Dave Hill

On My Radar: Friday Edition

15 Minutes: General Curtis LeMay and the Countdown to Nuclear Annihilation
by L. Douglas Keeney
St. Martins Griffin / Macmillan
Trade Paperback

From the publisher website:

Packed with startling revelations, this inside look at the secret side of the Cold War exposes just how close America came to total annihilation

During the Cold War, a flight crew had 15 minutes to get their nuke-laden plane in the air from the moment Soviet bombers were detected—15 minutes between the earliest warning of an incoming nuclear strike and the first flash of an enemy warhead. This is the chilling true story of the incredibly risky steps our military took to protect us from that scenario, including: 

• Over two thousand loaded bombers that crossed American skies. They sometimes crashed and at least nine times resulted in nuclear weapons being accidentally dropped 

• A system that would use timers and rockets to launch missiles even after everyone was dead 

• Disastrous atmospheric nuclear testing including the horrific runaway bomb—that fooled scientists and put thousands of men in uniform in the center of a cloud of hot fallout 

• A plan to use dry lake beds to rebuild and launch a fighting force in the aftermath of nuclear war 

Based on formerly classified documents, military records, press accounts, interviews and over 10 years of research, 15 Minutes is one of the most important works on the atom bomb ever written.