On My Radar (Wednesday Edition)

Beneath the Sands of Egypt: Adventures of an Unconventional Archaeologist 
by Donald P. Ryan
William Morrow / Harper Collins
Trade paperback

From the publisher website:

Ancient Egypt, with its spectacular temples and tombs, its history, gods, and legends, has enticed the human imagination for centuries. This fascination—and the irresistible drive to unearth the buried secrets of a lost civilization—have been the life work of archaeologist Donald P. Ryan. Beneath the Sands of Egypt is the gripping first-person account of a real-life “Indiana Jones” as he recalls a career spent delving into the remains of Egypt’s past—including his headline-making rediscovery of a lost tomb in the Valley of the Kings containing the mummy of the famous female pharaoh Hatshepsut.

Infused with the irrepressible curiosity and the incomparable wonder of discovery that have fueled Ryan’s lifelong journey, Beneath the Sands of Egypt is the extraordinary story of a man who has always embraced adventure whenever—and wherever—he finds it.

Review

Author website

On My Radar (Monday Edition)

Sex On the Moon: The Amazing Story Behind the Most Audacious Heist in History
by Ben Mezrich
Doubleday / Random House
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

Thad Roberts, a fellow in a prestigious NASA program had an idea—a romantic, albeit crazy, idea. He wanted to give his girlfriend the moon. Literally.

Thad convinced his girlfriend and another female accomplice, both NASA interns, to break into an impregnable laboratory at NASA—past security checkpoints, an electronically locked door with cipher security codes, and camera-lined hallways—and help him steal the most precious objects in the world: the moon rocks.

But what does one do with an item so valuable that it’s illegal even to own? And was Thad Roberts—undeniably gifted, picked for one of the most competitive scientific posts imaginable, a possible astronaut—really what he seemed?

Mezrich has pored over thousands of pages of court records, FBI transcripts, and NASA documents and has interviewed most of the participants in the crime to reconstruct this Ocean’s Eleven–style heist, a madcap story of genius, love, and duplicity that reads like a Hollywood thrill ride.

Kirkus Reviews

Book Review

On My Radar (Friday Edition)

Flip Flop Fly Ball: An Infographic Baseball Adventure
by Craig Robinson
Bloomsbury USA
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

How many miles does a baseball team travel in one season?

How tall would A-Rod's annual salary be in pennies?

What does Nolan Ryan have to do with the Supremes and Mariah Carey?

You might never have asked yourself any of these questions, but Craig Robinson's Flip Flop Fly Ball will make you glad to know the answers.

Baseball, almost from the first moment Robinson saw it, was more than a sport. It was history, a nearly infinite ocean of information that begged to be organized. He realized that understanding the game, which he fell in love with as an adult, would never be possible just through watching games and reading articles. He turned his obsession into a dizzyingly entertaining collection of graphics that turned into an Internet sensation.
Out of Robinson's Web site, www.flipflopflyball.com,  grew this book, full of all-new, never-before-seen graphics. Flip Flop Fly Ball dives into the game's history, its rivalries and absurdities, its cities and ballparks, and brings them to life through 120 full-color graphics. Statistics-the sport's lingua franca-have never been more fun.

(By the way, the answers: about 26,000 miles, at least if the team in question is the 2008 Kansas City Royals; 3,178 miles; they were the artists atop the Billboard Hot 100 when Ryan first and last appeared in MLB games.)

Craig Robinson is, among other things, an Englishman and a New York Yankees fan with a soft spot for the Colorado Rockies and a man-crush on Ichiro. Last season he played outfield for the Prenzlauer Berg Piranhas in the Berlin Mixed Softball League (.452/.548/.575). His previous books include Atlas, Schmatlas: A Superior Atlas of the World and Fun Fun Fun.

Author website

Review of Flip Flop Fly Ball

Author tumblr page

On My Radar (Thursday Edition)

The Chairs Are Where the People Go: How to Live, Work, and Play in the City
by Misha Glouberman with Sheila Heti
Faber & Faber / Macmillan
Trade paperback

From the publisher website:

Should neighborhoods change? Is wearing a suit a good way to quit smoking? Why do people think that if you do one thing, you’re against something else? Is monogamy a trick? Why isn’t making the city more fun for you and your friends a super-noble political goal? Why does a computer last only three years? How often should you see your parents? How should we behave at parties? Is marriage getting easier? What can spam tell us about the world?

Misha Glouberman’s friend and collaborator, Sheila Heti, wanted her next book to be a compilation of everything Misha knew. Together, they made a list of subjects. As Misha talked, Sheila typed. He talked about games, relationships, cities, negotiation, improvisation, Casablanca, conferences, and making friends. His subjects ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous. But sometimes what had seemed trivial began to seem important—and what had seemed important began to seem less so. 

The Chairs Are Where the People Go is refreshing, appealing, and kind of profound. It’s a self-help book for people who don’t feel they need help, and a how-to book that urges you to do things you don’t really need to do.

Book website

Publishers Weekly review

Review by BookSpin friend Harvey Freedenberg on Shelfawareness.com

The Man in the Rockefeller Suit

BookSpin review by Doni Molony

The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Imposter
by Mark Seal
Viking Press
Penguin
June 2011  $26.95
323 pages, 18 pgs. illustrations


This is the mesmerizing true story of Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, aka Clark Rockefeller, who came to the U.S. in 1978 as a seventeen-year-old German citizen, then perpetuated an elaborately fabricated scam that lasted for 30 years. Mark Seal spent 2 years interviewing 200+ people for this book, which details the relentless scheming of a psychopathic grifter. It culminates in Rockefeller's conviction for the kidnapping of his daughter after a bitter divorce, and his indictment in March of 2011 for the murder of John Sohus.

The audacity of Clark Rockefeller frankly astounded me. How could so many erudite individuals: business leaders, doctors, lawyers, professors, art dealers, historians, and members of California, New York and Boston society's elite have been so completely duped by the guile of this faux aristocrat? This cunning poseur with the lockjaw accent?

The Man in the Rockefeller Suit reads like a thriller. It is a fast-paced, intriguing story that caused me to do something I've never done before. Ever. When I finished the last page, I turned it over and began re-reading again at page one. Not simply because of the frenetic pace of his "thousand piece jigsaw puzzle of a life," but because I was left with unanswered questions. Why did it take to long for anyone to figure out Rockefeller's con?

This is a hypnotic story complete with blue-blood, high stakes, big money, kidnapping, murder, and a larger-than-life outcome for the good guys. The Boston DA's said in closing, "the DSM IV (Diagnotic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) does not have a diagnosis for liar."

Highly recommended.

- - - - -
About the Author: Mark Seal is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, and the author of Wildflower: An Extraordinary Life and Mysterious Death in Africa. Seals was a 2010 National Magazine Award Finalist for his Vanity Fair profile of Clark Rockefeller. He lives in Aspen, Colorado.

On My Radar (Tuesday Edition)

Cradle of Gold: The Story of Hiram Bingham, a Real-Life Indiana Jones, and the Search for Machu Picchu
by Christopher Heaney
Palgrave Macmillan
Trade Paperback

From the publisher website:

Hiram Bingham

In 1911, a young Peruvian boy led an American explorer and Yale historian named Hiram Bingham into the ancient Incan citadel of Machu Picchu. Hidden amidst the breathtaking heights of the Andes, this settlement of temples, tombs and palaces was the Incas' greatest achievement. Tall, handsome, and sure of his destiny, Bingham believed that Machu Picchu was the Incas’ final refuge, where they fled the Spanish Conquistadors. Bingham made Machu Picchu famous, and his dispatches from the jungle cast him as the swashbuckling hero romanticized today as a true Indiana Jones-like character. But his excavation of the site raised old specters of conquest and plunder, and met with an indigenous nationalism that changed the course of Peruvian history. Though Bingham successfully realized his dream of bringing Machu Picchu’s treasure of skulls, bones and artifacts back to the United States, conflict between Yale and Peru persists through the present day over a simple question: Who owns Inca history?
In this grand, sweeping narrative, Christopher Heaney takes the reader into the heart of Peru's past to relive the dramatic story of the final years of the Incan empire, the exhilarating recovery of their final cities and the thought-provoking fight over their future. Drawing on original research in untapped archives, Heaney vividly portrays both a stunning landscape and the complex history of a fascinating region that continues to inspire awe and controversy today.

Author website

Review of Cradle of Gold (Financial Times)

Another review of Cradle of Gold (Wall St. Journal)

On My Radar (Monday Edition)

A Renegade History of the United States
by Thaddeus Russell
Free Press / Simon & Schuster
Trade paperback

From the publisher website:

In this groundbreaking book, noted historian Thaddeus Russell tells a new and surprising story about the origins of American freedom. Rather than crediting the standard textbook icons, Russell demonstrates that it was those on the fringes of society whose subversive lifestyles helped legitimize the taboo and made America the land of the free.

In vivid portraits of renegades and their "respectable" adversaries, Russell shows that the nation's history has been driven by clashes between those interested in preserving social order and those more interested in pursuing their own desires—insiders versus outsiders, good citizens versus bad. The more these accidental revolutionaries existed, resisted, and persevered, the more receptive society became to change.

Russell brilliantly and vibrantly argues that it was history's iconoclasts who established many of our most cherished liberties. Russell finds these pioneers of personal freedom in the places that usually go unexamined—saloons and speakeasies, brothels and gambling halls, and even behind the Iron Curtain. He introduces a fascinating array of antiheroes: drunken workers who created the weekend; prostitutes who set the precedent for women's liberation, including "Diamond Jessie" Hayman, a madam who owned her own land, used her own guns, provided her employees with clothes on the cutting-edge of fashion, and gave food and shelter to the thousands left homeless by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake; there are also the criminals who pioneered racial integration, unassimilated immigrants who gave us birth control, and brazen homosexuals who broke open America's sexual culture.

Among Russell's most controversial points is his argument that the enemies of the renegade freedoms we now hold dear are the very heroes of our history books— he not only takes on traditional idols like John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Carnegie, John Rockefeller, Thomas Edison, Franklin Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy, but he also shows that some of the most famous and revered abolitionists, progressive activists, and leaders of the feminist, civil rights, and gay rights movements worked to suppress the vibrant energies of working-class women, immigrants, African Americans, and the drag queens who founded Gay Liberation.

This is not history that can be found in textbooks— it is a highly original and provocative portrayal of the American past as it has never been written before.

Author website

Review of A Renegade History of the United States

Excerpt in Fast Company magazine

Introducing BookSpin Reviewer Evangeline Han

Please join me in welcoming new BookSpin reviewer Evangeline Han:

Evangeline Han is a student from Malaysia. She is a voracious reader with a penchant for books with humor and intrigue. Besides reading, she also enjoys listening to music, surfing the Internet, checking out the movies and browsing through the latest news. She blogs at Sugarpeach and tweets at @EvangelineHan .


We will be featuring the normal book previews, as well as book reviews from myself and the three ladies I have introduced this week.  I would personally like to thank each of them for their enthusiastic participation and to every reader for their time.

--Tim

Introducing BookSpin Reviewer Rita Hernandez

The second of the three new reviewers BookSpin has partnered with in order to bring more reviews to this space is Rita Hernandez, who tweets at @rita_liccious.  Rita's blog can be found here.

Please join me in welcoming Rita to the BookSpin family.

Those Guys Have All the Fun by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales

Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN
by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales
Little, Brown and Company 
Hardcover


I just finished this 700+ page book and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Written in an "as told by" style instead of a narrative, this book fills in ALL the blanks on a sports fan's questionnaire on the inner workings of the 24/7/265 sports network.

Reading the comments from former employees as well as current ones, the love, anger, respect, rivalry and fun of working at ESPN are very apparent.  There are many sports fan who would give anything to work there and this is the closest most of us will ever come.  It is not surprising to hear that it is like many workplaces: full of rivalries, jealousy, unfair promotions and, at times, bad management.  Being a male-dominated workplace, the ugly beast of sexual harassment has reared its head from time to time, and this is handled pretty thoroughly in the book.

This is a great read for any sports fan who wants to know more about the behind the scenes story of the genesis, development and success of ESPN.  Among the personalities interviewed for the book:  Mitch Albom, Erin Andrews, Lance Armstrong, Michelle Beadle (my current crush), Chris Berman, Linda Cohn, Bob Costas, Colin Cowherd, Peter Gammons, Tony Hawk, Craig Kilborn, Suzy Kolber, Tony Kornheiser, Andrea Kremer, Bob Ley, Barack Obama, Keith Olbermann, Dan Patrick, Robin Roberts, Stuart Scott, Charley Steiner, Mike Tirico and Michael Wilbon.

Not At All What One Is Used To by Marian Janssen

  BookSpin has recently hired 3 book reviewers to help us churn out reviews faster and more often.
I will be introducing them this week.

First up, is Doni Molony, whose twitter is @thebattleofme .  Doni has already provided her first review:

Not at All What One Is Used To: The Life and Times of Isabella Gardner
by Marian Janssen
Univ. of Missouri Press
2010, 392 pages, 20 illustrations

This is the well-researched, very readable story of the other Isabella Stewart Gardner.  Not the gilded-age patroness of the arts, whose mansion in Boston's Fenway became the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; but the story of her great-niece and namesake, a mid-20th century poet and rebellious wild-child.

Born in 1915, Isabella grew up in splendid surroundings, attended exclusive schools, and was raised in the posh Brookline neighborhood of Boston. Gardner made her debut into Boston Society, but her life was inexorably changed at age 18, when she was involved in a drunk-driving accident. Her family quickly moved to cover up the incident, and shipped her off to Europe.

The years in Europe helped Isabella crystalize her interests: in the theatre, in literature, and in men. She was married and divorced four times, with heart-wrenching results. "Belle" was brilliant, troubled, prodigious, refined, and generous-to-a-fault. She usually followed her heart, which led her to multiple relationships; some good, some bad, but none everlasting.

Seemingly at the right place at the right time, Isabella associated with many of the literary lions of her day, including Robert Penn Warren, Tennessee Williams, T.S. Eliot, and her cousin, Robert Lowell. She co-edited Poetry magazine in the 190's, and was an unsparing contributor of her time regarding the reading and writing of poems.

As troubled as Belle was in love, she was both a durable and stalwart friend. She was gracious and generous, and gave freely of both her time and her resources. Gardner helped many struggling young artists, and never "lent" money, but gave plenty away; to the consternation of her family.

Gardner was married for the fourth and final time to poet and southern writer Allen Tate, who left his wife of 35 years to marry Belle. She moved to Minneapollis, and tried to live life as a "faculty wife," further alienating her children and her family. She was shattered when after a few short years, Tate left her to marry a nun.

Gardner's story is unsettling. She spent her final years living in the Chelsea Hotel in New York, writing poems, and drinking with thieves and hangers-on. Her children's lives spiraled out of control in tandem with her alcoholism, ultimately with grim results. Gardner was named Poet Laureate of New York, preceding her untimely death in 1981 at age 66.

- - - - - - - - - -
Doni Molony is a native of South Louisiana, an East Tennessee transplant, and a sucker for anything with an engine.  She holds a pilot license and a motorcycle endorsement. She has a husband of 3 decades, 2 grown children, and a serious reading addiction.

On My Radar (Friday Edition)

Gone Boy: A Father's Search for the Truth in his Son's Murder
by Gregory Gibson
North Atlantic Books
Trade Paperback

From the publisher website:

Description:

On December 14, 1992, Gregory Gibson’s eighteen-year-old son Galen was murdered, shot in the doorway of his college library by a fellow student gone berserk. The killer was jailed for life, but for Gibson the tragedy was still unfolding. The morning of the shooting, he learned, college officials had intercepted but not stopped a box of ammunition addressed to the murderer. They were also anonymously warned of the intended killing but failed to call the police. After years of frustrated attempts to find peace, Gibson woke one morning to a terrible vision of his own rage and helplessness. He knew he had to do something before he destroyed himself, and he resolved to discover and document the forces that led to Galen’s death.

Gone Boy follows Gibson as he visits the gun seller, as well as detectives, lawyers, psychiatrists, politicians, and college bureaucrats— a cast of characters as vivid as those in a Raymond Chandler mystery. Hailed by the New York Times and others for its evocative style and courage in confronting guns, violence, and manhood in America today, this wrenching memoir speaks in the voice of a man struggling to turn grief and rage into acceptance and understanding.

Author Biography:

Gregory Gibson is an antiquarian bookseller. When Gone Boy was first published, he began speaking at conferences, seminars, schools, and churches on victim’s issues, gun violence, and school safety. He lives in Gloucester, MA.

Reviews/Endorsements:

“A poignant, insightful, and admirably honest chronicle of a father’s attempts to make sense—in both large and small ways—of his son’s murder.”—New York Times

“Powerful … must-reading for everyone troubled by the epidemic of shootings.”—Time

“Gibson is a fine writer whose work rivals the subtleties of Norman Mailer's best fiction.”—Boston magazine

“Complex, surprising. … This book should be seriously considered by educational professionals, as well as by violence survivors who might benefit from Gibson's singular odyssey.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Gibson is one of those rare birds whose humanism is a result of his innate curiosity about people. He's not interested in demonizing anyone, and he readily admits how people confound his expectations. To his great credit, Gibson writes about everyone he meets as an irreducibly complex human being.”—Salon

“Gone Boy is not merely a book; it’s a journey you experience. You move with Gregory Gibson as he looks down the barrel of the gun that killed his son, stands face to face with the man who sold it, comes to know the killer, comes to know the killer’s parents—and comes to know himself. You will never read a more honest book, and honestly, it changed me.”—Gavin de Becker, author of The Gift of Fear

On My Radar (Wednesday Edition)

A Nation Rising: Untold Tales from America's Hidden History
by Kenneth C. Davis
Harper
Trade Paperback

I previewed this book in hardcover and it has just been released in paperback.

From the publisher website:

In the dramatic period from 1800 through 1850, the United States went from a tiny newborn nation on the Atlantic seaboard to a near-empire that spanned the continent. But America's path to nationhood was vastly more complex than the tidily packaged national myth of a destiny made manifest by visionary political leaders and fearless pioneers. In A Nation Rising, bestselling author Kenneth C. Davis offers fascinating, intertwining stories about historical episodes whose great issues—ambition, power, territorial expansion, slavery, intolerance, civil rights, freedom of the press—reverberate to this day, including:

• Aaron Burr's 1807 trial, culminating in one of our nation's first media circuses
• The 1813 Indian uprising and ensuing massacre, exposing the powerful conflicts at the heart of America's expansion
• The mutiny aboard the slave ship Creole, illustrating how the institution of slavery both destroyed lives and warped our nation's founding
• The bloody "Bible Riots" in Philadelphia, erupting in an early episode of deadly anti-immigrant sentiment

Eye-opening history and riveting storytelling, A Nation Rising is a powerful reminder of the ways in which our past continues to shape our present.

Author/book website


Review of A Nation Rising

Author twitter feed