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.

Forthcoming Books

On My Radar:

Fringe Florida: Travels Among Mud Boggers, Furries, Ufologists, Nudists, and Other Lovers of Unconventional Lifestyles
by Lynn Waddell
University Press of Florida

Hardcover

Street date:  9/17/2013

Most people visit the Sunshine State for its theme parks and beaches, but there is another side to Florida, an underbelly few tourists ever see, a periphery most residents know about but--out of decorum or discomfort--prefer not to discuss. 

In "Fringe Florida," Lynn Waddell explores the frequently exotic, often sensational, and sometimes illicit worlds of the oddest state in the nation. Waddell takes the reader on a colorful journey to meet the most unconventional of Floridians in unbelievable and spectacular places. 

At Fetish Con, she befriends furries and pony girls. She travels to Cassadaga, the oldest active Spiritualist community in the South, where trained mediums converse with the dead, and to the Holy Land Experience theme park in Orlando, where one can eat a hot dog while watching a reenactment of the Crucifixion. She interviews the founder of the Leather & Lace Motorcycle Club, a Daytona Beach-area grandmother who hosts the club's annual gathering at her subdivision home where scores of lady bikers camp out on her lawn. At an Animal Amnesty Day outside Busch Gardens, Waddell meets exotic reptile owners who give up their beloved-but no-longer-manageable pets and others who vie to take home the cast-offs.If you've ever wanted to parade around on a pimped-out swamp buggy amidst a couple thousand beer-swigging mud boggers or fall asleep with a python hissing in your ear, been tempted to bring a Capuchin monkey in a stroller to a Little League game, or contemplated sitting on the beach waiting to be picked up by a UFO but couldn t quite bring yourself to such extremes, "Fringe Florida" is for you.

Having lived in Florida for a couple of years, I would love to read this book.  I'd probably reconnect with some old friends.

New Nonfiction Hardcover Titles This Week

Books I'd Like to Read

A Colossal Wreck: A Road Trip Through Political Scandal, Corruption, and American Culture
by Alexander Cockburn

Verso Books
Hardcover

Alexander Cockburn was without question one of the most influential journalists of his generation, whose writing stems from the best tradition of Mark Twain, H.L. Menchken and Tom Paine. Colossal Wreck, his final work, finished shortly before his death in July 2012, exemplifies the prodigious literary brio that made Cockburn's name.  

Whether ruthlessly exposing Beltway hypocrisy, pricking the pomposity of those in power, or tirelessly defending the rights of the oppressed, Cockburn never pulled his punches and always landed a blow where it mattered. In this panoramic work, covering nearly two decades of American culture and politics, he explores subjects as varied as the sex life of Bill Clinton and the best way to cook wild turkey. He stands up for the rights of prisoners on death row and exposes the chicanery of the media and the duplicity of the political elite. As he pursues a serpentine path through the nation, he charts the fortunes of friends, famous relatives, and sworn enemies alike to hilarious effect.  

This is a thrilling trip through the reefs and shoals of politics and everyday life. Combining a passion for the places, the food and the people he encountered on dozens of cross-country journeys, Cockburn reports back over seventeen years of tumultuous change among what he affectionately called the “thousand landscapes” of the United States.

Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune
by Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell, Jr.
Ballantine Books / Random House

Hardcover

When Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Bill Dedman noticed in 2009 a grand home for sale, unoccupied for nearly sixty years, he stumbled through a surprising portal into American history. Empty Mansions is a rich mystery of wealth and loss, connecting the Gilded Age opulence of the nineteenth century with a twenty-first-century battle over a $300 million inheritance. At its heart is a reclusive heiress named Huguette Clark, a woman so secretive that, at the time of her death at age 104, no new photograph of her had been seen in decades. Though she owned palatial homes in California, New York, and Connecticut, why had she lived for twenty years in a simple hospital room, despite being in excellent health? Why were her valuables being sold off? Was she in control of her fortune, or controlled by those managing her money? Dedman has collaborated with Huguette Clark’s cousin, Paul Clark Newell, Jr., one of the few relatives to have frequent conversations with her. Dedman and Newell tell a fairy tale in reverse: the bright, talented daughter, born into a family of extreme wealth and privilege, who secrets herself away from the outside world. Huguette was the daughter of self-made copper industrialist W. A. Clark, nearly as rich as Rockefeller in his day, a controversial senator, railroad builder, and founder of Las Vegas. She grew up in the largest house in New York City, a remarkable dwelling with 121 rooms for a family of four. She owned paintings by Degas and Renoir, a world-renowned Stradivarius violin, a vast collection of antique dolls. But wanting more than treasures, she devoted her wealth to buying gifts for friends and strangers alike, to quietly pursuing her own work as an artist, and to guarding the privacy she valued above all else. The Clark family story spans nearly all of American history in three generations, from a log cabin in Pennsylvania to mining camps in the Montana gold rush, from backdoor politics in Washington to a distress call from an elegant Fifth Avenue apartment. The same Huguette who was touched by the terror attacks of 9/11 held a ticket nine decades earlier for a first-class stateroom on the second voyage of theTitanic. Empty Mansions reveals a complex portrait of the mysterious Huguette and her intimate circle. We meet her extravagant father, her publicity-shy mother, her star-crossed sister, her French boyfriend, her nurse who received more than $30 million in gifts, and the relatives fighting to inherit Huguette’s copper fortune. Richly illustrated with more than seventy photographs, Empty Mansions is an enthralling story of an eccentric of the highest order, a last jewel of the Gilded Age who lived life on her own terms.

Word of Mouse: 101+ Trends in How We Buy, Sell, Live, Learn, Work, and Play
by Marc Ostrofsky

Simon & Schuster
Hardcover

Gain a competitive edge— get the most from today’s technology! 

Technology changes so fast that it’s easy to be intimidated by it. Our personal choices and business decisions are increasingly driven by digital “word of mouse”— and it’s essential to our success and satisfaction to take control of the gadgets, apps, and trends that are shaping our world.

Bestselling author and trend watcher Marc Ostrofsky is here to help. In this groundbreaking new book, Ostrofsky reveals the ways that new technologies implant themselves in our daily lives and how we can easily take advantage of them to live, learn, buy, sell, work, play, communicate, and socialize better.

Covering diverse topics from how the Internet affects our health to how we can become bargain-hunting pros, Ostrofsky’s book could come at no better time. The Internet’s presence is only growing, and new technologies are sprouting up every day. We must learn how to cultivate these new tools so that we can remain competitive and live happier, healthier lives.

Word of Mouse gives you the tools you need to conquer information overload—and puts you in the driver’s seat of the world’s most potent technologies. 

New Nonfiction Paperbacks This Week

Books I'd Like to Read


A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper

by John Allen Paulos

Basic Books
Trade Paperback

In this lively volume, mathematician John Allen Paulos employs his singular wit to guide us through an unlikely mathematical jungle—the pages of the daily newspaper. From the Senate and sex to celebrities and cults, Paulos takes stories that may not seem to involve math at all and demonstrates how mathematical naïveté can put readers at a distinct disadvantage. Whether he’s using chaos theory to puncture economic and environmental predictions, applying logic to clarify the hazards of spin doctoring and news compression, or employing arithmetic and common sense to give us a novel perspective on greed and relationships, Paulos never fails to entertain and enlighten.

A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming: Mastering the Art of Oneironautics

by Dylan Tuccillo, Jared Zeizel, and Thomas Peisel

Workman Publishing

Trade Paperback

Imagine being able to fly. Walk through walls. Shape-shift. Breathe underwater. Conjure loved ones—or total strangers—out of thin air. Imagine experiencing your nighttime dreams with the same awareness you possess right now—fully functioning memory, imagination, and self-awareness. Imagine being able to use this power to be more creative, solve problems, and discover a deep sense of well-being.

This is lucid dreaming—the ability to know you are dreaming while you are in a dream, and then consciously explore and change the elements of the dream. A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming, with its evocative retro illustrations, shows exactly how to do it. Written by three avid, experienced lucid dreamers, this manual for the dream world takes the reader from step one—learning how to reconnect with his or her dreams— through the myriad possibilities of what can happen once the dreamer is lucid and an accomplished oneironaut (a word that comes from the Greek oneira, meaning dreams, and nautis, meaning sailor).

Readers will learn about the powerful REM sleep stage—a window into lucid dreams. Improve dream recall by keeping a journal. The importance of reality checks, such as “The Finger”—during the day, try to pass your finger through your palm; then, when you actually do it successfully, you’ll know that you’re dreaming. And once you become lucid, how to make the most of it. Every time you dream, you are washing up on the shores of your own inner landscape. Learn to explore a strange and thrilling world with A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming.

Steve Jobs

by Walter Isaacson

Simon & Schuster

Trade Paperback

The phenomenal bestseller from the author of the acclaimed biographies of Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein. 

Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than 100 family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson set down the riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing. Isaacson’s portrait touched hundreds of thousands of readers. 

At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge and when societies around the world are trying to build digital-age economies, Jobs still stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering. 

Although Jobs cooperated with the author, he asked for no control over what was written. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. He himself spoke candidly about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues offer an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped Jobs’s approach to business, the innovative products that resulted, and his legacy.

Hollywood Said No!  Orphaned Film Scripts, Bastard Scenes, and Abandoned Darlings from the Creators of Mr. Show

by Bob Odenkirk and David Cross

Grand Central Publishing

Trade Paperback

Bob Odenkirk and David Cross, creators of HBO's classic sketch comedy show Mr. Show, present to you this collection of never-before-seen scripts and ideas that Hollywood couldn't find the gumption to green-light. Simply put...

HOLLYWOOD SAID NO!

Since Mr. Show closed up shop, Bob and David have kept busy with many projects--acting in fun, successful, movies and TV shows, directing things, and complaining about stuff that didn't turn out well to anyone who would listen, and even alone, in silence, inside their own heads.

HOLLYWOOD SAID NO! reveals the full-length, never-before-seen scripts for Bob and David Make a Movie (fleshed out with brand-new storyboards by acclaimed artist Mike Mitchell) and Hooray For America!: a satirical power-house indictment of all that you hold dear. This tome also includes a bonus section of orphaned sketch ideas from the Mr. Show days and beyond, suitable for performance by church groups that aren't all koo-koo about religion. What you are looking at online, and are about to buy, is chock-full of comic twists, turns, and maybe a few hard truths. We said "maybe," but what we mean was "probably not."

Now, for the first time, take a peek at the scripts that didn't get the go-ahead and ponder a world we can only dream about...and beyond! 

10 Things You Might Not Know About Nearly Everything

by Mark Jacob and Stephan Benzkofer

Agate Publishing / Agate Midway / Publishers Group West

Trade Paperback

For years, the Chicago Tribune's popular weekly feature column "10 Things You Might Not Know” has been informing and entertaining readers on a diverse range of fascinating subjects. 10 Things You Might Not Know About Nearly Everything is a comprehensive collection of these columns, presented in a fun and easy-to-read format. This book gives readers well-researched, obscure facts on universal topics—including arts and culture, food and leisure, history, politics, science and technology, sports, religion, lifestyle, language, and more. 

10 Things You Might Not Know About Nearly Everything contains a plethora of surprising trivia and pertinent tidbits on so many different areas that will appeal to everyone from history buffs to sports fans to foodies, with an especially riveting look into Chicago-area history and facts. For example, did you know that the adult human body contains about half a pound of salt? Or that the U.S. had no national debt under President Andrew Jackson for a brief period of time around January 1835? 

From amusing, lighthearted topics like beards and holidays to more serious subjects like taxes and juries, this collection of well-researched and universal trivia will make readers laugh and their jaws drop. 10 Things You Might Not Know About Nearly Everything will leave readers brighter, wittier, and curious to learn more about myriad worlds they never encountered before and will never forget.

Author of the Week:

Rick Bragg        photo: Ben Flanagan / al.com

Rick Bragg

Once in a while, someone comes along who can put words in a particular order and change your life.

I first encountered the genius that is Rick Bragg when an unsolicited advance copy of ALL OVER BUT THE SHOUTIN' came to the Waldenbooks I was managing in Valdosta, Georgia.  As is my
wont, I offered the book to anyone on the crew but there were no takers.  I finally took the book home and it sat on the table next to my sofa for a month or so, untouched.

One day I picked the book up out of boredom and began to read, seeing if it caught my fancy.  From the first words, this amazing book had me in its grip.  Here is the opening vignette of ALL OVER BUT THE SHOUTIN':

  "I used to stand amazed and watch the redbirds fight.  They would flash and flutter like scraps of burning rags through a sky unbelievably blue, swirling, soaring, plummeting.  On the ground they were a blur of feathers, stabbing for each other's eyes.  I have seen grown men stop why they were doing, stop pulling corn or lift their head out from under the hood of a broken-down car, to watch it.  Once, when I was little, I watched one of the birds attack its own reflection in the side mirror or a truck.  It hurled its body again and again against that unyielding image, until it pecked a crack in the glass, until the whole mirror was smeared with blood.  It was as if the bird hated what it saw there, and discovered too late that all it was seeing was itself.  I asked an old man who worked for my uncle Ed, a snuff-dipping man named Charlie Bivens, why he reckoned that bird did that.  He told me it was just its nature."

What I didn't know, reading that paragraph, was that Bragg was foreshadowing the story I was about to read.  SHOUTIN' is a story about his family, specifically his beloved mother, entwined with the sad, all-too-common story of his drunken and defeated father.

I know now that I love Bragg's story so much because of how parallel it is in many ways to my own story.  But Rick Bragg writes about the terrible in a beautiful way.  I have never, ever, read words so lyrically put together.  To that point, he also has a book of his Pulitzer-Prize winning newspaper feature writing for the New York Times, called "Somebody Told Me."  In one of the early stories, Bragg writes about a devastating tornado that rips though a small Alabama town.  His ability to make the reader feel the emotions of the characters in his pieces is palpable.  Put it this way: the title of "Somebody Told Me," comes from Bragg's response to the often-asked question, "Where do you find these stories?"

Bragg's voice is one that comes from a place few authors can reach.

ALL OVER BUT THE SHOUTIN' is the first of what ended up being three books about his family.  I highly recommend all of them.  The man can write no wrong.

I have met and talked to Rick Bragg on several occasions. The man probably recognizes me on sight now.  He also puts to rest the worry of meeting one's heroes.  He is genuinely funny and appreciative of his fans.  I get the feeling that he takes it as a compliment to his mother when people rave about his work.

I always keep several copies of the family trilogy at my house. I have given away more copies of those three books than I care to remember.  It is my go-to for gifts if I think the person can appreciate them.  I have probably hand sold more copies of SHOUTIN' than any person alive.  I am proud to have my own hardcover inscribed by the author:  "For Tim, Thank You, Rick Bragg."

No, Rick Bragg.  Thank YOU.

New Hardcover Nonfiction This Week:

Books that look interesting to me:


Salinger
by David Shields and Shane Salerno

Simon and Schuster
Hardcover

Based on eight years of exhaustive research and exclusive interviews with more than 200 people—and published in coordination with the international theatrical release of a major documentary film from the Weinstein Company—Salinger is a global cultural event: the definitive biography of one of the most beloved and mysterious figures of the twentieth century.

 For more than fifty years, the ever elusive author of The Catcher in the Rye has been the subject of a relentless stream of newspaper and magazine articles as well as several biographies. Yet all of these attempts have been hampered by a fundamental lack of access and by the persistent recycling of inaccurate information. Salinger remains, astonishingly, an enigma. The complex and contradictory human being behind the myth has never been revealed.

No longer.  

In the eight years since Salinger was begun, and especially in the three years since Salinger’s death, the authors interviewed on five continents more than 200 people, many of whom had previously refused to go on the record about their relationship with Salinger. This oral biography offers direct eyewitness accounts from Salinger’s World War II brothers-in-arms, his family members, his close friends, his lovers, his classmates, his neighbors, his editors, his publishers, his New Yorker colleagues, and people with whom he had relationships that were secret even to his own family. Shields and Salerno illuminate most brightly the last fifty-six years of Salinger’s life: a period that, until now, had remained completely dark to biographers. Provided unprecedented access to never-before-published photographs (more than 100 throughout the book), diaries, letters, legal records, and secret documents, readers will feel they have, for the first time, gotten beyond Salinger’s meticulously built-up wall. The result is the definitive portrait of one of the most fascinating figures of the twentieth century.

One Doctor: Close Calls, Cold Cases, and the Mysteries of Medicine
by Brendan Reilly, M.D.
Atria Books / Simon and Schuster
Hardcover

An epic story told by a unique voice in Ameri­can medicine, One Doctor describes life-changing experiences in the career of a distinguished physi­cian. In riveting first-person prose, Dr. Brendan Reilly takes us to the front lines of medicine today. Whipsawed by daily crises and frustra­tions, Reilly must deal with several daunting challenges simultaneously: the extraordinary patients under his care on the teeming wards of a renowned teaching hospital; the life-threatening illnesses of both of his ninety-year-old parents; and the tragic memory of a cold case from long ago that haunts him still. As Reilly’s patients and their families survive close calls, struggle with heartrending decisions, and confront the limits of medicine’s power to cure, One Doctor lays bare a fragmented, depersonal­ized, business-driven health-care system where real caring is hard to find. Every day, Reilly sees patients who fall through the cracks and suffer harm because they lack one doctor who knows them well and relentlessly advocates for their best interests. 

Filled with fascinating characters in New York City and rural New England—people with dark secrets, mysterious illnesses, impos­sible dreams, and many kinds of courage—One Doctor tells their stories with sensitivity and empathy, reminding us of professional values once held dear by all physicians. But medicine has changed enormously during Reilly’s career, for both better and worse, and One Doctor is a cautionary tale about those changes. It is also a hopeful, inspiring account of medicine’s poten­tial to improve people’s lives, Reilly’s quest to understand the “truth” about doctoring, and a moving testament to the difference one doctor can make. 

I have a copy of this book to give away!  The first person to email me requesting it, wins!  My email address is above on the right.  


Enemies Within: Inside the NYPD's Secret Spying Unit and Bin Laden's Final Plot Against America
by Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman

Touchstone / Simon and Schuster
Hardcover

How safe are we? What do we sacrifice to feel safe? And who pays the ultimate price?

Two Pulitzer Prize–winning journalists examine one of the most sensitive post–9/11 national security investigations—a breathtaking race to prevent an al-Qaeda bomber from launching Osama bin Laden’s final attack on American soil.

In Enemies Within, Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman lay bare the complex and often contradictory state of counterterrorism and intelligence in America through the pursuit of Najibullah Zazi, a terrorist bomber who trained under one of bin Laden’s most trusted deputies. Zazi and his coconspirators represented America’s greatest fear: a terrorist cell operating inside America.

Apuzzo and Goldman lift the veil of secrecy to reveal the strengths and weaknesses of our counterterrorism measures. This real-life spy story—uncovered in previously unpublished secret NYPD documents and interviews with intelligence sources—shows that while many of these programs are more invasive than ever, they are often counterproductive at best.

After 9/11, New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly initiated an audacious plan for the Big Apple: dispatch a vast network of plainclothes officers and paid informants—called “rakers” and “mosque crawlers”—into Muslim neighborhoods to infiltrate religious communities and eavesdrop on college campuses. Police amassed data on innocent people, often for their religious and political beliefs. But when it mattered most, these strategies failed to identify the most imminent threats.

Enemies Within tackles the tough questions about the measures that we take to protect ourselves from real and perceived threats. Apuzzo and Goldman take readers inside America’s sprawling counterterrorism machine while it operates at full throttle. They reveal what works, what doesn’t, and what Americans have unknowingly given up.

I have a copy of this book to give away!  The first person to email me requesting it, wins!  My email address is above on the right.  



Floating City: A Rogue Sociologist Lost and Found in New York's Underground Economy
by Sudhir Venkatesh
The Penguin Press

Hardcover

"[A] fascinating X-ray of the city...Venkatesh's engrossing narrative dissects the intricacies of illegal commerce." --Publishers Weekly(STARRED review)

New York is a city of highs and lows, where wealthy elites share the streets with desperate immigrants and destitute locals. Bridging this economic divide is New York’s underground economy, the invisible network of illicit transactions between rich and poor that secretly weaves together the whole city.

Sudhir Venkatesh, acclaimed sociologist at Columbia University and author ofGang Leader for a Day, returns to the streets to connect the dots of New York’s divergent economic worlds and crack the code of the city’s underground economy. Based on Venkatesh’s interviews with prostitutes and socialites, immigrants and academics, high end drug bosses and street-level dealers,Floating City exposes the underground as the city’s true engine of social transformation and economic prosperity—revealing a wholly unprecedented vision of New York.

A memoir of sociological investigation, Floating City draws from Venkatesh’s decade of research within the affluent communities of Upper East Side socialites and Midtown businessmen, the drug gangs of Harlem and the sex workers of Brooklyn, the artists of Tribeca and the escort services of Hell’s Kitchen. Venkatesh arrived in the city after his groundbreaking research in Chicago, where crime remained stubbornly local: gangs stuck to their housing projects and criminals stayed on their corners. But in Floating City, Venkatesh discovers that New York’s underground economy unites instead of divides inhabitants: a vast network of “off the books” transactions linking the high and low worlds of the city. Venkatesh shows how dealing in drugs and sex and undocumented labor bridges the conventional divides between rich and poor, unmasking a city knit together by the invisible threads of the underground economy.

Planting himself squarely within this unexplored world, Venkatesh closely follows a dozen New Yorkers locked in the underground economy. Bangledeshi shop clerks like Manjun and Santosh navigate immense networks of illegal goods and services, connecting inquisitive tourists with sex workers and drug dealers. Hispanic prostitutes like Angela and Carla feel secure enough in the new city to leave their old neighborhoods behind in pursuit of bigger money, yet abandon all the safety they had when their clients were known locals. Rich uptown women like Analise and Brittany have the changing city at their beck and call, but both turn to sex work as an easy way to make ends meet without relying on their family fortunes. Venkatesh’s greatest guide is Shine, an African American drug boss based in Harlem who hopes to break into the elusive, upscale cocaine market. Without connections among wealthy whites, Shine undertakes an audacious campaign of self-reinvention, leaving behind the certainties of race and class with all the drive of the greatest entrepreneurs. As Shine explains to Venkatesh, “This is New York! We’re like hummingbirds, man. We go flower to flower. . . . Here, you need to float.”

Floating City: A Rogue Sociologist Lost and Found in New York’s Underground Economy chronicles Venkatesh’s decade of discovery and loss in the shifting terrain of New York, where research subjects might disappear suddenly and new allies emerge by chance, where close friends might reveal themselves to be criminals of the lowest order. Propelled by Venkatesh’s numerous interviews and firsthand research, Floating City at its heart is a story of one man struggling to understand a complex global city constantly in the throes of becoming.

New Nonfiction Paperbacks This Week

Books that look interesting to me:

The Cornbread Mafia: A Homegrown Syndicate's Code of Silence and the Biggest Marijuana Bust in American History
by James Higdon
Lyons Press
Trade paperback

The true story of the largest homegrown marijuana syndicate in American history, a band of Kentucky farmers descended from Prohibition-era moonshiners versus the War on Drugs. 

The Sensory Child Gets Organized: Proven Systems for Rigid, Anxious, or Distracted Kids
by Carolyn Dalgliesh
Simon & Schuster / Touchstone Books

Trade Paperback

Every year, tens of thousands of young children are diagnosed with disorders that make it difficult for them to absorb the external world. Parents of sensory kids—like those with sensory processing disorder, anxiety disorder, AD/HD, autism, bipolar disorder, and OCD—often feel frustrated and overwhelmed, creating stress in everyday life for the whole family. Now, with The Sensory Child Gets Organized, there’s help and hope.

As a professional organizer and parent of a sensory child, Carolyn Dalgliesh knows firsthand the struggles parents face in trying to bring out the best in their rigid, anxious, or distracted children. She provides simple, effective solutions that help these kids thrive at home and in their day-to-day activities, and in this book you’ll learn how to:

¦ Understand what makes your sensory child tick¦ Create harmonious spaces through sensory organizing¦ Use structure and routines to connect with your child¦ Prepare your child for social and school experiences¦ Make travel a successful and fun-filled journey

With The Sensory Child Gets Organized, parents get an easy-to-follow road map to success that makes life easier—and more fun—for your entire family.

I have a copy of this book to give away!  The first person to email me requesting it, wins!  My email address is above on the right.  

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Tomorrow on BookSpin:  New Nonfiction Hardcovers This Week

News Release:

A Classic Returns to the Bestseller Lists

More than 20 years after it was published, Jean Sasson's PRINCESS: A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia is a NYT bestseller again. 

PRINCESS laid bare life in the Saudi royal family as Princess Sultana knew it. Her story of incomparable luxury paid for with the sacrifice of all personal freedom caused a sensation when it was first published in 1992, by William Morrow in the United States and by Transworld in the UK.  It was sold in 38 countries and became a worldwide bestseller, including a stint of eleven weeks on the New York Times list, rising to No. 3.  Before PRINCESS, few people knew the truth of life for women in Saudi Arabia.  To discover how young girls could be married to men three times their age, and how women were not allowed to work or travel without a male guardian's express permission, was a revelation for readers.

In anticipation of the twentieth anniversary, Jean Sasson and Princess Sultana updated the story.  Sasson and her literary agent, Liza Dawson of Liza Dawson Associates, then commissioned new art work for all three books in the PRINCESS trilogy, which is now published by Windsor-Brooke Books and distributed by Midpoint.
 
After a recent blast announcing a promotion, and with the help of both Amazon and Barnes & Noble, the book surged in sales.  PRINCESS was No. 1 on this week's Wall Street Journal e-book bestseller list.  It was No. 17 on the USA Today list.   And next week it will appear at No. 2 on The New York Times e-list and No. 3 on The New York Times combined e- and print editions. 
 
"There was obviously a pent-up demand for PRINCESS," says Dawson.  "PRINCESS is a timeless classic.  It is required reading in colleges and high schools.  Teachers say it is the book to turn to for authentic detail about the lives of women who live beneath the veil.  And unfortunately little has changed in Saudi Arabia, which means that the book is just as current as it was twenty years ago."

Sasson and Princess Sultana are currently working on a new book in the PRINCESS series which has been licensed to her UK Publisher Transworld.  
 
Sasson is also the author of  THE RAPE OF KUWAIT: The True Story of Iraqi Atrocities Against a Civilian Population;   MAYADA:  Daughter of Iraq;  LOVE IN A TORN LAND:  The True Story of a Freedom Fighter's Escape from Iraqi Vengeance;  FOR THE LOVE OF A

SON: One Afghan Woman's Quest for her Stolen Son;  GROWING UP BIN LADEN: Osama Bin Laden's Wife and Son Take Us Inside Their Secret World and her e-only memoir AMERICAN CHICK IN SAUDI ARABIA. 
 
"It's particularly exciting to read the dozens of reviews on Barnes and Noble and on Amazon from new readers,” says Dawson.  “Sasson is an author who has an on-going career in print and a strong digital backlist.  Both formats support each other and have brought her back to bestsellerdom."

 
 
 
PRAISE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER PRINCESS:

"Absolutely riveting and profoundly sad" --People magazine

"A chilling story...a vivid account of an air-conditioned nightmare" --Entertainment Weekly

"Must-reading for anyone interested in human rights" --USA Today

"Shocking...candid...sad, sobering, and compassionate" --San Francisco Chronicle

On My Radar:

Foul Play: The Dark Arts of Cheating in Sport
by Mike Rowbottom
A & C Black Publishers, Ltd. / Bloomsbury

Trade paperback

From the publisher website:

Foul Play dissects the age-old subject of cheating in all its absurdity. From plain old doping to claiming a marathon victory despite having driven the middle section of the race, from match-fixing to diving for a penalty - cheating in sport is as old as sport itself. 

There are plenty of well-known cases of cheats being found out in sport: Ben Johnson, for example, was stripped of his 100m Olympic medal after a positive drugs test; South African cricketer Hansie Cronje was banned from all cricket for life after admitting involvement in match-rigging; rugby union recently found itself having to deal with the "bloodgate" scandal. However, there are myriad other examples of bending the rules more subtly: pressuring the referee, demoralising an opponent with mind games, or shirt-pulling.

But what constititues cheating and where do we draw the line? Are some sports cleaner than others? Is cheating in one sport the same as cheating in another or does each sport's distinctive culture set different standards? Is there such a thing as a sport without sin? Or, indeed, a sporting competitor?

This book is not a catalogue of past sporting misdemeanours so much as an investigation into the lengths to which some sports people have gone, and will go, to get the better of others. And also the lengths to which they will not go.

On My Radar:

Who Stole the American Dream?
by Hedrick Smith
Random House
Trade paperback

From the publisher website:

Pulitzer Prize winner Hedrick Smith’s new book is an extraordinary achievement, an eye-opening account of how, over the past four decades, the American Dream has been dismantled and we became two Americas.  In his bestselling The Russians, Smith took millions of readers inside the Soviet Union. In The Power Game, he took us inside Washington’s corridors of power. Now Smith takes us across America to show how seismic changes, sparked by a sequence of landmark political and economic decisions, have transformed America. As only a veteran reporter can, Smith fits the puzzle together, starting with Lewis Powell’s provocative memo that triggered a political rebellion that dramatically altered the landscape of power from then until today.  This is a book full of surprises and revelations—the accidental beginnings of the 401(k) plan, with disastrous economic consequences for many; the major policy changes that began under Jimmy Carter; how the New Economy disrupted America’s engine of shared prosperity, the “virtuous circle” of growth, and how America lost the title of “Land of Opportunity.” Smith documents the transfer of $6 trillion in middle-class wealth from homeowners to banks even before the housing boom went bust, and how the U.S. policy tilt favoring the rich is stunting America’s economic growth. This book is essential reading for all of us who want to understand America today, or why average Americans are struggling to keep afloat. Smith reveals how pivotal laws and policies were altered while the public wasn’t looking, how Congress often ignores public opinion, why moderate politicians got shoved to the sidelines, and how Wall Street often wins politically by hiring over 1,400 former government officials as lobbyists. Smith talks to a wide range of people, telling the stories of Americans high and low. From political leaders such as Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and Martin Luther King, Jr., to CEOs such as Al Dunlap, Bob Galvin, and Andy Grove, to heartland Middle Americans such as airline mechanic Pat O’Neill, software systems manager Kristine Serrano, small businessman John Terboss, and subcontractor Eliseo Guardado, Smith puts a human face on how middle-class America and the American Dream have been undermined. This magnificent work of history and reportage is filled with the penetrating insights, provocative discoveries, and the great empathy of a master journalist. Finally, Smith offers ideas for restoring America’s great promise and reclaiming the American Dream.

A Book I Want to Read:

The Billionaire Who Wasn't: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune
by Conor O'Clery
Public Affairs Books

Hardcover

From the publisher website:

Bill Clinton once said of the book's subject, "Chuck Feeney's success in business, coupled with his commitment to philanthropy, stands as living proof that it is possible to do well and do good at the same time." This authorized but not approved biography demonstrates how one of the world's richest and most secretive donors managed to do just that. More than a story of an extraordinarily gifted entrepreneur,The Billionaire Who Wasn't is the tale of what happens to a man confronted with wealth beyond imagining, and how he came to make the decision to get rid of almost all of it. The book now includes a section on the controversial last days of Feeney's foundation, Atlantic Philanthropies, and one final enormous pledge to build a cutting-edge, technology-focused university with Cornell-Technion in New York City.

Conor O'Clery is an award-winning journalist and author who served as foreign correspondent for The Irish Times in London, Moscow, Beijing, Washington, and New York. He has written books on Russian, Irish, and American politics. He now lives in Dublin, Ireland.

I reviewed a previous Conor O'Clery book here.

.

In My TBR Stack:

The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory
by Jesse Walker
Harper Books

Hardcover

From the publisher website:

Jesse Walker’s The United States of Paranoia presents a comprehensive history of conspiracy theories in American culture and politics, from the colonial era to the War on Terror. 

The fear of intrigue and subversion doesn’t exist only on the fringes of society, but has always been part of our national identity. When such tales takes hold, Walker argues, they reflect the anxieties and experiences of the people who believe them, even if they say nothing true about the objects of the theories themselves. 

With intensive research and a deadpan sense of humor, Jesse Walker’s The United States of Paranoia combines the rigor of real history with the punch of pulp fiction. 

This edition includes primary-source documentation in the form of archival photographs, cartoons, and film stills selected by the author. 

Book Description 

A history of America's demons 

1693: Cotton Mather suggests that the spirits attacking Salem are allied with the colony's human enemies. At their "Cheef Witch-meetings," he writes, "there has been present some French canadians, and some Indian Sagamores, to concert the methods of ruining New England." 

1835: A gunman tries to kill Andrew Jackson. The president accuses a senator of plotting the assassination. Jackson's critics counter that the shooting was arranged by the president himself to gain public support. 

1868: An article in the New-York Tribune declares that the Democrats have engineered malaria outbreaks in the nation's capital, pumping "the air, and the water, and the whisky of Washington full of poison." 

1967: President Lyndon Johnson asks his cabinet if the Communists are behind the country's urban riots. The attorney general tells him that the evidence isn't there, but Johnson isn't convinced. 

Conspiracy theories aren't just a feature of the fringe. They've been a potent force across the political spectrum, at the center as well as the extremes, from the colonial era to the present. In The United States of Paranoia, Jesse Walker explores this rich history, arguing that conspiracy stories should be read not just as claims to be either believed or debunked but also as folklore. When a tale takes hold, it reveals something true about the anxieties and experiences of those who believe and repeat it, even if the story says nothing true about the objects of the theory itself. 

In a story that stretches from the seventeenth century to today, Walker lays out five conspiracy narratives that recur in American politics and popular culture. With intensive research and a deadpan sense of humor, The United States of Paranoia combines the rigor of real history with the punch of pulp fiction.

Links

Six of the Craziest Conspiracy Theories from United States of Paranoia (Mother Jones)

Review of United States of Paranoia (Los Angeles Times)

Author Twitter feed

Excerpt from United States of Paranoia (salon.com)