Forthcoming Book:

The Hidden White House: Harry Truman and the Reconstruction of America's Most Famous Residence
by Robert Klara
Thomas Dunne Books
Hardcover

Street Date 10/22/13

Critically acclaimed author Robert Klara leads readers through an unmatched tale of political ambition and technical skill: the Truman administration’s controversial rebuilding of the White House.

In 1948, President Harry Truman, enjoying a bath on the White House’s second floor, almost plunged through the ceiling of the Blue Room into a tea party for the Daughters of the American Revolution. A handpicked team of the country’s top architects conducted a secret inspection of the troubled mansion and, after discovering it was in imminent danger of collapse, insisted that the First Family be evicted immediately. What followed would be the most historically significant and politically complex home-improvement job in American history. While the Trumans camped across the street at Blair House, Congress debated whether to bulldoze the White House completely, and the Soviets exploded their first atomic bomb, starting the Cold War.

Indefatigable researcher Robert Klara reveals what has, until now, been little understood about this episode: America’s most famous historic home was basically demolished, giving birth to today’s White House. Leaving only the mansion’s facade untouched, workmen gutted everything within, replacing it with a steel frame and a complex labyrinth deep below ground that soon came to include a top-secret nuclear fallout shelter,
The story of Truman’s rebuilding of the White House is a snapshot of postwar America and its first Cold War leader, undertaking a job that changed the centerpiece of the country’s national heritage. The job was by no means perfect, but it was remarkable—and, until now, all but forgotten.

Forthcoming Book:

Explore Everything: Place-Hacking the City
by Bradley L. Garrett
Verso Books

Hardcover

Street Date: 10/8/13

It is assumed that every inch of the world has been explored and charted; that there is nowhere new to go. But perhaps it is the everyday places around us—the cities we live in—that need to be rediscovered. What does it feel like to find the city’s edge, to explore its forgotten tunnels and scale unfinished skyscrapers high above the metropolis? Explore Everything reclaims the city, recasting it as a place for endless adventure. 

Plotting expeditions from London, Paris, Berlin, Detroit, Chicago, Las Vegas and Los Angeles, Bradley L. Garrett has evaded urban security in order to experience the city in ways beyond the boundaries of conventional life. He calls it ‘place hacking’: the recoding of closed, secret, hidden and forgotten urban space to make them realms of opportunity. 

Explore Everything is an account of the author’s escapades with the London Consolidation Crew, an urban exploration collective. 

The book is also a manifesto, combining philosophy, politics and adventure, on our rights to the city and how to understand the twenty-first century metropolis.

New Nonfiction Hardcovers This Week:

It is a glorious day here at BookSpin Manor.  One of our Patron Saints, Bill Bryson, has a new book in bookstores today.  If you, or someone you love, enjoy narrative nonfiction, this would make a wonderful addition to the library.  As the synopsis below states, Bryson is a master of the form.

One Summer: America 1927
by Bill Bryson
Doubleday / Random House
Hardcover

The summer of 1927 began with one of the signature events of the twentieth century: on May 21, 1927, Charles Lindbergh became the first man to cross the Atlantic by plane nonstop, and when he landed in Le Bourget airfield near Paris, he ignited an explosion of worldwide rapture and instantly became the most famous person on the planet. Meanwhile, the titanically talented Babe Ruth was beginning his assault on the home run record, which would culminate on September 30 with his sixtieth blast, one of the most resonant and durable records in sports history. In between those dates a Queens housewife named Ruth Snyder and her corset-salesman lover garroted her husband, leading to a murder trial that became a huge tabloid sensation. Alvin “Shipwreck” Kelly sat atop a flagpole in Newark, New Jersey, for twelve days—a new record. The American South was clobbered by unprecedented rain and by flooding of the Mississippi basin, a great human disaster, the relief efforts for which were guided by the uncannily able and insufferably pompous Herbert Hoover. Calvin Coolidge interrupted an already leisurely presidency for an even more relaxing three-month vacation in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The gangster Al Capone tightened his grip on the illegal booze business through a gaudy and murderous reign of terror and municipal corruption. The first true “talking picture,” Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer, was filmed and forever changed the motion picture industry. The four most powerful central bankers on earth met in secret session on a Long Island estate and made a fateful decision that virtually guaranteed a future crash and depression. 

     All this and much, much more transpired in that epochal summer of 1927, and Bill Bryson captures its outsized personalities, exciting events, and occasional just plain weirdness with his trademark vividness, eye for telling detail, and delicious humor. In that year America stepped out onto the world stage as the main event, and One Summer transforms it all into narrative nonfiction of the highest order.

David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants
by Malcolm Gladwell

Little, Brown and Company / Hachette Book Group
Hardcover

Three thousand years ago on a battlefield in ancient Palestine, a shepherd boy felled a mighty warrior with nothing more than a stone and a sling, and ever since then the names of David and Goliath have stood for battles between underdogs and giants. David's victory was improbable and miraculous. He shouldn't have won. 

Or should he have? 

In David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell challenges how we think about obstacles and disadvantages, offering a new interpretation of what it means to be discriminated against, or cope with a disability, or lose a parent, or attend a mediocre school, or suffer from any number of other apparent setbacks.
Gladwell begins with the real story of what happened between the giant and the shepherd boy those many years ago. From there, David and Goliath examines Northern Ireland's Troubles, the minds of cancer researchers and civil rights leaders, murder and the high costs of revenge, and the dynamics of successful and unsuccessful classrooms---all to demonstrate how much of what is beautiful and important in the world arises from what looks like suffering and adversity. 

In the tradition of Gladwell's previous bestsellers---The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers and What the Dog Saw---David and Goliath draws upon history, psychology, and powerful storytelling to reshape the way we think of the world around us. 

Running With Monsters: A Memoir
by Bob Forrest
Crown Archetype / Random House

Hardcover

Life has been one strange trip for Bob Forrest. He started out as a suburban teenage drunkard from the Southern California suburbs and went on to become a member of a hip Hollywood crowd that included the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Johnny Depp, and River Phoenix. Los Angeles was their playground, and they hung out in such infamous haunts as the Viper Room and the Whisky a Go Go. Always one to push things to their limit, Bob partied the hardest and could usually be found at the center of the drama. Drugs weren’t Bob’s only passion. He was also a talented musician who commanded the stage as the wild and unpredictable lead singer of Thelonious Monster. They traveled the world, and their future seemed bright and wide open. But Bob’s demons grew stronger as he achieved more success and he sank deeper into his chemical dependency, which included alcohol, crack, and heroin habits. No matter how many times he went to rehab, sobriety just wouldn’t stick for him. Soon he saw his once-promising music career slip away entirely. Eventually Bob found a way to defeat his addiction, and once he did, he saw the opportunity to help other hopeless cases by becoming a certified drug counselor. He’s helped addicts from all walks of life, often employing methods that are very much at odds with the traditional rehab approach. Running with Monsters is an electrifying chronicle of the LA rock scene of the 1980s and ’90s, the story of a man who survived and triumphed over his demons, and a controversial perspective on the rehab industry and what it really takes to beat addiction. Bob tells his story with unflinching honesty and hard-won perspective, making this a reading experience that shocks, entertains, and ultimately inspires.

Life in 5 Seconds: The Short Story of Absolutely Everything
by H-57, Gianmarco Milesi, Matteo Civaschi
Quercus Books

Hardcover

Told in ingenious pictographs that are witty, provocative, and to the point, Life in 5 Seconds starts with 200 important events, inventions, great lives, wonders of the natural world, and cultural icons and boils away the useless details to give you the pure essence of knowledge. 

In today’s caffeine-charged, jet-fueled, information-overload society, who has the time to probe the deeper meaning of existence? Let’s face it—life’s far too short for that sort of in-depth research. What today calls for is instant knowledge, delivered in pictures. 

The result is a collection of hilarious visual snapshots that puts all of life into context. You’ll laugh out loud as you finally understand the differences between Satan and Santa Claus; explore the vibrancy of artists from Beethoven to Banksy; compare the masonry in the Great Wall of China to that of the Berlin Wall; weigh the importance of Elvis; deconstruct the genius of Ikea; play with the history of video games; and plumb other vitally important holes in your knowledge. 

Recipient of a 2013 Cannes Bronze Book Design Lion Award, Life in Five Seconds is beautifully designed with bold color scheme and irreverent illustrations—a gift for anyone with a good sense of humor and a short attention span.

Forthcoming Book:

The Best American Sports Writing 2013
by J.R. Moehringer & Glenn Stout (Editors)
Mariner Books / Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Trade Paperback

Street Date 10/08/13

J. R. Moehringer, a Pulitzer Prize–winning feature writer and the author of The Tender Bar, has selected the best in sports writing from the past year. Chosen from more than 350 national, regional, and specialty publications and, increasingly, the top sports blogs, this collection showcases those journalists who are at the top of their game.

*J.R. Moehringer is a BookSpin favorite.  If you like memoirs, you must read his The Tender Bar.  I loved it. 

New in Paperback:

1775: A Good Year for Revolution
by Kevin Phillips
Penguin Books
Trade Paperback

A groundbreaking account of the American Revolution—from the bestselling author of American Dynasty.

In this major new work, iconoclastic historian and political chronicler Kevin Phillips upends the conventional reading of the American Revolution by debunking the myth that 1776 was the struggle’s watershed year. Focusing on the great battles and events of 1775, Phillips surveys the political climate, economic structures, and military preparations of the crucial year that was the harbinger of revolution, tackling the eighteenth century with the same skill and perception he has shown in analyzing contemporary politics and economics. The result is a dramatic account brimming with original insights about the country we eventually became.

An excerpt from 1775 can be found here.

Excerpt:

The Devil Inside the Beltway: The Shocking Expose of the U.S. Government's Surveillance and Overreach into Cybersecurity, Medicine and Small Business

by Michael J. Daugherty

Broadland Press

Trade Paperback

(Excerpt is below the book information, in bold.)

Michael J. Daugherty, author and CEO of LabMD in Atlanta, Georgia, uncovers and details an extraordinary government surveillance story that compromised national security and invaded the privacy of tens of millions of online users worldwide. Unbelievable from beginning to end, you'll be shocked at what is really going on behind every closed door in Washington. A riveting true political thriller, the pace is breathless, the arguments compelling, and the iron will of Daugherty transforms him from government prey to government whistleblower. The Devil Inside the Beltway is a compelling true story that begins when an aggressive security surveillance company, with retired General Wesley Clark on its advisory board, magically acquires the private health information of thousands of LabMD's patients. This company, Tiversa, campaigns for a "fee" from LabMD to "remedy" the problem. When Michael J. Daugherty refuses to pay, Tiversa follows up by handing the file over to the FTC. Daugherty reveals that the company was already working with Dartmouth, having received a significant portion of a $24,000,000 grant from Homeland Security, to surveil for files. The reason for the investigation was this: Peer to peer software companies have back doors built into their technology that allows for illicit and unapproved file sharing. When individual work stations are accessed, as in the case of LabMD, proprietary information can be taken. Tiversa, as part of their assignment, acquired over 14 million files, financial, medical and military data during their search. Daugherty's book documents a frighteningly systematic and dishonest investigation by one of the US Government's most important agencies. The consequences of their actions will have a chilling effect on Americans and their businesses for years.

Excerpt: 

The search told us that the only probable way someone could have come into the computer without authorization was through LimeWire. The breach occurred through a program that one employee had installed without our authorization or knowledge. A program that didn’t appear on the desktop. A program that stayed hidden from our view during inspections. How were we to know or anticipate such breaches? The questions were endless. 

Rebecca insisted she had no idea she could expose sensitive material through her computer. In fact, she said she had no idea anyone could access her computer externally; she believed she was only using the software to listen to music while she worked. Although she signed an employee handbook acknowledging that downloading software was against company policy, I did not believe she would have risked committing career suicide by being careless with patient data. 

We would one day learn that more than 450 million other computers in the world were also vulnerable. We now assumed that Rebecca’s computer was the gateway Boback used to get the file; it seemed obvious but we had no concrete proof. 

So what the hell just happened? We needed answers and we needed them now, so we turned back to Robert Boback to see how many more cards he would show in his quest to “help us out.” 

Rep. Yarmouth: Do you think that users that download P2P software applications are being tricked into sharing files that they would not ordinarily share?

Sydnor: Yes. They are inadvertently sharing files they do not intend to share. In the report we attempt to explain why, although the user does not intend that result, that result may have been intended by others. That is not a question we purport to be able to answer based on the publicly available data that we were able to review. But the short answer is yes, people are making catastrophic mistakes with these programs . . . That is also a very important part of the problem, and people who do not want to be distributors of pirated goods on these networks should be able to make that choice and have it be very easy, and right now it is simply not.¹ 

Thomas D. Sydnor, II, Testifying before the US House of Representatives, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, to Representative John Yarmouth, R-KY.

Currently Reading:

I.T. Confidential
by C.D. Rahm
BP Press
Trade Paperback

What happens when heavily medicated, disorganized, and generally weird people are forced to work together? Welcome to the cubicle-infested world of Information Technology.

Author C.D. Rahm sheds light on such burning I.T. issues as:

• Identifying super smart people by looking at their shirts
• Getting promoted by avoiding work
• Why consultants should wear glasses
• Corporate travel death marches and stale bagels
• Job descriptions for goofballs
• The heartbreak of frozen turkeys and other non-monetary performance bonuses

But why should you care about I.T.? Because it’s behind everything from your email and e-banking, to your iPhone and iTunes. And it involves many other letters of the alphabet besides E and I, as well. Next to oxygen, it’s something you rarely see but without it life as we know it would come to an end. So, suck it up, buy this book, and find out what I.T. geeks have to go through just so industry can roll and you can see the latest grainy video of some college kid putting Cheerios up his nose.

How can you live without knowing that?

New Nonfiction Hardcovers This Week

Brave Genius: A Scientist, a Philosopher, and Their Daring Adventures from the French Resistance to the Nobel Prize
by Sean B. Carroll
Crown Publishing / Random House

Hardcover

The never-before-told account of the intersection of some of the most insightful minds of the 20th century, and a fascinating look at how war, resistance, and friendship can catalyze genius.

 In the spring of 1940, the aspiring but unknown writer Albert Camus and budding scientist Jacques Monod were quietly pursuing ordinary, separate lives in Paris. After the German invasion and occupation of France, each joined the Resistance to help liberate the country from the Nazis, ascended to prominent, dangerous roles, and were very lucky to survive. After the war and through twists of circumstance, they became friends, and through their passionate determination and rare talent they emerged as leading voices of modern literature and biology, each receiving the Nobel Prize in their respective fields.  

Drawing upon a wealth of previously unpublished and unknown material gathered over several years of research, Brave Genius tells the story of how each man endured the most terrible episode of the twentieth century and then blossomed into extraordinarily creative and engaged individuals. It is a story of the transformation of ordinary lives into exceptional lives by extraordinary events of courage in the face of overwhelming adversity, the flowering of creative genius, deep friendship, and of profound concern for and insight into the human condition.

New Nonfiction Paperbacks This Week:

Books I'd Like to Read:

The Diary of the D.C. Sniper
by Lee Boyd Malvo and Anthony Meoli
DIP Publishing House

Trade Paperback

The Beginning...In October 2002, a little over a year after the September 11th terrorist attacks, the entire East Coast was gripped in fear by a series of random shootings and murders that occurred in and around our nation's capital. 

The Panic...These were innocent people, doing everyday things, from pumping gas, to reading a book on a park bench, mowing their lawn or just walking down the street.Most were gunned down in broad daylight, seemingly without any rhyme or reason. The shooters left no evidence other than a loud bang and a single bullet casing in their wake. The only connection between all of the victims was that there was no connection at all.
The panic that began with the first murder on the evening of October 2nd had spiraled out of control by October 22nd. 10 people were dead and at least 3 others were critically injured. Buses lined the front of schools to protect children as they entered and exited. Families were held captive in their own homes. Law enforcement had no real leads or answers and could not offer anything to calm the public's growing concerns. Nobody was safe.

The Capture... Then 2 days later, in the early morning hours of October 24th, the D.C. Snipers were apprehended at a rest stop in Myersville, Maryland. They were caught as they slept in their dark blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice. 

The Other Story...Now, a decade later, Lee Boyd Malvo provides intimate personal details through a diary that was written 2 years after the shootings. The diary was brought out of the darkness through a relationship that was established by Anthony Meoli over 7 years of wanting to know the real story behind Lee's motivation for committing these crimes. 
At first this relationship was initiated by letters, it was later fostered through personal phone calls which were taken on a weekly basis. It was during one of these calls that Lee revealed that a diary existed and it would explain the details of his life that have never fully been known. It would be a combination of traumatic life events that would become the catalysts of change, eventually leading him to choose the wrong path from which there would be no return. 
What you will find inside Lee Boyd Malvo's fully authorized diary will shock you. 

This Machine Kills Secrets: Julian Assange, the Cypherpunks, and Their Fight to Empower Whistleblowers
by Andy Greenberg
Plume / Penguin

Trade Paperback

Who Are The Cypherpunks?

This is the unauthorized telling of the revolutionary cryptography story behind the motion picture The Fifth Estate in theatres this October, and We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks, a documentary out now.

WikiLeaks brought to light a new form of whistleblowing, using powerful cryptographic code to hide leakers’ identities while they spill the private data of government agencies and corporations. But that technology has been evolving for decades in the hands of hackers and radical activists, from the libertarian enclaves of Northern California to Berlin to the Balkans. And the secret-killing machine continues to evolve beyond WikiLeaks, as a movement of hacktivists aims to obliterate the world’s institutional secrecy.

Forbes journalist Andy Greenberg has traced its shadowy history from the cryptography revolution of the 1970s to Wikileaks founding hacker Julian Assange, Anonymous, and beyond.

This is the story of the code and the characters—idealists, anarchists, extremists—who are transforming the next generation’s notion of what activism can be.

With unrivaled access to such major players as Julian Assange, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, and WikiLeaks’ shadowy engineer known as the Architect, never before interviewed, Greenberg unveils the world of politically-motivated hackers—who they are and how they operate.

Forthcoming Book:

A book I'd like to read:

The Investigator: Fifty Years of Uncovering the Truth
by Terry Lenzner
Blue Rider Press / Penguin

Hardcover

Street Date:  10/8/2013

The Los Angeles Times once called investigative lawyer Terry Lenzner one of the most powerful and dreaded private investigators in the world. In his fifty-year career, Lenzner has worked with politicians, celebrities, governments, and corporations worldwide; with a steadfast commitment to the truth, he has uncovered facts that have shaped policy and influenced major legal battles.

In this captivating memoir, Lenzner speaks about his varied career and high-profile cases for the first time. At the Justice Department in 1964, he investigated the murder of three civil rights workers an infamous event that inspired the film Mississippi Burning. He led the national Legal Services Program for the poor, prosecuted organized crime in New York, defended peace activist Philip Berrigan, and represented CIA operative Sid Gottlieb. As a counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee, Lenzner investigated Nixon s dirty tricks and followed the money trail that led to the Watergate burglary and cover-up. He was the first person to deliver a congressional subpoena to a sitting U.S. president. He uncovered cost overruns of the Alaska oil pipeline, helped identify the Unabomber, investigated the circumstances of Princess Diana s death, and cleared Hugo Chavez of false corruption charges. Lenzner also worked with President Clinton s defense team during the impeachment hearings.

The Investigator is a riveting personal account: Lenzner astounds with anecdotes of scandal and intrigue, offers lessons in investigative methods, and provides an eye-opening look behind some of the most talked-about media stories and world events of our time.

Forthcoming Book:

A book I'd love to read:


Skyway: The True Story of Tampa Bay's Signature Bridge and the Man Who Brought It Down
by Bill DeYoung
University Press of Florida

Hardcover

Street Date:  10/8/13

On the morning of May 9, 1980, harbor pilot John Lerro was guiding a 600-foot freighter, the Summit Venture, into Tampa Bay. Directly in the ship’s path was the Sunshine Skyway Bridge?two ribbons of concrete, steel, and asphalt that crossed fifteen miles of open bay.  Suddenly, a violent weather cell reduced visibility to zero at the precise moment when Lerro attempted to direct the 20,000-ton vessel underneath the bridge. Unable to stop or see where he was going, Lerro drove the ship into a support pier; the main span splintered and collapsed 150 feet into the bay. Seven cars and a Greyhound bus fell over the broken edge and into the churning water below. Thirty-five people died.

Skyway tells the entire story of this horrific event, from the circumstances that led up to it through the years-long legal proceedings that followed. Through personal interviews and extensive research, Bill DeYoung pieces together the harrowing moments of the collision, including the first-person accounts of witnesses and survivors.

Among those whose lives were changed forever was Wesley MacIntire, the motorist whose truck ricocheted off the hull of the Summit Venture and sank. Although he was the lone survivor, MacIntire, like Lerro, was emotionally scarred and remained haunted by the tragedy for the rest of his life. Similarly, DeYoung details the downward spiral of Lerro’s life, his vilification in the days and weeks that followed the accident, and his obsession with the tragedy well into his painful last years.

DeYoung also offers a history of the ill-fated bridge, from its construction in 1954, through the addition of a second parallel span in 1971, to its eventual replacement. He discusses the sinking of a Coast Guard cutter a mere three months before Skyway collapsed and the Department of Transportation’s dire warnings about the bridge’s condition. The result is a vividly detailed portrait of the rise and fall of a Florida landmark.

Forthcoming Book:

A book I'd like to read:

Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern Pop
by Bob Stanley
Faber and Faber
Trade Paperback

Street date:  10/3/13

For fifty years, pop music was created and consumed like this: you heard a record on the radio, or read about it in a music paper; you bought it on Saturday; you lent it to, or taped it for, a friend; and they reciprocated with another record. It was a secret network. It was how you made friends, how you met girls, and how you soundtracked your world.

  

Bob Stanley's Yeah Yeah Yeah tells the chronological story of the modern pop era, from its beginnings in the fifties with the dawn of the charts, vinyl, and the music press, to pop's digital switchover in the year 2000, from 'Rock Around the Clock' to 'Crazy In Love'. There was constant change, constant development, a constant craving for newness. It was more than just music - it could be your whole life.

Yeah Yeah Yeah covers the birth of rock, soul, punk, disco, hip hop, indie, house and techno. It also includes the rise and fall of the home stereo, Top Of The Pops, Smash Hits, and "this week's highest new entry". Yeah Yeah Yeah is the first book to look back at the entire era: what we gained, what we lost, and the foundations we laid for future generations.

There have been many books on pop but none have attempted to bring the whole story to life, from Billy Fury and Roxy Music to TLC and Britney via Led Zeppelin and Donna Summer. Audacious and addictive, Yeah Yeah Yeah is essential reading for all music lovers. It will remind you why you fell in love with pop music in the first place.

New Nonfiction Hardcovers This Week

Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir
by Linda Ronstadt
Simon & Schuster

Hardcover

Tracing the timeline of her remarkable life, Linda Ronstadt, whose forty-five year career has encompassed a wide array of musical styles, weaves together a captivating story of her origins in Tucson, Arizona, and her rise to stardom in the Southern California music scene of the 1960s and ’70s.

Linda Ronstadt was born into a musical family, and her childhood was filled with everything from Gilbert and Sullivan to Mexican folk music to jazz and opera. Her artistic curiosity blossomed early, and she and her siblings began performing their own music for anyone who would listen. Now, in this beautifully crafted memoir, Ronstadt tells the story of her wide-ranging and utterly unique musical journey. 

Ronstadt arrived in Los Angeles just as the folkrock movement was beginning to bloom, setting the stage for the development of country-rock. As part of the coterie of like-minded artists who played at the famed Troubadour club in West Hollywood, she helped define the musical style that dominated American music in the 1970s. One of her early backup bands went on to become the Eagles, and Linda went on to become the most successful female artist of the decade. 

In Simple Dreams, Ronstadt reveals the eclectic and fascinating journey that led to her long-lasting success, including stories behind many of her beloved songs. And she describes it all in a voice as beautiful as the one that sang “Heart Like a Wheel”—longing, graceful, and authentic. 

The Girl: A Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski
by Samantha Geimer
Atria Books / Simon & Schuster

Hardcover

In this searing and surprising memoir, Samantha Geimer, “the girl” at the center of the infamous Roman Polanski sexual assault case, breaks a virtual thirty-five-year silence to tell her story and reflect on the events of that day and their lifelong repercussions.

March 1977, Southern California. Roman Polanski drives a rented Mercedes along Mulholland Drive to Jack Nicholson’s house. Sitting next to him is an aspiring actress, Samantha Geimer, recently arrived from York, Pennsylvania. She is thirteen years old. 

The undisputed facts of what happened in the following hours appear in the court record: Polanski spent hours taking pictures of Samantha—on a deck overlooking the Hollywood Hills, on a kitchen counter, topless in a Jacuzzi. Wine and Quaaludes were consumed, balance and innocence were lost, and a young girl’s life was altered forever—eternally cast as a background player in her own story.

For months on end, the Polanski case dominated the media in the United States and abroad. But even with the extensive coverage, much about that day—and the girl at the center of it all—remains a mystery. Just about everyone had an opinion about the renowned director and the girl he was accused of drugging and raping. Who was the predator? Who was the prey? Was the girl an innocent victim or a cunning Lolita artfully directed by her ambitious stage mother? How could the criminal justice system have failed all the parties concerned in such a spectacular fashion? Once Polanski fled the country, what became of Samantha, the young girl forever associated with one of Hollywood’s most notorious episodes? Samantha, as much as Polanski, has been a fugitive since the events of that night more than thirty years ago.

Taking us far beyond the headlines, The Girl reveals a thirteen-year-old who was simultaneously wise beyond her years and yet terribly vulnerable. By telling her story in full for the first time, Samantha reclaims her identity, and indelibly proves that it is possible to move forward from victim to survivor, from confusion to certainty, from shame to strength.

Slow Getting Up: A Story of NFL Survival From the Bottom of the Pile
by Nate Jackson
Harper Books
Hardcover

Nate Jackson’s Slow Getting Up is an unvarnished and uncensored memoir of everyday life in the most popular sports league in America—and the most damaging to its players—the National Football League. 

After playing college ball at a tiny Division III school, Jackson, a receiver, signed as a free agent with the San Francisco 49ers, before moving to the Denver Broncos. For six seasons in the NFL as a Bronco, he alternated between the practice squad and the active roster, eventually winning a starting spot—a short, tenuous career emblematic of the average pro player. 

Drawing from his own experience, Jackson tells the little known story of the hundreds of everyday, "expendable" players whose lives are far different from their superstar colleagues. 

From scouting combines to training camps, off-season parties to game-day routines, debilitating physical injuries—including degenerative brain conditions—to poor pensions and financial distress, he offers a funny, and shocking look at life in the NFL, and the young men who risk their health and even their lives to play the game. 

This is not a celebrity tell-all of professional sports. Slow Getting Up is a survivor's real-time account of playing six seasons (twice as long as the average NFL career) for the San Francisco 49ers and the Denver Broncos. 

As an unsigned free agent who rose through the practice squad to the starting lineup, Nate Jackson is the talented embodiment of the everyday freak athlete in professional football, one of thousands whose names go unmentioned in the daily press. Through his story recounted here—from scouting combines to preseason cuts to byzantine film studies to glorious touchdown catches—even knowledgeable football fans will glean a new, starkly humanized understanding of the daily rigors and unceasing violence of quotidian life in the NFL. 

Fast-paced, lyrical, and hilariously unvarnished, Slow Getting Up is an unforgettable look at the real lives of America's best twenty-year-old athletes putting their bodies and minds through hell.

Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing
by Anya Von Bremzen
Crown Publishing / Random House

Hardcover

With startling beauty and sardonic wit, Anya von Bremzen tells an intimate yet epic story of life in that vanished empire known as the USSR—a place where every edible morsel was packed with emotional and political meaning.  

     Born in 1963, in an era of bread shortages, Anya grew up in a communal Moscow apartment where eighteen families shared one kitchen. She sang odes to Lenin, black-marketeered Juicy Fruit gum at school, watched her father brew moonshine, and, like most Soviet citizens, longed for a taste of the mythical West. It was a life by turns absurd, drab, naively joyous, melancholy—and ultimately intolerable to her anti-Soviet mother, Larisa. When Anya was ten, she and Larisa fled the political repression of Brezhnev-era Russia, arriving in Philadelphia with no winter coats and no right of return.  

     Now Anya occupies two parallel food universes: one where she writes about four-star restaurants, the other where a taste of humble kolbasa transports her back to her scarlet-blazed socialist past. To bring that past to life, in its full flavor, both bitter and sweet, Anya and Larisa, embark on a journey unlike any other: they decide to eat and cook their way through every decade of the Soviet experience—turning Larisa’s kitchen into a "time machine and an incubator of memories.” Together, mother and daughter re-create meals both modest and sumptuous, featuring a decadent fish pie from the pages of Chekhov, chanakhi(Stalin’s favorite Georgian stew), blini, and more.  

     Through these meals, Anya tells the gripping story of three Soviet generations— masterfully capturing the strange mix of idealism, cynicism, longing, and terror that defined Soviet life. We meet her grandfather Naum, a glamorous intelligence chief under Stalin, and her grandmother Liza, who made a perilous odyssey to icy, blockaded Leningrad to find Naum during World War II. We meet Anya’s hard-drinking, sarcastic father, Sergei, who cruelly abandons his family shortly after Anya is born; and we are captivated by Larisa, the romantic dreamer who grew up dreading the black public loudspeakers trumpeting the glories of the Five-Year Plan. Their stories unfold against the vast panorama of Soviet history: Lenin’s bloody grain requisitioning, World War II hunger and survival, Stalin’s table manners, Khrushchev’s kitchen debates, Gorbachev’s disastrous anti-alcohol policies. And, ultimately, the collapse of the USSR. And all of it is bound together by Anya’s passionate nostalgia, sly humor, and piercing observations. 

     Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking is that rare book that stirs our souls and our senses.