In My TBR Stack:

A World Elsewhere: An American Woman in Wartime Germany
Sigrid MacRae
Viking Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Sigrid MacRae never knew her father, until a trove of letters revealed not only him, but also the singular story of her parents’ intercontinental love affair. While visiting Paris

in 1927, her American mother, Aimée, raised in a wealthy Connecticut family, falls in love with a charming, sophisticated Baltic German baron, a penniless exile of the Russian revolution. They marry. But the harsh reality of post–World War I Germany is inescapable: a bleak economy and the rise of Hitler quash Heinrich’s diplomatic

ambitions, and their struggling family farm north of Berlin drains Aimée’s modest fortune. In 1941, Heinrich volunteers for the Russian front and is killed by a sniper. Widowed, living in a country soon at war with her own, Aimée must fend for herself. With home and family in jeopardy, she and her six young children flee the advancing Russian army in an epic journey, back to the country she thought she’d left behind.

A World Elsewhere is a stirring narrative of two hostages to history and a mother’s courageous fight to save her family.

On My Radar:

Twitter: The Comic (The Book) - Comics Based on the Greatest Tweets of Our Generation
Mike Rosenthal
Chronicle Books
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

From a simple, brilliant premise—to create comics from the weirdest and funniest tweets around—artist Mike Rosenthal (@VectorBelly) has crafted a hilariously surreal world that has attracted over a million followers to his blog Twitter: The Comic. Each carefully curated tweet delivers concentrated humor in the language of the Internet, reproduced in the comics with typos and all. As envisioned by Rosenthal, each comes to life through a bizarrely recognizable cast of bassoon-playing cops, sarcastic teens, bear MDs, clueless dads, potential insect overlords, and more. Featuring more than 120 of these comics, including dozens unique to this book, Twitter: The Comic (The Book) is a dementedly funny vision of our strange online age.

On My Radar:

Corporations Are Not People: Reclaiming Democracy from Big Money and Global Corporations
Jeffrey D. Clements
Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

• STILL ESSENTIAL: The Citizens United decision continues to distort the electoral process and expand the power of corporations
• UPDATED THROUGHOUT: This second edition details both the ruling’s expanding damage to democracy and, in an all-new chapter, how citizens can lead the battle against it

The Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling that corporations are people eliminated campaign finance restrictions and dramatically increased corporate power –but attorney Jeff Clements shows how you can fight back.

Clements explains the strange history of how the Supreme Court came to embrace a concept that flies in the face of not only all common sense but most of American legal history as well. He shows how unfettered corporate rights will impact public health, energy policy, the environment, and the justice system.

In this new edition Clements details Citizens United’s ongoing destructive effects—for example, Chevron was able to spend $1.2 million to influence a single local election in a city of 100,000 people.  But he also describes the growing movement to reverse the ruling—since the first edition 16 states, 160 members of Congress, and 500 cities and towns have called for a Constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. And in a new chapter, Do Something!, Clements shows how—state by state and community by community—Americans are using new strategies and tools to renew democracy and curb unbalanced corporate power.

In My TBR Stack:

Kentucky Traveler: My Life in Music
Ricky Skaggs with Eddie Dean
It Books (now Dey Street Books)
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

In Kentucky Traveler, Ricky Skaggs, the music legend who revived modern bluegrass music, gives a warm, honest, one-of-a-kind memoir of forty years in music—along with the Ten Commandments of Bluegrass, as handed down by Ricky’s mentor Bill Monroe; the Essential Guide to Bedrock Country Songs, a lovingly compiled walk through the songs that have moved Skaggs the most throughout his life; Songs the Lord Taught Us, a primer on Skaggs’s most essential gospel songs; and a bevy of personal snapshots of his musical heroes.

For readers of Johnny Cash’s autobiography, lovers of O Brother Where Art Thou, and fans of country music and bluegrass, Kentucky Traveler is a priceless look at America’s most cherished and vibrant musical tradition through the eyes of someone who has lived it.

Now in Paperback:

Enemies Within: Inside the NYPD's Secret Spying Unit and bin Laden's Final Plot Against America
Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman
Touchstone
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

Two Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists take an unbridled look into one of the most sensitive post-9/11 national security investigations—a breathtaking race to stop a second devastating terrorist attack on American soil.

In Enemies Within, Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman “reveal how New York really works” (James Risen, author of State of War) and 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 co-conspirators represented America’s greatest fear: a terrorist cell operating inside America.

This real-life spy story—uncovered in previously unpublished secret NYPD documents and interviews with intelligence sources—shows that while many of our counterterrorism 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.

In Enemies Within, Appuzo and Goldman tackle the tough questions about the measures that we take to protect ourselves from real and perceived threats. They take you 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. “Did the Snowden leaks trouble you? You ain’t seen nothing yet” (Dan Bigman, Forbes editor).

In My TBR Stack:

After Lincoln: How the North Won the Civil War and Lost the Peace
A.J. Langguth
Simon and Schuster
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

A brilliant evocation of the post-Civil War era by the acclaimed author of Patriots and Union 1812. After Lincoln tells the story of the Reconstruction, which set back black Americans and isolated the South for a century.

With Lincoln’s assassination, his “team of rivals,” in Doris Kearns Goodwin’s phrase, was left adrift. President Andrew Johnson, a former slave owner from Tennessee, was challenged by Northern Congressmen, Radical Republicans led by Thaddeus Stephens and Charles Sumner, who wanted to punish the defeated South. When Johnson’s policies placated the rebels at the expense of the black freed men, radicals in the House impeached him for trying to fire Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. Johnson was saved from removal by one vote in the Senate trial, presided over by Salmon Chase. Even William Seward, Lincoln’s closest ally in his cabinet, seemed to waver.

By the 1868 election, united Republicans nominated Ulysses Grant, Lincoln's winning Union general. The night of his victory, Grant lamented to his wife, “I’m afraid I’m elected.” His attempts to reconcile Southerners with the Union and to quash the rising Ku Klux Klan were undercut by post-war greed and corruption during his two terms.

Reconstruction died unofficially in 1887 when Republican Rutherford Hayes joined with the Democrats in a deal that removed the last federal troops from South Carolina and Louisiana. In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed a bill with protections first proposed in 1872 by the Radical Senator from Massachusetts, Charles Sumner.

Sage's Blog Tour:

When All Balls Drop: The Upside of Losing Everything
Heidi Siefkas
Wheatmark
Trade Paperback

When you reach bottom there is nowhere to go but up.  Heidi Siefkas personifies that lesson in WHEN ALL BALLS DROP.  Not long after discovering that her husband may have cheated on her, Siefkas has her neck broken by a falling tree limb.  

Many people would have just given up at that point, become a victim and dissolve into a puddle of human misery, but Heidi Siefkas took a different road. She attacked her life in all aspects:  mental, physical and spiritual. 

It would have been easy for her to sink into a morass of anger and spitefulness, but the book is full of delightful humor and just enough quirkiness to endear her to the reader.  You really pull for this lady. Empathetic readers will find joy in her triumphs.

Many of us have many balls in the air on a constant basis.  We struggle mightily to keep them aloft so as not to suffer the fate of the fool.  Heidi Siefkas shows us how to handle adversity with humor, candor, and most importantly resilience. 

I highly recommend this book for anyone who enjoys uplifting and honest memoirs and I look forward to the sequel.

On My Radar:

Happiness: Ten Years of n+1
nplusone
Faber & Faber
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

“Ten years in, I still find the most re-readable writing—Coleridge’s old test was rereading—in n+1. There are only two things wrong with this assemblage. One, it’s not big enough. . . . Two, after ten years, this magazine remains too much of a damn secret.”

—Mary Karr, Introduction

Happiness, released on the occasion of n+1's tenth anniversary, collects the best of the magazine as selected by its editors. Intended to revive the leftist social criticism that was the hallmark of Dissent and Partisan Review, n+1 began as a fierce rejoinder to the consumerism and complacency of the Bush years. It hasn't slowed down since. 

Featuring founding editors Chad Harbach, Keith Gessen, Benjamin Kunkel, Marco Roth, and Mark Greif, as well as the essays that launched some of the most electric young writers working today, such as Elif Batuman, Emily Witt, and Kristen Dombek. 

Selected by the editors of n+1 magazine. 
With an introduction by Mary Karr. 
Published by Faber and Faber, Inc. 

On My Radar:

Collision Low Crossers: Inside the Turbulent World of NFL Football
Nicholas Dawidoff
Little, Brown and Company / Back Bay Books
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

An unrivaled portrait of day-to-day life in the NFL: "Riveting...An instant classic." -- New York Times Book Review

By spending a year with the New York Jets, Nicholas Dawidoff entered a mysterious and private world with its own rituals and language. Equal parts Paper Lion, Moneyball, Friday Night Lights, and The Office, this absorbing, funny, and vivid narrative gets to the heart of a massive and stressful collective endeavor.

Here is football in many faces: the polarizing, brilliant, and hilarious head coach; the general manager, whose job is to support (and suppress) the irrepressible coach; the defensive coaches and their in-house rivals, the offensive coaches; and of course the players. Wise safeties, brooding linebackers, high-strung cornerbacks, enthusiastic rookies, and a well-read nose tackle-they make up a strange and complex family. Dawidoff makes an emblematic NFL season come alive for fans and non-fans alike in a book about football that will forever change the way people watch and think about the sport.

In My TBR Stack:

Angry Optimist: The Life and Times of Jon Stewart
Lisa Rogak
Thomas Dunne Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Since his arrival at The Daily Show in 1999, Jon Stewart has become one of the major players in comedy as well as one of the most significant liberal voices in the media. In Angry Optimist, biographer Lisa Rogak charts his unlikely rise to stardom. She follows him from his early days growing up in New Jersey, through his years as a struggling standup comic in New York, and on to the short-lived but acclaimed The Jon Stewart Show. And she charts his humbling string of near-misses—passed over as a replacement for shows hosted by Conan O’Brien, Tom Snyder, and even the fictional Larry Sanders—before landing at a half-hour comedy show that at the time was still finding its footing amidst roiling internal drama.

Once there, Stewart transformed The Daily Show into one of the most influential news programs on television today. Drawing on interviews with current and former colleagues, Rogak reveals how things work—and sometimes don’t work—behind the scenes at The Daily Show, led by Jon Stewart, a comedian who has come to wield incredible power in American politics.

On My Radar:

People I Want to Punch in the Throat: Competitive Crafters, Drop-Off Despots, and Other Suburban Scourges
Jen Mann
Random House
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

A debut collection of witty, biting essays laced with a surprising warmth, from Jen Mann, the writer behind the popular blog People I Want to Punch in the Throat
 
People I want to punch in the throat:
• anyone who feels the need to bling her washer and dryer
• humblebraggers
• people who treat their pets like children
 
Jen Mann doesn’t have a filter, which sometimes gets her in trouble with her neighbors, her fellow PTA moms, and that one woman who tried to sell her sex toys at a home shopping party. Known for her hilariously acerbic observations on her blog, People I Want to Punch in the Throat, Mann now brings her sharp wit to bear on suburban life, marriage, and motherhood in this laugh-out-loud collection of essays. From the politics of joining a play group, to the thrill of mothers’ night out at the gun range, to the rewards of your most meaningful relationship (the one you have with your cleaning lady), nothing is sacred or off-limits. So the next time you find yourself wearing fuzzy bunny pajamas in the school carpool line or accidentally stuck at a co-worker’s swingers party, just think, What would Jen Mann do? Or better yet, buy her book.

In My TBR Stack:

Lincoln's Gamble: The Tumultuous Six Months That Gave America the Emancipation Proclamation and Changed the Course of the Civil War
Todd Brewster
Scribner
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

A brilliant, authoritative, and riveting account of the most critical six months in Abraham Lincoln’s presidency, when he penned the Emancipation Proclamation and changed the course of the Civil War.

On July 12, 1862, Abraham Lincoln spoke for the first time of his intention to free the slaves. On January 1, 1863, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, doing precisely that. In between, however, was perhaps the most tumultuous six months of his presidency, an episode during which the sixteenth president fought bitterly with his generals, disappointed his cabinet, and sank into painful bouts of clinical depression. Most surprising, the man who would be remembered as “The Great Emancipator” did not hold firm to his belief in emancipation. He agonized over the decision and was wracked by private doubts almost to the moment when he inked the decree that would change a nation.

Popular myth would have us believe that Lincoln did not suffer from such indecision, that he did what he did through moral resolve; that he had a commanding belief in equality, in the inevitable victory of right over wrong. He worked on drafts of the document for months, locking it in a drawer in the telegraph room of the War department. Ultimately Lincoln chose to act based on his political instincts and knowledge of the war. It was a great gamble, with the future of the Union, of slavery, and of the presidency itself hanging in the balance.

In this compelling narrative, Todd Brewster focuses on these critical six months to ask: was it through will or by accident, intention or coincidence, personal achievement or historical determinism that he freed the slaves? The clock is always ticking in these pages as Lincoln searches for the right moment to enact his proclamation and simultaneously turn the tide of war. Lincoln’s Gamble portrays the president as an imperfect man with an unshakable determination to save a country he believed in, even as the course of the Civil War remained unknown.

On My Radar:

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