On My Radar:

The Madman Theory: Trump Takes on the World
by Jim Sciutto
Harper Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Richard Nixon tried it first. Hoping to make communist bloc countries uneasy and thus unstable, Nixon let them think he was just crazy enough to nuke them. He called this “the madman theory.” Nearly half a century later, President Trump has employed his own “madman theory,” sometimes intentionally and sometimes not.

Trump praises Kim Jong-un and their “love notes,” admires and flatters Vladimir Putin, and gives a greenlight to Recep Tayyip Erdogan to invade Syria. Meanwhile, he attacks US institutions and officials, ignores his own advisors, and turns his back on US allies from Canada and Mexico to NATO to Ukraine to the Kurds at war with ISIS. Trump is willing to make the nation’s most sensitive and consequential decisions while often ignoring the best information and intelligence available to him. He continually catches the world off guard, but is it working?

In The Madman Theory, Jim Sciutto shows how Trump's supporters assume he has a strategy for long-term success – that he is somehow playing three-dimensional chess. Now that we are four years into his presidency, we can see his unpredictable focus on short-term headlines has in fact lead to predictably mediocre results in the short and long run.  Trump’s foreign policy has undermined American values and national security interests, while hurting allies who have been on our side for decades, leaving them isolated and vulnerable without American support. 

Meanwhile, he comforts and emboldens our enemies. The White House’s revolving door of staff demonstrates that Trump has no real plan; all serious policymakers—and those who would be a check on his most destructive impulses—have been exiled or jumped ship.

Sciutto has interviewed a wide swath of current and former administration officials to assemble the first comprehensive portrait of the impact of Trump’s erratic foreign policy. Smart, authoritative, and compelling, The Madman Theory is the definitive take on Trump’s calamitous legacy around the globe, showing how his proclivity for chaos is creating a world which is more unstable, violent, and impoverished than it was before.

On My Rradar:

Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan
by Alan Paul and Andy Aledort
St. Martin's Griffin
Trade Paperback

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From the publisher's website:

Just a few years after he almost died from a severe addiction to cocaine and alcohol, a clean and sober Stevie Ray Vaughan was riding high. His last album was his most critically lauded and commercially successful. He had fulfilled a lifelong dream by collaborating with his first and greatest musical hero, his brother Jimmie. His tumultuous marriage was over and he was in a new and healthy romantic relationship. Vaughan seemed poised for a new, limitless chapter of his life and career.

Instead, it all came to a shocking and sudden end on August 27, 1990, when he was killed in a helicopter crash following a dynamic performance with Eric Clapton. Just 35 years old, he left behind a powerful musical legacy and an endless stream of What Ifs. In the ensuing 29 years, Vaughan’s legend and acclaim have only grown and he is now an undisputed international musical icon. Despite the cinematic scope of Vaughan’s life and death, there has never been a truly proper accounting of his story. Until now.

Texas Flood provides the unadulterated truth about Stevie Ray Vaughan from those who knew him best: his brother Jimmie, his Double Trouble bandmates Tommy Shannon, Chris Layton and Reese Wynans, and many other close friends, family members, girlfriends, fellow musicians, managers and crew members.

On My Radar:

Moneyland: The Inside Story of the Crooks and the Kleptocrats Who Rule the World
by Oliver Bullough
St. Martin's Press
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

From ruined towns on the edge of Siberia, to Bond-villain lairs in London and Manhattan, something has gone wrong. Kleptocracies, governments run by corrupt leaders that prosper at the expense of their people, are on the rise.

Once upon a time, if an official stole money, there wasn't much he could do with it. He could buy himself a new car or build himself a nice house or give it to his friends and family, but that was about it. If he kept stealing, the money would just pile up in his house until he had no rooms left to put it in, or it was eaten by mice.

And then some bankers had a bright idea.

Join the investigative journalist Oliver Bullough on a journey into Moneyland—the secret country of the lawless, stateless superrich.

Learn how the institutions of Europe and the United States have become money-laundering operations, attacking the foundations of many of the world's most stable countries. Meet the kleptocrats. Meet their awful children. And find out how heroic activists around the world are fighting back.

This is the story of wealth and power in the 21st century. It isn't too late to change it.

On My Radar:

Like Crazy: Life with My Mother and Her Invisible Friends
by Dan Mathews
Atria Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Dan Mathews knew that his witty, bawdy, unhinged mother, Perry, was unable to maintain her fierce independence at seventy-eight—so he flew her across the country to Virginia to live with him in an 1870 townhouse badly in need of repairs. But to Dan, a screwdriver is a cocktail not a tool, and he was soon overwhelmed with two fixer-uppers: the house and his mother.

Unbowed, Dan and Perry built a rollicking life together fueled by costume parties, road trips, after-hours gatherings, and an unshakeable sense of humor as they faced down hurricanes, blizzards, and Perry’s steady decline. They got by with the help of an ever-expanding circle of sidekicks—Dan’s boyfriends (past and present), ex-cons, sailors, strippers, deaf hillbillies, evangelicals, and grumpy cats—while flipping the parent-child relationship on its head.

But it wasn’t until a kicking-and-screaming trip to the emergency room that Dan discovered the cause of his mother’s unpredictable, often caustic behavior: Perry had lived her entire adult life as an undiagnosed schizophrenic.

Irreverent and emotionally powerful, Like Crazy is a darkly comic tale about the perils and rewards of taking in a fragile parent without derailing your life in the process. A rare story about mental illness with an uplifting conclusion, it shows the remarkable growth that takes place when a wild child settles down to care for the wild woman who raised him.

In My TBR Stack:

The Final Gift of the Beloved
by Barron Steffen
The Yoga of Mindset Press
Trade Paperback

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From the publisher's website:

If you could leave your true love one final gift, what would it be? This intense, moment-by-moment chronicle begins with the officer’s words, “She is deceased.” For the next 13 days following the fatal automobile accident of his wife, the author draws on nearly forty years of study and training with gurus and meditation teachers to discover ecstatic love, save fractured relationships, and glimpse a greater arc and purpose for being alive. 

 

The Final Gift of the Beloved: Her Disappearance—13 Days is the story of one man’s sudden, astonishing brush with devastation and the Divine under the most heart breaking of circumstances.

 

A love story disguised as a tragedy, Steffen weaves extraordinarily poignant and powerful experiences with honesty and revelations that will change lives. Along with intense pain and emotion, prepare yourself for great beauty and transcendent insight, for nothing is as it appears.

On My Radar:

Liberty: Life, Billy, and the Pursuit of Happiness
by Liberty DeVitto
Hudson Music

Hardcover

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From the publisher's website:

For thirty years, Liberty DeVitto was the driving force behind one of the biggest pop artists of all time. With his intense drive, endless creativity, and New York swagger, Liberty created the grooves for 13 platinum Billy Joel albums that have sold over 150 million copies, and wrote and performed the drum parts on 22 of Billy’s 23 top-40 hits and all of his 6 Grammy-winning recordings. He toured the world multiple times as one of the most well-known drummers of his era.

The amazing success did not come without a price. This is Liberty’s story: a tale of an Italian-American kid who followed his dream and attained unimaginable success, only to see it crumble before his eyes, and ultimately experience a rebirth after passing through the fire of broken relationships, divorce, substance abuse, the death of a brother and a bandmate—and the pain of losing the persona the world knew as “Billy Joel’s drummer.”

In this compelling memoir, Liberty takes you back to his immigrant roots and ultimate settling on Long Island, a place he recounts in warm detail. He then traces a musician’s journey: early childhood bands, a rise through the local club scene, wedding bands, building a career, his first tours, and then a juggernaut of success, excess, and stardom with Billy Joel.

The making of each of Billy’s albums is recounted in detail, with specific memories from the recording sessions of every song on every album from Turnstiles through Storm Front. Liberty then shares stories from the production and tour for River of Dreams and the end of his tenure with Billy.

Liberty is a tale of following and fulfilling your dream, a love story of a drummer and his drum, and an inside look at the music and career of Billy Joel from the man who viewed it from the best seat in the house: the drum throne.

On My Radar:

Far Out Man: Tales of Life in the Counterculture

by Eric Utne

Random House

Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Far Out Man is the story of a life-long seeker who was occasionally a finder as well. In 1984, Eric Utne founded Utne Reader, a digest of new ideas and fresh perspectives percolating in the arts, culture, politics, business, and spirituality. With the tag line “The Best of the Alternative Press,” the magazine was twice a finalist for a National Magazine Award and grew to more than 300,000 paid circulation. In the nineties, the magazine promoted the Neighborhood Salon Association to revive the endangered art of conversation and start a revolution in people’s living rooms. More than 18,000 people joined, comprising nearly 500 salons across North America. Utne devoted the magazine to bringing people together to help make the world a “little greener and a little kinder.” 

Far Out Man serves as a chronicle of both an individual life and a generation, covering the conflicts of the Vietnam era, the hopes and excesses of the sexual revolution and the Me Decade, the idealism and depredations of the entrepreneurial eighties and nineties, and the promise and perils of the digital age. Ultimately, Far Out Man is the story of Eric Utne’s lifelong search for hope, how he lost it, and what he found on the other side that sustains him in his darkest moments. It is a book dedicated to helping all seekers become finders.

 

On My Radar:

Life of a Klansman: A Family History in White Supremacy

by Edward Ball

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Life of a Klansman tells the story of a warrior in the Ku Klux Klan, a carpenter in Louisiana who took up the cause of fanatical racism during the years after the Civil War. Edward Ball, a descendant of the Klansman, paints a portrait of his family’s anti-black militant that is part history, part memoir rich in personal detail.

Sifting through family lore about “our Klansman” as well as public and private records, Ball reconstructs the story of his great-great grandfather, Constant Lecorgne. A white French Creole, father of five, and working class ship carpenter, Lecorgne had a career in white terror of notable and bloody completeness: massacres, night riding, masked marches, street rampages—all part of a tireless effort that he and other Klansmen made to restore white power when it was threatened by the emancipation of four million enslaved African Americans. To offer a non-white view of the Ku-klux, Ball seeks out descendants of African Americans who were once victimized by “our Klansman” and his comrades, and shares their stories.

For whites, to have a Klansman in the family tree is no rare thing: Demographic estimates suggest that fifty percent of whites in the United States have at least one ancestor who belonged to the Ku Klux Klan at some point in its history. That is, one-half of white Americans could write a Klan family memoir, if they wished.

In an era when racist ideology and violence are again loose in the public square, Life of a Klansman offers a personal origin story of white supremacy. Ball’s family memoir traces the vines that have grown from militant roots in the Old South into the bitter fruit of the present, when whiteness is again a cause that can veer into hate and domestic terror.

In My TBR Stack:

Everyone Dies Famous

by Len Joy

BQB Publishing

Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

As a tornado threatens their town, a stubborn old man who has lost his son teams up with a troubled young soldier to deliver a jukebox to the wealthy developer having an affair with the soldier’s wife.

It’s July 2003 and the small town of Maple Springs, Missouri is suffering through a month-long drought. Dancer Stonemason, a long-forgotten hometown hero still grieving over the death of his oldest son, is moving into town to live with his more dependable younger son. He hires Wayne Mesirow, an Iraq war veteran, to help him liquidate his late son’s business.

The heat wave breaks and the skies darken. Dancer tries to settle an old score while Wyne discovers the true cost of his wife’s indifference and turns his thoughts to revenge. When the tornado hits Maple Springs, only one of the men will make it out alive.

“Everyone Dies Famous” is a story from the heartland about the uncommon lives of everyday people – the choices they make, how they live their lives, and how they die.

In My TBR Stack:

Detectives in the Shadows: A Hard-Boiled History

by Susanna Lee

Johns Hopkins University Press

Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Steadfast in fighting crime, but operating outside the police force—and sometimes even the law—is the private detective. Driven by his own moral code, he is a shadowy figure in a trench coat standing on a street corner, his face most likely obscured by a tilted fedora, a lit cigarette dangling from his hand. The hard-boiled detective is known by his dark past, private pain, and powers of deduction. He only asks questions—never answers them. In his stories he is both the main character and the narrator.

America has had a love affair with the hard-boiled detective since the 1920s, when Prohibition called into question who really stood on the right and wrong side of the law. And nowhere did this hero shine more than in crime fiction. In Detectives in the Shadows, literary and cultural critic Susanna Lee tracks the evolution of this truly American character type—from Race Williams to Philip Marlowe and from Mike Hammer to Jessica Jones. 

Lee explores how this character type morphs to fit an increasingly troubled world, offering compelling interpretations of The Wire, True Detective, and Jessica Jones. Suddenly, in the present day, the hard-boiled detective wears his—or her—fatigue outwardly, revealing more vulnerability than ever before. But the detective remains resolute in the face of sinister forces, ever the person of honor. For anyone interested in crime fiction and television, or for those wanting to understand America's idolization of the good guy with a gun, Detectives in the Shadows is essential reading.

On My Radar:

It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump

by Stuart Stevens

Knopf

Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Stuart Stevens spent decades electing Republicans at every level, from presidents to senators to local officials. He knows the GOP as intimately as anyone in America, and in this new book he offers a devastating portrait of a party that has lost its moral and political compass.  

This is not a book about how Donald J. Trump hijacked the Republican Party and changed it into something else. Stevens shows how Trump is in fact the natural outcome of five decades of hypocrisy and self-delusion, dating all the way back to the civil rights legislation of the early 1960s. Stevens shows how racism has always lurked in the modern GOP’s DNA, from Goldwater’s opposition to desegregation to Ronald Reagan’s welfare queens and states’ rights rhetoric. He gives an insider’s account of the rank hypocrisy of the party’s claims to embody “family values,” and shows how the party’s vaunted commitment to fiscal responsibility has been a charade since the 1980s. When a party stands for nothing, he argues, it is only natural that it will be taken over by the loudest and angriest voices in the room.

It Was All a Lie is not just an indictment of the Republican Party, but a candid and often lacerating mea culpa. Stevens is not asking for pity or forgiveness; he is simply telling us what he has seen firsthand. He helped to create the modern party that kneels before a morally bankrupt con man and now he wants nothing more than to see what is has become burned to the ground.

On My Radar:

We're Not Here to Entertain: Punk Rock, Ronald Reagan, and the Real Culture War of 1980s America

by Kevin Mattson

Oxford University Press

Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

• Presents a history of punk based on archival research rather than oral history
• Uncovers the connection between 1980s punk and Reaganism
• Proves how widespread punk was by looking beyond New York City and Los Angeles
• Argues for the intelligence of punk, presenting an intellectual history of punk ideas and expression
• Moves beyond the standard "band history" to examine punk art, poetry, sci-fi literature, and movies as well
• Provides an entertaining but critical analysis of protest politics and songs and other modes of expression

In My TBR Stack:

Individual Development Plan 2.0: Master Your Professional Development in 4 Practical Steps

by Gonzalo Cordova

Leadership Holdings LLC

Trade Paperback

From the book publicity:

Many are feeling overwhelmed with the amount of change in their professional lives in the last few months, so you are not alone. Finding the motivation to take control of your professional development is crucial to succeed in the current environment. 

No book to date tells you how to identify what matters the most and how to capitalize on it – your strongest and most marketable skills. 

Individual Development Plan 2.0: Master Your Professional Development in 4 Practical Steps is the book that will change the game for you. 

Here’s what you can expect to master: 

Step #1: Assessing your Capabilities 
Step #2: Setting Your Long-Term Professional Goals 
Step #3: Identifying Meaningful Capabilities 
Step #4: Committing to Tangible Actions and Metrics 

Take charge of your professional future in a strategic, simple, actionable, and meaningful way. You absolutely won’t regret it.