BOOKS THREAD

Currently reading the fascinating "1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus" by Charles Mann. If they had used books like this in school, maybe I wouldn't have flunked history five times.

 

Sequel just came out:

 

That one is next in my queue

 

Read Cornelius Ryan's trilogy: "The Longest Day" "A Bridge Too Far" and "The Last Battle".

The former is on D-Day, ABTF is about Operation Market Garden and both led to probably two of the best war movies ever made. "The Last Battle" is about the final push into Berlin. It's probably my favorite of the three. All three are well-written, fascinating tomes written from the inside, via eyewitnesses and participants in every operation.

 

Am three chapters in with "The Art of Fielding" by Chad Harbach. LOVE it.

I've never seen so many stories in a single week about a single book ... The New Yorker, NY Times, Vanity Fair. Harbach is the next Franzen. He's good.

 

Shirer's book remains first-rate . . . though if you've been paying attention over the past fifty years, much of it will seem repetitive. But it wasn't repetitive when it first came out. One of the absolute go-to sources . . .

 

I read Finding Everett Ruess by David Roberts, which I guess was pretty good, about a kid who wandered the Southwest in the '30s until he disappeared and no sign of him has been found. Kind of an early day Christopher McCandless (except for the not being found). It was good, but I felt like more was being made out of the guy than was necessary, like he was a more important, mythic figure than I think he really is. Plus he comes across as kind of a dick (Ruess) but then again, he was in his late teens, early 20s.
Also read Jon Krakauer's short Three Cups of Deceit, where he completely discredits Greg Mortenson, his book Three Cups of Tea, and his charitable work building schools in the Middle East. Outstanding short read, only about 70 pages.

 

Shirer's trilogy of his memoirs is also great. He had a fascinating career: covering Gandhi early in his career, working for Murrow at CBS, getting blacklisted, writing "Rise and Fall"....

Also just read Daniel Okrent's "Last Call" about one of my favorite topics in American history: Prohibition. Pretty good read.

 

About twice as far as you and also love it. Hope it doesn't go all The Passage on me and bog down in the middle section. The scene at the beginning of Chapter 3 (or is it 4) with Henry leaning against the door is worth the price of the book.

 

Just finished Life by Keith Richards. Ridiculously entertaining, even if you aren't a Stones fanboi looser like me. Not so much a history of the Stones, more like Keef just being Keef which is more than good enough for me.

Don't know if there will be another book from one of the Stones. Can't see Charlie writing a tell-all and Mick's would read like Jann Wenner's wet dream. Bill Wyman's book, which I read not long ago, only covered the band through the end of the 60s and was a dry litany of club gigs, Bill's endless sexual conquests and his vague assertions that he deserved credit for his contributions to plenty of classic Stones songs even if he never named them.

Next up, Enter Night, Mick Wall's bio of Metallica and then Tony Blair's memoirs.

 

"Biopunk: DIY Scientists Hack the Software of Life" by Marcus Wohlsen, AP science writer.

Real good stuff. Unavoidably, it's kind of thick with genetics terminology and exposition, of course, but it's not so dense as to be unreadable by the layman. The stories about the garage genetics hackers are cool. Important point illustrated toward the end is that bioterrorism is infinitely easier to do with age-old conventional stuff like ricin than it is by creating some new superbug in a basement lab.

 

A fun read.