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Finding a good book isn't always easy. But over the Summer and Spring, I've had the fortune of one great read after another. So I thought I'd share some of my luck with you. Some of the titles are brand-spankin'-new, others are old. All of 'em are worth picking up. Here they are, in no particular order:
Crooked Little Vein
by Warren Ellis. Best premise of all time: A Lower East Side private investigator gets recruited by the White House to find the
Constitution. No, not that Constitution. The real one, written on the skins of aliens, that has the 23 invisible amendments. Dick
Nixon gave it away to a Chinese hooker in the '50s. Now our scrappy PI
and his nymphomaniac, polyamorous gal pal have to get it back.
The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century
by Steve Coll. Osama didn't just come from a rich, influential family
-- he emerged from Saudi Arabia's answer to the Rockefellers. These are folks who've had their hands on the tiller of the world for decades. Essential reading (along with Coll's * Ghost Wars*) for understanding Afghanistan and the modern Middle East.
Samaritan by Richard Price. One of The Wire's
go-to scribes tells an impossibly sad tale of a wannabe do-gooder that tries to save a ghetto family -- and suddenly finds himself in need of a rescue.
A Nuclear Family Vacation: Travels in the World of Atomic Weaponry by Sharon Weinberger and Nathan Hodge. Ride shotgun with DANGER ROOM's royal couple as they encounter hidden bunkers, secret cities, nuclear missileers, and a one-eyed baby. Along they way, they'll teach you everything you need to know about nuclear weapons policy.
*Now the Hell Will Start: One Soldier's Flight from the Greatest Manhunt of World War II*by Brendan I. Koerner.
An African-American G.I. gets abused one time too many, doing construction in South Asia during World War II. So he escapes into the tiger-infested jungle, falls in love with a headhunter's daughter, and eludes the widest, tightest dragnet the military can put together -- becoming a folk hero to Black troops, in the process.
Clockers* *by Richard Price. The crack game never had so much heart. And no writer better captures the language of the streets.
Thunderstruck
by Erik Larson. The world follows a murder on the high seas, thanks to a new-fangled invention called wireless telegraphy. Ghosts, death rays, and Queen Victoria all make cameo appearances.
Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes, and the Man Who Makes War Possible by Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun. On the trail of Viktor Bout, a strong contender for World's Most Evil Man.
Rear Window and Other Stories by Cornell Wollrich. O'Henry with a fedora and a .38.
Hard Revolution by George Pelecanos. Black Power and small-time, cracker thugs collide in 60's D.C. Read this, and you'll see that *The Wire *-- credited to David Simon and Ed Burns -- really is taken straight out of Pelecanos' and Price's pages.
Anthropological Intelligence: The Deployment and Neglect of American Anthropology in the Second World War* *by David Price. How Axis and Allied social scientists raised guerrilla armies, prepped troops for war, and kept suspect populations in check.
The New Avengers, Vols. 1-4, by Brian Michael Bendis and David Finch. This used to be a staid supergroup. Then Spidey, Wolverine, and Luke Cage showed up.
*Freedomland *by
Richard Price. A stunned woman emerges from the projects, claiming her son has been kidnapped. The police descend. The media goes crazy. And an asthmatic detective scrambles to keep a pair of cities from detonating. Maybe his best book, with characters so real, you want to hug 'em, when it's all over.
