Capturing the Lives of Others: New Biographies for the Kindle (29 Nov 2010)

One lives in the hope of becoming a memory - Antonio Porchia.

Given the burgeoning popularity of social media on the Internet, it is not surprising that biographies and memoirs are among the most popular reading choices of Kindle readers. Whether you enjoy reading of exemplary lives or living vicariously through celebrity memoirs, now you can spend less time searching and more time reading, as I watch for new biographies and memoirs in the Kindle Store so you don't have to.

My Reading Life, by Pat Conroy. Nan A. Talese, 2010. Print Length: 192 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (13 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99 (Hardcover $12.81). Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Bestselling author Pat Conroy acknowledges the books that have shaped him and celebrates the profound effect reading has had on his life.He has for years kept a notebook in which he notes words or phrases, just from a love of language. But reading for him is not simply a pleasure to be enjoyed in off-hours or a source of inspiration for his own writing. It would hardly be an exaggeration to claim that reading has saved his life, and if not his life then surely his sanity. In My Reading Life, Conroy revisits a life of passionate reading. He includes wonderful anecdotes from his school days, mov­ing accounts of how reading pulled him through dark times, and even lists of books that particularly influenced him at vari­ous stages of his life, including grammar school, high school, and college." - from the hardcover edition.

Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia, by Michael Korda. Harper Collins, 2010. Print Length: 800 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (10 reviews). Kindle edition $16.99 (Hardcover $19.64). Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"An Oxford scholar and archaeologist, one of five illegitimate sons of a British aristocrat who ran away with his daughters' governess, Lawrence was sent to Cairo as a young intelligence officer in 1916. He vanished into the desert in 1917 only to emerge later as one of the greatest - and certainly most colorful - figures of World War One. Though a foreigner, he played a leading and courageous part in uniting the Arab tribes to defeat the Turks, and eventually capture Damascus, transforming himself into a world-famous hero, hailed as 'the Uncrowned King of Arabia.' In illuminating Lawrence's achievements, Korda digs further than anyone before him to expose the flesh-and-blood man and his contradictory nature. Here was a born leader who was utterly fearless and seemingly impervious to pain, thirst, fatigue, and danger, yet who remained shy, sensitive, modest, and retiring; a hero who turned down every honor and decoration offered to him, and was racked by moral guilt and doubt; a scholar and an aesthete who was also a bold and ruthless warrior; a writer of genius - the author of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, one of the greatest books ever written about war - who was the virtual inventor of modern insurgency and guerrilla warfare; a man who at the same time sought and fled the limelight, and who found in friendships, with everyone from Winston Churchill to George Bernard and Charlotte Shaw, from Nancy Astor to Noel Coward, a substitute for sexual feelings that he rigorously - even brutally and systematically - repressed in himself..." - Amazon.

Life, by Keith Richards. Little, Brown and Company, 2010. Print Length: 560 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (104 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99 (Hardcover $16.18). Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"As the legendary guitarist for the Rolling Stones, Keith Richards has done more, been more and seen more than you or I will ever dream of, and reading his autobiography, Life, should awaken (if you have a pulse and an I.Q. north of 100) a little bit of the rock star in you...Music is at the core of Life, as it is at the core of Keith... Believe me, you won't want to miss a thing. The most impressive part of Life is the wealth of knowledge Keith shares, whether he's telling you how to layer an acoustic guitar until it sounds electric, as he did on the classic Stones track 'Street Fighting Man,' or how to win a knife fight. He delivers recipe after recipe for everything rock 'n' roll, and let me say it's quite an education...like getting to corner Keith Richards in a room and ask him every­thing you ever wanted to know about the Rolling Stones, and have him be completely honest with you." - Liz Phair for The New York Times Book Review.

You Had Me at Woof: How Dogs Taught Me the Secrets of Happiness, by Julie Klam. Riverhead, 2010. Print Length: 240 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (13 reviews). Kindle edition $11.99 (Hardcover $14.99). Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"Julie Klam was thirty, single, and working as a part-time clerk in an insurance company, wondering if she would ever meet the man she could spend the rest of her life with. And then it happened. She met the irresistible Otto, her first in a long line of Boston terriers, and fell instantly in love. You Had Me at Woof is the often hilarious and always sincere story of how one woman discovered life's most important lessons from her relationships with her canine companions. From Otto, Julie realized what it might feel like to find 'the one.' She learned to share her home, her heart, and her limited resources with another, and she found an authentic friend in the process. But that was just the beginning. Over the years her brood has grown to one husband, one daughter, and several Boston terriers. And although she had much to learn about how to care for them - walks at 2 a.m., vet visits, behavior problems - she was surprised and delighted to find that her dogs had more wisdom to convey to her than she had ever dreamed." - Amazon.

Cleopatra: A Life, by Stacy Schiff. Little, Brown and Company, 2010. Print Length: 384 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (49 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99 (Hardcover $16.49). Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"The Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer brings to life the most intriguing woman in the history of the world: Cleopatra, the last queen of Egypt. Though her life spanned fewer than forty years, it reshaped the contours of the ancient world. She was married twice, each time to a brother. She waged a brutal civil war against the first when both were teenagers. She poisoned the second. Ultimately she dispensed with an ambitious sister as well; incest and assassination were family specialties. Cleopatra appears to have had sex with only two men. They happen, however, to have been Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, among the most prominent Romans of the day. Both were married to other women. Cleopatra had a child with Caesar and--after his murder--three more with his protégé. Already she was the wealthiest ruler in the Mediterranean; the relationship with Antony confirmed her status as the most influential woman of the age. The two would together attempt to forge a new empire, in an alliance that spelled their ends. In a masterly return to the classical sources, Stacy Schiff here boldly separates fact from fiction to rescue the magnetic queen whose death ushered in a new world order. Rich in detail, epic in scope, Schiff's is a luminous, deeply original reconstruction of a dazzling life." - Amazon.

Colonel Roosevelt, by Edmund Morris. Random House, 2010. Print Length: 800 p. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (18 reviews). Kindle edition $17.29 (Hardcover $19.25). Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Of all our great presidents, Theodore Roosevelt is the only one whose greatness increased out of office. When he toured Europe in 1910 as plain 'Colonel Roosevelt,' he was hailed as the most famous man in the world. Crowned heads vied to put him up in their palaces. “If I see another king,” he joked, “I think I shall bite him.”
Had TR won his historic 'Bull Moose' campaign in 1912 (when he outpolled the sitting president, William Howard Taft), he might have averted World War I, so great was his international influence. Had he not died in 1919, at the early age of sixty, he would unquestionably have been reelected to a third term in the White House and completed the work he began in 1901 of establishing the United States as a model democracy, militarily strong and socially just. This biography by Edmund Morris, the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award–winning author of The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt and Theodore Rex, is itself the completion of a trilogy sure to stand as definitive. Packed with more adventure, variety, drama, humor, and tragedy than a big novel, yet documented down to the smallest fact, it recounts the last decade of perhaps the most amazing life in American history. ." - from the hardcover edition.

Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage, by Hazel Rowley. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010. Print Length: 368 p. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (9 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99 (Hardcover $16.61). Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Franklin Delano and Eleanor Roosevelt’s marriage is one of the most celebrated and scrutinized partnerships in presidential history. It raised eyebrows in their lifetimes and has only become more controversial since their deaths. From FDR’s lifelong romance with Lucy Mercer to Eleanor’s purported lesbianism - and many scandals in between - the American public has never tired of speculating about the ties that bound these two headstrong individuals. Some claim that Eleanor sacrificed her personal happiness to accommodate FDR’s needs; others claim that the marriage was nothing more than a gracious façade for political convenience. No one has told the full story until now. In this dramatic and vivid narrative, set against the great upheavals of the Depression and World War II, Rowley paints a portrait of a tender lifelong companionship, born of mutual admiration and compassion. Most of all, she depicts an extraordinary evolution - from conventional Victorian marriage to the bold and radical partnership that has made Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt go down in history as one of the most inspiring and fascinating couples of all time." - Amazon.

The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love, by Kristin Kimball. Scribner, 2010. Print Length: 288 p. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (20 reviews). Kindle edition $11.99 (Hardcover $15.00). Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"Single, thirtysomething, working as a writer in New York City, Kristin Kimball was living life as an adventure. But she was beginning to feel a sense of longing for a family and for home. When she interviewed a dynamic young farmer, her world changed. Kristin knew nothing about growing vegetables, let alone raising pigs and cattle and driving horses. But on an impulse, smitten, if not yet in love, she shed her city self and moved to five hundred acres near Lake Champlain to start a new farm with him. The Dirty Life is the captivating chronicle of their first year on Essex Farm, from the cold North Country winter through the following harvest season - complete with their wedding in the loft of the barn." - simonandschuster.com.

A Week of Entertainment: Kindle Books Reviewed in Entertainment Weekly's 26 Nov 2010 Issue

Each week Entertainment Weekly reviews a small selection of popular new books. Titles available for the Kindle reviewed in the November 26th issue include:

The New Yorker Stories, by Ann Beattie. Scribner, 2010. Print length: 528 p. SHORT STORIES. EW's slant: "...an in-depth study of a subculture and a staggering almanac of emotions." Amazon customer rating: none yet. Kindle edition $14.99 (Hardcover $19.80). Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"When Ann Beattie began publishing short stories in The New Yorker in the mid-seventies, she emerged with a voice so original, and so uncannily precise and prescient in its assessment of her characters’ drift and narcissism, that she was instantly celebrated as a voice of her generation. Subtle, wry, and unnerving, she is a master observer of the unraveling of the American family, and also of the myriad small occurrences and affinities that unite us. Her characters, over nearly four decades, have moved from lives of fickle desire to the burdens and inhibitions of adulthood and on to failed aspirations, sloppy divorces, and sometimes enlightenment, even grace. Each Beattie story, says Margaret Atwood, is 'like a fresh bulletin from the front: we snatch it up, eager to know what’s happening out there on the edge of that shifting and dubious no-man’s-land known as interpersonal relations.'"

Sterling's Gold: Wit and Wisdom of an Ad Man, by Roger Sterling. Grove Press, 2010. Print length: 176 p. POPULAR CULTURE. EW's slant: "For Mad Men fans in severe withdrawal...too bad this handsome-looking book turns ot to be little more than a collection of quips uttered by the silver fox on the show." Amazon customer rating: 2 1/2 stars (3 reviews). Kindle edition $9.29 (Hardcover $11.53). Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Advertising pioneer and visionary Roger Sterling, Jr., served with distinction in the Navy during World War II, and joined Sterling Cooper Advertising as a junior account executive in 1947. He worked his way up to managing partner before leaving to found his own agency, Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, in 1963. During his long and illustrious career, Sterling has come into contact with all the luminaries and would-be luminaries of the advertising world, and he has acquired quite a reputation among his colleagues for his quips, barbs, and witticisms. Taken as a whole, Roger Sterling’s pithy comments and observations amount to a unique window on the advertising world - a world that few among us are privileged to witness first-hand - as well as a commentary on life in New York City in the middle of the twentieth century." - www.groveatlantic.com/.

The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, by Walter Mosley. Riverhead, 2010. Print length: 288 p. NOVEL. EW's slant: "A series of bizarre plot twists...cloud and blur Ptolemy Grey's story line..." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars. Kindle edition $12.99 (Hardcover $17.13). Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Ptolemy Grey is a 91-year-old African American living alone in violent South Central L.A. Frail and suffering from dementia, largely forgotten by his extended family, he can’t remember to eat, his mind 'scattered over nearly a hundred years.' He relives events marked by racism, lynching, poverty, and longing for his long-dead wife. His great-grand nephew, Reggie, takes him to the grocery store and prompts him to eat. When Reggie is killed in a drive-by shooting, Ptolemy’s days appear to be numbered. But Robyn, a beautiful, resourceful 17-year-old, steps in. As she sees to Ptolemy’s needs, she awakens his desire for the lucidity he once had.. a deeply thoughtful, provocative, and often beautiful meditation on aging, memory, family, loss, and love. Ptolemy and Robynare truly indelible characters. Mosley’s story is ultimately life affirming, and his writing is by turns gritty and sublime..." - Thomas Gaughan for Booklist.

An Object of Beauty, by Steve Martin. Grand Central Publishing, 2010. Print length: 304 p. NOVEL. EW's slant: "...a dramedy of manners that doubles as an immersion course in the rarefied world of high-end art...wry, wise, and keenly observant." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (3 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99 (Hardcover: $14.50). Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"Martin compresses the wild and crazy end of the millennium and finds in this piercing novel a sardonic morality tale. Lacey Yeager is an ambitious young art dealer who uses everything at her disposal to advance in the world of the high-end art trade in New York City. After cutting her teeth at Sotheby's, she manipulates her way up through Barton Talley's gallery of 'Very Expensive Paintings,' sleeping with patrons, and dodging and indulging in questionable deals, possible felonies, and general skeeviness until she opens her own gallery in Chelsea. Narrated by Lacey's journalist friend, Daniel Franks, whose droll voice is a remarkable stand-in for Martin's own, the world is ordered and knowable, blindly barreling onward until 9/11... Martin (an art collector himself) is an astute miniaturist as he exposes the sound and fury of the rarified Manhattan art world..." - Publishers Weekly.

Briefly Mentioned: Other Steve Martin Titles Available in Kindle Editions:

Born Standing Up. Scribner, 2007. Print length: 224 p. MEMOIR. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (264 reviews). Kindle edition $11.99 (Paperback $10.20). Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"At age 10, Steve Martin got a job selling guidebooks at the newly opened Disneyland. In the decade that followed, he worked in Disney's magic shop, print shop, and theater, and developed his own magic/comedy act. By age 20, studying poetry and philosophy on the side, he was performing a dozen times a week, most often at the Disney rival, Knott's Berry Farm. Obsession is a substitute for talent, he has said, and Steve Martin's focus and daring - his sheer tenacity - are truly stunning. He writes about making the very tough decision to sacrifice everything not original in his act, and about lucking into a job writing for The Smothers Brothers Show. He writes about mentors, girlfriends, his complex relationship with his parents and sister, and about some of his great peers in comedy - Dan Ackroyd, Lorne Michaels, Carl Reiner, Johnny Carson. He writes about fear, anxiety and loneliness. And he writes about how he figured out what worked on stage." - Amazon.

Late for School. Grand Central Publishing, 2010. Print length: 32 p. CHILDREN'S FICTION. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (5 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99 (Hardcover $12.23). Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Getting to school has never been quite this difficult - or hilarious. Celebrated writer and performer Steve Martin and dynamic artist C. F. Payne (illustrator of John Lithgow's children's books) have teamed up to tell a story of the adventure, danger, and laughs of the journey to school."

The Pleasure of My Company. Hyperion, 2003. Print length: 176 p. NOVEL. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (168 reviews). Kindle edition $6.99 (Paperback $9.00). Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Readers expecting something zany, something crudely humorous from Steve Martin's second novel, The Pleasure of My Company, will discover much greater riches. While the book has a sense of humor, Martin moves everywhere with a gentler, lighter touch in this elegant little fiction that verges on the profound and poetic. Daniel Pecan Cambridge is the narrator and central consciousness of the novel (actually a novella). Daniel, an ex-Hewlett-Packard communiqué encoder, is a savant whose closely proscribed world is bounded on every side by neuroses and obsessions. He cannot cross the street except at driveways symmetrically opposed to each, and he cannot sleep unless the wattage of the active light bulbs in his apartment sums to 1,125. Daniel's starved social life is punctuated by twice-weekly visits from a young therapist in training, Clarissa; by his prescription pick-ups from a Rite Aid pharmacist, Zandy; and by his 'casual' meetings with the bleach-blond real estate agent, Elizabeth, who is struggling to sell apartments across the street. But Daniel's dysfunctional routines are shattered one day when he becomes entangled in the chaos of Clarissa's life as a single mother..." - Patrick O'Kelley for Amazon.com Review.

Holiday Gift Ideas: Should I Buy a Kindle or Go Bowling?

Kindles are a popular and relatively inexpensive gift you might be considering this holiday season. Here's my personal take on whether the person receiving it is going to love you for it or send it right back to Amazon - and, by the way, Amazon offers a full refund to unsatisfied buyers if you return the Kindle in new condition within 30 days.

When thinking of gifting a Kindle, keep these folks in mind:

1. The avid reader who likes to keep up with the latest N. Y. Times best sellers and has been known to purchase hardcover books instead of waiting months for the paperback edition to come out. This person may also enjoy reading thrillers, science fiction or other genre fiction for fun. Kindle books are almost always less expensive than hardcovers, so the avid reader can actually save money by purchasing books for the Kindle.

2. Anyone whose eyesight is not quite as acute as it used to be. The newest Kindles offer a choice of eight different type sizes and three different typefaces. Make sure to buy them a light for night reading. I recommend the Amazon Kindle cover with built-in light powered by the Kindle itself (more convenient) or the Kandle Book Light clip-on light (less expensive).

3. Anyone who would enjoy having the Kindle read books to them. If you remember the old computer "voices" of years ago, you're in for a surprise when you hear the Kindle's female and male voices. Ok. we're not talking professional actor here, but so many books that are not available anywhere in audio versions, are available for reading by the Kindle itself, either by plugging earphones into the device or just listening through the built-in speaker. One caveat: not all Kindle books are available with the text-to-speech feature. This is clearly indicated in the Amazon listing for the book, however.

4. Anyone who would enjoy having a built-in dictionary that makes it quick and simple to look up words without jumping up and looking for that elusive dictionary. The Kindle includes The New Oxford American Dictionary with over 250,000 entries and definitions. Just place your cursor before an unfamiliar word and the definition appears at the top (or bottom) of the Kindle's screen. If the gift recipient is a language student and wants to read Kindle books in languages like Spanish, French or German, they can purchase a default dictionary in the language they are studying and use it when reading in that language.

5. The frequent traveler bookworm. There is nothing like carrying a wide variety of books - newspapers and magazines too - on a trip (or a visit to the doctor's office) without having to pack a bookcase. The Kindle can hold more than 3000 books so don't hesitate to plan a trip around the world if you so desire.

6. The classicist who would rather read time-tested classics like War and Peace, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin or The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes than the latest bestseller. All are available - with thousands of other free titles - at Amazon's Free eBooks Collection.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, here's my take on my folks you might NOT want to buy a Kindle for this season.

1. The friend who, when you mention your new Kindle, says "I'm not much of a reader."

2. Folks who shudder at the name Kindle. For them it's not a book unless you can smell the paper and ink and hold it in your hand. Once these Kindle naysayers realize that the Kindle is just another way to read books and not a substitute for their hardcover and paperback treasures, they may become Kindle converts, but I'd advise letting them find this out for themselves.

3. A friend who - and this really happened to me - walks out of their local Barnes & Noble saying "why would anyone want to buy a book when they can play video games?"

4. The technophobe. The Kindle is, after all, a type of computer. If you buy one of these babies for a confirmed technophobe, be prepared to set it up and demo it for him/her.

5. Someone who already owns a Kindle. The best gift for the Kindle owner? Get them an Amazon gift card so they can do some serious Kindle book shopping.


see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Books They're Talking About: Kindle Books in the Media (21 Nov 2010)

Media interviews are a popular way for writers to introduce new books they hope will catch the viewer's eye and generate interest in their work. Here's a selection of forthcoming Kindle books by authors scheduled for interviews on TV and radio programs. Books are arranged in chronological order by the date of the scheduled interview.

On NBC's Meet the Press (21 Nov 2010):

Leadership and Crisis, by Bobby Jindal. Regnery Press, 2010. Print Length: 256 p. Kindle edition $14.99 (Hardcover: $16.77). Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Bobby Jindal has been tested as few politicians have. And from the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster to Hurricane Katrina, he’s shown an astounding ability to beat the odds (and beat the bureaucrats) to get things done. Then again, Jindal is not your typical politician. The son of Indian immigrants, a Christian convert from Hinduism, and a Rhodes Scholar, Jindal presided over Louisiana’s healthcare system at age 24, headed the University of Louisiana system at 27, became a U.S. congressman at 33, and was elected governor of Louisiana at 36. Filled with behind–the–scenes stories from the oil–slicked beaches of Louisiana to the corridors of power in the U.S. Capitol, Leadership and Crisis offers an insider’s view into one of the worst environmental disasters our nation has suffered - and into one of the most unique success stories of American politics." - http://www.leadershipandcrisis.com/

On NBC's Today Show (23 Nov 2010)

The Woman I Was Born To Be, by Susan Boyle. Simon and Schuster, 2010. Print Length: 288 p. Kindle edition $12.99 (Hardcover: $15.08). Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"In April 2009, a modest middle-aged woman from a village in Scotland was catapulted to global fame when the YouTube video of her audition for Britain’s Got Talent touched the hearts of millions all over the world. From singing karaoke in local pubs to a live performance with an eighty-piece orchestra in Japan’s legendary Budokan Arena and a record-breaking debut album, Susan Boyle has become an international superstar. This astonishing transformation has not always been easy for her, faced with all the trappings of celebrity, but in the whirlwind of attention and expectation, she has always found calm and clarity in music. Susan was born to sing. Now, for the first time, she tells the story of her life and the challenges she has struggled to overcome with faith, fortitude, and an unfailing sense of humor." - Amazon.

On NPR's Diane Rehm Show (23 Nov 2010):

The Killing of Crazy Horse, by Thomas Powers. Knopf, 2010. Print Length: 608 p. Kindle edition $14.58 (Hardcover: $16.50). Text-to-Speech: Disabled.

"He was the greatest Indian warrior of the nineteenth century. His victory over General Custer at the battle of Little Bighorn in 1876 was the worst defeat inflicted on the frontier Army. And the death of Crazy Horse in federal custody has remained a controversy for more than a century. A rich cast of characters, whites and Indians alike, passes through this story, including Red Cloud, the chief who dominated Oglala history for fifty years but saw in Crazy Horse a dangerous rival; No Water and Woman Dress, both of whom hated Crazy Horse and schemed against him; the young interpreter Billy Garnett, son of a fifteen-year-old Oglala woman and a Confederate general killed at Gettysburg; General George Crook, who bitterly resented newspaper reports that he had been whipped by Crazy Horse in battle; Little Big Man, who betrayed Crazy Horse; Lieutenant William Philo Clark, the smart West Point graduate who thought he could 'work' Indians to do the Army’s bidding; and Fast Thunder, who called Crazy Horse cousin, held him the moment he was stabbed, and then told his grandson thirty years later, 'They tricked me! They tricked me!' With the Great Sioux War as background and context, drawing on many new materials as well as documents in libraries and archives, Thomas Powers recounts the final months and days of Crazy Horse’s life not to lay blame but to establish what happened." - Amazon.

On C-Span's Book TV (25 Nov 2010):

Kingdom Under Glass: A Tale of Obsession, Adventure, and One Man's Quest to Preserve the World's Great Animals, by Jay Kirk. Henry Holt, 2010. Print Length: 400 p. Kindle edition $12.99 (Hardcover: $18.15). Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"During the golden age of safaris in the early twentieth century, one man set out to preserve Africa's great beasts. In this epic account of an extraordinary life lived during remarkable times, Jay Kirk follows the adventures of the brooding genius who revolutionized taxidermy and created the famed African Hall we visit today at New York's Museum of Natural History. The Gilded Age was drawing to a close, and with it came the realization that men may have hunted certain species into oblivion. Renowned taxidermist Carl Akeley joined the hunters rushing to Africa, where he risked death time and again as he stalked animals for his dioramas and hobnobbed with outsized personalities of the era such as Theodore Roosevelt and P. T. Barnum. In a tale of art, science, courage, and romance, Jay Kirk resurrects a legend and illuminates a fateful turning point when Americans had to decide whether to save nature, to destroy it, or to just stare at it under glass." - Amazon.

On Oprah (26 Nov 2010):

Breaking Night: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard, by Liz Murray. Hyperion, 2010. Print Length: 352 p. Kindle edition $9.99 (Hardcover: $14.99). Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"While reading Murray’s memoir, you can’t help but continuously wonder how the young woman narrated on the page could be the same woman who survived to become her author. In the harrowing tale of her childhood in the Bronx, Murray’s straightforward and no-frills prose hits hard. These are the facts, and they are not pretty: Murray watched her parents’ mainline cocaine at the kitchen table from before she could speak, and the family often spent 25 days a month - the time after her parents blew the welfare check to feed their blazing drug habit - starving... With no resources to speak of, she ultimately commits to high school and finds her prospects can be great. Neither sensationalizing nor soliciting pity, Murray’s generous account of and caring attitude toward her past are not only uplifting, but also a fascinating lesson in the value of dedication. --Annie Bostrom for Booklist.

On NBC's Today Show (26 Nov 2010):

Justin Bieber: First Step 2 Forever, by Justin Bieber. Harper Collins, 2010. Print Length: 240 p. Kindle edition $10.99 (Hardcover: $12.86). Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"My world got very big, very fast, and a lot of people expect me to get lost in it. I grew up in a small town in Canada. I taught myself to sing in front of my bedroom mirror and to play guitar on a hand-me-down. My mom posted my first videos on YouTube. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that I'd sell millions of records, sing for the president of the United States and sell out a massive arena tour. So no, I'm not lost. Not at all. If anything, onstage in front of my fans, I'm home. I'm found. And that's what this book is about: my journey, from singing and busking on the sidewalk in Stratford, Ontario, to performing and showing my appreciation to millions of fans all over the world for making this dream a reality..." - Justin Bieber.

On Comedy Central's Colbert Report (01 Dec 2010

An Object of Beauty, by Steve Martin. Grand Central Publishing, 2010. Print Length: 304 p. Kindle edition $12.99 (Hardcover: $14.50). Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Martin compresses the wild and crazy end of the millennium and finds in this piercing novel a sardonic morality tale. Lacey Yeager is an ambitious young art dealer who uses everything at her disposal to advance in the world of the high-end art trade in New York City. After cutting her teeth at Sotheby's, she manipulates her way up through Barton Talley's gallery of 'Very Expensive Paintings,' sleeping with patrons, and dodging and indulging in questionable deals, possible felonies, and general skeeviness until she opens her own gallery in Chelsea. Narrated by Lacey's journalist friend, Daniel Franks, whose droll voice is a remarkable stand-in for Martin's own, the world is ordered and knowable, blindly barreling onward until 9/11... Martin (an art collector himself) is an astute miniaturist as he exposes the sound and fury of the rarified Manhattan art world..." - Publishers Weekly.

Kindle Genre Watch: New in Fantasy & Science Fiction (21 Nov 2010)

Spend less time searching for new fiction and more time reading it as I watch for newly-released genre fiction in the Kindle Store so you don't have to. Recent genre fiction releases in fantasy and science fiction include:

Fantasy

Side Jobs: Stories from the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. Penguin, 2010. Print length: 432 p. Kindle edition $12.99 (Hardcover $14.71). Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Here, together for the first time, are the shorter works of #1 New York Times bestselling author Jim Butcher - a compendium of cases that Harry and his cadre of allies managed to close in record time. The tales range from the deadly serious to the absurdly hilarious. Also included is a new, never-before-published novella that takes place after the cliff-hanger ending of the new April 2010 Dresden Files novel, Changes. This is a must-have collection for every devoted Harry Dresden fan as well as a perfect introduction for readers ready to meet Chicago's only professional wizard." -www.jim-butcher.com.

Mercury Falls by Robert Kroese. AmazonEncore, 2010. Print length: 350 p. Kindle edition $7.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"While on assignment in Nevada, Christine Temetri isn’t surprised when yet another prophesied Apocalypse fails to occur. After three years of reporting on End Times cults for a religious news magazine, Christine is seriously questioning her career choice. But then she meets Mercury, a cult leader whose knowledge of the impending Apocalypse is decidedly more solid than most: he is an angel, sent from heaven to prepare for the Second Coming but distracted by beer, ping pong, and other earthly delights. After Christine and Mercury inadvertently save Karl Grissom - a film-school dropout and the newly appointed Antichrist - from assassination, she realizes the three of them are all that stand in the way of mankind’s utter annihilation. They are a motley crew compared to the heavenly host bent on earth’s destruction, but Christine figures they’ll just have to do." - Amazon.

Gilded Latten Bones: A Garrett, P.I., Novel by Glen Cook. Roc, 2010. Print length: 368 p. Kindle edition $6.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
This is book thirteen in Cook's Garrett P.I fantasy/mystery series that began with Sweet Silver Blues.
"Garrett's attempt at domestic bliss with the fiery Tinnie Tate is sidetracked when he waylays a pair of home intruders and learns they've been paid by an unknown source to kidnap Tinnie. But as Garrett rushes to find out who is trying to push his buttons, his best friend is attacked. Now, Garrett has to track down both malefactors. Unless they're really one and the same - in which case Garrett might be next..." - Amazon.

The Last of the Demon Slayers by Angie Fox. Amazon Digital Services, 2010. Kindle edition $4.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
This is book four of The Demon Slayers series which began with The Accidental Demon Slayer (2008).
"Lizzie Brown would just like to have one normal date. Instead she gets a towering inferno with a message: her long-lost dad is a fallen angel in danger of becoming a demon. Not good. Especially since she’s a demon slayer. Her grandma advises her to stay out of it. Her sexy-as-sin shapeshifter boyfriend would much rather she devote her attention to more carnal pursuits. And her dog’s one demand is for more bacon. After all, he can’t train his pet dragon on an empty stomach. But Lizzie knows there’s no other choice but to hop on her Harley and help her father - even if the search for the truth brings a bad-boy slayer back into her life and leads her into the middle of a war to end all wars." - angiefox.wordpress.com

The Broken Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin. Orbit, 2010. Print length: 416 p. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
This is book two in The Inheritance Trilogy following The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.
"In the city of Shadow, beneath the World Tree, alleyways shimmer with magic and godlings live hidden among mortalkind. Oree Shoth, a blind artist, takes in a strange homeless man on an impulse. This act of kindness engulfs Oree in a nightmarish conspiracy. Someone, somehow, is murdering godlings, leaving their desecrated bodies all over the city. And Oree’s guest is at the heart of it..." - Publisher.

Science Fiction

Trader Vyx by Thomas DePrima. Vinnia Publishing, 2010. Print length: 328 p. Kindle edition $5.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
This is book four in DePrima's A Galaxy Unknown series that began with A Galaxy Unknown.
"Advanced weapons manufactured for Space Command are being offered for sale on the galactic black market. Trader Vyx, an undercover operative for Space Command, the military arm of the Galactic Alliance, has been sent into the Frontier Zone to procure several weapons from an Alyysian arms merchant, as part of an effort to trace the serial numbers and end the thefts. All is going smoothly until a Tsgardi mercenary enters the room..." - Amazon.

Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Zero Sum Game by David Mack. This is book one in the projected six book Typhone Pack series. Simon and Schuster, 2010. Print length: 352 p. Kindle edition $7.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"A spy for the Typhon Pact - a new political rival of the Federation - steals the plans for Starfleet’s newest technological advance: the slipstream drive. To stop the Typhon Pact from unlocking the drive’s secrets, Starfleet Intelligence recruits a pair of genetically enhanced agents: Dr. Julian Bashir, of station Deep Space 9, and Sarina Douglas, a woman whose talents Bashir helped bring to fruition, and whom Bashir thinks of as his long-lost true love. Bashir and Douglas are sent to infiltrate the mysterious species known as the Breen, find the hidden slipstream project, and destroy it. Meanwhile, light-years away, Captain Ezri Dax and her crew on the U.S.S. Aventine play a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a Typhon Pact fleet that stands between them and the safe retrieval of Bashir and Douglas from hostile territory." - Book Jacket.

Machine of Death, edited by author Ryan North, Matthew Bennardo and David Malki !. Bearstache Books, 2010. Print length: 464 p. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"The machine had been invented a few years ago: a machine that could tell, from just a sample of your blood, how you were going to die. It didn’t give you the date and it didn’t give you specifics. It just spat out a sliver of paper upon which were printed, in careful block letters, the words DROWNED or CANCER or OLD AGE or CHOKED ON A HANDFUL OF POPCORN. It let people know how they were going to die. The problem with the machine is that nobody really knew how it worked, which wouldn’t actually have been that much of a problem if the machine worked as well as we wished it would. But the machine was frustratingly vague in its predictions: dark, and seemingly delighting in the ambiguities of language. OLD AGE, it had already turned out, could mean either dying of natural causes, or shot by a bedridden man in a botched home invasion. The machine captured that old-world sense of irony in death — you can know how it’s going to happen, but you’ll still be surprised when it does. The realization that we could now know how we were going to die had changed the world: people became at once less fearful and more afraid. There’s no reason not to go skydiving if you know your sliver of paper says BURIED ALIVE. Machine of Death tells thirty-four different stories about people who know how they will die. Prepare to have your tears jerked, your spine tingled, your funny bone tickled, your mind blown, your pulse quickened, or your heart warmed." - Amazon.

Surface Detail by Iain M. Banks. Orbit, 2010. Print length: 640 p. Kindle edition $12.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
This is book nine of Banks' The Culture series that began in 1987 with the publication of Consider Phlebas.
"It begins with a murder. And it will not end until the Culture has gone to war with death itself. Lededje Y'breq is one of the Intagliated, her marked body bearing witness to a family shame, her life belonging to a man whose lust for power is without limit. Prepared to risk everything for her freedom, her release - when it comes - is at a price, and to put things right she will need the help of the Culture. Benevolent, enlightened and almost infinitely resourceful though it may be, the Culture can only do so much for any individual. With the assistance of one of its most powerful - and arguably deranged - warships, Lededje finds herself heading into a combat zone not even sure which side the Culture is really on. A war - brutal, far-reaching - is already raging within the digital realms that store the souls of the dead, and it's about to erupt into reality. It started in the realm of the Real and that is where it will end. It will touch countless lives and affect entire civilizations, but at the center of it all is a young woman whose need for revenge masks another motive altogether." - Amazon.


see more Lolcats and funny pictures

A Week of Entertainment: Kindle Books Reviewed in Entertainment Weekly's 19 Nov 2010 Issue

Each week Entertainment Weekly reviews a small selection of popular new books. Titles available for the Kindle reviewed in the November 19th issue include:

Autobiography of Mark Twain. Edited by Harriet Elinor Smith and other editors of The Mark Twain Project. The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Volume 1. University of California Press, 2010. Print length: 743 p. MEMOIR. EW's slant: "His 'whole frank mind,' sharp and funny, is seared onto every page." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (25 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"Mark Twain is his own greatest character in this brilliant self-portrait, the first of three volumes collected by the Mark Twain Project on the centenary of the author's death. It is published complete and unexpurgated for the first time. (Twain wanted his more scalding opinions suppressed until long after his death.) Eschewing chronology and organization, Twain simply meanders from observation to anecdote and between past and present. There are gorgeous reminiscences from his youth of landscapes, rural idylls, and Tom Sawyeresque japes; acid-etched profiles of friends and enemies, from his 'fiendish' Florentine landlady to the fatuous and 'grotesque' Rockefellers; a searing polemic on a 1906 American massacre of Filipino insurgents; a hilarious screed against a hapless editor who dared tweak his prose; and countless tales of the author's own bamboozlement, unto bankruptcy, by publishers, business partners, doctors, miscellaneous moochers; he was even outsmarted by a wild turkey. Laced with Twain's unique blend of humor and vitriol, the haphazard narrative is engrossing, hugely funny, and deeply revealing of its author's mind." - Publishers Weekly.

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, by Laura Hillenbrand. Random House, 2010. Print length: 496 p. NONFICTION. EW's slant: "...a good book, sometimes even a profound book." Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (24 reviews). Kindle edition $12.59. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Eight years ago, an old man told me a story that took my breath away. His name was Louie Zamperini, and from the day I first spoke to him, his almost incomprehensibly dramatic life was my obsession. Growing up in California in the 1920s, Louie was a hellraiser, stealing everything edible that he could carry, staging elaborate pranks, getting in fistfights, and bedeviling the local police. But as a teenager, he emerged as one of the greatest runners America had ever seen, competing at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where he put on a sensational performance, crossed paths with Hitler, and stole a German flag right off the Reich Chancellery. When World War II began. Louie joined the Army Air Corps, becoming a bombardier. On a May afternoon in 1943, Louie took off on a search mission for a lost plane. Somewhere over the Pacific, the engines on his bomber failed. The plane plummeted into the sea, leaving Louie and two other men stranded on a tiny raft. Drifting for weeks and thousands of miles, they endured starvation and desperate thirst, sharks that leapt aboard the raft, trying to drag them off, a machine-gun attack from a Japanese bomber, and a typhoon with waves some forty feet high. At last, they spotted an island. As they rowed toward it, unbeknownst to them, a Japanese military boat was lurking nearby. Louie’s journey had only just begun." - Laura Hillenbrand.

Decoded, by Jay-Z. Spiegel & Grau, 2010. Print length: 336 p. MEMOIR. EW's slant: "Shawn Carter's most honest airing of the experiences he drew on to create the mythic figure of Jay-Z." Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (5 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"...an eloquent and candid memoir detailing the story of a man who was born in a Brooklyn housing project, spent his teen years dealing drugs on the streets of Trenton, New Jersey, and grew up to be one of his generation’s most successful artists and businessmen. But Decoded is much more than a memoir: it is an intensely personal homage to hip-hop, as written by a man who so clearly adores the art form; it is a rare glimpse of the unexpectedly deep meanings behind the most recognizable rap lyrics of the last decade; and it is a truly moving collection of essays on topics ranging from Hurricane Katrina to the decline of the music industry. There’s not much in the way of celebrity gossip here, but what we get, instead, is a gritty and enormously compelling look inside the cultural phenomenon of rap, from one of the men who contributed so much to its shape." - Juliet Disparte for Amazon.com Review.

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, by Siddhartha Mukherjee. Scribner, 2010. Print length: 592 p. NONFICTION. EW's slant: "...brilliant, riveting history...crammed with fascinating characters..." Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (4 reviews). Kindle edition $14.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"...a magnificent, profoundly humane 'biography' of cancer - from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence. Physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer, Siddhartha Mukherjee examines cancer with a cellular biologist’s precision, a historian’s perspective, and a biographer’s passion. The result is an astonishingly lucid and eloquent chronicle of a disease humans have lived with - and perished from - for more than five thousand years. The book reads like a literary thriller with cancer as the protagonist. From the Persian Queen Atossa, whose Greek slave cut off her malignant breast, to the nineteenth-century recipients of primitive radiation and chemotherapy to Mukherjee’s own leukemia patient, Carla, The Emperor of All Maladies is about the people who have soldiered through fiercely demanding regimens in order to survive. Riveting, urgent, and surprising, [it] provides a fascinating glimpse into the future of cancer treatments..." - Amazon.

Sunset Park, by Paul Auster. Henry Holt and Co., 2010. Print length: 320 p NOVEL. EW's slant: "Once you get the whole thing assembled in front of you, the picture's really not much to look at." Amazon customer rating: 3 1/2 stars (18 reviews). Kindle edition $11.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"In the sprawling flatlands of Florida, 28-year-old Miles is photographing the last lingering traces of families who have abandoned their houses due to debt or foreclosure. Miles is haunted by guilt for having inadvertently caused the death of his step-brother, a situation that caused him to flee his father and step-mother in New York seven years ago. What keeps him in Florida is his relationship with a teenage high-school girl, Pilar, but when her family threatens to expose their relationship, Miles decides to protect Pilar by going back to Brooklyn, where he settles in a squat to prepare himself to face the inevitable confrontation with his father that he has been avoiding for years. ...Sunset Park is as mythic as it is contemporary, as in love with baseball as it is with literature. It is above all, a story about love and forgiveness - not only among men and women, but also between fathers and sons." - Faber & Faber.

Briefly Mentioned:

Decision Points, by George W. Bush. Crown, 2010. Print length: 400 p. MEMOIR. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (204 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"President George W. Bush describes the critical decisions of his presidency and personal life. Shattering the conventions of political autobiography, George W. Bush offers a strikingly candid journey through the defining decisions of his life. In gripping, never-before-heard detail, President Bush brings readers inside the Texas Governor’s Mansion on the night of the hotly contested 2000 election; aboard Air Force One on 9/11, in the hours after America’s most devastating attack since Pearl Harbor; at the head of the table in the Situation Room in the moments before launching the war in Iraq; and behind the Oval Office desk for his historic and controversial decisions on the financial crisis, Hurricane Katrina, Afghanistan, Iran, and other issues that have shaped the first decade of the 21st century. President Bush writes honestly and directly about his flaws and mistakes, as well as his accomplishments reforming education, treating HIV/AIDS in Africa, and safeguarding the country amid chilling warnings of additional terrorist attacks. He also offers intimate new details on his decision to quit drinking, discovery of faith, and relationship with his family." - Amazon.

Foreign Bodies, by Cynthia Ozick. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010. Print length: 272 p. NOVEL. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (6 reviews). Kindle edition $12.87. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Cynthia Ozick is one of America’s literary treasures. For her sixth novel, she set herself a brilliant challenge: to retell the story of Henry James’s The Ambassadors - the work he considered his best - but as a photographic negative, that is the plot is the same, the meaning is reversed. At the core of the story is Bea Nightingale, a fiftyish divorced schoolteacher whose life has been on hold during the many years since her brief marriage. When her estranged, difficult brother asks her to leave New York for Paris to retrieve a nephew she barely knows, she becomes entangled in the lives of her brother’s family and even, after so long, her ex-husband. Every one of them is irrevocably changed by the events of just a few months in that fateful year." - Amazon.

Kindle Genre Watch: New in Mystery & Suspense Fiction (17 Nov 2010)

Spend less time searching for new genre fiction and more time reading it as I watch for newly-released fiction in the Kindle Store so you don't have to. Recent fiction releases in mystery and suspense fiction include:

The Confession by John Grisham. Doubleday, 2010. Print Length: 432 p. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"For every innocent man sent to prison, there is a guilty one left on the outside. He doesn’t understand how the police and prosecutors got the wrong man, and he certainly doesn’t care. He just can’t believe his good luck... Travis Boyette is such a man. In 1998, in the small East Texas city of Sloan, he abducted, raped, and strangled a popular high school cheerleader. He buried her body so that it would never be found, then watched in amazement as police and prosecutors arrested and convicted Donté Drumm, a local football star, and marched him off to death row. Now nine years have passed. Travis has just been paroled in Kansas for a different crime; Donté is four days away from his execution. Travis suffers from an inoperable brain tumor. For the first time in his miserable life, he decides to do what’s right and confess. But how can a guilty man convince lawyers, judges, and politicians that they’re about to execute an innocent man?" - from the hardcover edition.

Indulgence in Death by J. D. Robb. Putnam, 2010. Print Length: 384 p. Kindle edition $12.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"NYPD lieutenant Eve Dallas might have been on holiday, but as she knows all too well, murder never takes a vacation. No sooner does Eve return from Ireland with her husband, Roarke, than she is back on the job looking into the death of a limousine driver who has been shot with a crossbow. The very next day, a high-priced licensed companion is stabbed to death in an amusement park horror house. The only connection between the two killings is the choice of weapons: the second involved an antique bayonet. As Eve and her team scramble to find more clues, Eve begins to think she is on the track of a thrill killer... The latest addictive addition to Robb’s long-running series features spiky humor; a cleverly constructed, adrenaline-raising plot; and the requisite amount of sexy passion between Eve and her soulmate, Roarke. - John Charles for Booklist.
Indulgence in Death is the thirty-eighth book in Nora Robert's (writing as J. D. Robb) In Death series and some would say that the enormous number of books in the series is ample evidence of its popularity. If you are new to these mysteries set in mid-21 century New York and featuring Lieutenant Eve Dallas and her husband Roarke, you can enjoy the very first volume (Naked in Death) on your Kindle while you wait for the price of this one to go down. Go here for a list of all of J. D. Robb's books available in Kindle editions.

Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King. Scribner, 2010. Print Length: 384 p. Kindle edition $14.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"I believe there is another man inside every man, a stranger... writes Wilfred Leland James in the early pages of the riveting confession that makes up 1922, the first in this pitch-black quartet of mesmerizing tales from Stephen King. For James, that stranger is awakened when his wife, Arlette, proposes selling off the family homestead and moving to Omaha, setting in motion a gruesome train of murder and madness. In Big Driver, a cozy-mystery writer named Tess encounters the stranger along a back road in Massachusetts when she takes a shortcut home after a book-club engagement. Violated and left for dead, Tess plots a revenge that will bring her face-to-face with another stranger: the one inside herself. Fair Extension, the shortest of these tales, is perhaps the nastiest and certainly the funniest. Making a deal with the devil not only saves Dave Streeter from a fatal cancer but provides rich recompense for a lifetime of resentment. When her husband of more than twenty years is away on one of his business trips, Darcy Anderson looks for batteries in the garage. Her toe knocks up against a box under a worktable and she discovers the stranger inside her husband. It’s a horrifying discovery, rendered with bristling intensity, and it definitively ends a good marriage... Full Dark, No Stars proves Stephen King a master of the long story form. " - Amazon.

Shaken by J. A. Konrath. AmazonEncore, 2010. Print Length: 304 p. Kindle edition $2.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Since her debut in Whiskey Sour, Lieutenant Jacqueline 'Jack' Daniels has dealt with her fair share of criminals. But she may have finally met her match in 'Mr. K,' the brutal serial killer who has eluded Jack not once, but twice, over the years. Mr. K is the essence of evil, credited with more than two hundred horrific homicides. Now, on a hot August night, Jack finally gets the chance to face the maniac - unfortunately, she must do so while bound and gagged in a storage locker, primed to be his next victim. As she awaits her fate, Jack looks back on her career, from her first homicide case to her recent retirement. The twenty-five years in between saw Jack’s attitude toward justice, the law, her job, and her personal life shift drastically. She is a different woman now ... but is she good enough to stop a madman?" - Amazon.

Hell's Corner by David Baldacci. Grand Central Publishing, 2010. Print Length: 432 p. Kindle edition $14.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"John Carr, aka Oliver Stone - once the most skilled assassin his country ever had - stands in Lafayette Park in front of the White House, perhaps for the last time. The President has personally requested that Stone serve his country again on a high-risk covert mission. Though he’s fought for decades to leave his past career behind, Stone has no choice but to say yes. But Stone’s mission changes drastically before it even begins. It’s the night of a State Dinner honoring the British Prime Minister. As he watches the Prime Minister’s motorcade leave the White House that evening, a bomb is detonated in Lafayette Park, an apparent terrorist attack against both the President and the Prime Minister. It’s in this chaotic aftermath that Stone takes on a new, more urgent assignment: find those responsible for the bombing. British MI-6 agent Mary Chapman becomes Stone’s partner in the search for the unknown attackers. But their shadowy opponents are elusive, capable, increasingly lethal, and worst of all, it seems that the park bombing may just have been the opening salvo to their plan. With nowhere else to turn, Stone enlists the help of the only people he knows he can trust: the Camel Club. But that may be a big mistake." - David Baldacci's website.
This is the fifth of David Baldacci's thrillers to feature the diverse group of characters known as The Camel Club. Earlier volumes are - in order - The Camel Club, The Collectors, Stone Cold, and Divine Justice. All are available in Kindle editions.

Edge by Jeffery Deaver. Simon & Schuster, 2010. Print Length: 368 p. Kindle edition $12.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"...edge-of-your-seat thriller that pits two worthy antagonists against each other. Henry Loving, 'a lifter,' specializes in extracting information from human targets by any means necessary (i.e., torture). Corte, 'a shepherd,' is an agent in the Strategic Protection Department of a secret government agency normally assigned to protect high-profile targets. An intercepted communication identifies Loving as the lifter ordered to target Ryan Kessler, a Washington, D.C., metro detective. While Corte attempts to protect Kessler's family and identify the 'primary,' Loving's employer, Loving seeks the edge to get the information he needs to extract. Corte, a board game aficionado and game theory student, and Loving are well matched, sharing a history that ups the stakes and makes the contest personal. Deaver's first first-person narrator, Corte, is an exciting new weapon in the author's arsenal of memorable characters." - Publishers Weekly.

Cross Fire by James Patterson. Little, Brown and Company. Print Length: 384 p. Kindle edition $14.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Detective Alex Cross and Bree's wedding plans are put on hold when Alex is called to the scene of the perfectly executed assassination of two of Washington D.C.'s most corrupt: a dirty congressmen and a scheming lobbyist. Next, the elusive marksman begins picking off other crooked politicians, sparking a blaze of theories - is the marksman a hero or a vigilante? The case explodes and FBI agent Max Siegel battles Alex for jurisdiction. As Alex struggles with the sniper, Siegel, and the wedding, he receives a call from his deadliest adversary, Kyle Craig. The Mastermind is in D.C. and will not relent until he has eliminated Cross - and his family - for good." - Publisher.
This is the 17th book in the Alex Cross series that began with the publication in 1993 of Along Came a Spider.


see more Lolcats and funny pictures

A Week of Entertainment: Kindle Books Reviewed in Entertainment Weekly's 12 Nov 2010 Issue

Each week Entertainment Weekly reviews a small selection of popular new books. Titles available for the Kindle reviewed in the November 12th issue include:

The War for Late Night: When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy, by Bill Carter. Viking, 2010. Print length: 384 p. NONFICTION. EW's slant: "...some juicy details..." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (3 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"When NBC decided to move Jay Leno into prime time to make room for Conan O'Brien to host the Tonight show - a job he had been promised five years earlier - skeptics anticipated a train wreck for the ages. It took, in fact, only a few months for the dire predictions to come true. Leno's show, panned by critics, dragged down the ratings - and the profits - of NBC's affiliates, while ratings for Conan's new Tonight show plummeted to the lowest levels in history. Conan's collapse, meanwhile, opened an unexpected door of opportunity for rival David Letterman. What followed was a boisterous, angry, frequently hilarious public battle that had millions of astonished viewers glued to their sets...New York Times reporter Bill Carter offers a detailed behind-the-scenes account of the events of the unforgettable 2009/2010 late-night season as all of its players - performers, producers, agents, and network executives - maneuvered to find footing amid the shifting tectonic plates of television culture." - Amazon.

Moonlight Mile, by Dennis Lehane. Harper Collins, 2010. Print length: 320 p. MYSTERY. EW's slant: "There is a lot to like...but you'll finish it hoping that Lehane has another, better book on his mind." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (62 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"It’s tough going for a good man in a messed-up world, particularly in Dennis Lehane's Boston. Patrick Kenzie knows he did the right thing twelve years ago (during the events in Gone, Baby, Gone) when he located missing 4-year-old Amanda McCready and returned her to her neglectful mother, even though she would’ve been better off with her kidnappers. That doesn’t mean he’s had an easy time living with his decision. In Moonlight Mile, Patrick is still scraping by as a freelance PI, but now he’s married to his former partner Angie Gennaro and with a daughter of his own. When Patrick learns that once again Amanda McCready’s gone missing, his conscience gets the better of him and he's soon on the trail of the enigmatic 16-year-old..." - Shane Hansanuwat for Amazon.com Review.

Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms,and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories, by Simon Winchester. Harper Collins, 2010. Print length: 512 p. HISTORY. EW's slant: "Luckily, the author comes armed with a knowledge almost as vast and deep as his subject..." Amazon customer rating: 3 1/2 stars (10 reviews). Kindle edition $14.99. Please note: As I write this post, the Kindle price of this book is higher than that of the hardcover edition so you might want to check the current price and perhaps wait a while - until Harper Collins comes to its senses - to purchase this book. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Until a thousand years ago, no humans ventured into the Atlantic or imagined traversing its vast infinity. But once the first daring mariners successfully navigated to far shores - whether it was the Vikings, the Irish, the Chinese, Christopher Columbus in the north, or the Portuguese and the Spanish in the south - the Atlantic evolved in the world's growing consciousness of itself as an enclosed body of water bounded by the Americas to the West, and by Europe and Africa to the East. Atlantic is a biography of this immense space, of a sea which has defined and determined so much about the lives of the millions who live beside or near its tens of thousands of miles of coast. The Atlantic has been central to the ambitions of explorers, scientists and warriors, and it continues to affect our character, attitudes, and dreams. Poets to potentates, seers to sailors, fishermen to foresters - all have a relationship with this great body of blue-green sea and regard her as friend or foe, adversary or ally, depending on circumstance or fortune. Simon Winchester chronicles that relationship, making the Atlantic come vividly alive." - Amazon.

The Killer of Little Shepherds: A True Crime Story and the Birth of Forensic Science, by Douglas Starr. Knopf, 2010. Print length: 320 p. TRUE CRIME. EW's slant: "...like an episode of CSI: 19th Century France..." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (26 reviews). Kindle edition $14.82. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"...eloquently juxtaposes the crimes of French serial killer Joseph Vacher and the achievements of famed criminologist Dr. Alexandre Lacassagne during France's belle époque. From 1894 to 1897, Vacher is thought to have raped, killed, and mutilated at least 25 people, though he would confess to only 11 murders. Lacassagne, who headed the department of legal medicine at the university in Lyon, was a pioneer in crime scene analysis, body decomposition, and early profiling, and investigated suspicious deaths, all in an era when rural autopsies were often performed on the victim's dinner table. Lacassagne's contributions to the burgeoning field of forensic science, as well as the persistence of investigating magistrate Émile Fourquet, who connected crimes while crisscrossing the French countryside, eventually brought Vacher to justice..." - Publishers Weekly.

I Remember Nothing and Other Reflections, by Nora Ephron. Knopf, 2010. Print length: 160 p. ESSAYS. EW's slant: "...the language is knowing and sophisticated [but] brings to mind Gertrude Stein's quip to Ernest Hemingway: 'Remarks are not literature.'" Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (5 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"A master of the jujitsu essay, Ephron leaves us breathless with rueful laughter. As the title suggests, she writes about the weird vagaries of memory as we age, although she is happy to report that the Senior Moment has become the Google Moment. Not that any gadget rescued her when she failed to recognize her own sister. But the truth is, Ephron remembers a lot. Take her stinging reminiscence of her entry into journalism at Newsweek in the early 1960s, when 'girls,' no matter how well qualified, were never considered for reporter positions. An accomplished screenwriter (When Harry Met Sally...and Julie & Julia) in a family of screenwriters, Ephron looks further back to her Hollywood childhood and her mother’s struggles with alcohol. Whether she takes on bizarre hair problems, culinary disasters, an addiction to online Scrabble, the persistent pain of a divorce, or that mean old devil, age, Ephron is candid, self-deprecating, laser-smart, and hilarious." - Donna Seaman for Booklist.

Briefly Mentioned:

Eighteen Acres, by Nicolle Wallace. Atria, 2010. Print length: 272 p. NOVEL. Amazon customer rating: 3 1/2 stars (18 reviews). Kindle edition $11.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Melanie Kingston, White House chief of staff to the nation’s forty-fifth president, Charlotte Kramer, has spent 15 years in the 18 acres that constitute the White House complex. As her boss and dear friend President Kramer considers running for a second term, the two are confronted with political and personal turmoil that threatens their collective and individual careers. Melanie has no social life to speak of as she navigates the politics within and outside the White House. Charlotte’s marriage is falling apart, her husband is having an affair, and her closest adviser and friend makes a judgment that threatens national security and tests the bonds of friendship. Wallace draws on 13 years experience as a political commentator and news reporter, many of those years spent working in the White House, to deliver a portrait of three women caught in the whirlwind of Washington politics." - Vanessa Bush for Booklist.

Frank: The Voice, by James Kaplan. Doubleday, 2010. Print length: 688 p. BIOGRAPHY. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (3 reviews). Kindle edition $16.64. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Sinatra endowed the songs he sang with the explosive conflict of his own personality. He also made the very act of listening to pop music a more personal experience than it had ever been. In Frank: The Voice, Kaplan reveals how he did it, bringing deeper insight than ever before to the complex psyche and tur­bulent life behind that incomparable vocal instrument. We relive the years 1915 to 1954 in glistening detail, experiencing as if for the first time Sinatra’s journey from the streets of Hoboken, his fall from the apex of celebrity, and his Oscar-winning return in From Here to Eternity. Here at last is the biographer who makes the reader feel what it was really like to be Frank Sinatra - as man, as musician, as tortured genius." - from the hardcover edition.

I Still Dream About You, by Fannie Flagg. Random House, 2010. Print length: 352 p. NOVEL. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (13 reviews). Kindle edition $11.69. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"...it’s a grand thing to have Fannie Flagg’s name carved on my heart again. Her main character is Maggie Fortenberry, a woman with a brand-new plan to change her life but who keeps getting interrupted by phone calls from friends and responsibilities to the troubled real-estate company where she works. A former Miss Alabama who represented her state in the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, Maggie is a worthy descendant of those four fabulous women who were the main protagonists in Fried Green Tomatoes. In this novel, as in all of her novels, Fannie Flagg creates memorable characters, great set pieces, and gales of unexpected laughter. When a cop stops Maggie for speeding, Flagg writes one of the most hilarious scenes she has ever created in the oddball world of southern letters. I laughed my way through this book, and I found myself falling in love with Maggie as she kept postponing her plans for reasons of real estate and friendship." - Pat Conroy.

Luka and the Fire of Life, by Salman Rushdie. Random House, 2010. Print length: 288 p. NOVEL. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (10 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Luka and the Fire of Life revisits the magic-infused, intricate world first brought to life in the modern classic Haroun and the Sea of Stories. This breathtaking new novel centers on Luka, Haroun’s younger brother, who must save his father from certain doom. For Rashid Khalifa, the legendary storyteller of Kahani, has fallen into deep sleep from which no one can wake him. To keep his father from slipping away entirely, Luka must travel to the Magic World and steal the ever-burning Fire of Life. Thus begins a quest replete with unlikely creatures, strange alliances, and seemingly insurmountable challenges as Luka and an assortment of enchanted companions race through peril after peril, pass through the land of the Badly Behaved Gods, and reach the Fire itself, where Luka’s fate, and that of his father, will be decided." - from the hardcover edition.

Kindle Reads: Bookmarks Magazine's Best Books of 2010 (Part 8)

In its November/December 2010 issue, Bookmarks looks back at 50 staff favorites from among the hundreds of books reviewed in the magazine in 2010.

Kindle readers will be pleased to learn that 48 of the 50 titles in Bookmarks best books list are available in Kindle editions. Here's a rundown of all forty-eight. Given the length of the list, I've divided this post into multiple consecutive parts.

History

Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory, by Ben MacIntyre. Crown, 2010. Print Length: 320 p. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"In 1943, from a windowless basement office in London, two brilliant intelligence officers conceived a plan that was both simple and complicated...to deceive the Nazis into thinking that Allied forces were planning to attack southern Europe by way of Greece or Sardinia, rather than Sicily, as the Nazis had assumed, and the Allies ultimately chose. Charles Cholmondeley of MI5 and the British naval intelligence officer Ewen Montagu could not have been more different. Cholmondeley was a dreamer seeking adventure. Montagu was an aristocratic, detail-oriented barrister. But together they were the perfect team and created an ingenious plan: Get a corpse, equip it with secret (but false and misleading) papers concerning the invasion, then drop it off the coast of Spain where German spies would, they hoped, take the bait. Unveiling never-before-released material, Ben Macintyre brings the reader right into the minds of intelligence officers, their moles and spies, and the German Abwehr agents who suffered the 'twin frailties of wishfulness and yesmanship.' He weaves together the eccentric personalities of Cholmondeley and Montagu and their near-impossible feats into a riveting adventure that not only saved thousands of lives but paved the way for a pivotal battle in Sicily and, ultimately, Allied success in the war." - Amazon.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot. Crown, 2010. Print Length: 368 p. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Henrietta Lacks was a mother of five in Baltimore, a poor African American migrant from the tobacco farms of Virginia, who died from a cruelly aggressive cancer at the age of 30 in 1951. A sample of her cancerous tissue, taken without her knowledge or consent, as was the custom then, turned out to provide one of the holy grails of mid-century biology: human cells that could survive - even thrive - in the lab. Known as HeLa cells, their stunning potency gave scientists a building block for countless breakthroughs, beginning with the cure for polio. Meanwhile, Henrietta's family continued to live in poverty and frequently poor health, and their discovery decades later of her unknowing contribution - and her cells' strange survival - left them full of pride, anger, and suspicion. For a decade, Skloot doggedly but compassionately gathered the threads of these stories, slowly gaining the trust of the family while helping them learn the truth about Henrietta, and with their aid she tells a rich and haunting story..." - Tom Nissley for Amazon.

Science

The Science of Liberty: Democracy, Reason, and the Laws of Nature, by Timothy Ferris. Harper Collins, 2010. Print Length: 384 p. Kindle edition $11.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"...award-winning author Timothy Ferris - "the best popular science writer in the English language today" (Christian Science Monitor) - makes a passionate case for science as the inspiration behind the rise of liberalism and democracy. Ferris argues that just as the scientific revolution rescued billions from poverty, fear, hunger, and disease, the Enlightenment values it inspired has swelled the number of persons living in free and democratic societies from less than 1 percent of the world population four centuries ago to more than a third today. Ferris deftly investigates the evolution of these scientific and political revolutions, demonstrating that they are inextricably bound. He shows how science was integral to the American Revolution but misinterpreted in the French Revolution; reflects on the history of liberalism, stressing its widely underestimated and mutually beneficial relationship with science; and surveys the forces that have opposed science and liberalism - from communism and fascism to postmodernism and Islamic fundamentalism. ...a stunningly original work that transcends the antiquated concepts of left and right." - Amazon.

The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements, by Sam Kean. Little, Brown and Company, 2010. Print Length: 400 p. Kindle edition $11.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"The Periodic Table is one of man's crowning scientific achievements. But it's also a treasure trove of stories of passion, adventure, betrayal, and obsession. The infectious tales and astounding details in The Disappearing Spoon follow carbon, neon, silicon, and gold as they play out their parts in human history, finance, mythology, war, the arts, poison, and the lives of the (frequently) mad scientists who discovered them. We learn that Marie Curie used to provoke jealousy in colleagues' wives when she'd invite them into closets to see her glow-in-the-dark experiments. And that Lewis and Clark swallowed mercury capsules across the country and their campsites are still detectable by the poison in the ground..." - Amazon.
Sam Kean is a reporter for Science magazine. His work has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Mental Floss, Slate and The New Scientist.

101 Theory Drive: A Neuroscientist's Quest for Memory, by Terry McDermott. Pantheon, 2010. Print Length: 288 p. Kindle edition $14.27. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"From as far back as ancient Greece, anatomy enthusiasts have been peering inside the human skull to discover where memories live. Yet, despite the development of advanced brain scanners and dissection methods, scientists have been repeatedly frustrated in finding any concrete neurological changes when people acquire new information. Now, as McDermott recounts in his revealing look at the work of maverick scientist Gary Lynch, this holy grail of brain research may have finally been discovered. McDermott steps inside Lynch’s laboratory at 101 Theory Drive in Irvine, California, for a peek at Lynch’s groundbreaking ideas and eccentric, often sharp-tongued personality. McDermott balances a lay-friendly discussion about exotic brain chemicals and Lynch’s long-term potentiation theory (LTP) of memory, and a riveting portrait of Lynch as hard-driving taskmaster to his lab technicians and iconoclast to his neuroscientist peers. Showing considerable narrative skill and more than a dollop of wit, McDermott’s work ultimately looks past Lynch’s oversized ego and shows how one brilliant scientist’s discoveries may someday conquer dementia and Alzheimer’s. - Carl Hays for Booklist.

Kindle Reads: Booksmarks Magazine's Best Books of 2010 (Part 7)

In its November/December 2010 issue, Bookmarks looks back at 50 staff favorites from among the hundreds of books reviewed in the magazine in 2010.

Kindle readers will be pleased to learn that 48 of the 50 titles in Bookmarks best books list are available in Kindle editions. Here's a rundown of all forty-eight. Given the length of the list, I've divided this post into multiple consecutive parts.

Biography

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope, by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer. Harper Collins, 2009. Print Length: 288 p. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Discarded motor parts, PVC pipe, and an old bicycle wheel may be junk to most people, but in the inspired hands of William Kamkwamba, they are instruments of opportunity. Growing up amid famine and poverty in rural Malawi, wind was one of the few abundant resources available, and the inventive fourteen-year-old saw its energy as a way to power his dreams. 'With a windmill, we'd finally release ourselves from the troubles of darkness and hunger,' he realized. 'A windmill meant more than just power, it was freedom.' Despite the biting jeers of village skeptics, young William devoted himself to borrowed textbooks and salvage yards in pursuit of a device that could produce an 'electric wind.' The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is an inspiring story of an indomitable will that refused to bend to doubt or circumstance. When the world seemed to be against him, William Kamkwamba set out to change it." - Dave Callanan.

Woodrow Wilson: A Biography, by John Milton Cooper Jr. Knopf, 2009. Print Length: 720 p. Kindle edition $19.25. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"The first major biography of America’s twenty-eighth president in nearly two decades, from one of America’s foremost Woodrow Wilson scholars. A Democrat who reclaimed the White House after sixteen years of Republican administrations, Wilson was a transformative president - he helped create the regulatory bodies and legislation that prefigured FDR’s New Deal and would prove central to governance through the early twenty-first century, including the Federal Reserve system and the Clayton Antitrust Act; he guided the nation through World War I; and, although his advocacy in favor of joining the League of Nations proved unsuccessful, he nonetheless established a new way of thinking about international relations that would carry America into the United Nations era. Yet Wilson also steadfastly resisted progress for civil rights, while his attorney general launched an aggressive attack on civil liberties. Even as he reminds us of the foundational scope of Wilson’s domestic policy achievements, John Milton Cooper, Jr., reshapes our understanding of the man himself: his Wilson is warm and gracious - not at all the dour puritan of popular imagination...Ever the professor, Wilson relied on the strength of his intellectual convictions and the power of reason to win over the American people." - from the hardcover edition.

A Ticket to the Circus: A Memoir, by Norris Church Mailer. Random House, 2010. Print Length: 448 p. Kindle edition $14.30. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Growing up a strict Free Will Baptist in the South of the 1950s, Norris Church, christened Barbara Jean Davis, was crowned 'Little Miss Little Rock' at the age of three and always knew that life had more to offer her than the comforts of small-town Arkansas. But she could never have guessed that in her early twenties she would date future president Bill Clinton (and predict his national victory even after he lost his first run for Congress), or that the following year she would meet Norman Mailer, who was passing through town giving a lecture at the local college. They fell in love in one night - and their marriage lasted thirty-three years. Despite her enduring love for the man, Norris found life with the writer full of challenges - from carving out her own niche in the wake of five ex-wives and numerous former girlfriends, to easing her way into the hearts of her seven stepchildren, to negotiating the ferocious world of Mailer’s fame, friends, and literary life...The couple’s New York parties were legendary, and their social circle included such luminaries as Muhammad Ali, Jacqueline Kennedy, Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, and Imelda Marcos...This unforgettable memoir will enchant readers with its honesty and insight..." - from the hardcover edition.

Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century , by Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger. Harper Collins, 2010. Print Length: 512 p. Kindle edition $12.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"In this dual biography of the two legendary film stars, the authors draw upon new information, including interviews with Elizabeth Taylor and with the Burton family, to capture the famously passionate and tumultuous relationship between the legendary couple. Already well known for her multiple marriages when she met him, Elizabeth Taylor added fuel to the flame of her own celebrity in 1964 by embarking on an affair with her married Cleopatra leading man, Richard Burton. The two became inseparable, and their personal charisma, scandalous love affair, and tempestuous relationship captured the attention of the press and the public worldwide, giving rise to the paparazzi phenomenon. It's a mesmerizing tale, but it's also sad, and sometimes ugly, as the two stars engaged in vicious fights, nursed their jealousies and insecurities, and descended into alcoholism while outwardly living a life of glamour and sophistication. - Kathleen Hughes for Booklist.

History

The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America, by Timothy Egan. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009. Print Length: 336 p. Kindle edition $6.74. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"On the afternoon of August 20, 1910, a battering ram of wind moved through the drought-stricken national forests of Washington, Idaho, and Montana, whipping the hundreds of small blazes burning across the forest floor into a roaring inferno that jumped from treetop to ridge as it raged, destroying towns and timber in the blink of an eye. Forest rangers had assembled nearly ten thousand men - college boys, day workers, immigrants from mining camps - to fight the fire. But no living person had seen anything like those flames, and neither the rangers nor anyone else knew how to subdue them. Egan narrates the struggles of the overmatched rangers against the implacable fire with unstoppable dramatic force. Equally dramatic is the larger story he tells of outsized president Teddy Roosevelt and his chief forester, Gifford Pinchot. Pioneering the notion of conservation, Roosevelt and Pinchot did nothing less than create the idea of public land as our national treasure, owned by and preserved for every citizen..." - Amazon.

Hellhound On His Trail, by Hampton Sides. Doubleday, 2010. Print Length: 480 p. Kindle edition $10.94. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Magnificent in scope, drawing on a wealth of previously unpublished material, this nonfiction thriller illuminates one of the darkest hours in American life - an example of how history is so often a matter of the petty bringing down the great. On April 23, 1967, Prisoner #416J, an inmate at the notorious Missouri State Penitentiary, escaped in a breadbox. Fashioning himself Eric Galt, this nondescript thief and con man - whose real name was James Earl Ray - drifted through the South, into Mexico, and then Los Angeles, where he was galvanized by George Wallace’s racist presidential campaign. On February 1, 1968, two Memphis garbage men were crushed to death in their hydraulic truck, provoking the exclusively African American workforce to go on strike. Hoping to resuscitate his faltering crusade, King joined the sanitation workers’ cause, but their march down Beale Street...With relentless storytelling drive, Sides follows Galt and King as they crisscross the country, one stalking the other, until the crushing moment at the Lorraine Motel when the drifter catches up with his prey. Against the backdrop of the resulting nationwide riots and the pathos of King’s funeral, Sides gives us a riveting cross-cut narrative of the assassin’s flight and the sixty-five-day search that led investigators to Canada, Portugal, and England..." - from the hardcover edition.