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Vick Mickunas
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I prefer to read fiction and non-fiction in almost equal quantities. Some men rarely touch fiction. Some women only read novels. But the world of books is so varied - so incredible - I wish to read widely, avoiding a narrow range of topics.
Non-fiction books can cover every conceivable subject. Here are my favorites from 2009:
“Imperial” by William T. Vollmann (Viking, 1306 pages, $55). Some books are like boat anchors, others - doorstops. Huge books. Massive enterprises. Some actually work better as doorstops or boat anchors than as books. “Imperial” is that rare book, gigantic yet still worthy of a place of honor on the bookshelf.
This author has a prodigious talent. Vollmann does it all, writing novels and non-fiction. He excels at both forms, cranking out mountains of work. He worked on this one over the course of many years. He wanted it to be a novel but could not find a way to make it so.
“Imperial” is the history of Imperial County, California. This sprawling expanse along the Mexican border is one of the poorest counties in the state. That desert bloomed a century ago as Colorado River water irrigated a bonanza of farm produce. They thought that water would last forever.
Vollmann documents the booms and the busts along both sides of that border. This book is probably twice as long as it needed to be. Reading it felt like running a marathon. You must pace yourself.
“Bright-Sided, How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America” by Barbara Ehrenreich (Metropolitan Books, 235 pages, $23). This searing cultural critique was inspired during the author’s treatment for breast cancer. She got annoyed with people telling her to think positively to help beat the cancer.
Ehrenreich was intrigued by “instructors in the discipline of positive thinking-coaches, preachers, and gurus of various sorts.” She scrutinized a subculture that spawned an entire genre of self-help books, videos, lectures, and retreats. Ehrenreich is an incisive commentator. She doesn’t pull her punches here.
“The Man Who Loved Books Too Much - the True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession” by Allison Hoover Bartlett (Riverhead, 274 pages, $24.95). Can you ever have enough books? If you answered “no” then I know how you feel. We are the bibliomaniacs. We can never have enough books, right?
Some people take their bibliomania to extremes. Some become the bibliokleptomaniacs. They steal books. This story of one such afflicted soul was pure catnip for this book lover. The gent in question stole rare books because he simply had to have them for his collection. He didn’t do it for the money. The author interviewed the thief as well as the man who caught him. A book lover’s delight.
“Tears in the Darkness - the Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath” by Michael Norman and Elizabeth M. Norman (Farrar Straus Giroux, 464 pages, $30). Riveting. Harrowing. Stunning. World War Two history at its best.
Posted by Vick Mickunas on 1/1/10; 2:01:15 PM
from the dept.
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Do you ever find yourself looking for some good fiction to read? We know it when we read it, don’t we? The barriers dissolve. It draws us right in. Here is my favorite fiction from 2009:
“American Rust” by Philipp Meyer (Spiegel & Grau, 367 pages, $24.95): The steel mill shut down long ago in a decaying river town in Pennsylvania. Two friends wander into an abandoned building. They encounter strangers. A random act of violence occurs. Innocence fractures. Meyer forges a magical story, part crime novel, part road novel. These two young men are hurled upon dire trajectories. One runs off. The other ends up in prison.
Poe, the character who is headed to prison, ponders the unreality of it all: “I am giving up my life, he said out loud. But still the words brought nothing to his mind, no description, only a very faint feeling, he might have been saying I would like a glass of milk.”
“Ravens” by George Dawes Green (Grand Central, 325 pages, $24.99): Two young men from Piqua get burned out on their jobs providing technical support for computer users in the Dayton area. They head south with the dream of joining a fishing crew in Key West. Then their junker car breaks down in Georgia.
They pull over at a filling station and one of them catches wind of a huge lottery windfall that has just been won. He hatches a plot to extort some of that money from the family that has hit the jackpot. “Ravens” is a dark farce that takes readers on a roller coaster ride of lottery fantasies that don’t always turn out for the best.
“Rain Gods” by James Lee Burke (Simon & Schuster, 434 pages, $25.99): How does James Lee Burke do it? He has been putting out exceptional novels for decades and they just keep getting better.
His latest, “Rain Gods,” dredges up a character who Burke hasn’t written about in years. Hackberry Holland is the sheriff of a little Texas town on the Mexican border. As the book opens he has happened upon a grisly crime scene. The perpetrator of this horrific crime is the nastiest villain Burke has ever imagined. One key witness, an Iraq War vet, flees the scene. In an interview Burke described the state of this veteran’s mind after he returned from Iraq: “he comes home with a head full of snakes.”
“Love and Obstacles” by Aleksandar Hemon (Riverhead, 210 pages, $25.95): Hemon’s book “The Lazarus Project,” was one of my favorite books from 2008. This new collection of short stories was written during the same period that he was writing that other book.
The author is a native of Bosnia. His stories take readers through some odd locales — to an embassy in Africa, on a train trip across Yugoslavia to buy a freezer, the icy streets of Madison, Wisc., and selling magazine subscriptions door to door in Chicago. These stories dazzled me with their wry humor and glittering language.
Next week I’ll have my favorite non-fiction from 2009.
And on further reflection I am realizing that there are four more compelling reasons why I chose these four books as my favorites; I interviewed all four authors - and for me that caused a more significant engagement with these works of fiction. There’s nothing quite like talking to writers about the creative process that nourishes the wellsprings of their writerly muses.
Posted by Vick Mickunas on 12/21/09; 11:06:57 PM
from the dept.
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'Imperial' waters our curiosity with greed 'Imperial' is mountain of a book on U.S.-Mexico margin
By Vick Mickunas, Cox Newspapers
Books come in various sizes. Some are quick reads. Others are gigantic, monumental works that bear something in common with the Great Wall of China or possibly the Panama Canal.
They can take a long time to construct. These books require mountains of time and patience to read. When we complete one of these volumes we feel a genuine sense of accomplishment.
Four months ago, I began reading "Imperial" by William T. Vollmann. It is over 1,300 pages long. I felt like a weight lifter even picking it up.
Vollmann is one of our most prolific writers. He produces numerous books the way some of us produce household waste: fast, impressive stacks of it.
His book "Europe Central" won the National Book Award a few years ago. I was pleased it won - I chose it as my favorite novel that year. It is another immense Vollmann volume.
"Imperial" is Vollmann's history of the poorest county in California. Imperial County is on the border with Mexico.
"Imperial," the book, is hard to describe. Words don't seem adequate somehow. It is majestic and immense and rather dumbfounding.
Vollmann kept returning to this project while he continued to work on his other books. He imagined "Imperial" would be a novel but he couldn't figure out how to make it so. So here it is finally in utterly sprawling splendor.
I read it somewhat in the manner that Vollmann wrote it, coming back to it whenever I finished reading another book.
"Imperial" is a massive tale of ambition, hardship, foolishness and greed.
Have you heard of the Salton Sea? This giant body of water in Imperial County is a monument to some stupendous notions that were eventually proven idiotic and destructive. "Imperial" is the story of how the waters of the Colorado River were diverted to transform this desert into an agricultural miracle.
That precious water transformed Imperial County into one of the largest producers of crops like lettuce and cotton. They never thought they would run out of water. The Salton Sea is the end result of this foolhardy belief - it is an environmental disaster.
Vollmann spent a lot of time on both sides of the border, what he refers to as Northside and Southside. He takes his readers on a boat trip down a polluted underground waterway. He searches for a network of secret tunnels. He looks at old photos and tries to get the locals to speak to him.
Vollmann doesn't drive nor does he speak Spanish. But he's curious and quite eccentric.
Throughout the book he repeats the mantra that guided the early settlers to this eventual disaster. They believed that "water is here. We need to have no fear that our lands will not become better and better as the years go by."
They squandered that water. Crop overproduction ruined prices. Imperial County is now salty and poor.
Of course one book wasn't enough. Vollmann's impressive photography is collected in a companion volume, "Imperial: Photographs by William T. Vollmann."
Posted by Vick Mickunas on 8/31/09; 1:18:21 PM
from the dept.
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Shaw McBride and Romeo Zderko have been friends since grade school in Piqua.
Burned out on careers providing tech-support for Dayton area computer users, they set out in Romeo’s rattletrap car for Florida.
As “Ravens,” the new novel by George Dawes Green, opens the friends are headed south. Romeo is driving “when a raccoon or possum ran in front of the car. The impact was disturbingly gentle. No thud — just a soft unzipping, beneath the chassis. Still, it tore at Romeo’s heart. He braked and pulled over.”
This is our first clue that Romeo is the sentimental one. Green flashes back to their days growing up in Piqua. They have an unequal relationship. Shaw is in charge — Romeo’s the willing accomplice.
Their clunker car makes it to Georgia and “Shaw was roasting to death. So feeble the a.c. in this ’91 Tercel that he had to leave the windows open or die. Though the air that came in was as hot as jet exhaust, so he was dying anyway.”
Romeo is fast asleep. Shaw notices the car pulling to the left. He exits to find a gas station. Is it a faulty bearing? Shaw hopes “maybe they could ignore it. Just nurse it as far as Key West and then sell it (the plan was to hire out on fishing boats and work their way to Trinidad and never return to their zombie jobs at Dayton Techworld).”
This stop in Brunswick, Ga., changes the plan. Shaw overhears a convenience store clerk on the phone. Did a local family just win a huge lottery jackpot? He hears her saying “nobody even knew this was the store! It hasn’t been announced yet! And they buy tickets here all the time.”
Shaw’s eavesdropping piques his greed — he hears enough information about the lottery winners to take action. They check into a cheap motel. Shaw does research on his laptop. He Googles the winning family. Bingo — jackpot.
Meanwhile the Boatwrights, the lottery winners, are playing it cool, laying low. Their winning ticket is locked away and they have not filed a claim yet for their winnings. This gives Shaw time to hatch his plot to steal half of the jackpot of more than $318 million.
“Ravens” is a marvelous yarn. Green has created a cast of characters that is truly memorable. Mr. Boatwright is deeply religious. Mrs. Boatwright is an alcoholic with fantasies of spending their prize on a mansion in Malibu. Their young son is a brat who spends all day playing computer games.
The Boatwright’s daughter Tara becomes the central character — she holds the story together. The real scene stealer is Nell, Tara’s widowed grandmother. As Shaw’s dark extortion plot unfolds it is Nell who provides welcome comic relief.
“Ravens” poses the question: How far would you be willing to go to steal $100 million (after taxes)? These boys from Piqua give it a shot. Fasten your seat belts.
Posted by Vick Mickunas on 7/26/09; 5:06:02 PM
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“Cooking Dirty — A Story of Life, Sex, Love and Death in the Kitchen” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 355 pages, $26).
Jason Sheehan is a food writer for a Denver newspaper. He knows his cooking, having labored as a cook in 30 some restaurants before becoming a writer.
“Cooking Dirty — A Story of Life, Sex, Love and Death in the Kitchen” is his memoir about life in those kitchens. He got his start in the business as a dishwasher at a pizza place in his hometown of Rochester, N.Y., when he was still in high school.
That’s where he caught the cooking bug. He spent the next dozen years working his way up the ladder to become a full-fledged chef. It was a slippery slope. He kept sliding back down.
“Cooking Dirty” is a no-holds barred, profane and hilarious account of a passion for food and cooking that almost killed the author. He describes working 16-hour shifts in kitchens that were infernos. Temperatures would rise to 140 degrees. Cooks would collapse, then be hauled outside to recover while another one jumped into their vacated spot on the line.
The author worked in an all-night diner. At midnight the orders would come pouring in. The kitchen crew would fill hundreds of orders over the course of a few hours. They made it through each night fueled by adrenaline, hard rock music, coffee, beer, cigarettes and marijuana.
These tales read like war stories. Each night was the same battle with new casualties. Sheehan explains: “It was the pressure that did it. The grind: same menu, night after night after night. It was the proximity — four or six or 10 men jammed into a space not much larger than a prison cell, baking in the heat, listening to the incessant clacking of the ticket printer.”
Burned out in Buffalo, Sheehan fled to Florida where “on the day we arrived it was 170 degrees with 900 per cent humidity.” He needed a job. He got one at Jimmy’s Crab Shack. His humor here is as finely honed as the expensive knives he carries with him to each new job.
At Jimmy’s “no one seemed to care that the daily special never changed. This was likely because Jimmy’s Crab Shack had never in its long history seen a repeat customer. And no one ever complained, because anyone smart enough to know good food from bad would’ve taken one look” at the decor and “run for their lives.”
Sheehan descends into his culinary underworld with morbid good cheer. He reflects that “it was an act, sure. But what job isn’t? Just on the other side of the swinging doors there would be bedlam, fire, blood and harsh language; 20 guys who, in another life, were maybe the guys who’d stolen your car or your credit-card numbers, who worked two jobs or three jobs under two or three different names to keep their own families fed...”
For an industry that employs millions “Cooking Dirty” pays loving tribute to what really goes on behind those “swinging doors.”
Contact book reviewer Vick Mickunas at vick@vickmickunas.com
Posted by Vick Mickunas on 7/15/09; 4:26:41 PM
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“The Garden of Last Days” by Andre Dubus III (Norton, 535 pages, $14.95)
The weather was splendid on that fateful New York City morning, Sept. 11, 2001. It was a Tuesday. Things turned ugly in a matter of seconds. Our innocence evaporated, lost forever.
Andre Dubus III sets his novel “The Garden of Last Days” during those waning moments of innocence on that final weekend prior to 9/11. It is told from the numerous viewpoints of characters living in south Florida at that instant in time.
There’s April, an exotic dancer at a strip club. And Lonnie, a bouncer at the club.
April and her 3-year-old daughter Franny share a house with Jean, who simply adores Franny.
AJ is a blue collar worker who frequents the club. Finally there’s Bassam, a young Saudi who is staying at a hotel.
Bassam hates America and everything it stands for.
Seething with rage, Bassam despises immorality yet he cannot resist partaking in it.
Dubus doesn’t want his readers to focus on the disaster that looms ahead. He said: “It’s not anything I want you to think about at all. I want you to just go through the journey with all the people in there.” It is their story.
I asked him how he got the idea for this book? He responded: “I just get an image. I start to go with it. I saw an image of a wad of cash on a bedroom bureau.”
He thought about the money and where it came from — that it belonged to a stripper. So he wrote about “48 or 72 hours in the life of one of these women.”
He described his process: “I love trying to be other people and trying to imagine other peoples’ existence.”
His task was to “try not to say anything with this novel. Instead, just try to find something.”
He elaborated on that impulse: “The human imagination I find to be a gorgeous thing. Terrifying. Frustrating …
“The kind of fiction I like to read and the kind I try to write tends to be inherently empathetic.
“I think character-driven fiction is a sustained act of empathy. You are really just asking, ‘What is it like to be you?’
“For me that’s the joy of reading these novels by these great writers … you get to live all these other lives than the one you’ve got. It’s kind of miraculous.”
Dubus is the son of an acclaimed short story writer, the late Andre Dubus. He had no intention of becoming a writer though. Then something altered his view.
“I wrote a short story. It wasn’t very good but I was hooked.
“Honestly, the day I finished it I felt more like myself than I ever had in my life … it’s one of those rare epiphanies that can happen in a life. I feel very lucky that I got to have that … I still didn’t want to be a writer but I knew that I was going to keep writing no matter what because I just felt more like myself than I ever had before.”
Posted by Vick Mickunas on 6/8/09; 12:07:46 PM
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Reading books is one happy endeavor. Reviewing books widens my avenues of literary pleasure. I enjoy hearing from readers who discovered books by reading this column.
I interview writers. I’m intrigued when doors fall open during these conversations. One glimpses a writer’s process.
Some favorites from 2008 are now out in paperback.
• “The Lazarus Project” by Aleksandar Hemon (Riverhead, 304 pages, $16). My favorite novel from 2008. Hemon was a Bosnian journalist in the USA as civil war broke out in Sarajevo. He could not return home. He settled in Chicago and mastered the English language. “The Lazarus Project” is a fictional account of an actual incident that happened a century ago in Chicago. The chief of police killed a man, an immigrant from central Europe. Hemon imagined the chain of events that led this innocent victim, Lazarus, across the ocean to a terrible fate. Hemon writes with savage joy.
• “A Voyage Long and Strange — On the Trail of Vikings, Conquistadors, Lost Colonists, and Other Adventurers in Early America” by Tony Horwitz (Picador, 464 pages, $18). The author is a former war correspondent who has transitioned his adventurous mode of journalism into another realm. He traces some obscure journeys. Horwitz finds himself in rather odd situations. His account of a visit to a Canadian sweat lodge is one of the funniest things I read last year.
• “Beautiful Children” by Charles Bock (Random House, 432 pages, $14). This novel about street kids in Las Vegas was one of the most anticipated books last year. Bock grew up in Las Vegas. His depiction of otherworldly pleasure seeking and desolation makes a dark read. The paperback has a quote from my original review; “Beautiful Children” uncoils like a gorgeous, deadly serpent. It sprawls with all the mind-numbing brilliance of Las Vegas’ hypnotic neon excess.
• “Reading the OED —One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages” by Ammon Shea (Perigee, 256 pages, $13.95). The author loves words. He collects dictionaries. He read the entire Oxford English Dictionary over the course of one year. This is his story, the gallons of coffee he drank, amazing words he discovered. Words like “petrichor (n.) The pleasant loamy smell of rain on the ground, especially after a long dry spell.” We have all smelled that wonderful scent, haven’t we? There’s actually a word for it. I always wanted to know it. The book is filled with words like that.
• “Knockemstiff” by Donald Ray Pollock (Anchor Books, 224 pages, $13.95). Growing up in the southeastern Ohio community of Knockemstiff Don Pollock witnessed some bizarre events. During the 30 years that Pollock labored in a paper mill he never relinquished his dream of becoming a writer. In an interview he told me that he learned how to write by sitting in his attic at his typewriter where he re-typed books by authors whom he admired, word for word. The paperback quotes my original review: “These stories detonate ... Pollock writes with incendiary verbal pyromania ... this is a fantastic debut.”
Contact book reviewer Vick Mickunas at vick@vickmickunas.com
Posted by Vick Mickunas on 5/3/09; 4:38:52 PM
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Whenever I start reading a book, I begin it with the hope that it will be so much fun to read that I won't want to put it down. I don't want certain books to end.
Books like "A Quiet Flame," the latest installment in Philip Kerr's detective series featuring the hard-boiled homicide cop Bernie Gunther. These novels are written in the classic noir style but with an unusual twist: Bernie is a German and he was solving cases in Berlin when the Nazis rose to power.
This creates a certain moral ambiguity. Bernie had to join up with the dreaded SS to survive the war. He did the best he could to avoid becoming a war criminal. Nevertheless, he has a guilty conscience.
Kerr wrote his first Bernie Gunther book in 1989. He didn't consider writing another one until his publisher encouraged him to do so. Eventually he wrote three books which became his Berlin Noir trilogy. He thought that was the end of it.
Writers rarely have the luxury of reviving a character. Even so, after an interlude of 15 years, Kerr renewed this one. "A Quiet Flame" is now the fifth installment in this series with more to come.
The story begins in 1950. Bernie is escaping from Germany under an assumed name. His companions are Nazi war criminals. They are headed to Argentina.
Bernie is impersonating a doctor. Upon his arrival in Buenos Aires he is quickly introduced to high-ranking government officials. Bernie chooses to reveal his true identity to them. When they find out he is actually a homicide detective, he is quickly drawn into a murder investigation.
This leads him into an underworld populated by hundreds of fugitive Nazi war criminals. The circumstances of this murder seem familiar. Bernie had an unsolved Berlin case in 1932 that was quite similar.
Kerr employs substantial flashbacks to the original investigation. It took place right as Adolph Hitler was taking power in Germany. It has always struck me as a stroke of genius that Kerr placed this series within the chilling landscape of Nazi swastikas.
I called the author at his home in London and asked him why he chose to do so. He replied: "It's easy to forget. We get fed this diet of 'Did it really happen?' all the time .... Were there gas chambers, or not?"
"You have to remind yourself. These kinds of things are kind of conveniently forgotten. It's always good to stick the stick into the bottom of the bucket and stir it all up again."
In "A Quiet Flame," Detective Bernie Gunther repeatedly pokes his stick into Nazi-infested snakepits. It's exhilarating and terrifying. Bernie wisecracks his way through numerous sticky spots in this thriller. And he'll be back rather soon.
Kerr revealed that "the one I just finished is partly set in Cuba ... he goes from Argentina on to Cuba." This was during the period when Cuba was a playground for American hoodlums like Meyer Lansky. I can hardly wait for the next installment.
Contact him at vick@vickmickunas.com
Posted by Vick Mickunas on 3/22/09; 6:27:53 PM
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Novelists spend entire careers trying to write even one classic book. Philipp Meyer has accomplished that feat on his first attempt.
Meyer's debut novel, "American Rust," might one day be recognized as one of our great American novels. Time will tell that tale.
"American Rust" takes place in the heart of the Rust Belt, a western Pennsylvania river town formerly shaded by massive steel mills. All gone now.
Those high paying jobs have vanished. Meyer's characters are those who were left behind: the disabled, the unemployed, the down and out.
As the story begins two unlikely friends wander into an abandoned factory. Isaac is small in stature but has a brilliant mind. He has just stolen some money from his father and he is on his way out of town.
His friend Billy Poe is the dumb jock who is constantly getting into trouble. He could have had a football scholarship but he chose to stay home with his mother in their trailer. The only thing keeping Billy out of jail is his mother's romantic link with the town's police chief.
Billy doesn't want to enter that empty factory. For once his instincts are good. But he goes in anyway as this tragedy begins. Billy and Isaac get involved in an altercation with some vagrants and a man dies. This sets off the tragic chain of events which forms "American Rust."
Meyer's theme is profoundly disturbing because it could be ripped right out of our daily news. The society he depicts is one that is starting to unravel. The few jobs remaining are in home health care and fast food. As the local economy collapsed some residents turned to drugs and crime.
Billy Poe passed up that scholarship. He also squandered the opportunity to be hired for one of the few high paying jobs left, tearing down the remains of shuttered factories.
Meyer's descriptions ring painfully: "The work was all in the Midwest now, taking down the auto plants in Michigan and Indiana. And one day even that work would end, and there would be no record, nothing left standing, to show that anything had ever been built in America."
After the killing, Isaac flees the area. Billy refuses to talk to the authorities and ends up in prison. Meyer crosscuts his story by zooming in on the fugitive Isaac, the incarcerated Billy, the embattled police chief, and various relatives.
It does veer a bit close to home. A truck driver hands his passenger five dollars, "a few hours later he dropped Isaac off at an on-ramp in Dayton. As he got out the driver said, 'You wouldn't spend it on drugs or anything would you buddy?'"
"American Rust" burns with the molten fire of a steel furnace. Meyer's characters circle the flames, drawing ever closer to incineration. They could be your neighbors, your friends, our jobs. The glittering literary shards strewn about by Meyer are like shattered mirrors reflecting a society that is being crushed.
Book reviewer Vick Mickunas blogs daily about books at www.DaytonDailyNews.com/booknook. Contact him at vick@vickmickunas.com.
Posted by Vick Mickunas on 3/1/09; 4:24:27 PM
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Readers of this column sometimes ask me to explain the difference between "mass market" paperbacks and "trade" paperbacks.
"Mass market" paperbacks are the smaller, pocket sized books that usually sell for $7 to $8 each. "Trade" paperbacks are larger. They typically retail for $14 to $16.
Paperbacks are wonderfully convenient and inexpensive. I can't imagine going anywhere without a few. Here are some recent paperbacks that you might enjoy:
"Matala," by Craig Holden (Simon and Schuster, 180 pages, $14). This suspenseful novel opens as a seemingly innocent young American college student wanders off from her European tour group. She meets a couple of drifters, a young man and an older woman — con artists working scams on tourists. They all get involved in a smuggling ring. A surprising ending.
• "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden," by Joanne Greenberg (Holt, 304 pages, $15). Originally published in 1964, this semi-autobiographical novel has sold millions of copies. Greenberg's experiences as an adolescent in a mental institution inspired the story of Deborah, a 16-year-old mental patient who has been diagnosed as a schizophrenic. Greenberg has written a new "afterword" for this reissue.
"Osteoarthritis — Preventing and Healing Without Drugs," by Peter Bales M.D., MHSA (Prometheus Books, 284 pages, $18.98). Osteoarthritis is now epidemic with more than 20 million Americans affected. Peter Bales thinks many cases of osteoarthritis result from nutritional deficiencies. He suggests that dietary changes could provide more benefits than drugs.
"Our Daily Meds," by Melody Peterson (Picador, 432 pages, $16). Two out of every three Americans takes a prescription drug regularly. We spend billions of dollars on medications while our average life spans are shorter than the life spans in 40 other countries where they use far fewer drugs. Pharmaceutical companies have greatly expanded our drug exposure during the past 30 years.
"The Breaks of the Game," by David Halberstam (Hyperion, 400 pages, $15.99). David Halberstam was a triple threat: an extraordinary journalist, a gifted historian and a splendid sportswriter. "The Breaks of the Game" is Halberstam's account of spending the 1979-80 basketball season following the Portland Trailblazers. His portrayal of the massive talents and giant egos in the battle for NBA supremacy of 30 years ago foreshadow what the sport has become today. Halberstam died in a car accident two years ago. He was enroute to an interview with a 1950s football star for a book that he was working on.
"The Age of American Unreason," by Susan Jacoby (Vintage, 357 pages, $15.95). In an interview, Susan Jacoby described an experience that took place right after 9/11. She told me that she went into a tavern in New York City and overheard some businessmen chatting. She was astonished by their apparent ignorance of basic American history. She decided to write a book about what she describes as " a powerful mutant strain of intertwined ignorance, anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism" in America today.
Book reviewer Vick Mickunas blogs daily about books at www.DaytonDailyNews.com/booknook. Contact him at vick@vickmickunas.com.
Posted by Vick Mickunas on 2/22/09; 4:09:46 PM
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This Page was last update: Friday, January 1, 2010 at 2:01:15 PM
This page was originally posted: 1/1/2010; 2:01:15 PM.
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