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The way this works is if you buy a book through one of my links
I get a percentage. Won't you please buy through me? I review and specialize in biographies
and memoirs, history, political humor, nonfiction, and spy mysteries.
For Spring 2000 Ron recommends:
(Occasionally links might change because a printing or edition change might result in a change of ISBN. If that's the case with your selection, please enter the author's name or the title in the Keyword box on the "error page".)John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1994) price: $9.60 (Publishers's price: $12.00). There has to be a reason this book was the New York Times bestseller list for four years. The Savannahians Berendt writes about are real, they are eccentic, and they are fascinating, "as bracing and intoxicating as half-a-dozen mint juleps."
Patricia Cornwell, Southern Cross(1999).Amazon.com price: $6.39 (Publisher's price: $7.99). An edge-of-the-seat detective story set in the South. The author has an eye for the petty details that make a novel live - much like Frederick Forysth and John Grisham.
Cristina Ferrare, Ok, So I Don't Have a Headache (1999). Amazon.com price: $15.37 (Publisher's price: $21.95). This is not the usual type of book I recommend. However, as nonfiction, it qualifies as a needed book for so many couples whose sex lives have lost the magic spark. Ms.Ferrare, famous model and TV hostess, went from Ms. Passion to Ms. Avoidance. Frustrated, she found a solution in testosterone cream (yes, women need testosterone, too - but not to grow a moustache) and a tofu diet...An excellent cook, she has included dozens of recipes designed to deliciously disguise tofu. Throughout, the book is filled with her wit and charm - and, judging from a recent Oprah show and a Good Morning America interview, she has addressed a previously unmentioned, unbelievable problem.
James Loewen, Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong, (1999). Amazon.comprice $18.87. (Publisher's price: $26.05). A very funny study of America's past, told in an irreverent, hilarious, astute, but very serious manner. It tells the real story behind many of the country's monuments, memorials, and "historical" road-side stops. Even the former chief historian of the National Park Service endorsed it, as did Howard Zinn, leftist author of A People's History of the United States...If these two tell you to read it, you've got to!
Gregg Stebben & Jim Morris, White House Confidential: The Little Book of Weird Presidential History, (1998). Publisher's price: $10.95. The cover advertises this as "an irreverent look at presidential foibles, fibs, and moral failures." It gives one perspective to see that Mr. Clinton is not the first to be engulfed in scandals and that the nation survives. My own opinion after reading this book is that the President is like the hole in a doughnut -- the hole has nothing to it, but it is essential to making the doughnut.
Scott Adams, The Joy of Work: Dilbert's Guide to Finding Happiness at the Expense of Your Co-workers, (1998). Publisher's price: $22.00; with Amazon.com you pay $15.40. The cover describes a situation: "Office Prank #44: Sounds That Drive Co-workers Crazy. You can produce sounds in the office that will drive your co-workers insane. That can be very entertaining. Every co-worker is different, so you might have to experiment to find the sounds that are most annoying to your cubicle neighbor. It's worth the effort." It is compiled by Adams; if you are a "Dilbert" fan no other explanation will do, if you're not then no explanation will suffice. Naturally, the cartoon books, such as 1999's Don't Step in the Leadership, in which the boss's hair looks strikingly like something unpleasant on the sidewalk appears on the cover, and 1997's Dogbert's Managent Handbook which was probably read by a former boss of mine (and who has gone to bother other people) are de riguer for "Dilbert" fans and sympathizers.
Here are unabashed plugs for two of my own books: Theda Bara: A Biography of the Silent Screen Vamp, With a Filmography, (1996). Publisher's price: $29.95. It enjoyed good reviews from publications such as Choice, Filmfax, Movie/Entertainment Book Club, and Classic Images; it was praised by such diverse people as the renowned 1950s sex-goddess Bettie Page, 1930s child star Tommy "Butch" Bond, and Stanford University Cecil Green Librarian R. L. Carr. And, last but not least my co-authored Darn RightIt's Butch, the story of Tommy Bond, the original Butch in Hal Roach's Our Gang Comedies (1994) which the publisher has reissued at the original cost of $16.95.
Books previously reviewed include:John
Richard Stephens, Weird History 101, (1997). Publisher's
price: $12.95; with Amazon.com you pay $10.36. It helps to humanize
and de-mythologize history, giving the reader a humorous view
of the greats and not-so-greats of the past... people, who after
all, put on their
pants one leg at a time the way the rest of us do.
Robert K. Massie, Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War, (1992). Publisher's price: $17.50; with Amazon.com you pay $14.00. Massie's other works include Nicholas and Alexandra, Peter the Great, and Romanovs: The Final Chapter.
Eve Golden's Vamp: The Rise and Fall of Theda Bara.,(1996). Amazon.com price $19.95.This is another book on Theda, complete and written in a different vein
Alan Bullock, Hitler and Stalin: Portraits in Power,(1993).Amazon.com price $19.20. (Publisher's price: $24.00). A very serious study of the makeups of the world's two worst mass-murderers and their quest not for wealth, not for fame, but for pure power...
