By The Beachwood Bureau of Adding Value
The Sun-Times’s fine book editor, Teresa Budasi, offered a package of summer reading choices over the weekend, including the following 10 nonfiction titles. We’ll add value.
Book: Colossus: Hoover Dam and the Making of the American Century.
Author: Michael Hiltzik.
Amazon Product Description: “Yet the story of Hoover Dam has a darker side. Its construction was a gargantuan engineering feat achieved at great human cost, its progress marred by the abuse of a desperate labor force. The water and power it made available spurred the development of such great western metropolises as Los Angeles, Phoenix, Denver, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, and San Diego, but the vision of unlimited growth held dear by its designers and builders is fast turning into a mirage.”
Publisher’s Video:
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Book: You Never Give Me My Money: The Beatles After The Break Up.
Author: Peter Doggett.
Blog On Books: “From the looks of it, The Beatles – the most influential band in musical history – were actually two groups. The first was the mop-top through drug-influenced neo-psychedelic pop band that changed the world through musical messages from ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ to ‘All You Need is Love.’
“The second, was a business.
“It’s that second group that Peter Doggett reveals here, perhaps for the first time, all in one place.”
Shortcut: twitter.com/Peter_Doggett.
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Book: Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook.
Author: Anthony Bourdain.
In His Own Words: “I guess I’m less interested in being cruel or malicious just for the sake of a laugh. I mean . . . Sandra Lee is pretty low hanging fruit.
“On the other hand, one of the reasons I’ve been so unpleasant on the subject of Alice Waters is that I suspect she’s right about most things – in principle, anyway. The disconnect between message and messenger seems to be what drives me batty.”
Actual Chapter Title: Alan Richman Is a Douchebag.
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Book: The Facebook Effect: Inside The Story of the Company That is Connecting the World.
Author: David Kirkpatrick.
Facebook Effect’s Facebook Page: www.facebook.com/thefacebookeffect
Urban Dictionary: The Facebook Effect.
Kirkpatrick on Twitter: twitter.com/davidkirkpatric
Interview:
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Book: Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century.
Authors: Sam Kashner, Nancy Schoenberger.
Preview: “Elizabeth Taylor has made public for the first time her love letters from Richard Burton, giving new insight into a passionate, playful but turbulent romance that spanned 20 years and two marriages.
“But Taylor is keeping one letter private, according to Vanity Fair magazine in an article in its July edition.”
Hollywood Backstage:
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Book: Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality.
Authors: Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha.
Webby: sexatdawn.com; Facebook page; Twitter feed.
Relevant Question: So they have an open marriage?
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Book: Wrong: Why Experts Keep Failing Us – And How To Know When Not To Trust Them.
Author: David Freedman.
Publisher’s Description: “Our investments are devastated, obesity is epidemic, blue-chip companies circle the drain, and popular medications turn out to be ineffective and even dangerous. What happened? Didn’t we listen to the scientists, economists, and other experts who promised us that if we followed their advice all would be well?
“Actually, those experts are a big reason we’re in this mess. Their expert counsel usually turns out to be wrong – often wildly so. WRONG reveals the dangerously distorted ways experts come up with their advice, and why the most heavily flawed conclusions end up getting the most attention – all the more so in the online era. But there’s hope: WRONG spells out the means by which every individual and organization can do a better job of unearthing the crucial bits of right within a vast avalanche of misleading pronouncements.”
Relevant Question: If Freedman is such an expert, why should we listen to him?
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Book: The Fiddler in the Subway: The Story of the World-Class Violinist Who Played For Handouts . . . And Other Virtuoso Performances By America’s Foremost Feature Writer.
Author: Gene Weingarten.
The Fiddler’s Story: “Pearls Before Breakfast.”
The 2010 Pulitzer Story: “Fatal Distraction: Forgetting A Child in the Backseat of a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime?”
Journalistic Philosophy: “I am a leading proponent of stories dispassionately searching for the truth, and then passionately telling the truth. I have no patience for stories that are quote dumps, obscuring the truth with bogus moral equivalencies, giving equal weight to unequally valid opinions, and doing it all in the name of objectivity.”
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Book: The Weather of the Future: Heat Waves, Extreme Storms, and Other Scenes From a Climate-Changed Planet.
Author: Heidi Cullen.
Twitter: twitter.com/heidicullen.
A Scientist & A Skeptic:
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Book: The Murder Room: The Heirs of Sherlock Holmes Gather to Solve the World’s Most Perplexing Cold Cases.
Author: Michael Capuzzo.
Product Description: “Named in honor of Eugene Vidocq, the first modern detective and inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, the Vidocq Society comprises of 150 world-renowned criminologists who convene in ‘the murder room’ on the third Thursday of every month to discuss a cold case murder over a gourmet lunch. Over the course of the meeting, the Vidocq members examine the known facts of the case to come up with new angles of investigation – suspects, technological methods, or areas of inquiry. And sometimes they are able to crack the case before the afternoon is over. They have allowed journalist Michael Capuzzo exclusive access to witness their legendary investigations and tell their amazing story.”
Customers Who Bought This On Amazon Also Bought: Sherlock Holmes For Dummies.
Seven Percent of Customers Who Viewed This Item On Amazon Ultimately Bought: Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and his Rendezvous with American History.
The Real Heirs To Sherlock Holmes: “[F]or nearly 80 years [Holmes] has also been caught in a web of ownership issues so tangled that Professor Moriarty wouldn’t have wished them upon him.”
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Comments welcome.
Posted on June 3, 2010