Happy Days will return

Nothing to fear : FDR's inner circle and the hundred days that created modern America / Adam Cohen.

 More about the men around him than about FDR.

Dr. Orzac

A patron, a retired librarian, asked for his short stories.

The fall of the house of ill-repute and other short stories
The love ashram and other short stories 

A classic

West, Rebecca. (1957). The fountain overflows. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England ; New York, N.Y., U.S.A. : Penguin Books, 1985, c1984.

A West novel.

52 B.C.

Saylor, Steven. (1996). A murder on the Appian Way. New York: St. Martin's.

Passing

Sandweiss, Martha A. (2009). Passing strange: a Gilded Age tale of love and deception across the color line. New York: Penguin.

Kirkus: An intriguing look at long-held secrets, Jim Crow, bad faith—and also, as Sandweiss observes, "love and longing that transcends the historical bounds of time and place."

a "surreal transmogrification of a genre"

 Berry, Jedediah. (2009). The manual of detection. New York: Penguin.


Kirkus Reviews An unlikely sleuth anchors an unlikely investigation in Berry's fantastical melding of Kafka, Hitchcock and The Man Who Was Thursday. Though its nonsense logic eventually lags behind its breakneck pace, Berry's debut is a boldly inventive deconstruction of Cartesian metaphysics, the criminal-justice system and the well-oiled detective story.

Tell, sister

Tannen, Deborah. You were always mom's favorite: sisters in conversation throughout their lives. (2009). New York: Random House.

Booklist : The author of You're Wearing THAT? (2006) turns her piercing gaze on the complex relationships between sisters.

Morgan Mafia

Tett, Gillian. (2009). Fool's gold: how the bold dream of a small tribe at J.P. Morgan was corrupted by Wall Street greed and unleashed a catastrophe. New York: Free Press.

Choice Reviews:  A journalist with the Financial Times, Tett uses personal interviews to provide a massive amount of detail. However, she does not describe or illustrate the various derivatives, so the reader needs prior knowledge of these instruments. This omission reduces the book's attractiveness to general readers, who are the primary target audience. A timely book on a topic of great current interest.

PW Annex Reviews At once a gripping narrative, an education in derivatives, and a most lucid origin-story for the current financial meltdown, it's no surprise the author of this volume is an award-winning Financial Times journalist.

Making the military-industrial complex

Hartung, William D. (2011). Prophets of war: Lockheed Martin and the making of the military-industrial complex. New York: Nation Books.

Chillin' with Enzo

Stein, Garth. (2008). The art of racing in the rain. New York: Harper.

Kirkus: Stein uses a dog as narrator to clever effect in this tear-jerker about an aspiring race-car driver who suffers more woes than Job but never mistreats his dog. Pointedly inspirational

From vaccuum tubes ...

Ira Brodsky. (2008). The history of wireless: how creative minds produced technology for the masses. St. Louis: Telescope Books.

Sunny Cooper has been running since she was eighteen ...

Hendricks, Judith Ryan. The laws of Harmony. New York: Harper.

... both from the New Mexican commune where she grew up and from the haunting memory of her younger sister's death. When a second tragic accident turns her world upside down, Sunny runs again, to the town of Harmony on San Miguel Island where she takes a new job, learns to ride a motorcycle, and makes some surprising new friends. But the past is never far behind.

Black Mamba Boy

Mohamed, Nadifa. (2010). Black mamba boy. London: Harper Collins.

Mixed reviews.

Lorriane Adams, in the NY Times: Had she dived deeply into just one city in this atlas of misery, Mohamed might have told us more about what it is like to be a scavenger child in Africa than this novel does. Perhaps one day, with her considerable talents, she will write such a book.

Kirkus: With one glorious exception, an eccentric intellectual in Djibouti, the author shows little talent for characterization. Pulled this way and that, Jama reflects Mohamed's own indecision, torn between naturalism and magic realism.

On the other side:
Library Journal Reviews: A pleasure to read, with descriptive language that allows readers to envision themselves in the story, this novel shows a distinctly non-European way of life in mid-20th-century Africa that is captivating. Highly recommended.

Publishers Weekly Reviews: Mohamed's beautifully rendered debut

Whiskey

Liss, David. (2008). The whiskey rebels. New York: Random House.

" ... a ripping yarn of intrigue, money, politics, real-life heroes and villains, and even a love story ..."

Kirkus: Uneven, sometimes risibly overstuffed narrative that's nevertheless compulsively readable.

Hogeland, William.(2006). The Whiskey Rebellion : George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and the frontier rebels who challenged America's newfound sovereignty. New York: Scribner.


Kirkus: Contrarian account of a contrarian struggle, in some senses America's first civil war. A vigorous, revealing look at a forgotten—and confusing—chapter in American history, one that invites critical reconsideration of a founding father or two.

American comedy in black and white

Reid, Tim. Tim & Tom: an American comedy in black and white. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

1960s comedy team. Tim Reid was in WKRP Cincinnati; Tom stayed a comedian.

Idiosyncratic first novel

Cutting for stone : a novel / Abraham Verghese Very popular these days

49er football

The genius: how Bill Walsh reinvented football and created an NFL dynasty

Love?

The unprofessionals

Stolen art

Loot : the battle over the stolen treasures of the ancient world

Speaking treason fluently : anti-racist reflections from an angry white male.

In this absorbing compilation of essays, Wise (White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son), an anti-racist activist and writer, continues to plumb white privilege, racism and responsibility.

The school of essential ingredients

Book of the day on Book-a-Day calendar liked it; Kirkus: The stifling humidity of the prose will push a lot of readers out of this kitchen..

A mighty long way

 LaNier, Carlotta Walls. (2009). A mighty long way: my journey to justice at Little Rock Central High School. New York: One World Ballantine Books.

An inspiring and important story: Book-a-Day calendar.

Kirkus: Well-crafted look at the wrenching experience of the youngest of the "Little Rock Nine. Keenly observed and moving.

How the dead dream

Millet, Lydia. (2008). How the dead dream. Brooklyn: Soft Skull Press.


Book of the day on Book-a-Day calendar praises it, Kirkus not as much.

The botany of desire

Pollan, Michael. (2001). The botany of desire: a plant's eye view of the world. New York: Random House.

The invisible line : three American families and the secret journey from Black to white

Montecore

A distinguished, linguistically complex narrative that examines the ordeals of a Tunisian immigrant to Sweden.

Portraits of a marriage

Márai, Sándor. (2011). Portraits of a marriage. translated from the Hungarian by George Szirtes. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

The adults

Espach, Alison. (2011). The Adults. Simon & Schuster.

Well regarded by Kirkus: Wry rather than out-loud funny, laced with melancholy and angst, this book is an enviable first effort.

Reviewed in Sunday Times Books, less favorably: It saddened me to watch the small marvel of this fierce, tender adolescent narrative being submerged by waves of extra storytelling. Too much storytelling. I also had some minor factual quibbles. Lehman Brothers was never known for having a bustling office in Prague in the mid-1990s, and to suggest this detracts from the authenticity of Espach’s portrayal of Emily’s father, even Espach’s understanding of the world of finance.

Beat the reaper

Bazell, Josh. (2009). Beat the reaper. New York : Little, Brown.

Kirkus: The past comes knocking for a physician with a fistful of secrets.Medical resident Bazell opens his debut novel with a bone-crunching interlude between Manhattan ER doctor Peter Brown and a mugger whom he beats senseless, then treats for injuries. Brown soon confesses that his real name is Pietro Brnwa. He's a former hit man whose lethal trade drove him into the witness-protection program, where he reinvented himself as a pill-popping trauma physician. "It's a weird curse, when you think about it," says the killer turned doc. "We're built for thought, and civilization, more than any other creature we've found. And all we really want to be is killers." The past catches up with Brown when a terminal patient at the hospital recognizes him as the mob assassin called "Bearclaw." The patient threatens to out Brown if he does not work to save the man's life. Bazell's profane, hyperactive novel is readable and fun, and no fan of shoot-'em-ups or medical dramas can afford to miss it. Among the book's highlights is a riotous set of doctor's rounds that find Brown making out with a cancer patient, chasing down a wheelchair-bound fugitive and suffering a particularly vile needle stick.A wildly funny mashup between genres that makes ER and St. Elsewhere look tame

Black rain

on page 305 of Escape from Amsterdam, the film is mentioned.

The 1989 Japanese version: A woman caught in fallout during the bombing of Hiroshima returns to her village, where she is ostracized and considered unsuitable for marriage. There is another film with the same title that is only on VHS. And a third film, with Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia, is a piece of shit.