Since March 17^th is St. Patrick’s Day it is altogether fitting to recommend Greatest Irish Americans of the 20^th Century ($19.95, Oak Tree Press, Dublin), edited by Patricia Harty. Therein you will find brief life stories of John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Sandra Day O’Connor, Walt Disney, and many other Irish-Americans of distinction. For those who share this heritage, it’s a fine book, particularly for the younger members of the family to read. Older readers will enjoy Irish America: Coming into Clover by Maureen Dezell ($24.95, Doubleday) that documents the fascinating history and complex culture of Irish America today. It’s a blend of sociology and pop culture that debunks myths and stereotypes. So, if we’re all Irish for just one day, you can enjoy what it means to be an Irish-American every day.

For those who follow the Academy Awards and are film buffs, you will welcome knowing that The Academy Awards Handbook ($6.99, Pinnacle paperback) has been revised and updated by John Harkness. It’s quite thorough with a listing, year by year, of all nominations in every category, every major winner and loser, and an easy to use index for quick reference.

Our former President has been in the news non-stop since he departed office and my eye was caught by a new book, The Nonpatriotic President: A Survey of the Clinton Years by essayist Janet Scott Barlow ($12.95, Chronicles Press, 800-397-8160) because the author provides an entertaining and informative look back at his eight years in office. She’s no fan and provides an excellent chronicle the cultural damage done during his tenure.

A publisher calling itself Excellent Books (PO Box 131322, Carlsbad, CA 92013-1322) has the right name. In July it will publish a new three-volume anthology of America’s greatest speeches. Landmark American Speeches, edited by Maureen Harrison and Steve Gilbert ($17.95 each) covers the 225 years of the nation through the great speeches of the 17^th and 18^th centuries in the first volume, the 19^th century in the second volume, and the 20^th century in the third. To sit down and read the full text of Patrick Henry’s call to "Give me liberty or give me death", Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address or John F. Kennedy’s famed Inaugural Address, barely begins to describe the pleasure of also reading Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Paine, Robert E. Lee, Barry Goldwater, and Martin Luther King, Jr., among the many distinguished men and women whose words take you back to their times and into their minds. Check them out at Excellentbooks.com.

History lovers will enjoy Terra Incognita: The True Story of How America Got its Name by Rodney Broome ($19.95, Educare Press, PO Box 17222, Seattle, WA 98107) due out officially in May. The author makes a strong case that America was not named after Amerigo Vespucci, but instead for Richard Amerike, a King’s customs officer in Bristol, England in the late 1400’s. Broome has done an excellent job of putting all the pieces together, noting that Amerike’s family coat of arms featured stars and stripes, among the many other fascinating details. Filled with photos and illustrations, this book could end up re-writing history.

For spectacular photos of the United States, check out America from Space by Thomas B. Allen ($24.95, Firefly Books Ltd.) that look at the near empty mid-west to the heavily urban northeast. Mostly taken from Landsat satellites, up to 540 miles overhead, these photos reveal an America that is beautiful and rich in both natural and human resources. The text adds much to the enjoyment of the photos and the book is a thoroughly enjoyable educational experience.

How Americans perceive the media is the subject of Don’t Shoot the Messenger by Bruce W. Sanford ($16.95, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers). The author addresses the public’s dwindling trust of the press that includes charges of sensationalism and bias. An attorney, the author argues that court rulings against the way journalists investigate a story are forcing the public to rely more and more on the government for information. Some, however, might argue that the public is simply more aware of the flaws and failures of journalism. He makes his case and can be the judge.

Another book about the nation’s media actually takes the time to personally attack ME! Trust Us, We’re Experts! ($24.95, Tarcher Putnam) is written by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, two guys that masquerade as experts on the media and the public relations profession. They pay their rent with a noble sounding operation called the Center for Media and Democracy. Essentially, they attack anyone and any organization that seeks to dispel the lies perpetrated by the diehard environmentalists, animal rights fanatics, and food police types. These are the folks who are forever telling you the earth is doomed and we’re all going to die from something toxic. If you believed what this book has to say, you’d have to believe that evil PR people are so clever they manipulate stupid journalists every day. Having earned my living for three decades as a PR Counselor, I guarantee you that journalists are born skeptics. I know. I used to be one. The book conveniently ignores the millions spent annually by environmental groups and fellow travelers who perpetrate all kinds of hoaxes. Save your money.

The classic children’s book, The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery is available on CD from Pocket Audio, Montreal ($l6.95, 800-360-1377), narrated by Richard Gere. It is utterly charming.

If you enjoy newspaper comic pages—and who doesn’t?—Mort Walker’s Private Scrapbook ($29.95, Andrews McMeel) is available those who are fans of Beetle Bailey. The book reveals how this gifted cartoonist developed his art and the famous characters he created. Also from Andrews McMeel, a collection of Pat Oliphant’s cartoons, Now We’re Going to Have to Spray for Politicians ($12.95) that takes jabs at Republicans and Democrats alike. Oliphant is the most widely syndicated political cartoonist in the world and a Pulitzer Prize winner. Jack Ziegler’s hilarious cartoons have been entertaining people for three decades in The New Yorker, National Lampoon and Playboy magazines. The Essential Jack Ziegler ($12.95, Workman Publishing) has been compiled and edited by Lee Lorenz in a third volume of Workman’s Essential Cartoonist Library and features 150 of his best cartoons. This softcover provides plenty of laughs.

Back to Top

Solzhenitsyn, mentioned above, is the subject of a biography, Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile by Joseph Pearce ($19.99, Baker Books). What makes this book about the famed Russian author of particular interest is the fact it is based on exclusive, personal interviews that provide some truly profound insight into a man who is regarded as a towering literary and political figure who spoke out against the Soviet regime before and after the fall of Communism there. He triumphed over imprisonment in the Soviet ghulags to grapple with the great questions of our times.

A less than flattering portrait of John Steinbeck emerges in The Other Side of Eden: Life with John Steinbeck ($27, Prometheus Books) written by his late son, John Steinbeck IV and his wife, Nancy. The celebrated author has become a literary icon and his books, "East of Eden", "Grapes of Wrath", and others are considered modern classics. The problem is, for his son, despite growing up among the literati and intellectual elite who surrounded his father, the real problem was his father’s dark side, the world of his mother’s alcoholism, a bitter divorce of his parents, the estrangement, and abuse, from both. The son tried to make sense of his often-painful youth. Despite his own success as a writer, when her husband died an untimely death after a life spent dealing with a variety of personal demons, Nancy chose to live in a remote area of the Ozarks. Like her husband, she is a skilled writer. Sometimes the price of living with a genius is that one’s own life becomes a casualty of the passions that drive such a person.

A contemporary and rival of Steinbeck was Ernest Hemingway. There’s an unusual book edited by Nick Lyons, Hemingway on Fishing, ($29.95, The Lyons Press), with a foreword by Jack Hemingway, the author’s son. Hemingway loved to fish and wrote extensively of his love for this sport and pastime. From obscure journal articles to his famed novel, "The Old Man and the Sea", it was a lifelong passion. Published in November, this is a great tribute to the man and one that anyone who shares his love will thoroughly enjoy.

The Birth of the Cool by Lewis MacAdams ($27.50, Simon and Schuster) is a very entertaining look at one of the compelling cultural forces today. Focusing on the years between the Second World War and the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the author has written a wonderful story of the history and roots of American bohemian culture where a host of legendary artists from painter Jackson Pollock to musicians like Miles Davis, actors like Marlon Brando, and writers like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, honed their talents. Want to know what cool really is? You have to read this book.

One of the most unusual stories that occurred during the 1950’s involves a group of convicts in Tennessee State Prison and the nation’s youngest governor, Frank Clement, an advocate of prison reform. Just Walkin’ in the Rain ($24.95, Renaissance Books) is perhaps best known as the title of singer Johnnie Ray’s biggest hit, but it was written by Johnny Bragg, a man sentenced to six life terms for crimes he did not commit. His only pleasure was singing and, while incarcerated, he organized some other convicts into a group called the Prisonaires. They came to the attention of Governor Clement and the result is a story of redemption through music. In time, he pardoned every member. Bragg was released on January 29, 1959. In the process, they all had an impact on civil rights, prison reform, and the music industry. Jay Warner has written the story and you will enjoy it.

Published in October, Sketches from a Life by George F. Kennan ($14.95, W.W. Norton) is considered one of the important memoirs of our time by a man who witnessed some of the most important events of the last century. Beginning with his first foreign service post in 1927 and ending seven decades later, Kennan rose to become one of the nation’s most respected experts on Russia and the Soviet Union, and other issues. The author of eighteen books, Kennan is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. For an insight to the issues that still are headlines today, this former ambassador to the Soviet Union makes for great reading.

Film lovers will instantly recognize the name. Tim Burton: An Unauthorized Biography of the Filmmaker ($15.95, Renaissance Books) was published in December. Ken Hanke provides the first full-length biography of the director of films that include Batman, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood and Mars Attacks!, among others. Fans of his work will thoroughly enjoy this look at his often pain-filled life.

A Doctor’s Life: Unique Stories by Dr. William T. Close ($15.95, Meadowlark Springs Productions, PO Box 4460, Big Piney, WY 83113) is a memoir of some fifty years as a physician and surgeon in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, l6 years in Africa’s brutal, chaotic Congo, and as a country doctor in rural Wyoming. He’s treated African leaders, cowboys, and people of all descriptions. An advocate for genuine care of people in need, Dr. Close is what being a doctor is all about. The book debuts this month is well worth reading.

Back to Top

The field of children’s books appears to be exploding with new titles that offer great opportunities to inform and entertain children of all ages.

McGraw-Hill is a publishing name associated with business topics, but their children’s publishing division is producing some fabulous new series. "All in a Day’s Work" offers eight books that tell the story of what it was like to be Pharoahs and Embalmers, Emperors and Gladiators, Athletes and Actors, and Raiders and Traders, among others. Each book offers a dozen professions from a specific time and place in history, and describes what was involved. Handsomely illustrated, their texts take young readers to ancient Egypt, the Roman Empire, the golden age of Athens, Greece, and the world of the Vikings.

Ancient worlds are also the subject of a McGraw-Hill series, Clothes of the Ancient World, four books, beautifully illustrated, that describe how people dressed through early history to the Medieval times. Young readers will learn how fashions developed with the rise and fall of early civilizations and how they changed as trade, travel, and inventions opened societies to new influences and a greater choice of fabrics and styles. In the series, History Detectives, eight books are fact-filled records of life in ancient Egypt, the Greek and Roman empires, and among the Aztecs. If your child is in the early grades of school, these books from McGraw-Hill’s Children’s division will whet their appetites to learn more, as well as deeper their appreciation for history. They retail for $16.59 and, together, represent a great starter library.

One of my favorite publishers for young girls is the Pleasant Company 8400 Fairway Place, Middleton, WI 53562-2554). Their American Girl Library is a popular line of advice and activity books. These include Letter Art and The Big Book of Notes and The Quiz Book. This latter book is a way for young readers to discover who they are through a clever Q&A. There’s also a My Life, a scrapbook with all sorts of things like stencils, stickers, and instructions to make it very special.

Recent new Pleasant Company books for older readers include their History Mysteries, Samantha and the Missing Pearls, a collection of short stories, The Minstrel’s Melody by Eleanore E. Tate, and Say Goodbye by Laurie Halse Anderson. For ages 3 through 7, there’s Angelina Ballerina, a dancing mouse, who is featured in Angelina on Stage and Angelina and Alice. It doesn’t get much better than this when it comes to providing books for girls from the very young to the more mature. This company’s Matchbox series for ages 3 or so, include a playtoy and a book that can take a lot of punishment while telling a short, entertaining story. One of the latest is Splash about a ride down a rainforest river.

Moon Mountain Publishing (80 Peachtree Rd., North Kingstown, RI 02852) had a great debut with Hello Willow and Petronella. Both are great books for those aged three to eight years of age. Now they’re back with Hamlet and the Magnificent Sandcastle ($l5.95) by Brian Lies. A natural for summer reading with its sandcastle theme, it unites an odd couple in a suspensefully silly escape story featuring a pig, Hamlet, and his fretful porcupine pal, Quince.

Bookmark Publishing (PO Box 701413, San Antonio, TX 78270-1413) has just published Corky the Bathtub Who Couldn’t Swallow ($12.95) for the very young who will learn about overcoming a problem with the help of friends. It’s due out in June. For every parent who had to listen to their kid beg to stay up just a little longer comes a delightful story, Night School, ($18.95 hardcover, $5.95 softcover, Annick Press) written and illustrated by Loris Lesynski. It tells of Eddie who never wants to go to bed and discovers a school for night owls, learning that getting a good night’s sleep isn’t such a bad thing afterall.

Golden Books have been around as long as I can remember. Their "Reading On Your Own" series includes some cute stories, Pepe and Papa, Cat on Ice, and Beans Baker, Number Five ($3.99) that will please any child eager to read using easy words, fun rhythms, big type, and picture cues. Coming in April and May are The Twins by John Wallace and Metro Cat by Marsha Diane Arnold ($9.95) that tell two great tales for kids. Kane/Miller Book Publishers (PO Box 8515, La Jolla, CA 92038-8515) specializes in translated foreign children’s books and has a number of new titles this spring such as Animal Tails, originally from Japan and Bilby Moon by Margaret Spurling of Adelaide, South Australia. Winner of the Hans Christian Andersen Award 2000 is Nina Bonita by Ana Maria Machado who makes her home in Brazil. These and other books from this publisher are a great way to introduce your child to the big world.

f you’re looking for suspense or courtroom drama in John Grisham’s new novel, A Painted House ($37.95, Doubleday Broadway), keeping moving because this one is a complete departure from anything he’s written before. Instead, the time is 1952 and the setting is rural Arkansas. Moreover, the story is told through the eyes of 7-year-old Luke Chandler, a Tom Sawyer-like farm boy who takes his measure of the Mexican immigrants hired to pick cotton and the families who come each year in search of work. In the course of this story, he develops a crush on the 17-year-old daughter of one of the families needed to bring in the crop and witnesses a murder. He must make a decision to keep the secret or not. This is a story about the different social layers of the time and place in which he lives. It is told at a leisurely pace and, I couldn’t help thinking, if Grisham wasn’t the author, this might just be another novel that goes relatively unnoticed. Certainly, at $37.95, both the author and the publisher are asking you to spend a lot for a novel that may prove less satisfying than you might otherwise anticipate.

In Beautiful Disguises marks the debut of Rajeev Balasubramanyam, an Indian author ($14.95, Bloomsbury USA, dist. by St. Martin’s Press). It will take you to a different world and culture as it evokes the dreams of a teenage girl in southern India who dreams of Hollywood stardom but is confronted with the prospect of an arranged marriage to a man she regards as a scoundrel. It is an interesting story about the crosscurrents of tradition and modernity, the cultures of East and West, and of honor and personal ambition. It is also a witty tale of a girl who finds solace in the Majick Movie House where she watches Western films. The author is British-born and a graduate of both Oxford and Cambridge Universities. The novel has already won a prestigious British literary award and, when you read it, you will understand why. This book marks the beginning of a distinguish career by a talented writer.

The British have given us many fine writers and, for an hilarious romp, I recommend H.W. Crocker III’s The Old Limey ($19.95, Regnery Publishing, Inc.) about a retired, reactionary, British brigadier general, Nigel Haversham, who goes in search of his goddaughter in Los Angeles where she has disappeared. In the process he encounters a cast that includes California beach babes, Jamaican drug gangs, and a host of other colorful folk in the course of his search and rescue mission. I promise you, you will laugh. A lot.

Scotland is M.C. Beaton country and his latest Hamish MacBeth mystery. Death of a Dustman ($22.95, Mysterious Press) has the laconic Scottish constable in his 17^th outing trying to figure out who killed a dustman; that’s garbage collector to you Yanks. No one paid much attention to the drunk, but when a politically ambitious environmentalist gets elected to the Strathbane Council, she doubles his salary and names him the new environmental officer. He then becomes a bullying tyrant and when he’s found stuffed in a recycling bin, no one is sorry! This is just good fun.

There’s good fun and plenty of suspense to be found in Stephen White’s new novel, The Program ($24.95, Doubleday). The author of eight previous books, crime stories, White flexes his literary muscles with a mesmerizing novel about the witness protection program. Two people in the program are thrown together as patients of a psychologist to assist them make the life-wrenching change. One is a woman judge whose husband has been killed. The other is a reformed Mafia hitman. There are so many twists and turns, you will be flipping the pages as fast as you can. A psychologist himself, the author has perfect pitch when it comes to dialogue, engaging characters, and a non-stop narrative drive.

You will probably not enjoy Mr. Mee by Andrew Crumley ($25, Picador USA) which is mired in deep thoughts about philosophy and other diversions the author provides in a mostly uninteresting story about the disappearance of a 200-year-old text that purports to disprove the existence of the universe. Like, who cares? The same, regrettably, must be asked about The Jube Dog Never Lies ($15.95, iUniverse.) Understandably self-published, this is a coming of age story set in Tehran, just before and after the 1979 revolution. The story’s narrator is a 12-year-old boy with an overactive imagination. It even includes talking dogs that give profound advice. It just fails on too many levels.

Another debut is found in David Anthony Durham’s Gabriel’s Story ($23.95, Doubleday) that will remind you a bit of Cormac McCarthy’s "All the Pretty Horses" in that it is a story of the American West and one of love, forgiveness, redemption, and survival. Its central character’s African-American family has moved to rural Kansas to escape the racism of the Reconstruction Era. The 15-year-old makes friends with another young man and, together, they are drawn into a group of a ruthless band of cowboys seeking adventure. Plenty of mayhem occurs to keep you turning the pages.

For anyone who loves the genre of the Western novel, this one offers a great deal to enjoy. The West is also the setting for Dixon’s Edge by Dennis O’Keefe ($15, plus $3.75 shipping, Parintel Publishing, 888-836-5818) that isn’t officially due until June. The time is 1867 and an Apache tribe has been herded into a prison at Bosque Redondo to be starved and treated like animals. It is a story of revenge and confrontation whose author was born and raised on a South Texas farm, spent time in law enforcement, and is currently a private investigator. His research and personal knowledge shows through on every page of a very compelling story that will have you on the edge of your chair as you read straight through to the last page.

Terry Gatesh makes his debut as a novelist with Whitey, 2000 ($0.00, lst Books Library), the story of Zachary Adecki, a never-married, advertising agency creative director having a mid-life crisis brought on by sex, success, and betrayal. His best friends turn out to be his worst enemies and vice-versa. Someone from his past abducts him and a daughter he fathered and scarcely knows rescues him. It’s a real romp that touches on many aspects of life in our times. This one is strictly for grownups.

The first in what the author promises will be a series of new mystery novels demonstrates that psychiatrist, Bruce Forester, M.D., has the talent to pull it off. Fatal Betrayal ($24.95. Twin Bridges Publishing.) With five suspense novels to his credit already, Dr. Forester’s professional life has provided him with an understanding of what motivates his characters, but he also has a knack for intrigue. When a troubled young male patient dies, followed rapidly by the equally enigmatic deaths of two more members of the same psychotherapy group, the situations escalates when one of the victims is identified as a US Senator. Are the deaths linked? That’s when Dr. Mart Yvars and his wife, Millie, swing into action to identify the killer. You’ll be hooked and will want to read the new additions to this series as they are published.

Another novel has a medical theme, Dysplasia, ($24.95, iUniverse). It’s a medical thriller that chronicles the road to Hell of a renowned OB-GYN whose sexual habits are bizarre. This is not for the squeamish and it should not come as a surprise that it is written by a surgeon, Brad Lewis. He maintains that his portrayal of high-profile surgeons is not an exaggeration and, if true, you will not want to let one of this fellows get within a mile of you. The interplay between inflated egos and dependent patients works against the background of unnecessary operations, the profit mentality of many medical practices, and frightening inattention to new research. In short, physicians will hate this book, but readers will no doubt find it fascinating, if not terrifying.

Tudar Alexander is the pen name of the author of Planet New York ($16, Xlibris) who has written the story of a young Romanian couple who arrived in New York in the late 1970s. The contrast between the Communist culture they have escaped and the new one they encounter reflects the author’s own experience. He deftly captures the time and the changes required to adapt to their new world as they also struggle to get on with their lives. This is a short, very interesting story that has a happy ending.

We can thank the folks at Kensington Publishing Corporation for a steady stream of romance novels including Thea Devine’s Sinful Secrets ($12) where the emphasis is on eroticism, and Bertrice Small’s Intrigued ($14). The former serves up a lot of sex-drenched scenes and the latter takes you back to the 17^th century as the sequel to the author’s "Skye’s Legacy." It too has its fair measure of eroticism—do we sense a pattern here? Anyway, they are the type of novel that some ladies enjoy and why not?

Kensington is a paperback publishing machine. They pour out in astonishing numbers and are, for the most part, all entertaining. One novel is Kasey Michaels’ Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You just out this month. A private investigator, Grady Sullivan, is hired by a toilet paper millionaire to find out which of his heirs is out to kill him for his fortune. He, in turn, falls for the man’s granddaughter. Buckle up for a roller coaster ride. Other Zebra paperback titles include Shannon Drake’s Seize The Dawn and Fern Michael’s Yesterday, both romances. Under their Pinnacle Books imprint, you will find thrillers that include P.J. Parrish’s Dead of Winter, Stephen White’s Privileged Information, T. J. MacGregor’s Vanished and Tamara Thorne’s Eternity Pop. 298. I also liked Beverly Barton’s After Dark, a clever, sexy and suspenseful tale set in a sleepy Alabama town. Among the Kensington Mysteries, there’s Mark Miano’s The Street Where She Lived, G.A. McKevett’s Sugar and Spite, and Joanne Fluke’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder.

Recent paperbacks from St. Martin’s Press include two novels set in the West, Wyatt Earp by Matt Braun and Terry C. Johnston’s Lay The Mountains Low. Both authors bring an authenticity to their work, which is rich with historical law and dramatic detail. The latter, part of St. Martin’s Plainsmen Novel series, is a saga of the Nez Perce Wars. The former is, of course, about the legendary lawman, part of a new Gunfighter Chronicle series.

From Harper Paperbacks, there’s a sly, sexy, suspense novel, Mouth to Mouth by Michael Kimball and a thriller, Free Fall, by Kyle Mills. Submarines have been in the news and you will enjoy The Silent Service: Los Angeles Class by H. Jay Riker, an adventure story set in 1987 that is excellent reading.

Lovers of fantasy novels will enjoy Enemy Glory by Karen Michalson ($24.95, Tor hardcover) because, as anyone knows, Tor is famed for its mastery of this genre. This story is epic, mythic, and yet grounded in real emotion, a sprawling saga of war, gods, intrigue and magic. This is a very auspicious debut and marks the beginning of an adventure series that will capture readers with her dark fantasy world and memorable characters, caught up in warring kingdoms and a complex religion of gods of both good and evil.

Finally, a novel that comes with its own musical sound track. I kid you not! Sleeping with an Angel by Roger A. Campos, with music composed by his son, Jon Campus, includes a CD. This has got to be the first Rock novel ($24.95, St. John’s Press, PO Box 61362, Potomac, MD 20854) of its kind. It’s an inspirational and touching story involving a Washington lobbyist, Tony Cassera, who enters into a passionate affair with a beautiful young girl named Celinda. She invokes the spells of an ancient sorceress to capture his heart and his soul. He soon hits bottom, but his life is redeemed. That’s all I’m going to tell you. This is not everyone’s cup of tea, but it certainly marks an interesting combination of the written word and the music by which to read it.

That’s it for this month!

Authors, publishers, publicists take notice! Now your book can be a Featured Book on this site where it will enjoy an entire page of its own and a link to Amazon.Com. This is a great way to let the many visitors to Bookviews.Com learn about your book. It is very affordable. For more information, click here.