author:
WILL STORR

Non-fiction
320 pages
Ebury Press

“Life after death is as improbable as sex after marriage,” drones the impeccable Madeline Kahn in the classic 1985 film Clue. While others can attest to the post-nuptial state of physical relations, British writer and journalist Will Storr goes in search of life after death in this eponymous-titled nonfiction. Only his quest is a bit more than a search for ghosts and things that go bump in the night: Storr, an admitted lapsed Catholic and probable agnostic at best, seeks the supernatural with the notion that to believe in ghosts is to believe in life after death, ergo the existence of some spiritual higher being, whatever that may be.

Despite a massively weighty premise, Storr keeps the writing and the musing light, accessible, occasionally philosophical, and always entertaining as he goes through ghost vigils and hunts, television programs, bogus clairvoyants, haunted houses, the official Vatican exorcist, quantum physics-lite, and one truly terrifying encounter whose terror has much less to do with demonic possession than the religion involved. He reaches his own conclusions and is frank about it, though leaves very much open to speculation and interpretation by the reader.

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author:
STEVEN RINELLA

Non-fiction
259 pages
Spiegel & Grau

There is perhaps no other icon that is more symbolic of the American West than the Buffalo. It has graced our currency, our national parks and has even been protected by the U.S. government since the early nineteen hundreds after their prolific and near catastrophic slaughter of their species.

In American Buffalo, author Steven Rinella enters himself into a lottery in Alaska to win the opportunity to hunt Buffalo in the wild (and wins one of the coveted slots), embarking on a journey to take down the largest land animal in North America. While a good portion of the novel focuses on the actual hunt in the Alaskan wild, an equal length is dedicated to the history of the American Buffalo, from its arrival here in North America to its present numbers and questionable future.

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author:
MIR BAHMANYAR
w/ CHRIS OSMAN

Non-fiction
256 pages
Osprey Publishing

Modern warfare has created a more sophisticated and dedicated elite fighter, who has unbelievable skills, utilized every day in combat. World War II had Underwater Demolition Technicians (UDT) and these brave men were replaced by inclusion of new duties performed as U.S. Navy SEALS, (SEa, Air and Land) which refers to methods of insertion and ability to perform missions in these environments.

The training of these high caliber crusaders is extremely complex and rigorous. Those who go through the initial training phase called BUD/S find that the attrition rate is seventy-five to eighty per cent. This is a six month training cycle followed by six months probation before receiving the Navy Special Operations designation, the Budweiser (Trident). This is only the beginning for the budding SEAL, who goes on to further cycles such as Jump School, HALO training, Ranger Training, Army Special Forces training, and SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape). \The class of 1989 donated a class gift as a motto for UDT/Seal Training” “The only easy day was yesterday”.

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author:
PIERRE BERG
w/ BRIAN BROCK

Non-fiction
304 pages
American Management Association

Pierre Berg of Nice, France was seventeen and had aspirations of being a hairdresser and a ladies man, but never imagined that the unspeakable could happen to him. While visiting a friend who owned a shortwave radio the two were captured and sent to Nazi Concentration camps because the Gestapo banned all shortwave radio broadcasting. Pierre and his friend made broadcasts of Laurel and Hardy, which were sent only to neighbors, but the Nazi’s suspected them of making long-range broadcasts. Pierre was sent to Auschwitz and his friend was never heard from again.

Written with the assistance of Brian Brock, the story unfolds with twists and turns, in a style that reads like a novel, but was real nonetheless, and fatal for many of the people portrayed. For instance, Berg’s life is spared thanks to the shaky hand of another prisoner whose job was to administer the camp tattoos. A guard misreads one of the numbers while reporting a serious infraction that Berg committed. The prisoner with the misread number is executed, and Berg attributes this to “outhouse luck.”

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author:
REVA MANN

Non-fiction
368 pages
Dial Press Trade

Children veer from one extreme to another; it’s to be expected. When adults do it, it’s fascinating, troubling—and more than a little annoying.

Perhaps it is for this reason that, try as I might, I never warmed to Reva Mann over the course of her autobiography. The daughter of a progressive yet devout Orthodox rabbi, Mann spent her teens and early adulthood rocketing from the arms of gentile to the closeted life of a seminary in Israel. She abandons her life of rebellion in an episode, which is almost certainly partly invented, where her gentile ex-lover invites her to the Kind David Hotel and she declines to rejoin him for another hedonistic fling. Why do I think it’s partly invented? Because he’s staying in room 613—famously the number of laws to follow in the Torah—of the most famous hotel in Israel; I smell more than a whiff of poetic license here, which, to her discredit, surfaces repeatedly throughout the book.

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author:
SARAH THORNTON

Non-fiction
256 pages
Norton

What is art? This is always a very difficult question, and one that has been addressed in countless conversations held by those from the cultural upper echelon all the way down to teens with spray paint and a few stencils. In Seven Days In The Art World, Sarah Thornton makes no distinction as to what defines art, but rather provides the reader with a riveting insider account as to the way the art world functions. While much of this world consists of cocktails and caviar, much of what occurs treats art as nothing more than a commodity where a work’s value and a buyer’s portfolio acquisitions supercede beauty and talent.

As the title suggests, Seven Days In The Art World visits seven separate functions of the current art world, these consisting of: The Auction (places like Christie’s where the last paddle up in the air takes home the prize), The Critic, The Fair (Art Basel), The Prize (The UK’s Turner Prize), The Magazine (Artforum), The Studio Visit, and The Biennnale (Venice). Thornton interviews some of the “elite” within the art world, and while many of her confidants acknowledge how contemporary art has become a circus of sorts, all seem to revel in their status and standing.

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author:
DICK MEYER

Non-fiction
271 pages
Crown Publishers

Reality television. Annoying cell-phone ringtones. Bridezillas. The ills of modern American society make us sick, and yet we perpetuate their existence. In his charmingly cranky Why We Hate Us: American Discontent in the New Millennium Dick Meyer attempts to explain why.

A CBS News reporter and producer for twenty-three years, Meyer is now an editor for NPR, and—with his news media veteran status—is in a unique position to call bullshit. The book’s thesis is compelling, if semi-problematic: According to Meyer, the liberation of the nineteen sixties alongside the technology of today equates to “why we hate us.” We’re no longer oppressed, but we’ve taken it too far. We’re rude when we should be mannerly, we text message when we should be talking, and I don’t know what we should be watching, but it’s probably not “Rock of Love.”

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author:
ROSE GEORGE

Non-fiction
290 pages
Metropolitan Books

Why do we have so much trouble talking about shit? How is it possible that in these times two fifths of the world’s population literally does not have a pot to piss in? Are there safe, effective ways of disposing of and even recycling fecal matter? The fact that Rose George isn’t able to answer all the questions she raises in her new book doesn’t make it any less captivating. As she says in what sounds at times like a call to arms, “The first thing sanitation needs is a spotlight shining on it. It needs to be unshackled from shame. It needs some scrutiny.” In The Big Necessity, she provides some of that scrutiny.

Here in our society of flush toilets and hidden sewers, we all take the disposal of this most basic of bodily functions for granted. George comes at the problems raised by shit (she dislikes the term “waste”) from a number of different angles. She examines the language of defecation, including our need for euphemism—why is it nearly impossible to even utter the word ’shit’ in polite company? She goes on to show how different cultures deal with sanitation issues, examining everything from the poorest villages in India where “manual scavengers”—untouchable even by other untouchables—clean up shit with pieces of tin or their bare hands, to the robotic thrones of Japan which not only warm, wash and dry your buttocks, but will do so to the accompaniment of a pleasant tune. She discusses the history of sanitation, exploring the sewers of London and New York as well as modern “biosolid” treatment plants.

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author:
MARK DALY

Non-fiction
144 pages
Plume

What an unbelievably stupid book this is. The premise: Metal gods, as they were known, like Ozzy, Alice Copper, Judas Priest, and even Lita Ford, not only rocked through the eighties like bats out of hell, but also answered life’s greatest philosophical quandaries in their lyrics. Heavy metal is high art, folks—this is the memo.

The book is about one-hundred-and-fifty pages long. There is usually a full-bleed photo on the left-hand page, while on the right sits those tiny of nuggets of “wisdom,” which are usually no longer than ten or fifteen words long and have been set in a blood-red, gothic-y serif. That’s pretty much it. By the way, this book was manufactured then shipped on freight across the country. Well, here’s a quandary: At what point can a book be considered a crime against the environment?

Anyway, here’s an example from the book. It’s from Black Sabbath’s “After Forever.” Guitarist Tony Iommi is featured in the photograph, though I have no idea why since he didn’t write the lyrics: “Perhaps you think that when you’re dead you just stay in your grave?” Why, yes, as a matter of fact I do. So does Salman Rushdie, who once said, “When you’re dead, you’re dead forever.” Ah! A really smart guy setting the record straight on something some idiot in some rock band said. Now there’s a book I might actually want to read.

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author:
DAVID J. DANELO

Non-fiction
256 pages
Stackpole Books

The economy is the dominant issue in the current election season, and rightly so. Mentions of health care, taxes, America’s two wars and foreign policy also abound, but immigration has fallen by the wayside. David Danelo’s The Border points to this not staying the case for very long.

Danelo is a journalist, former Marine officer and a veteran of the Iraq war. It’s an unusual background from which to write a book about illegal immigration from Mexico. Danelo brings a refreshing and unusual point of view to the matter. Part travelogue and part social commentary, Danelo also sheds a lot of light on the history of the region. In the course of his travels along the border, he meets a lot of people that, in some way or other, are impacted by U.S. policy towards Mexican illegal immigrants. It’s a colorful cast of characters, and Danelo is very good at drawing out the stories that give the book a more personal feel than other “wonkier” books.

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