Memoir, schmemoir: Here are some new (or newish) nonfiction books that caught my eye this year, all topical, mostly serious. Just like the dude at left, who is reading MASTER OF THE SENATE.Jane Mayer, THE DARK SIDE. I've read some of Mayer's dispatches in the New Yorker, but this National Book Award Finalist account is supposed to be eye-opening. And now that it's not annoying me in the news every day, it's past time to confront the legacy of Dick Cheney.
Rajiv Chandrasekaran, IMPERIAL LIFE IN THE EMERALD CITY. This Washington Post reporter's work on contractors gone amok in L. Paul Bremer's Iraq has been developed into a Matt Damon-starring thriller in theatres early next year.
Nick Reding, METHLAND: THE DEATH AND LIFE OF AN AMERICAN SMALL TOWN. Investigative reporter Reding had a hard time even finding a publisher for his report on middle American drug culture; then he got a cover review in the New York Times. Might not want to read it in front of your Sarah Palin-loving relatives but it's supposed to be excellent.
Chris Hedges, EMPIRE OF ILLUSION: THE END OF LITERACY AND THE TRIUMPH OF SPECTACLE. Not sure how this July release slid past me given my love of a good polemic. Hedges argues that in its quest to continually entertain, American society has become meaningless and morally bankrupt. Maybe I'll want to throw this book across the room when I'm finished, but it seems like a chance worth taking.
Liaquat Ahamed's LORDS OF FINANCE: THE BANKERS WHO BROKE THE WORLD won the Financial Times-Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year award, and even if you find the title a bit histrionic the subject sounds fascinating. It also comes out in paperback on the 29th, in case your recipient prefers that.
FTC cover-assery: I got IMPERIAL LIFE IN THE EMERALD CITY as a gift, but I can't remember from whom.
Photo: gwilmore
1 comment:
Chris Hedges' War Is A Force That Gives Us Meeaning was an outstanding book - I'm looking forward to reading his new one.
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