Library Journal

Binelli, Mark. Detroit City Is the Place To Be: The Afterlife of an American Metropolis. Holt. Nov. 2012. 320p. ISBN 9780805092295. $28; eISBN 9781429974615. SOCIAL SCIENCE
For most Americans, Detroit epitomizes contemporary urban blight. Here, native son and Rolling Stone contributing editor Binelli shows that while Detroit may be down it’s not out. In fact, current developments—organic farming on empty lots, a realignment plan to shift residents from desolate neighborhoods to a vibrant new center—suggest how not just Detroit but all troubled cities can rise again. Expect good writing on a freighted topic.

Coddington, Grace. Grace. Random. Nov. 2012. 304p. ISBN 9780812993356. $30; eISBN 9780679645214. CD/Downloadable: Random House Audio. MEMOIR
Stunning British model. Then creative director of British Vogue. Then head of Calvin Klein’s operations in New York. Then creative director of American Vogue. And true star of the 2009 documentary The September Issue, in which she famously upstaged Anna Wintour. Here’s a memoir about Coddington’s 40 years in fashion, beautifully designed by the author herself. Go, fashionistas!

Fellowes, Jessica & Matthew Sturgis. The Chronicles of Downton Abbey: A New Era for Family, Friends, Lovers and Staff. St. Martin’s. Nov. 2012. 320p. ISBN 9781250027627. $29.99; eISBN 9781250027634. TELEVISION
Former deputy editor of Country Life and niece of lead Downton Abbey author Julian Fellowes, Fellowes has already written about the public television phenomenon in The World of Downton Abbey. Here she returns with critic/author Sturgis to give an official preview of Season 3, which launches on PBS in January 2013. Downtown Abbey fever does not appear to be abating (though not yet commissioned, Seasons 4 and 5 are in discussion), so this should be popular.

Fornatale, Peter & Bernard M. Corbett. 50 Licks: An Album’s Worth of Stories from the 50-Year History of the Rolling Stones. Bloomsbury USA, dist. by Macmillan. Nov. 2012. 240p. ISBN 9781608199211. pap. $17. MUSIC
Fifty years, 50 cool stories (or “Licks”), each named for a different Rolling Stones song, and often drawn from previously unavailable material. FM rock pioneer Fortanale, who died on April 26, joined with Corbett—the radio voice of Harvard University football and a lifelong Rolling Stones nut—to deliver another celebratory piece on the Band That Played On…and On.

Greene, Robert. Mastery. Viking. Nov. 2012. 320p. ISBN 9780670024964. $28.95; Downloadable: Penguin Audio. PSYCHOLOGY
Want to be the master of your universe? Greene shows you how by looking at the folks who have done it before you, from middling-student Charles Darwin to Temple Grandin, Henry Ford, and more. Since Greene’s books (e.g., The 48 Laws of Power) have sold more than a million copies, he must have something to say to folks out there. Be prepared.

Kelley, Kitty. Capturing Camelot: Stanley Tretick’s Iconic Images of the Kennedys. Thomas Dunne Bks: St. Martin’s. Nov. 2012. 240p. ISBN 9780312643423. $29.99; eISBN 9781250018830. PHOTOGRAPHY
Assigned by United Press International to cover John F. Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign, Stanley Tretick became friendly enough with the candidate that he was given access to the White House once Kennedy was elected. He took many pictures readers will recognize immediately, often of JFK with his family. But of course never-before-seen shots are here, too. Best-selling author Kelley, a friend of Tretick, provides an upbeat text. Big publicity push.

Lil Wayne. Gone Till November. Grand Central. Nov. 2012. 288p. ISBN 9781455515264. $25.99. MEMOIR
Rapper Lil Wayne has won four Grammies and sold millions of albums; he also did time in Rikers Island Penitentiary in 2010 for criminal possession of a weapon. Here are the journals he kept at the time, reportedly smart, detailed, and thoughtful. Since he has five million Twitter followers and 33.7 million Facebook fans (decidedly the biggest numbers I’ve keyed in for those venues), this book will have an audience.

Love, Courtney & Anthony Bozza. Untitled. Morrow. Nov. 2012. 464p. ISBN 9780062127952. $29.99. eISBN 9780062127990. MEMOIR
These rock memoirs just keep coming. Now the contrarian, controversial Love, loved and hated by the media (and the rest of us), widow of Kurt Cobain and a scalding musician in her own right, tells her own story. With a 250,000-copy first printing and author appearances in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Seattle (but not Portland?).

Mount, Jane (illus.). & Thessaly La Force (ed). My Ideal Bookshelf. Little, Brown. Nov. 2012. 240p. ISBN 9780316200905. $24.99. LITERATURE
If you’re like me, you judge people by what’s on their bookshelves. Here’s a book that lets you see what folks like Malcolm Gladwell, Michael Chabon, Jennifer Egan, Gwyneth Paltrow, Mark Bittman, Patti Smith, and more have stashed on theirs. Each contributor weighs in on his or her favorites (“There’s no cumulative purpose—it’s just an excellent way to waste your life,” says Jonathan Lethem), and Mount provides whimsical drawings of side-by-side spines. Sweet.

Nelson, Willie & Kinky Friedman. The Troublemaker: A Story of Faith, Redemption, and Staying True to Your Deepest Beliefs. Morrow. Nov. 2012. 192p. ISBN 9780062193643. $22.99; eISBN 9780062193650. lrg. prnt. MEMOIR
Nelson is such a famed singer/songwriter/activist that next year Austin will place an eight-foot-tall bronze statue of him on Willie Nelson Boulevard. Meanwhile, here’s a memoir cum inspirational tale—and just right for the holidays. With his career stuttering and his personal life in shreds, Nelson wasn’t facing the greatest Christmas in 1971. Even his house burned down. So he decided to change everything, shrugging off pressures to sound Nashville and heading in a new creative direction that landed him where he is today. With a 125,000-copy first printing; note the large print, not surprisingly since this hardy 78-year-old has some mature fans.

Scottoline, Lisa & Francesca Serritella. Meet Me at Emotional Baggage Claim. St. Martin’s. Nov. 2012. 256p. ISBN 9780312640088. $25.99; eISBN 9781250025074. CD: Macmillan Audio. RELATIONSHIPS
Scottoline is doing so well with her juicily acerbic essays collections, particularly those written with daughter Serritella, that one wonders whether they will start taking precedence over her best-selling fiction. Here, mother and daughter deal with separation anxiety of an adult sort, as Serritella moves to the big city, Scottoline looks about her suburban empty nest, and both think about shifting boundaries. Cozy.

Standiford, Les. Desperate Sons: The Secret Band of Radicals Who Led the Colonies to War. Harper: HarperCollins. Nov. 2012. 336p. ISBN 9780061899553. $27.99; eISBN 9780062218124. HISTORY
This chronicle of the Sons of Liberty in the American Revolution is billed as a political thriller, so expect excitement. Author of the best-selling Bringing Adam Home, Standiford goes behind the glossy surface of iconic events like the Boston Tea Party and Paul Revere’s midnight gallop to explain how dangerous (and admittedly illegal) they really were. His aim: to show that we are more bound together by the chances these “desperate Sons” took than divided by the petty politics of today. Well, we can hope.

Tapper, Jake. The Outpost: The Untold Story of American Valor. Little, Brown. Nov. 2012. 608p. ISBN 9780316185394. $28.99. CD/downloadable: Hachette Audio. CURRENT EVENTS
After Combat Outpost Keating was abandoned, the Pentagon determined that the camp, located in the desolate mountains of Afghanistan just 14 miles from the Pakistan border, should never have been established. But first came the October 3, 2009, attack by nearly 400 Taliban fighters, which the 53 U.S. troops held off at considerable cost. A senior White House correspondent for ABC News, Tapper did hard investigate work to understand how this fiasco came about. Lots of buzz about Tapper as a rising media star.

Applebaum, Anne. Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1945–1956. Doubleday. Oct. 2012. 640p. ISBN 9780385515696. $35; eISBN 9780385536431. CD/downloadable: Random Audio. HISTORY
Slate and Washington Post columnist Applebaum won a Pulitzer for Gulag, so you can bet that a lot of folks will be anticipating her next book. Here she explains how the Soviet Union, suddenly in control of Eastern Europe after World War II, turned those countries into communist regimes and what life was then like for citizens who often found the new ideology utterly alien. Applebaum not only dug into newly opened archives but conducted interviews, which should give this book a personal feel. Exciting!

Bastianich, Lidia Matticchio & Tanya Bastianich Manuali. Lidia’s Favorite Recipes: 100 Foolproof Italian Dishes, from Basic Sauces to Irresistible Entrées. Knopf. Oct. 2012. 240p. ISBN 9780307595669. $24.95; eISBN 9780307960856. COOKBOOKS
Lidia Bastianich has famously written eight cookbooks, five accompanied by nationally syndicated public television series. Here, she again joins forces with daughter Tanya, an Oxford Ph.D. in renaissance art whose travel company arranges art and culinary tours of Italy. They’re aiming for a truly reader-friendly book, with a lower price point and more compact size than the previous titles. But I’m betting that you’ll find the same old Bastianich quality.

Berkus, Nate. The Things That Matter. Spiegel & Grau. Oct. 2012. 288p. ISBN 9780679644316. $35; eISBN 9780679644323. MEMOIR/INTERIOR DESIGN
Made famous by Oprah, star of his own talk show (just wrapping its second and last season), author of the best-selling Home Rules, and, coincidentally, an executive producer of The Help, Berkus is one hot designer. This book, partly a memoir about his rocketing success after founding a design firm in the mid-1990s at age 24, also talks about design precepts and “the things that matter”—the beautiful things he surrounds himself with that remind him of who and what he has loved and where he wants to go next. With a four-city tour to New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles; the media opportunities here are huge.

The Big New Yorker Book of Dogs. Random. Oct. 2012. 304p. ISBN 9780679644750. $40; eISBN 9780679644767. PETS
Essays, short humor, poems, fiction, and cartoons! By Malcolm Gladwell, Ian Frazier, John Updike, Susan Orlean, Arthur Miller, E.B. White, and more! All from The New Yorker! And all about dogs! (Don’t worry, aurilophiles, cats are up next.) 

Brzezinski, Matthew. Isaac’s Army: The Jewish Resistance in Occupied Poland. Random. Oct. 2012. 544p. ISBN 9780553807271. $30; eISBN 9780679645306. HISTORY
Yes, the Jews fought back during World War II, and journalist/author Brzezinski chronicles one telling example: an underground movement in Poland masterminded by Isaac Zuckerman, only in his twenties at the time. Based in the Warsaw Ghetto, the movement sent couriers throughout the country, protecting Jews while battling the Gestapo. All its members escaped through the sewers during the Ghetto Uprising, ultimately surviving the war and helping to smuggle Jews to Palestine; Brzezinski was able to interview many movement members for his book. One story of derring-do that really, really matters.     

Coleman, David G. The Fourteenth Day: JFK and the Aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis; The Secret White House Tapes. Norton. Oct. 2012. ISBN 9780393084412. $25.95. HISTORY
On October 28, 1962, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev agreed to remove nuclear missiles from Cuba, effectively ending the Cuban Missile Crisis. Or so we have always thought. In fact, as secretly recorded White House tapes now reveal, nuclear missiles, nuclear bombers, and Soviet troops remained in Cuba after that date, with Kennedy carefully negotiating to get as many of them out as possible within setting off the pugnacious Khrushchev. Director of the Miller Center’s Presidential Recording Program, Coleman has the goods.

Henken, Priscilla J. Taliesin Diary: A Year with Frank Lloyd Wright. Norton. Oct. 2012. 192p. ISBN 9780393733808. $34.95. MEMOIR/ARCHITECTURE
With husband David, Henken lived at Taliesin as part of the Fellowship, the architectural community that worshipfully surrounded Frank Lloyd Wright from the 1930s to the 1950s. Her diary, covering 1942–43, captures not only Wright at his height but an entire movement, spiritual as well as aesthetic, and the conflicts within the community. For smart readers.

Hitz, Alex. My Beverly Hills Kitchen: Classic Southern Cooking with a French Twist. Knopf. Oct. 2012. 368p. ISBN 9780307701527. $35; eISBN 9780307960948. COOKBOOKS
Red-Pepper Tart? Salted Caramel Cake? This is not your standard Southern cooking, though Hitz draws inspiration from his Deep South roots (raised in Atlanta, he was a partner in the city’s famed Patio by the River restaurant). Then he mixes it up with what he learned about cooking in France to create…la nourriture au réconfort? Good cooks will know Hitz’s luxury prepared foods line, The Beverly Hills Kitchen, which he promotes on his top-ranked HSN show of the same name. With a six-city tour to Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco; with a 75,000-copy first printing.

Kurzweil, Ray. How To Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed. Viking. Oct. 2012. 384p. ISBN 9780670025299. $27.95. SCIENCE
New York Times best-selling author (The Singularity Is Near), National Medal of Technology winner, and former LJ columnist (note that he was keynote speaker at LJ’s first virtual ebook summit), Kurzweil here explains reverse engineering the brain. It’s a project to understand how the brain works, how the mind emerges from it, and what this means for our understanding of intelligence, human or machine. So that you can stay cutting edge; with a nine-city tour.

London, Stacy. The Truth About Style. Viking. Oct. 2012. 288p. ISBN 9780670026234. $32.95. FASHION
Preteen psoriasis left London physically scarred and emotionally burdened, and later she endured bouts of anorexia and then binge eating that promptly doubled her weight. So the cohost of TLC’s What Not To Wear understands that how we feel about ourselves affects all our choices, including what we wear; our worst fashion don’ts often stem from deep-down crisis. Here, she helps us see the crisis, deflect those choices, and develop a style all our own. I’m already looking in the mirror….

O’Reilly, Bill & Martin Dugard. Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot. Holt. Oct. 2012. 304p. ISBN 9780805096668. $28. HISTORY
O’Reilly, who presides over the highest-rated cable news show in the country, had a best seller with Killing Lincoln. Here, joined by best-selling author Dugard, he moves forward a century to recount events leading up to the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the terrible day itself. And the subtitle suggests a look at the long-range consequences.

Presilla, Maricel E. Gran Cocina Latina: The Food of Latin America. Norton. Oct. 2012. ISBN 9780393050691. 864p. $45. COOKBOOKS
Lots of cookbooks out there on Latin American favorites, but this one seems truly comprehensive—just look at the page count (and there are 500 recipes). Co-owner of the Latin restaurants Zafra and Cucharamama in Hoboken, NJ (and a Ph.D. in medieval Spanish history—I like that), Presilla ranges from Mexico to Argentina and through the Spanish-speaking Caribbean to show us that Latin American cuisine is not just tamales but adobos, sofritos, sancocho, and more. With a five-city tour to New York, Miami, San Francisco, Napa Valley, and Los Angeles; seems pretty much essential if you’ve got the audience.
Quammen, David. Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic. Norton. Oct. 2012. 480p. ISBN 9780393066807. $28.95. SCIENCE
AIDS. SARS. Ebola. Frightening diseases with one thing in common: like other diseases even now being discovered, they originate with wild animals and are c`ommunicated to humans in a process called spillover. (It’s the price we pay for invading their space.) The John Burroughs Medal–winning author of The Song of the Dodo went into the field with scientists who trap bats in China and monkeys in Bangladesh to understand how and why these diseases emerge. For more on this critical issue, see Craig Timberg and Daniel Halperin’s Tinderbox: How the West Sparked the AIDS Epidemic and How the World Can Finally Overcome It and Peter Piot’s No Time To Lose: Life in Pursuit of Deadly Viruses, both out next month, and Nathan Wolfe’s recent The Viral Storm: The Dawn of a New Pandemic Age.

Queenan, Joe. One for the Books. Viking. Oct. 2012. 256p. ISBN 9780670025824. $24.95. LITERATURE
When he hasn’t been working as a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Spy, and other publications, writing for venues ranging from Time to Rolling Stone, or coming up with best-selling books like Closing Time: A Memoir, Queenan is reading, reading, reading. But he avoids books praised as “astonishing” and picks his reads in unusual ways: with his eyes closed, for instance, or by digging up books he always thought he would hate. By not taking a glowy aren’t-books-profound approach, he could be showing us what reading is all about. Try this, literati.

Schwalbe, Will. The End of Your Life Book Club. Knopf. Oct. 2012. 352p. ISBN 9780307594037. $25; eISBN 9780307961112. CD/downloadable: Random Audio. MEMOIR/LITERATURE
The hugely accomplished Schwalbe has had a hand in publishing (he’s a former senior vice president and editor in chief at Hyperion Books), journalism (he’s had pieces in the New York Times), and the new media (he founded of Cookstr.com). But then he’s had to keep up with his mother, who taught at Harvard and the Dalton School and then spent ten years building libraries in Afghanistan. When she was preparing for chemotherapy treatments at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Schwalbe asked her what she had read lately, and so began a habit of reading the same books and discussing them—an activity that sustained Schwalbe’s mother throughout her treatments. A perfect book-club book about books and the community they create that also portrays the love between mother and son; with a reading group guide (no surprise) and a six-city tour to Boston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, DC.

Sethi, Aman. A Free Man: A True Story of Life and Death in Delhi. Norton. Oct. 2012. 240p. ISBN 9780393088908. $24.95. BIOGRAPHY/CURRENT EVENTS
A former biology student who has worked as a butcher, tailor, and electrician’s apprentice, Mohammed Ashraf is indeed free of the baggage of everyday life; he is now a homeless day laborer in Old Dehli. Sethi, a correspondent for the Hindu whose reporting has earned him an International Committee of the Red Cross award, aims to illuminate the global economic crisis by detailing what happened to Ashraf, providing vivid scenes of a tuberculosis hospital, Beggars Court, and the Old Delhi Railway Station where Ashraf and his friends gather. Already an international best seller; I’m feeling good about this book.

Tatar, Maria, ed. The Annotated Brothers Grimm. Norton. Oct. 2012. 576p. ISBN 9780393088861. $39.95. FAIRY TALES
It’s been 200 years since the publication of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s Children’s Stories and Household Tales, which collected the treasures of Europe’s oral folk tradition. To celebrate, here’s a deluxe edition of indefatigable Harvard folklorist Tatar’s annotated Grimm anthology, first published by Norton in 2004. Six new tales have been added (e.g., “Four Clever Brothers” and “The White Snake”), and even more illustrations grace the pages. (Think Arthur Rackham and George Cruikshank, among others.) Definitely consider replacing those battered 2004 copies.

Annan, Kofi. Interventions: A Life in War and Peace. Sept. 2012. Penguin Pr: Penguin Group (USA). NAp. ISBN 9781594204203. $36. MEMOIR/CURRENT EVENTS
Few memoirs coming out this year will be as interesting and as important as this one by Annan, seventh Secretary-General of the UN from January 1997 to December 2006 and a corecipient (with the UN itself) of the Nobel Peace Prize for having founded the Global AIDS and Health Fund. Check in on how the world turned during his time in office.

Bar-Zohar, Michael & Nissim Mishal. Mossad: The Greatest Missions of the Israeli Secret Service. Ecco: HarperCollins. Sept. 2012. 320p. ISBN 9780062123404. $26.99; eISBN 9780062123442. HISTORY
Official biographer of David Ben-Gurion and Shimon Peres, Bar-Zohar joins with leading Israeli TV personality Mishal to document the history of Israel’s crack intelligence service, focusing on high-profile cases ranging from Eichmann’s apprehension to the killing of important Iranian nuclear scientists—which makes the book particularly relevant. With a 30,000-copy first printing.

Bawer, Bruce. Children of the Revolution: How Identity Studies Have Destroyed American Higher Education. Broadside: HarperCollins. Sept. 2012. 288p. ISBN 9780061807374. $25.99; eISBN 9780062097064. HISTORY/EDUCATION
Since Bawer’s While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within was a New York Times best seller and a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and his Stealing Jesus a PW Best Book of the Year, it’s worth paying attention to his latest, a critique of how identity politics have shaped the academy in the last four decades. Not everyone will agree with Bawer that Chicano, African American, and Women’s Studies courses are exercises strictly in power struggle and victimhood that have gotten in the way of objective reasoning, but then listening to all sides of the argument is exactly what thoughtful readers should do. With a 50,000-copy first printing.

Gitlin, Todd. Occupy Nation: The Roots, the Spirit, and the Promise of Occupy Wall Street. It: HarperCollins. Sept. 2012. 176p. ISBN 9780062200921. pap. $10. CURRENT EVENTS
Wall Street may not be occupied right now, but the Occupy Wall Street movement has changed our way of thinking; we all know what that “99 percent” means. Arguing that the movement has been misrepresented by both the Left and the Right, Gitlin—author, Columbia journalism/sociology professor, and former president of Students for a Democratic Society—considers the causes and consequences of the movement and where it might go next. Not a huge printing, but right for the right readers; note the 99 percent–friendly paperback price.

Greenberg, Andy. This Machine Kills Secrets: How WikiLeakers, Cypherpunks, and Hacktivists Aim To Free the World’s Information. Dutton. Sept. 2012. 384p. ISBN 9780525953203. $26.95. TECHNOLOGY/CURRENT EVENTS
In the Sixties we marched in the streets. Now many young men and women fed up with the government, the military, and the corporations slip into silent whistleblower mode, anonymously uploading institutional secrets that they feel should be exposed. Think WikiLeaks, Anonymous, and OpenLeaks, and think about the long-term impact, as Forbes reporter Greenberg has us do here.

Johnson, Joyce. The Voice Is All: The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac. Viking. Sept. 2012. 512p. ISBN 9780670025107. $32.95. BIOGRAPHY
Nine months before On the Road was published, aspiring novelist Johnson met Jack Kerouac on a blind date set up by Allen Ginsberg. Minor Characters, her National Book Critics Circle Award winner, detailed their relationship. Here Johnson looks at Kerouac the young artist, showing that his French Canadian background, which left him suspended between two languages and two cultures, deeply influenced his work. For literati everywhere.

Lofgren, Mike. The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted. Viking. Sept. 2012. 208p. ISBN 9780670026265. $24.95. CURRENT EVENTS
Lofgren, a Republican who worked as a Congressional staffer for 28 years—the last 16 as a senior analyst on the House and Senate Budget committees—made news in September 2011 when he angrily quit over the debt ceiling crisis. Critical though he is of the tired Democrats, he saves his real bashing for the Republicans, whom he called lunatics in a piece he subsequently wrote for Truthout. That piece got so many hits so fast that the site crashed; reading the book might be just as tumultuous an experience.

McCord, Catherine. Weelicious: Fast, Easy, and Fresh Recipes Your Kids Want To Eat! Morrow Cookbooks. Sept. 2012. 288p. ISBN 9780062078445. $27.50. COOKING
With a new baby and a culinary degree, McCord was well positioned to launch Weelicious.com, which began as a compendium of baby food purees and now fosters family eating that is healthful and tasty and suggests how to teach kids to make smart choices about food. The site gets more than 500,000 hits a day and was among the New York Observer’s Top Ten “Must Read” Websites for Parents, so this should be in demand. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Max, D.T. Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace. Viking. Sept. 2012. 336p. ISBN 9780670025923. $26.95. BIOGRAPHY
Appearing in The New Yorker a year after David Foster Wallace’s suicide at age 46, Max’s “The Unfinished: David Foster Wallace’s Struggle To Surpass Infinite Jest” really fired up readers. Now Max offers what is less a portrait of the man than of the artist, detailing Wallace’s struggles to become a novelist while circumventing depression and addiction. He also explores Wallace’s powerful impact on American letters—particularly as a symbol of integrity in an increasingly slick world.

Mazower, Mark. Governing the World: The Rise and Fall of an Idea, 1815 to the Present. Penguin Pr: Penguin Group (USA). Sept. 2012. NAp. ISBN 9781594203497. $25.95. HISTORY
Having ranged from Duff Cooper Prize winner Salonica City of Ghosts to Los Angeles Times Book Prize winner Hitler’s Empire, among many other titles, Oxford-trained historian Mazower—now director of the Center for International History at Columbia University—seems good and ready to discuss world government from the post-Napoleonic era forward. Go for it, history fans.

Mendez, Antonio & Matt Baglio. Argo: How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History. Viking. Sept. 2012. 352p. ISBN 9780670026227. $26.95. Downloadable: Random Audio. HISTORY
In 1979, after Iranian militants stormed the American Embassy in Tehran, creating a hostage situation that lasted 444 days, six Americans escaped. Then a CIA agent, Mendez arranged for their rescue by bringing a bunch of Hollywood directors, producers, and actors to Iran, ostensibly to scout locations for a film they dubbed Argo but in fact to contact the escapees and smuggle them out. A crazy plan, but it worked, and Mendez is sharing the details only now. Yes, a film about the rescue is forthcoming, starring Ben Affleck and releasing in September.

Miller, Carol. Up All Night: My Life and Times in Rock Radio. Ecco: HarperCollins. Sept. 2012. 208p. ISBN 9780061845246. $24.99. MEMOIR/MUSIC
You bet that there are readers anticipating this memoir by the country’s top female disc jockey, who was raised in a staunchly intellectual Jewish household in Queens, got into progressive rock radio while at the University of Pennsylvania, worked with legends like Cousin Brucie, went all chatty with Paul McCartney and dated Steve Tyler, and eventually made it to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, having hugely shaped the business with her distinctive on-air approach. Here she tells her story, revealing her battle with cancer and fears about an unnamed illness that has taken many family members early in life, which gave her a real incentive to accomplish.

Perry, Michael. Visiting Tom: A Man, a Highway, and the Road to Roughneck Grace. Harper: HarperCollins. Sept. 2012. 336p. ISBN 9780061894442. $25.99; eISBN 9780062097798. BIOGRAPHY
Perry recently returned home to a 37-acre farm in New Auburn, WI (see his Population: 485), where he serves on the local rescue service when not commenting for NPR or acting as a contributing editor to Men’s Health. He’s also neighbors with octogenarian Tom Hartwig, who builds his own cannons, runs a shop seemingly “stocked by Rube Goldberg, curated by Hunter Thompson, and rearranged by a small earthquake,” and defies the four-lane interstate that was shoved through his front yard a few decades back. Perry is a good author—2009’s Coop was an Indie best seller and won a bunch of regional awards—and this portrait of an individual is also a welcome portrait of an underrepresented place and lifestyle. So check it out, especially if Perry come to your neighborhood; his driving tour takes him to Iowa City, Des Moines, Chicago, Wichita, Grand Rapids, Kansas City, St. Louis, Omaha, Lincoln, and Nashville, as well as Northfield, Stillwater, and Minneapolis, MN, and Madison, Rice, Red Wing, and Milwaukee, WI.

Ricks, Thomas E. The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today. Sept. 2012. Penguin Pr: Penguin Group (USA). Sept. 2012. ISBN 9781594204043. $36. CURRENT EVENTS
Once a reporter for the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, currently with the Center for a New American Security and a Foreign Policy blogger, Pulitzer Prize winner Ricks has already given us two best-selling books on our recent venture in Iraq, The Gamble and Fiasco. Here he steps back to provide a broader picture of military leadership—and particularly the decline in sound military leadership—since World War II. No doubt sobering.

Silver, Nate. The Signal and the Noise: Why Most Predictions Fail – But Some Don’t. Penguin Pr: Penguin Group (USA). Sept. 2012. NAp. ISBN 9781594204111. $27.95. SOCIAL SCIENCE
In 2008, Silver created the polling website and blog FiveThirtyEight.com (named for the number of electors in the electoral college), then relaunched the blog with the New York Times two years later. Here he challenges the very idea of making predictions in everything from weather to politics (interesting position for a pollster), so I won’t venture to say how this book will do. But it has a built-in audience.

Simmons, Sylvie. I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen. Ecco: HarperCollins. Sept. 2012. 384p. ISBN 9780061994982. $27.99. BIOGRAPHY/MUSIC
A music journalist who’s profiled folks like Neil Young and Johnny Cash and recently won an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for her liner notes for Leonard Cohen Live at the Isle of Wight 1970, Simmons conducted more than 100 interviews with friends and musicians (ranging from Judy Collins to, interestingly, Phillip Glass) to craft this portrait of the man who gave us such immortal songs as “Suzanne” and “Bird on a Wire.” Music lovers of a certain age will want, and since Cohen has just wrapped up a sold-out three-year world tour after a 15-year hiatus, he’ll be on their minds.

Weiss, Luisa. My Berlin Kitchen: A Love Story (with Recipes). Viking. Sept. 2012. 320p. ISBN 9780670025381. $26.95. MEMOIR/COOKING
When cookbook editor Weiss launched Thewednesdaychef.com, now an award-winning blog that boasts 100,000 unique visitors per month, it was just the beginning of a dramatic story. As she wrote about cooking her way through a stack of recipes, she was inspired to dump her fiancé, then her job, then her home, leaving New York for Berlin, where she had been partly raised by her Italian mother. Yummy tales, like foraging for plums in an abandoned orchard; even the curmudgeonly might want to head for the kitchen. With an eight-city tour.

White, Kate. Sweet Success: How To Get It, Run with It, Savor It. Harper Business: HarperCollins. Sept. 2012. 320p. ISBN 9780062122124. $24.99. BUSINESS
Here’s what White is doing when she’s not at her desk as editor in chief of Cosmopolitan or writing best sellers like the Bailey Weggins mystery series: she’s writing a career guide for women aiming to make it today’s tumultuous business world. To achieve success, says White, you’ve got to “Get It”—that is, take a risk that will land you ahead of the curve, as White did when she put Lady Gaga on Cosmo’s cover—then keep building on what you’ve done and learn to enjoy it (or why bother?). With a 40,000-copy first printing and lots of publicity through social media.

du Plessix Gray, Francine. The Queen’s Lover. Penguin Pr: Penguin Group (USA). Jun. 2012. 304p. ISBN 9781594203374. $25.95. Downloadable: Penguin Audio. LITERARY
This queen is Marie Antoinette, and her lover is Swedish nobleman Count Axel von Fersen, though they don’t initially become intimate when they meet at a masked ball in 1774 and the 19-year-old Marie Antoinette is but a dauphine, married to the man who would become Louis XVI. Fersen becomes close to the entire royal family, learning their secrets, then, after enlisting in the cause of the American Revolution, returns to France’s own bloody upheaval. The rigorous and penetrating du Plessix Gray should do for Louis XVI’s France would Hillary Mantel did for Henry VIII in Wolf  Hall, that is, make real art, distinctively her own, of an already fascinating time, place, and cast of characters.

Lanchester, John. Capital: A Novel. Norton. Jun. 2012. 544p. ISBN 9780393082074. $26.95. LITERARY
It’s 2008, and even as the economy shudders and falls, something sinister is happening on Pepys Road, London. The residents are an interesting mix—a banker and his greedy wife, an older woman terminally ill with cancer and her graffiti-artist son, Pakistani shop owners, refugees, a soccer star, and more—and they’re all getting postcards reading “We Want What You Have.” What that is, no one knows, but the ominousness fits perfectly with the anxiety of society at large, even as the novel chronicles the small, personal dramas of each household. Lanchester’s award-winning novels (e.g., The Debt of Pleasure) show him to have a sharp eye for social detail, and this novel should serve well to capture our aching times.

Steele, Jon. The Watchers. Blue Rider: Penguin Group (USA). Jun. 2012. 560p. ISBN 9780399158742. $26.95. THRILLER
Corpses bearing the marks of torture are showing up around Lausanne Cathedral, where an innocent named Marc Rochat serves as le guet—the man who rings out the hour from the church’s belfry. Katherine Taylor, a high-priced American call girl, lives just across the square. Soon they encounter a British private eye named Jay Harper who’s been sent to investigate the murders—by whom he cannot remember, though he does seem to remember the Latin he never knew that he knew. In this atmospheric but (at first glance) sharply written story—called a mystical noir-thriller by the publisher, written in the spirit of recent works by Danielle Trussoni and Anne Rice—stone angels adorn the cathedral, but real angels, tumbled from heaven, may be the cause of the trouble. A first novel (and first in a series) from Steele, for years a master cameraman for Independent Television News and author of War Junkie, an underground classic; really smart work for serious thriller readers.

Vargas Llosa, Mario. The Dream of the Celt. Farrar. Jun. 2012. 480p. ISBN 9780374143466. $28. LITERARY FICTION
A book from Nobel prize winner Vargas Llosa is always a treat, and this one is also something of a surprise. His subject is Irish nationalist Robert Casement, who in 1916 was hanged by the British government for treason. Casement had fought to improve the lives of oppressed people worldwide, from the Belgian Congo to the Amazon, but when he began highlighting injustices closer to home his fate was sealed. Casement’s legacy is not well known, and Vargas Llosa resurrects him—but in fictional form, allowing for a deeper exploration of motive and emotion. Obviously for all literary readers.

Collins, Gail. As Texas Goes…: How the Lone Star State Hijacked the American Agenda. Norton. Jun. 2012. 256p. ISBN 9780871404077. $25.95. POLITICS
“What happens in Texas doesn’t stay in Texas anymore.” That truth is delivered by the ever-perceptive Collins, New York Times columnist and best-selling author (When Everything Changed), who always thought of the country as two liberal coasts flanking a Republican heartland (she herself is from Ohio). Lately, she has come to understand that the country’s entire political agenda has been set by Texas, where a conservative ideology supporting deregulation, lowered environmental protections, tax cuts, and a states’ rights approach has been championed by George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and now Rick Perry. To understand what’s going on with the nation, we need to look at Texas—exactly what the acerbically smart Collins does. All set to raise both cheers and hackles; get it. 

McLane, Maureen N. My Poets. Farrar. Jun. 2012. 240p. ISBN 9780374217495. $25. MEMOIR/LITERATURE
The author of two collections (2010’s World Enough was an LJ Best Poetry Book), McLane writes musically astute lines that deliver a sharp and gratifying sense of story, character, or place; her poems are wonderful to dwell in. So it’s a delight to learn that she’s offering this book, not a study of poetry but of how certain poets have shaped her writing, her thinking, her very life. She thus presents her own story and literary exegesis as two sides of the same bright coin, and we meet her as we meet Chaucer, Shelley, Louise Glück, and more. I’m expecting a lot of this book.