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  My Misspent Youth

  Meghan Daum

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  An essayist in the tradition of Joan Didion, Meghan Daum is one of the most celebrated nonfiction writers of her generation, widely recognized for her fresh, provocative approach with which she unearths the hidden fault lines in the American landscape. From her well remembered New Yorker essays about the financial demands of big-city ambition and the ethereal, strangely old-fashioned allure of cyber-relationships to her dazzlingly hilarious riff in Harper's about musical passions that give way to middle-brow paraphernalia, Daum delves into the center of things while closely examining the detritus that spills out along the way. With precision and well-balanced irony, Daum implicates herself as readily as she does the targets that fascinate and horrify her.

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  Hitler's Engineers - Fritz Todt...

  Blaine Taylor

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  “An intriguing account of two of Nazi Germany’s top architects” and how their work prolonged the war for months—includes hundreds of photos (WWII History).  A Selection of the Military Book Club.   While Nazi Germany’s temporary ascendancy owed much to military skill, the talent of its engineers not only buoyed the regime but allowed it to survive longer than would normally be expected. This unique work focusing on Fritz Todt and Albert Speer is based on many previously unpublished photographs and artwork from captured Nazi records.   Todt was the brilliant builder of the world’s first superhighway system, the Autobahn, and the architect of the German West Wall, the Siegfried Line, that predated the later Atlantic and East Walls. The builder of each of the wartime “Führer Headquarters,” as well as the submarine pens, Todt was killed in a still-mysterious airplane crash that may well have been a Nazi death plot, though he was given a state funeral by Hitler.   Todt was succeeded as German Minister of Armaments and War Production by the Führer’s longtime personal architect, Albert Speer, who was described by the Allies after the war as having prolonged the conflict by at least a year. Called a genius by Hitler, Speer designed and built the prewar Nuremberg Nazi Party Congress rally stands and buildings. More importantly, amid the constant rain of Allied bombs and the Soviet advances from the East, Speer managed to keep the German industrial machine running until the spring of 1945, though it was driven ever further underground. He also allocated resources to fortifications and counterattacks, like the V-missile installations, against both West and East, in attempts to stave off defeat. Convicted as a war criminal at Nuremberg, Speer served twenty years at Spandau Prison and remained a Nazi apologist who died in London in 1981 on the anniversary of the German invasion of Poland.   Together, Todt and Speer were the pillars that propped up the Third Reich through the vicissitudes of battlefield fortune. With over three hundred photographs, this is the first work that examines their role in history’s most terrible war.

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  The Mayfair Mafia - The Lives...

  Dick Kirby

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  This true crime history reveals the shocking career of the London mafia family that ran a thriving prostitution empire for decades.   From the mid-1930s into the 1950s, one immigrant Italian family ran London’s thriving vice trade. The five Messina brothers imported prostitutes from the Continent on an industrial scale, acquiring British citizenship for the women by phony marriages. Taking 80% of these women’s earnings, the Messina family became fabulously wealthy, purchasing expensive properties, cars and influence.   As this revealing and absorbing account describes, the brothers ruled with a ruthless combination of charm, blackmail and threats of disfigurement and death that were all too credible. It took a sensational Sunday newspaper exposé to get the authorities to put an end to their criminal reign. A series of dramatic arrests and trials followed, as one by one the brothers were imprisoned and deported for crimes including immoral earnings, attempted bribery and firearms offenses.   Such was their fortune that numerous potential beneficiaries came forward, most recently in 2012. Dick Kirby, an author and former Metropolitan police officer, presents a vividly detailed and thoroughly researched narrative of the five Messina brothers in this revealing and riveting read.

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  Between the Pipes - A Revealing...

  Randi Druzin

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  A Canadian sportswriter profiles twelve legendary NHL goaltenders in a book that “reveals the changing face of professional hockey in the last half century” (Publishers Weekly).   Some NHL goalies are great and others are intriguing characters, but a select few are legends because they're both. Such is the case with the dozen players featured here. In Between the Pipes, veteran hocky writer Randi Druzin profiles these athletes, revealing the traits that make each one unique.   Gump Worsley defied the laws of biomechanics by being nimble despite having a cabbage-shaped body. He was also one of the funniest men ever to start in goal. Glenn Hall used to wrestle with a trainer in the dressing room before games and Jacques Plante refused to stay at a particular Toronto hotel. Despite their quirks, these twelve goalies are among the best the game has ever seen. With wit and verve, Druzin paints unforgettable portraits of these masked mavericks.

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  Risking Life for Death - Lessons...

  Ryan Blumenthal

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  Every contact leaves a trace: a single strand of hair or a tiny droplet of blood can be the silent witness at a crime scene.
  Locard's Exchange Principle underpins all forensic science and holds that the perpetrator of a crime will bring something to the crime scene and leave with something from it.
  Forensic experts use this principle daily to catch murderers and assailants. In Risking Life for Death, South African forensic pathologist Ryan Blumenthal offers a master class in this singular forensic technique based on real-life case studies. With more than twenty years' experience in the field, Blumenthal explains how to look for clues and traces, and how what he does not find at autopsy is often more important than what he does find. In other words, the absence of evidence can sometimes be of greater value than the presence of evidence.
  His account also highlights the dangers forensic pathologists are exposed to daily. As they try to unravel the puzzle of someone's death, forensic pathologists often face life-threatening infections, toxic gases and the hazards associated with high-profile cases – in effect, risking their life to solve someone else's death.
  An understanding of Locard's Exchange Principle can help you become a medical detective in your own life, can help you be a happier person and can even provide you with a better philosophy for growing older, Blumenthal argues.

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  The Confession

  James E. McGreevey

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  In August 2004, Governor James E. McGreevey of New Jersey made history when he stepped before microphones, declared "My truth is that I am a gay American," and announced his resignation. The story made international headlines—but what led to that moment was a human and political drama more complex and fascinating than anyone knew. Now, in this extraordinarily candid memoir, McGreevey shares his story of a life of ambition, moral compromise, and redemption. From childhood, McGreevey lived a kind of idealized American life. The son of working-class Irish Catholic parents, named for an uncle who died at Iwo Jima, he strove to exceed expectations in everything he did, meeting each new challenge as though his "future rode on every move." As a young man he was tempted by the priesthood, yet it was another calling—politics—that he found irresistible. Plunging early into the dangerous waters of New Jersey politics, he won three elections by the age of thirty-six, and soon thereafter nearly toppled the state's popular governor, Christie Todd Whitman, in a photo-finish election. Four years later, he won the governorship by a landslide.Throughout his adult life, however, Jim McGreevey had been forced to suppress a fundamental truth about himself: that he was gay. He knew at once that the only clear path to his dreams was to live a straight life, and so he split in two, accepting the traditional role of family man while denying his deepest emotions. And he discovered, to his surprise, that becoming a political player demanded ethical shortcuts that became as corrosive as living in the closet. In the cutthroat culture of political bosses, backroom deals, and the insidious practice known as "pay-to-play," he writes, "political compromises came easy to me because I'd learned how to keep a part of myself innocent of them." His policy triumphs as governor were tempered by scandal, as the transgressions of his staff came back to haunt him. Yet only when a former lover threatened to expose him did he finally confront his divided soul, and find the authentic self that had always eluded him. More than a coming-out memoir, The Confession is the story of one man's quest to repair the rift between his public and private selves, at a time in our culture when the personal and political have become tangled like frayed electric cables. Teeming with larger-than-life characters, written with honesty, grace, and rare insight into what it means to negotiate the minefields of American public life, it may be among the most honest political memoirs ever written.

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