Never Suck a Dead Man’s Hand: Curious Adventures of a CSI by Dana Kollmann

One of my colleagues brought this book to me, because she thought I might like it. The title alone piqued my interest, so I gave it a try. The author starts off by debunking a few myths about crime scene investigation. She explains that real CSIs don’t wear mini-skirts and heels to work and they [...]

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Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore To the Revolution, by Caroline Weber

If you need something to fill up the empty space where Project Runway used to be… if you pause the DVD of Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette on the close-ups of Marie’s satiny, beribboned heels… do I have a book for you!
Weber looks at the reign and downfall of Marie Antoinette, eighteenth-century fashionista, with a focus [...]

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Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets, by Sudhir Venkatesh

If you’ve read Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner you may remember a chapter called “Why do drug dealers still live with their moms?” Levitt and Dubner write about the research conducted by a graduate student, who took to the streets of a Chicago public housing project. That student, Sudhir Venkatesh, elaborates [...]

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Thomas Jefferson – A Film by Ken Burns (1996)

This is an excellent documentary by Ken Burns on the life of Thomas Jefferson. Ken Burns is a master of his craft and has created many fine documentaries that I have enjoyed, including Baseball and Jazz. The technical aspects of the film are top notch. The way he weaves commentary in with pictures, still shots, [...]

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Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone?, by Mark Zwonitzer

In 1927, Ralph Peer of the Victor Talking Machine Company loaded up his sound recording equipment and headed down from New Jersey to Bristol, VA on the Virginia-Tennessee border. Peer had been impressed by the popularity of “hillbilly” music among record buyers, and was seeking out new talent to include on the Victor label. [...]

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Schulz and Peanuts, by David Michaelis

I’ve been gulping down The Complete Peanuts reprints as they’ve been released for the last few years. Like most of those in my generation, I grew up in a world where Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy, Linus, and company were everpresent. I’ve always related to Charles Schulz’s depressed, anxious, yet whimsical children and their attempts to [...]

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This Glorious Struggle, by Edward Lengel

It isn’t hard to find George Washington hagiographies. Starting with Mason Locke Weems and the legendary cherry tree, writers have treated Washington as superhuman and above reproach. That is not to imply that he isn’t a great man – his resolve to walk away from the Presidency is probably the best example of [...]

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Born Standing Up, by Steve Martin

Most people today think of Steve Martin as the star of pleasant but rather bland family comedies. At least two other sides of Martin, however, are noteworthy. First, he’s a thoughtful writer whose short comic pieces, novels, and nonfiction are all worth a look. Second, his brand of abstract stand-up comedy–free for the most part of [...]

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Positively 4th Street: the Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina, and Richard Farina, by David Hajdu

I’m always fascinated by those historical moments when everything lines up right and a small group of friends and acquaintances produces not just one famous person, but a whole group of historically important people. David Hajdu has captured one of those moments in his book Positively 4th Street.
Many people may have forgotten, but there was a [...]

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A Woman in Charge, by Carl Bernstein

I’m not much of a biography reader. The occasional memoir is nice, because the author can focus on discrete events, but a full-fledged biography? Dang, that kind of thing covers the person’s entire life. Can’t I just get the highlights?
Besides, the typical biography does not include zombies or werewolves or vampires. I have very little [...]

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