Reaching for Glory: Lyndon Johnson's Secret White House Tapes 1964-65


Michael R. Beschloss - 2001
    Reaching for Glory exposes the inner workings of the Johnson presidency from the summer of 1964 through the summer of 1965. From behind the scenes, you will hear Johnson pulling the strings of his presidential campaign against Barry Goldwater and pursuing his feud with the new senator Robert Kennedy. He agonizes over Martin Luther King, Jr., and the bloody march on Selma, Alabama, and twists arms on Capitol Hill to pass voting rights, Medicare, and more basic laws than any American president before or since. Above all, you will hear him sending young Americans off to Vietnam while privately insisting that the war can never be won. Winding Johnson's voice and exclusive excerpts from Lady Bird Johnson's private diaries into a gripping narrative, Michael Beschloss provides context and historical insights, showing how profoundly LBJ changed the presidency and the country. Reaching for Glory allows us to live at Lyndon Johnson's side, day by day, through the dramatic, triumphant, and catastrophic year of a turbulent presidency that continues to affect us all.

Wetbones


John Shirley - 1991
    Then his roommate’s missing brother turns up in a local hospital having sliced open his own chest and legs for some sick, inexplicable reason. In Oakland, the Reverend Garner, a recovering addict, leaves his ministry in search of his teenage daughter, who was last seen in the company of her ghoulish kidnapper. And the Los Angeles police are meanwhile baffled in their hunt for the elusive “Wetbones” serial killer who leaves nothing of his victims behind except a damp, grisly pile of bones. Though Tom, the reverend, and the LAPD are on separate quests for answers, they are all being led into the darkest shadows of Hollywood, where the debauchery never ceases and pleasure is a drug that devours human flesh, blood, and sanity. But the true source of the all-consuming addiction is the most horrifying revelation of all, for it is not of this rational Earth. From International Horror Guild Award–winning author John Shirley, the acclaimed “splatterpunk” classic Wetbones combines the monstrous inventiveness of H. P. Lovecraft with the exquisite excess of Clive Barker. A true masterwork of modern terror, it’s decidedly not for the faint of heart.

All the President's Men


Carl Bernstein - 1974
    This is “the work that brought down a presidency— perhaps the most influential piece of journalism in history” (Time, All-Time 100 Best Nonfiction Books).This is the book that changed America. Published just two months before President Nixon’s resignation, All the President’s Men revealed the full scope of the Watergate scandal and introduced for the first time the mysterious “Deep Throat.” Beginning with the story of a simple burglary at Democratic headquarters and then continuing through headline after headline, Bernstein and Woodward deliver the stunning revelations and pieces in the Watergate puzzle that brought about Nixon’s shocking downfall. Their explosive reports won a Pulitzer Prize for The Washington Post, toppled the president, and have since inspired generations of reporters.All the President’s Men is a riveting detective story, capturing the exhilarating rush of the biggest presidential scandal in U.S. history as it unfolded in real time. It is, as former New York Times managing editor Gene Roberts has called it, “maybe the single greatest reporting effort of all time.”

Requiem for a Dream


Hubert Selby Jr. - 1978
    She becomes addicted to diet pills in her obsessive quest, while her junkie son, Harry, along with his girlfriend, Marion, and his best friend, Tyrone, have devised an illicit shortcut to wealth and leisure by scoring a pound of uncut heroin. Entranced by the gleaming visions of their futures, these four convince themselves that unexpected setbacks are only temporary. Even as their lives slowly deteriorate around them, they cling to their delusions and become utterly consumed in the spiral of drugs and addiction, refusing to see that they have instead created their own worst nightmares."Selby's place is in the front rank of American novelists. HIs work has the power, the intimacy with suffering and morality, the honesty and moral urgency of Doestoevsky's. To understand Selby's work is to understand the anguish of America." - The New York Times Book Review

The Shetland Sea Murders


Marsali Taylor - 2021
    A fishing vessel has become trapped on the rocks off the coast of one of the islands.In the days that follow, there's both a shocking murder and a baffling death. On the surface there's no link, but when Cass becomes involved it is soon clear that her life is also in danger.Convinced that someone sinister is at work in these Shetland waters, Cass is determined to find and stop them. But uncovering the truth could prove to be deadly . .

Apathy and Other Small Victories


Paul Neilan - 2006
    Usually on a Greyhound bus, right before his life falls apart again. Just like he planned. But this time it's complicated: there's a sadistic corporate climber who thinks she's his girlfriend, a rent-subsidized affair with his landlord's wife, and the bizarrely appealing deaf assistant to Shane's cosmically unstable dentist. When one of the women is murdered, and Shane is the only suspect who doesn't care enough to act like he didn't do it, the question becomes just how he'll clear the good name he never had and doesn't particularly want: his own.

Exquisite Corpse


Poppy Z. Brite - 1996
    After feigning his own death to escape from prison, Compton makes his way to the United States with the sole ambition of bringing his "art" to new heights. Tortured by his own perverse desires, and drawn to possess and destroy young boys, Compton inadvertently joins forces with Jay Byrne, a dissolute playboy who has pushed his "art" to limits even Compton hadn't previously imagined. Together, Compton and Byrne set their sights on an exquisite young Vietnamese-American runaway, Tran, whom they deem to be the perfect victim.Swiftly moving from the grimy streets of London's Piccadilly Circus to the decadence of the New Orleans French Quarter, and punctuated by rants from radio talk show host Lush Rimbaud, a.k.a. Luke Ransom, Tran's ex-lover, who is dying of AIDS and who intends to wreak ultimate havoc before leaving this world, Exquisite Corpse unfolds into a labyrinth of murder and love. Ultimately all four characters converge on a singular bloody night after which their lives will be irrevocably changed — or terminated.Poppy Z. Brite dissects the landscape of torture and invites us into the mind of a killer. Exquisite Corpse confirms Brite as a writer who defies categorization. It is a novel for those who dare trespass where the sacred and profane become one.

Respected Sir, Wedding Song, The Search


Naguib Mahfouz - 2001
    Together with The Beggar, The Thief and The Dogs, and Autumn Quail (published by Anchor in December 2000), these novels represent a comprehensive collection of Mahfouz’s artful meditations on post-revolution Egypt. Diverse in style and narrative technique, they render a nuanced and universally resonant vision of modern life in the Middle East.Respected Sir, “a latter-day Bleak House in Arabic” (The New York Times), revisits a familiar theme–vaulting ambition–in a powerful and religious metaphor. Wedding Song, “one of Mahfouz’s most enjoyable works” (The Chicago Tribune), is a psychological drama, focusing on how four very different kinds of minds apprehend and reckon with the realities that surround them. The Search is a powerful, lurid, and compelling story of lust, greed, and murder.

Winter's Bone


Daniel Woodrell - 2006
    Her father has skipped bail on charges that he ran a crystal meth lab, and the Dollys will lose their house if he doesn't show up for his next court date.Ree's father has disappeared before. The Dolly clan has worked the shadowy side of the law for generations, and arrests (and attempts to avoid them) are part of life in Rathlin Valley. But the house is all they have, and Ree's father would never forfeit it to the bond company unless something awful happened. With two young brothers depending on her and a mother who's entered a kind of second childhood, Ree knows she has to bring her father back, dead or alive, or else see her family turned out into the unforgiving cold.Sixteen-year-old Ree, who has grown up in the harsh poverty of the Ozarks, learns quickly that asking questions of the rough Dolly clan can be a fatal mistake. She perseveres past obstacles of every kind and finally confronts the top figures in the family's hierarchy.Along the way to a shocking revelation, Ree discovers unexpected depths in herself and in a family network that protects its own at any cost.

Gun, With Occasional Music


Jonathan Lethem - 1994
    Near-future Oakland is a brave new world where evolved animals are members of society, the police monitor citizens by their karma levels, and mind-numbing drugs such as Forgettol and Acceptol are all the rage.Metcalf has been shadowing Celeste, the wife of an affluent doctor. Perhaps he's falling a little in love with her at the same time. When the doctor turns up dead, our amiable investigator finds himself caught in a crossfire between the boys from the Inquisitor's Office and gangsters who operate out of the back room of a bar called the Fickle Muse.Mixing elements of sci-fi, noir, and mystery, this clever first novel from the author of Motherless Brooklyn is a wry, funny, and satiric look at all that the future may hold.

A Firing Offense


George Pelecanos - 1992
    Blow-out sales and shady deals are his life. When a stockroom boy hooked on speed metal and the fast life disappears, Nick has to help find him.

Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine


Tom Wolfe - 1977
    In these stories and essays Wolfe meets the question head-on -- even providing the label "The Me Decade".

A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order


Richard N. Haass - 2017
    The rules, policies, and institutions that have guided the world since World War II have largely run their course. Respect for sovereignty alone cannot uphold order in an age defined by global challenges from terrorism and the spread of nuclear weapons to climate change and cyberspace. Meanwhile, great power rivalry is returning. Weak states pose problems just as confounding as strong ones. The United States remains the world’s strongest country, but American foreign policy has at times made matters worse, both by what the U.S. has done and by what it has failed to do. The Middle East is in chaos, Asia is threatened by China’s rise and a reckless North Korea, and Europe, for decades the world’s most stable region, is now anything but. As Richard Haass explains, the election of Donald Trump and the unexpected vote for “Brexit” signals that many in modern democracies reject important aspects of globalization, including borders open to trade and immigrants.In A World in Disarray, Haass argues for an updated global operating system—call it world order 2.0—that reflects the reality that power is widely distributed and that borders count for less. One critical element of this adjustment will be adopting a new approach to sovereignty, one that embraces its obligations and responsibilities as well as its rights and protections. Haass also details how the U.S. should act towards China and Russia, as well as in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. He suggests, too, what the country should do to address its dysfunctional politics, mounting debt, and the lack of agreement on the nature of its relationship with the world.A World in Disarray is a wise examination, one rich in history, of the current world, along with how we got here and what needs doing. Haass shows that the world cannot have stability or prosperity without the United States, but that the United States cannot be a force for global stability and prosperity without its politicians and citizens reaching a new understanding.

The King of Torts


John Grisham - 2003
    Clay Carter has been there too long and, like most of his colleagues, dreams of a better job in a real firm. When he reluctantly takes the case of a young man charged with a random street killing, he assumes it is just another of the many senseless murders that hit D.C. every week.As he digs into the background of his client, Clay stumbles on a conspiracy too horrible to believe. He suddenly finds himself in the middle of a complex case against one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, looking at the kind of enormous settlement that would totally change his life--that would make him, almost overnight, the legal profession's newest king of torts...'From the Hardcover edition'

The Long Run


Mishka Shubaly - 2011
    Despite his best attempts to dodge enlightenment and personal growth, the irreverent young drunk and drug abuser learns to tame his self-destructive tendencies through ultra running. His outrageous sense of humor, however, rages unabated.