Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Selected Book Purchases From My Fall 2006 Vacation

This is topic Selected Book Purchases From My Fall 2006 Vacation in forum Discussing Published Hooks & Books at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :

I'm all about books. I try to ration myself but I can't even cut down. Fortunately I'm a fast reader, but that might also contribute to my habit.

Anyway, here's a sampling of what I bought in the past week or so.

The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy's Dossier on Hillary Clinton, Amanda B. Carpenter.

Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U. S. Navy, Ian W. Toll.

King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa, Adam Hochschild. [with a new afterword]

Berlin Games: How the Nazis Stole the Olympic Dream, Guy Walters.

Culture Warrior, Bill O'Reilly

Symptoms of Withdrawal: A Memoir of Snapshots and Redemption, Christopher Kennedy Lawford.

Boarding the Enterprise: Transporters, Tribbles and the Vulcan Death Grip in Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek, edited by David Gerrold and Robert J. Sawyer.

102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers, Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn.

Bismarck: The Man and the Statesman, A. J. P. Taylor.

The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism, Paul Kegnor.

No One Left to Lie To: The Values of the Worst Family, Christopher Hitchens.

That'll do for now. Some of these are recent issues, others are old or reprints with new material. As usual, you can probably deduce my political orientation.

Of the above, I recommend all of them as interesting reads except for the O'Reilly book---how well you take that depends either on your politics or your interest in news shows and personalities, 'cause there are better books out there covering the same ground.

I recommend King Leopold's Ghost to everybody...it covers a severely-neglected historical episode and is of interest to anyone influenced by Conrad's Heart of Darkness. This edition is a reprint.

I've still got a pile of books I bought and that I'm still plowing through, and I bought more since I've been home. Fortunately I've got awhile before I have to go back to work. Right now I'm partway into a biography of Mustapha Kemal Attaturk and that's just one of many.

Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :

Here's a few more:

Steel Drivin' Man - John Henry - The Untold Story of an American Legend, Scott Reynolds Nelson.

Ataturk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey, Andrew Mango.

The Looming Tower: al-Qaeda and the Road to 9 / 11, Lawrence Wright.

The Complete Peanuts: 1961 to 1962, Charles M. Schulz.

The Black Prince of Baseball: Hal Chase and the Mythology of the Game, Donald Dewey and Nicholas Acocella.

Posted by arriki (Member # 3079) on :

I read 102 minutes. Great insight to what was going on.