by Marja Mills (Get the Book)
Harper Lee, author of the national touchstone, To Kill a Mockingbird, withdrew from the relentless vortex of fame and never published another book. Her silence, like that of J. D. Salinger, has been a compelling literary mystery. When To Kill a Mockingbird was chosen for One Book, One Chicago in 2001, Chicago Tribune reporter Mills traveled to Lee's Alabama hometown, certain that she would never get anywhere near the author. Instead, Mills found herself living a literary fairy tale, as Alice, Harper's older sister by 15 years, still working as an attorney in her nineties, ushered Mills into their book-filled home. Soon Mills, much to her astonishment, is watching football games, going fishing, and sharing meals with Alice, Nelle (Harper is her middle name), and their friends. When the Lees express their hope that Mills will record their reminiscences and set the record straight, she rents the house next door and devotes herself to listening to tales of the Lee family; Nelle's relationship with their childhood neighbor, Truman Capote ( Truman was a psychopath, honey ); and the nearly overwhelming repercussions of Nelle's novel. Mills' struggles with lupus bring her even closer to the sisters. As she portrays the exceptional Lee women and their modest, slow-paced world with awed precision, Mills creates a uniquely intimate, ruminative, and gently illuminating biographical memoir. --Booklist
by David Bromwich (Get the Book)
The 18th-century Anglo-Irish philosopher and politician Edmund Burke (1729-97) has been called "the father of modern conservatism," largely because of his opposition to the French Revolution. However, Bromwich (Hazlitt: The Mind of a Critic), in this new intellectual biography that covers the first three decades of Burke's professional life, sees his subject's work as more nuanced and complex. Drawing on Burke's correspondence, as well as his public writings and speeches, Bromwich presents the portrait of a serious thinker who cannot be easily categorized as either conservative or liberal-Burke spoke out about abuse of power, even supporting the American colonies, yet at times seemed to distrust democracy. The author focuses primarily on Burke's work, supplying just enough biographical details to provide context, resulting in many quotations with in-depth explication. This approach is especially successful in the chapter featuring "The Sublime and Beautiful," the 1857 treatise on aesthetics that reveals Burke's exceptional rhetorical abilities. VERDICT Bromwich has brought his considerable research and writing skills together to present a readable, thorough picture of Burke's earlier years. --Library Journal
by Michael Morton (Get the Book)
In this absorbing first-person narrative, first-time author Morton shows readers how it is possible in our justice system to be convicted of a crime without substantial evidence. One afternoon in August 1986, -Morton returned home from work to find that his wife had been bludgeoned to death. He became the prime suspect, even though there was nothing to tie him to the murder. Tried and convicted, Morton spent 25 years behind bars in Williamson County, TX, until the New York-based Innocence Project took on his case and secured his release using DNA evidence. The happier side to all this is that Morton holds no grudges, and, back at home, he has found peace through a new marriage and a new life. The narrative deals mostly with the man's personal traumas during his incarceration as well as his prison experiences--readers may prefer one or the other of these or they may learn about his courage to find forgiveness despite everything that has happened. -VERDICT Written in a crisp style, this book should appeal to almost any reader who is interested in true crime stories. It is a must-read for students and professionals in criminal justice. --Library Journal
by Gregory N. Fleming (Get the Book)
Flemming relates the story of the capture by pirates of Philip Ashton in 1722, and in the process he reveals a fascinating history of pirates during the first decades of the 18th century, "the golden age of piracy." Ashton, a fisherman, was taken captive during a raid off the coast of Nova Scotia by the pirate crew of the notorious Edward Low, a captain more vicious than Blackbeard. Ashton survived his capture for nine months before escaping on a deserted island in the Caribbean where the ship had stopped for water. He spent 16 months there, alone, before he was rescued. By the time he made it home to Marblehead, Mass., he'd been away three years. Ashton's account was written down and published by his minister, John Barnard-a less severe protege of fire-and-brimstone Puritan preacher Cotton Mather-and Flemming's detailed contextualizing of pirate life was taken from court records, survivor narratives, newspaper accounts, and logbooks. From battles with warships to the way the pirates split their plunder, Flemming's focus on individual actors adds a welcome depth to the history of piracy with this engaging and harrowing account of "America's real-life Robinson Crusoe." --Publishers Weekly
by Linda Porter (Get the Book)
Members of England's Tudor dynasty have been the subjects of books, films, TV series, and more. Their contemporaries, Scotland's Stewarts, remain largely in the background until Mary, Queen of Scots, emerges from the shadows to bedevil Elizabeth I. Author Porter (Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr, the Last Wife of Henry VIII, 2010) interweaves the stories of both dynasties to show how the history of Great Britain was shaped by their uneasy relations. She begins with the struggles that brought crowns to both Henry VII of England and James IV of Scotland, whom she calls one of Britain's greatest kings. James' marriage to Henry's daughter Margaret united the families but also intensified their rivalries, since it gave the Stewarts a claim to the English throne. The rivalries were carried into the next generations, particularly in the conflicts between Henry VIII and his nephew James V, ending only when Mary's son, James VI, was crowned as England's James I. Porter's highly readable account offers a fresh perspective for readers who look forward to each new book on the Tudors. --Booklist
by Ruben Castaneda (Get the Book)
When D.C. mayor Marion Barry was arrested for smoking crack, journalist Castaneda was in that hotel's lobby, phoning in the details to the Washington Post, where he'd recently landed a job, moving from L.A.'s now defunct Herald-Examiner. What Castaneda also brought to D.C. back then was his own crack addiction, and it is a nonchalantly and honestly detailed part of his memoir. While he's running down the stories and writing them well, he is also getting wasted. D.C.'s S Street is where the drug-selling action takes place, and Castaneda parallels his story with that of pastor Jim, who promises not to rat on the dealers but invites them to church, and that of honest, tough homicide cop Lou. There are scenes in this book that depict people acting in ways that are as low as one can humanly go, but they are related matter-of-factly, almost impersonally. There are also instances of incredible goodness, but the good guys don't always win. Castaneda's page-turner, told with easygoing charm and great skill, is an unstinting unveiling of who got away with what and when and how Castaneda followed the action and found himself. --Booklist
by Nina Stibbe (Get the Book)
With a who's who at the beginning that ranges from film director Stephen Frears to Maxwell, the author's ex-pony, you might guess this is not your typical memoir. Not only that, but it comprises the tuneful, descriptive letters Nina wrote in the 1980s, while she tried her hand at nannying in London, to her sister, Vic, who stayed basically at home, near Leicestershire, England. The nannied children were young Sam and Will Frears their arty, daffy children's conversations fill the pages living with their sharp, blunt mother, Mary-Kay Wilmers, deputy editor of the London Review of Books. Nina herself, then just 20 and new to the task of being a nanny, was a lover of London and quite the observer, documenting for her sister back home the who, the when, and her full-blown, clever, open-eyed take on the what of life at the Wilmers-Frears. Stibbe notes that nannying is not like a job really, just like living in someone else's life, but what a funny, artist-filled life she lived, and how well she watched and participated. This is an offbeat paean to families, real and cobbled-together, to sisters and siblings, and to communicating with love. It's also a rare and wholly delectable epistolary slice of life. --Booklist
