REQUIRED READING
Something Must be Done About Prince Edward County A Family, a Virginia town, a Civil Rights Battle by Kristen Green (Harper)
In the 1950s, the Virginia county where author Green later grew up refused the courtordered integration of its public schools, shutting them down instead. A whitesonly private academy was then opened, forcing the local black kids to skip school, take long commutes to other counties or move in with farflung relatives to get an education. Incredibly, the schools weren’t integrated till 1986. In 2008, Green discovered that her beloved grandfather had been a leader of the forces of segregation. An astonishing personal tale of the Civil Rights struggle.
A Life of Lies and Spies Tales of a CIA Ops Polygraph Interrogator by Alan B. Traube (Thomas Dunne Books)
Traube, a secondgeneration CIA man, didn’t only direct the agency’s liedetector operations around the globe during his 40 years of service, he ran its polygraph school. Maintaining care to not reveal too many details — he won’t even identify cities he worked in, using a more general “My favorite South American city,” for example — Traube explains what it’s like to try to figure out if spies and double agents are telling the truth.
The League of Regrettable Superheroes
HalfBaked Heroes from Comic Book History
by Jon Morris (Quirk)
Most of us are familiar with the likes of Superman and SpiderMan. But the Red Bee or Brain Boy? With reproductions of original art and brief character bios, Gone and Forgotten blogger Morris has brought back a treasure trove of sh icbook heroes. The Red Bee is a DA who wears striped tights and lets out bees from his belt to battle bad guys; Brain Boy, born speaking fluent English, uses telekinesis and mind control to protect us from the Red Menace of Communist ESP.
Men of War The American Soldier in Combat at Bunker Hill, Gettysburg and Iwo Jima by Alexander Rose (Random House)
Rose looks at the unique demands on American foot soldiers throughout history. Using three historic conflicts as its lens, the book reveals these soldiers’ jobs had little to do with the strategy of ge technology of weaponsmakers, and everything to do with harsh physical demands — WWII troops in the Pacific often lost 40 pounds in a month — and a complete disregard for danger.
Fastest Things on Wings Rescuing Hummingbirds in Hollywood by Terry Masear (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Forget “Celebrity Rehab.” Here’s hummingbird rehab. Masear details her work on an LA hummingbird rescuehotline. With thousands of the the bitty birds flying in Southern California air space, blunders are bound to happen: There’s Pepper, who hit turbulence in a filmprop warehouse and had to be rescued by taping an antique butterfly net to an aboriginal spear, and Gabriel, victim of a runin on Rodeo Drive. Fellow rescuers include cranky cops, jaded film execs and even a bulldog.