Book Wrangler

July 4, 2005

By Bob Patterson

The material for this week's column of new books that caught our eye was provided by copying down the pertinent information from some books in the Santa Monica Public Library's "new arrivals" section.  When the fact checker went to Amazon to verify some of the details, it was apparent that it takes a certain period of time between a book's publication and its arrival at the main branch in downtown Santa Monica.

Here are some of the books we wish we had time to read and review:

Treasonable Doubt by R. Bruce Craig ($34.95  University Press of Kansas) 

This is about the Harry Dexter White Case.  White helped Russia during WWII.

Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from The Sedition Act of 1798 to The War on Terrorism by Geoffry R. Stone ($35 WWNorton)

Do folks still believe what you don't know can't hurt you - or is there some kind of movement to have "informed choices"?

Broken: The Troubled Past and Uncertain Future of the FBI by Richard Gid Powers ($30 Free Press) 

Fortress America: On the Frontlines of Homeland Security - An Inside Look at the Coming Surveillance State by Matthew Brzezinski ($25 Bantam)      

"They" will know if you read this book.

Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists and Activists Are Fueling the Climate Crisis - And What We Can Do to Avert Disaster by Ross Gelbspan ($22 Basic Book) 

Aren't the folks in Washington giving this "theory" the cold shoulder?

Ballad of the Whiskey Robber: A True Story of Bank Heists, Ice Hockey, Transylvanian Pelt Smuggling, Moonlighting Detectives, and Broken Hearts by Julian Rubinstein ($23.95 Little, Brown & Co.)

Can you believe that a book with that title is a biography and not a novel?

Planet Simpson: How A Cartoon Masterpiece Defined a Generation by Chris Truner ($26 Da Capo Press) 

Will Bart Simpson ever do a guest appearance on South Park?

An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power by John Steele Gordon ($26.95 HarperCollins) 

Rosebud.

In the novel It Can't Happen Here (1935), Sinclair Lewis has a retired general saying: "A state in which college professors, newspapermen, and notorious authors are secretly promulgating these same seditious attacks on the grand old Constitution!  A state in which, as a result of being fed with those mental drugs, the People are flabby, cowardly, gasping, and lacking in the fierce pride of the warrior!  No, such a state is far worse than war at its most monstrous!" (Page 9) 

Now, if the disk jockey will play Rosemary Clooney's song Mañana, we'll slip out of here for now and be back next week.  Until then, have a week full of government pre-approved reading matter.

Copyright © 2005 – Robert Patterson

Email the author at worldslaziestjournalist@yahoo.com