Mark Bittman provided one of my all time favorite recipes in a New York Times’ Minimalist column during the height of Summer 2009. It’s just two simple lines (with a one word editorial comment): “Mix wedges of tomatoes and peaches, add slivers of red onion, a few red-pepper flakes and cilantro. Dress with olive oil and lime or lemon juice. Astonishing.” I gave it a try. It actually was astonishing. Since then, I have kept up with developments from Mark Bittman – following him through articles, his fantastic app, videos, columns, editorials, and books in an effort to eat fresh, flavorful food, simply prepared by me at home.

But am I ready to be a vegan before 6 PM? This is the central challenge of his new book VB6.

My first observation about VB6 is that this is more of a lifestyle book than a cookbook. His initial story of an epiphany at the doctor’s office several years back resonates with me. Bittman didn’t want to take Lipitor for the rest of his life, especially with food so central to his life and livelihood. I am primarily worried about long-term brain health (I’ve read widely on how to keep the noggin sharp and research is fairly clear that what you eat really matters), but I wouldn’t say no to dropping a pound or twenty either.

VB6 defines six basic principles that really reflect what Bittman has been preaching (in a really good way) for a long time. The most important principles are to eat only vegetables, fruits, and other plant-based foods before 6 PM and after that hour to reduce your consumption of animal products. He also encourages us to cook our own food – and of course to avoid all junk and processed foods. After these basics he goes rather quickly into helping you determine how to make this new way of eating appealing to you (and your family or your lifestyle).

I confess: I’m having trouble sticking to my reading. One Sunday, after reading the tip on making healthy snacking more convenient, I realized I didn’t even need to go shopping to get down to business and prep some healthy snacks for the week. Suddenly I was digging into the fridge to fish out the carrots, potatoes, and yams to roast them up in sage and thyme for use as sides all week. I had some aging broccoli and cauliflower too, so I steamed, sautéed, and pureed into a fabulous veggie mix as well. And that wasn’t even dinner.

VB6 can serve as an inspiration for healthy eating even if the concept of being a vegan puts you off. I love the balanced approach of this lifestyle – Bittman encourages the readers to adapt as needed to suit your lifestyle. In general he encourages us to stick with it even if we cheat for a day or a month. So he’d probably be okay with my initial adaptation: vegetarian before 6 PM plus splash of milk in coffee (not as catchy -- VB6PSMC -- but potentially more sustainable). It’s early days, however, and I am going to give it a try – check back in a month and I’ll let you know how I have done.

Charlie LeDuff's new memoir, Detroit: An American Autopsy, tells of his return home to -- and subsequent exploration of -- the once-celebrated Motor City. At one time, Detroit was the "nation's richest big city." With its profitable factories, its well-paid blue-collar jobs, its widespread home ownership and credit, Detroit's reign, it seemed, would never end. That is until, of course, it did.

Today, Detroit is a much darker and sadder city that suffers heavily from corruption, poverty, and crime. LeDuff shows this firsthand with stories of parents told to send their children to school with toilet paper; firefighters forced to wear coats foggy with carbon and boots full of holes; emergency vehicles too old and few; a skyline full of ghost skyscrapers; the population's drop from 1.9 million people in the 1950s to just 700,000 people now; coyotes and other wildlife reclaiming the emptied city; banks foreclosing on so many houses that whole neighborhoods are left dead; these same abandoned houses and neighborhoods being set on fire and stripped of any value; a man dead in an elevator shaft, a police raid gone bad, and a seven-year-old shot dead; the murder, illiteracy, and unemployment rates all the highest in the nation; and of no one seeming to care. As LeDuff repeats, "This passes for normal in Detroit."

Perhaps most frustrating and "normal" are Detroit's failed leaders. From the "hip-hop mayor" Kwame Kilpatrick to City Council member Monica Conyers to the ever-influential Big Three, LeDuff takes them to task as only a hometown boy can, exposing their corruption, greed, and ineptitude, all of which eventually led to prison, bankruptcy, and victims. And there are numerous victims in Detroit. LeDuff crosses paths with many of them while covering stories for The Detroit News. Everyone, from heroic firefighters to everyday families, is affected by the squalid city. No one is immune. In fact, LeDuff and his own family are victims; his brothers struggle to support themselves; his sister and niece have died untimely deaths; and Charlie is left years later still trying to accept it all.

LeDuff calls Detroit "America's city" -- a place where "America's way of life was built." Yet, LeDuff also says, the rest of the country has ignored Detroit's struggles. Well, in the end, Detroit: An American Autopsy is too strong to be ignored. Its concise stories and observations reveal a precise and local view of where this broken city has been and where it is going. And maybe, if LeDuff is right, it, too, reveals something more: Where America has been, and where it is going.

We aren't what we eat so much as how we eat. Such is the theory behind Bee Wilson's Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat. Equal parts historical text and cookbook, Consider the Fork is an anthropological study of how, since the beginning of our existence, humans have turned the necessity of eating into a way of life.

After the first happy accident of caveman fire, humans discovered that cooking food made it both easier to digest and more delicious. When we learned to contain fires in hearths, our whole hunter-gatherer culture changed to center around those dancing flames, which provided generations with nourishing meals that gave us strength, energy, and more time to grow our big human brains. Even as the hearth gave way to roasting pits and then the ovens of modern day, the lifeblood of a household seems to flow from the same central point: the kitchen.

But some culinary habits aren't so familiar. It's hard to believe, but up until the mid-seventeenth century, it was typical for every person to carry around his or her own eating utensil in the form of a single dagger-like knife. Similarly strange were the Italians, pre-fork, twirling their pasta with wooden rods. What seems most remarkable, however, is that even as we shaped these utensils out of metal and wood, they were shaping us, too. The slight overbite of human teeth is only a recent development in our evolution: As we began using forks and knives 200 to 250 years ago, it became no longer necessary to tear away at our food with our teeth with the edge-to-edge bite of our chimpanzee relatives, thus forming the alignment our teeth tend to have today. It seems such a simple, everyday object, but from the fork comes not only our table manners and social norms for eating, but also our smiles.

We may think the evolution of our food culture ended in modern times, but this isn't the case. The onset of refrigeration changed our diets to include fresh fruits and vegetables previously only available in their respective seasons. Wilson suggests the refrigerator, with its cornucopia of fresh food, is the hearth of the twenty-first century. And you can't forget the often misjudged microwave, which provided mid-century families with a unique pleasure (or, to some, a pain): leftovers. The dynamics of our eating habits and food technology affect one another in a constant cycle of change.

A food columnist for the Sunday Telegraph, Wilson keeps her erudite style seasoned with wit, nostalgia, and compassion for the hopeless cooks who charred and minced their way through history. We may have the shiny gadgets of the future -- food processors, stand mixers, and microwaves, -- but deep down we're still cavemen staring in wonder at our fires.

Editor's Note: In 2007, author Lawrence Wright won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for his book "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11." Wright doesn't only pen nonfiction books; he is a staff writer at The New Yorker as well as a screenwriter and playwright, and has also written a novel, "God's Favorite." A graduate of Tulane University, Wright also spent two years teaching at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, and is currently a fellow at the Center on Law and Security at New York University School of Law. Wright's latest work is "Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief." Wright recently sat down with us here at Everyday eBook where we talked about Scientology -- the stunners, the motivations, its future, and more.

EVERYDAY EBOOK: In your research for Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief, was there one thing that shocked you or stunned you the most?

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: The exploitation of children. I was very disturbed, I am still very disturbed by the stories I was told about the way children are pressed into this clerical organization at Sea Org at alarmingly young ages. And they surrender their education, they’re impoverished by their service, and they work them, those kids, mercilessly – all day long. The church claims that it doesn’t violate the child labor laws, but when I read the child labor laws I just don’t understand how that can be the case.

EE: What do you think was the motivation for L. Ron Hubbard? And what is David Miscavige’s motivation? Power? Sadism? Something else?

LW: In the case of L. Ron Hubbard, in the book I compare him to a shaman because anthropologists talk about how schizophrenia is a shaman disease. And in aboriginal cultures, you see people that we would say are mentally unstable. They often have psychotic episodes and then they’re considered in some respects holy. Their mission is to heal themselves and then heal their community. It may seem like a lofty way to approach L. Ron Hubbard given the charlatan aspect of his character, but I really do think that he wrote Dianetics to heal himself. And the idea was he would heal the world. The fact that I think he invented so much of this stuff out of a whole cloth – that’s the part that makes people say he is a conman. But I do think that he believed he was trying to heal the world and I think the same impulse drove him to create Scientology. Despite that, he said, many times, that that’s where the money is – religion; that may have been a factor. David Miscavige is different from L. Ron Hubbard mainly in the fact that he grew up in Scientology. He’s a product of it in a way that Hubbard was not. He joined the Sea Org when he was sixteen, so, virtually, his entire life has been lived inside the strictures of this organization. The product of that is a glaring indictment of the church itself, because if that is what it produces – this totalistic universe, which is what the Sea Org has become, led by a person who dominates it entirely – then I think Scientology has a reckoning ahead of it.

EE: Do you think that will happen in the near future? Is that where you think the future is headed for Scientology?

LW: I think that it’s at a turning point in its history. It’s got a lot of money, and it has a lot of lawyers. And that will hold it together for quite a while. But I think it’s hemorrhaging members. And look at its reputation; they’ve earned the reputation of being the most vindictive, litigious, mean-spirited organization that calls itself a church in the country. And I don’t think that’s an appealing image. It’s not going to draw a lot of people to it, so it’s got to change.

EE: What’s next for you? Any idea where you’re going to turn your attention?

LW: I don’t know! I’m looking for something. I would love to swing through the trees and already have the next vine in my hand, but I finish a project and then I have to go hunting for a new one. And I haven’t found that new one yet. To me the big mystery about creation is not the process – and there are so many workshops devoted to process – it’s, “What do you want to do? What do you choose to spend your life on?” It’s a very central question and there are so many appealing things to write about, but why choose one thing over another? There is some internal bell that goes off and so I’m waiting to hear that sound.

Check out more of what Lawrence Wright has to say on Biographile.com

Dining one evening in one of the swank new restaurants in downtown Washington, D.C., I brought up the subject of colorism with the two African American women who had joined me -- both women successful in their fields -- and the memories poured forth. We looked back with laughter and regret, but it was with special sadness that they admitted they still see evidence of colorism's hold on the thinking of young people.

"When I was in high school a girl told me I acted like I didn't know I was dark-skinned, and wondered where I got my pride and dignity from," one said. The other told us about her daughter, who is sometimes mistaken for every nationality from Greek to Spanish, "My daughter hears all the time from Black boys that they would never marry a girl darker than she is." This friend's daughter also attends a respected, historically black university and has shared with her mother stories of female classmates physically assaulting one another in the wake of colorist verbal insults.

For generations, there was the infamous "paper bag test" in the African American community. Men and women darker than a paper bag were denied membership in churches, fraternities and sororities, and social clubs, and were not allowed to attend certain parties and social events. Blue-vein societies flourished, as did the orthodoxy that among the sororities, AKA's are light, Delta's are brown, Zeta's are black. Fast forward to today and you'll find a #teamlightskin on twitter and complexion competitions in urban nightclubs. The color complex -- or put simply, the belief in the superiority of light skin and European-like hair and facial features -- is, among African Americans, a legacy of slavery that was once practiced and adhered to with nearly unquestioned fidelity. Though increasingly questioned, colorism persists today.

I grew up in Washington, D.C., and I recall one time as I was playing with friends one summer day outside our house on Harvard Street N.W., my mother called me indoors with the admonition, "Come on inside out of that sun, you're already gonna have to get a light-skinned husband for the sake of your children." I saw colorism everywhere: in my family, on TV, in magazines and books. By the time a male fifth-grade classmate at Harrison Elementary brushed my hand away when I reached for his when we were assigned to be square dance partners, I knew instinctively that he didn't want to touch me not just because I was a Negro (as we were called back then), but also because I was the wrong color Negro.

During the tumult and triumph of the activism of the 1960s while a student on the campus of American University, I got Black and loud and proud, and overcame my color complex. More recently, several years ago when I wrote Don't Play in the Sun: One Woman's Journey Through the Color Complex, a book about colorism and its global impact, I became a color-complex activist.

I have begun more and more to conclude that colorism is the most unacknowledged and unaddressed mental health crisis in communities of color around the world. We speak of the color complex as a problem, as an issue, but its negative emotional impact on people of all hues is so serious that it needs to be called what it is: a disease. I'm gratified by an increasing willingness among scholars and cultural activists to write and talk more about the impact of colorism. Colorism is being challenged in the classroom, in forums, on the internet, in books and conferences. Among the most effective "image activists" working to combat this issue are the writers Michaela Angela Davis and Esther Armah, and CNN's Soledad O'Brien, who recently devoted a "Black in America" series segment to the topic of colorism. We are currently at a watershed moment in the recognition of the real impact of this longstanding legacy of racism.

In my family, when our now-grown children were young, my husband and I wove discussions of colorism into conversations about media presentations of African Americans, African American history, race, and life in general, so that our children would develop the ability to comfortably talk about colorism, recognize it, and reject it. People of all races and hues and across the generational divide are now creating a space where the real costs of colorism can be addressed. It's time for more of us to step into that magic circle and begin the long overdue process of healing colorist thought and action in ourselves, our families, and our communities.

Eye-opening, even eye-popping at times, Michael Moss' Salt Sugar Fat is a blistering expose on the processed food industry. While I doubt it will surprise many readers that salt, sugar, and fat are detrimental to good health -- and the main contributors to the recent surge in obesity levels -- there will be shock at the actual amounts we consume. And even more startling is the level to which food conglomerates go to design foods that are not only appealing, but addictive.

Here are just a few of the jaw-dropping statistics from the book:

Salt: The vast majority of the salt in our diets comes from processed foods (bread, soups, frozen dinners, even cookies and ice cream), and not from the shakers on our tables. Consider this: Most of us are getting three times the recommended daily amount without ever touching a salt shaker.

Sugar: An average American consumes twenty-two teaspoons of sugar, per day. That's seventy pounds per year.

Fat: On average, Americans eat as much as thirty-three pounds of cheese each year, triple the amount we ate thirty years ago. This is a direct result of Congress helping the dairy industry re-purpose their surplus fat when Americans began switching from whole to skim milk.

Salt Sugar Fat: The potato chip is the perfect trifecta of all three ingredients. The potato chip began as a snack food, but is now served alongside almost every sandwich, and even used as a main ingredient in some recipes. Studies show the potato chip is the single biggest contributor to obesity in America.

Through visits to secretive food laboratories, Moss exposes the techniques scientists use to study "bliss point" and "mouth-feel" in order to create foods we crave. He lays bare their ability to actually manipulate these ingredients at the molecular level in order to make them irresistible.

So what are we to do? Moss believes we need to make healthier food less expensive and more readily available in all communities. Consumers need to learn to read labels for hidden ingredients and educate themselves on the marketing techniques used throughout grocery stores to influence their shopping. As bestselling author of In Defense of Food Michael Pollan so succinctly put it: "Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food."

Americans are not going to magically give up their junk-food habit overnight, but read Salt Sugar Fat and I guarantee you'll think more carefully about what you buy and eat. After this thought-provoking read, the once ubiquitous potato chip slogan, "Betcha you can't eat just one," takes on a whole new -- and scary -- meaning.

Everyone does it, but not everyone talks about it. Some do it alone, some with another person. Some do it only at night, and some do it any time the mood strikes them. Some do it with the television on, or their senses muffled by earplugs and eye masks. Some, it’s said, even do it with one eye open. People do it all different ways, sticking with whatever feels best for them. But how often does one peek into the science behind the action? Or, rather, the science under the sheets? And even then, how often do the findings make it to the curious ears of the layperson? Thanks to David K. Randall, chalk one up for pop science with Dreamland: Strange Adventures in the Science of Sleep.

It’s not often people think much about sleep – at least, not until a problem arises. It’s the impetus of sleep abnormalities that introduce many of Randall’s chapters in Dreamland. Anecdotes about dreams, health, habits, and even crimes kick off many of the lessons throughout this all-encompassing study of our nocturnal goings-on. Inspired by his own sleepwalking – and injuries sustained during the act – Randall traces the history of sleep habits in culture back to the 1700s, before the invention of artificial light, back to a time when people generally had both a “first sleep” and “second sleep” each night. (It was Edison’s invention that began to change everything, in case you’re looking for someone to blame for the move away from a practice that sounds like a lovely way to spend the night.)

From there Randall makes a case for separate spousal sleeping quarters, touches on the mostly unscientific study of dreams, the connection between sleep and excellence, the effects of sleep deprivation (it’s not pretty), how one might use their own circadian rhythm to their advantage and to the advantage of their gambling habits, the rise of sleep-aiding drugs, and more. Ultimately, Dreamland won’t tell you the meaning of your dreams, nor will it cure your insomnia. It doesn’t provide exhaustive explanations for everything that happens while one snoozes (because, well, there is no known explanation for all of it yet). But if you’ve ever been curious about some of what goes on while you’re slumbering away, or the evolution of how we came to all aim for the same eight or so hours during the same hours, more or less, David K. Randall’s Dreamland is an interesting walk down that road. Just be sure to take that walk with your eyes open.

Drinking with Men is the story of author Rosie Schaap’s self-estimated 13,000-plus hours on bar stools and banquettes. The title might suggest to some a certain kind of tale; however, this is not a moralizing fable of addiction and regret. Schaap’s story is a celebration of bar culture at its best, when it is “both civilized and civilizing,” and of the people who make it so.

The book follows Schaap’s coming of age from her days trading tarot readings for beer as a teenager in the Metro North bar car; through an entertaining stint following the Grateful Dead; to her time learning to drink in Dublin, Ireland, the best place in the world to learn what it means to be a regular. Regularhood is a hallowed institution defined as “the practice of drinking in a particular establishment so often that you become known by, and bond with, both the bartenders and your fellow patrons.” Schaap further hones her regularhood and barroom education back in her hometown, New York City.

Many things make New York City a great bar town: our roommates, small apartments, late-night (early-morning) last call, the simple fact that we like to walk. Schaap finds lifelong friends and much more – from employment to a love of the Tottenham Hotspurs – in the bars she frequents. Certainly, there are times when it is distinctly uncomfortable being a woman in the male space of the bar. It’s both great and not so great to be “one of the lads” when you’re a lass. Schaap struggles with what she wants out of the bar in this way at times. The teenager on the bar car wants the freedom of adulthood, but confronting the fear and pain that go with it is jarring. The only woman at the bar wants to be accepted as one of the guys, but she also kind of wants to kiss some of the actual guys.

Schaap makes her fair share of mistakes along the way, and there is pain and grief in this story. There are definitely moments that make your heart heavy and bring tears to your eyes. This is, however, more than that: a story of redemption, of faith, and of finding one’s place in the world. Schaap is a wonderful storyteller, and through the loss and heartache, this is ultimately a joyful book celebrating the people and places that she has called home. The book is more about the people and places than it is about drinking. It is a complete pleasure to spend time at the bar with Rosie.

If you're at all familiar with Kurt Vonnegut, you'll likely appreciate the way he reveals his true self in his fiction writing. Even in his science-fictional worlds far removed from the reality of our humdrum human lives, he reminds us that the narrator and ol' Kurt are never separated by more than an ink stain. To a Vonnegut diehard like myself, who seeks to unmask the man who gave us an anthem of playful nihilism ("So it goes!"), I'm left wanting to go even deeper into his narrative, beneath the tongue-in-cheek invective upon which he's built his career. In order to find the beating heart behind the humor, look no further than his trove of personal letters. All the humanism, jokes, warmth, and avuncular morality that radiates from his fiction is found tenfold in Kurt Vonnegut: Letters.

We have only to look to find instances that show how Vonnegut is one of the most autobiographical fiction writers of the twentieth century. His experience as a POW in World War II informs his reflections on war in Slaughterhouse-Five. The Saab dealership he once owned is reflected in his protagonist's profession in Breakfast of Champions. And of course his recurring character Kilgore Trout still proves to be the ultimate alter ego, there in many of his novels to amplify Vonnegut's musings on the absurdity of living.

This collection of correspondence has brought me as close as possible to the greatest voice of morality the "Greatest Generation" has ever produced, and I'm beaming by the light of its words. This is a man that did not live far from the pen. He pursued money, of course, but only insofar as it kept his family comfortable. When he wasn't nickel-and-diming his way through odd jobs -- teaching classes to disturbed teenagers, failing to pitch a strategic board game he invented, running a book club on Classics -- he was enriched by the one thing that kept him chugging along after the War: his writing. He was humble and modest to the very end.

Be sure to use this book as a compendium of truths, something to refer back to when you need a good laugh or a helping handful of guidance. Vonnegut would often regale his friends with a story about his uncle. His uncle would sit outside on the grass, rocking in his chair, the sun warming the pleasant company he kept, and he'd state matter-of-factly: "If this isn't nice, what is?" You'll find yourself uttering the same words every time you open, close, and reopen this delightful collection of letters.

While inspiration often comes from within, Eddie Huang's new memoir, Fresh Off the Boat, reminds us that it also comes in the form of a chubby Taiwanese high schooler from Florida, hell-bent on proving his mettle. Before the famed restaurateur and vocal vlogger for VICE magazine made it big, he was a "midget Chinaman" standing five-foot-four on a football field, facing down a hulking defensive end named Kwame.

Whenever "hike!" was called, young Eddie got pummeled. But Huang explains how each day during practice he would dig his heels in deeper, working so hard he'd vomit by whistle's end. Only a few months later, Eddie's name was being chanted by his teammates like a Taiwanese remake of "Rudy," the scene climaxing when Coach Rock put him into a game, one in which he helped lead his team to victory.

Today, Eddie Huang's name is still being chanted, this time by restaurant critics dying to get their hands on his gua bao at New York City's Baohaus. He's also still digging his heels into the ground, transferring his grit on the grass to his professional demeanor. But while his style defies a simple explanation, what is gleaned from his memoir is the fire of resilience that simmers within. Fresh Off the Boat is riddled with real-life roadblocks built to hamper the strongest of men -- a manic mother, an abusive ex-gangster father, and minority status taped like a "kick me" sign to his back. Yet at each turn Eddie emerges hardened and resolved. Huang's memoir reveals both heart and hood as he refashions every conventional setback in his life into a step forward.

All of this is put forth without pretense. The memoir demands at the outset that you either accept his flaws or clear out of the kitchen. The slang and irreverent style of writing Eddie employs is at first disarming. But chewing through his chummy vernacular, the "yo!'s," "bro!'s," and "shit son!'s" begin to take on a charm of their own. So comfortably conversational are the opening pages you might as well be kicking it with Huang in the flesh, jamming to Tupac tapes and claiming some urban turf of your own.

To the foodies out there, pay heed. Eddie's references to food are spontaneous, not forced. Don't expect a recipe on every page. Instead, the savory morsels of this memoir are masterfully interlaced with his stories of immigration and upbringing. And let's be frank: Does the genre "food memoir" even exist?

This is a tale of immigration. It's a blueprint of American entrepreneurialism. It's a coming-of-age saga and a family narrative drenched in dysfunction. By writing about all that, Huang proves that food, instead of being showmanship, is a social expression; it's something that assists -- rather than consumes -- our everyday lives. He understands the implicit nature of food better than almost any chef today. "Food at its best uplifts the whole community," he writes. It "makes everyone rise to its standard." Inspiration doesn't get any iller than that.

You slam down your can of Pabst and you look at your fellow bandmates. "Let’s DO this! Rock and ROLL!" Through an opening in the curtain, you can see the house lights go down. You strap on the bass guitar, crank the volume, heart pounding, and you step onto the stage, and … and now you can see that there are only two people in the room, and one of them is polishing glasses behind the bar. Welcome to Hitless Wonder, the hilarious and poignant rock-and-roll memoir by Joe Oestreich about a band that never quite made the big time.

Oestreich is the bass player for Watershed, a power-pop band from Ohio, styled loosely after KISS and Cheap Trick. They've been together for two decades. In that time, they have released half a dozen albums; toured up and down the east coast and the Midwest with bands like Insane Clown Posse, The Smithereens, and Ben Folds; and had a record deal with Epic. Also, unless you're from Columbus or maybe Green Bay, you've never heard of them.

Hitless Wonder works on a number of different levels. As straightforward rock journalism, the book gives us a slightly jaundiced look at what it takes to make it in the music business, and just how glamorous it is to live life on the road. (Hint: playing the 3:30AM show at the legendary CBGB's in New York City is not glamorous. As Oestreich writes, "Crappy high school bands are supposed to break up, like the Bryan Adams song: Jimmy quit. Jody got married.") It's also about what it feels like to chase a dream, regardless of the outcome. It's about growing up in a place like Columbus, feeling like life is happening somewhere else, and yearning to be there -- wherever there is. Ultimately, though, it's a love story: about a group of guys who just really like each other, despite the humiliation and poverty that comes from grinding it out in rock music's minor leagues.

In fact, perhaps that's the point. What matters in life really isn't the gold records and the limousines; it's the connections we make with the people we love, and the passions that we nurture, just because they make us happy. Oestreich seems to be comfortable in his own skin; he can laugh at himself, even as he and the rest of Watershed hold out hope that they might still make it. As he says, "I don't know if that makes us optimistic or delusional." Ain't that America, Joe.

Kristen Iversen had what many would consider an idyllic childhood, in a suburban house with avocado appliances, a horse, and parents who liked each other. Each afternoon after school, she would ride out to the edge of town. There, at the barbed wire, kicking the metal "No Trespassing" signs with the toes of her cowboy boots, she would look to the west. There: where the chinook winds came racing, swirling dust, past the eerie lights of the plant that made … something secret. In Full Body Burden, her gripping memoir, Iversen unravels the secrets of what it meant to grow up in the shadow of Rocky Flats. Unfortunately, it's our story, too.

The Rocky Flats plant made the triggers at the heart of every atom bomb made in America from the 1950s to the 1980s. These coffee-cup sized lumps of plutonium, one of the most deadly materials ever discovered, could be made to set off a mushroom cloud of destructive energy. But nobody talked about this, because it was the Cold War, and it meant jobs for the community. "I don't know what he does, exactly," one wife says. "He's an engineer. It's too complicated to explain."

Similarly, nobody talked about the self-destruction of Iversen's father, an attorney who sank deeper and deeper into alcoholic despair. The family closed ranks in denial, as so many troubled families do. The stories are integrally linked, as they go to the heart of a kind of collective amnesia. There are things that we just don't want to know.

Sooner or later, though, we have to face them -- or do we? As one child after another in Iversen's school developed testicular cancer, and as one plant worker after another died of lymphoma or a brain tumor or lung cancer, it became clear that something was very wrong at Rocky Flats. Like the deadly fire and explosion in 1957, and again in 1969, that sent a plume of radioactive dust toward Denver. Like the hundreds of rusting steel drums, filled with toxic, radioactive slurry, leaking into the groundwater, because nobody knew where else to put it. In some areas downwind of the plant, the soil was found to be more radioactive than "Ground Zero" at the Nevada nuclear test site. But this went on for decades, and nobody stopped it.

Full Body Burden is so powerful because it is personal. Iversen, who directs a Creative Writing MFA program, knows how to tell a story. But she also speaks with honesty about her childhood friends and neighbors, and the tension between knowing and willfully not knowing. We accept the nuclear weapons that protect us without asking about the thousands who died as a result of their manufacture, or about land near Denver that will remain deadly and radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. This is an important story about an American tragedy, but it's also about growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, when our country's innocence began its slow meltdown.

There are few cultures more extrinsically opposite in nature than those belonging to Americans and Arabs. Sophia Al-Maria knows this firsthand, as her formative years were spent making the leap back and forth between the two. In her brilliant coming-of-age memoir, The Girl Who Fell to Earth, Al-Maria recounts these near-surreal experiences.

The Girl Who Fell to Earth begins as a love story: A Middle Eastern man, Matar, makes a pilgrimage to America from his home in Qatar. Alone and clueless as to how to go about finding his way in the foreign landscape of the Pacific-Northwest United States, he is taken under the wing of Gale Valo, a quirky, Washington-born, farm-bred young woman. The two fall in an unlikely sort of love, start a family (enter the author), and get married. Matar finds work driving a big rig and enjoys his life. Yet, three years after arriving in Seattle, he hears the call of home and heads back to the Arabian Gulf. And when our narrator is five, she and her mother and younger sister finally hear from him, when he calls for them to join him overseas.

In spite of the size of Matar’s family, Gale is lonely in Qatar and it isn’t too long before she returns to the states, daughters in tow. All goes well until Sophia is well into the fifth grade. The preadolescent's preoccupation with sex – and her creative way of displaying this preoccupation – cause her mother to lose patience, call her husband, and arrange to have Sophia sent to live with him. Sophia arrives in her new home – a home packed with cousins, the multiple wives of uncles, and more, and moves into her room with her Aunt Falak. And so begins her new life, surrounded by gender divides, abayas, and the unfamiliar dynamics of her new family. For every piece of Sophia’s new world that is different, however, there is another that is the same. There are still adolescent crushes, an inherent desire to compete with the boys, a longing to be accepted, and a bending of the rules.

Coming of age is a universal fact of life, and in Al-Maria’s memoir, she demonstrates this with the keen observations of an anthropologist, the beautiful language of a writer, and the truth and passion of a storyteller. From her first period to her first love, and later to her rebellions and her own pilgrimage of self-discovery, there is one theme that will doubtless ring familiar with all readers: the quest for independence, the independence that comes from knowing who you are and where you are going, no matter where you come from.

At a time when aging pop and rock stars continue to record and perform well past their best-by dates, who would have thought a somewhat cantankerous, outspoken, old hippie like Neil Young would be the one to produce a refreshingly genuine and candid memoir? Waging Heavy Peace is a book full of surprises and good humor, honesty, modesty, and personal revelation.

Most know Neil as a legendary musical artist, having recorded thirty-four albums over four decades. This memoir includes the juicy details of his early days as a Canadian troubadour, his serendipitous success with the revered folk-rock group Buffalo Springfield, the soaring, vocally harmonic CSNY (Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young), the gritty, rock edge of Crazy Horse, and dozens of additional solo projects. For those less familiar, you may unknowingly recognize his high, nasally vocals on such songs as "Only Love Can Break Your Heart," "Southern Man," "(Four Dead in) Ohio," "Rockin' in the Free World," and "Long May You Run." His music has run the gamut from folk and country to rock and grunge. Neil has played or recorded with a virtual who's-who of the rock world.

As for the writing in Waging Heavy Peace, it quickly becomes apparent that Neil is not a professional author; his book reads more like a personal journal. Overall, this is a good thing; however, it's a bit untidy and, at times, could have used some judicious editing. But unlike celebrities who use ghostwriters or co-authors to pen their memoirs, Neil's affecting and naive way of expressing himself grows increasingly endearing as you settle in and travel the journey. What is revealed is the man behind the ego and rock persona: the way he thinks and feels and lives, his strengths and passions, regrets and weaknesses, with an abiding love and dedication to his children, one of whom is quadriplegic. His philanthropic involvements include the co-founding of Farm Aid, an annual benefit concert begun in 1985 to help raise funds for struggling family farmers. He and his wife, Pegi, were also founding members of The Bridge School, an internationally recognized leader in the field of augmentative and alternative communication for children with severe physical and speech impairments. For these and other efforts, Neil was named The MusicCare Foundation's Person of the Year in 2010, an annual award to commend musicians for their artistic achievement in the music industry and dedication to philanthropy.

I was happy to discover Neil Young is doing fine, alive and well, clean and sober, with many active projects and plans. His current passions include his involvements in LincVolt, an environmentally savvy solution for large automobiles, and PONO, a high-resolution technology for vastly improving digital music. These and other projects keep Neil active and fully engaged until the muse comes calling again. In a recent interview, Neil was asked about his book writing. Having broken his toe at the pool, he explained, "I just wrote this because basically I didn't have anything else to do and I couldn't walk." That's Neil just being Neil, honest and straightforward. And by the sounds of it, nowhere near his expiration date.

In April 2012, Dara-Lynn Weiss was featured with her young daughter, Bea, in Vogue's "Shape" issue. The article focused on their struggle to bring Bea's weight down to a healthy, normal range. Naïvely, Weiss believed if she shared their challenge she would help other mothers with overweight children. Instead, she became the center of a vicious media maelstrom. While I followed the coverage and was riveted by it, a part of me suspected there was much more to the story. In her controversial memoir, The Heavy, we get the real story.

At seven years old, Bea was four feet four inches tall and ninety-three pounds. Her blood pressure was 124/80. Her BMI was in the ninety-eighth percentile. Her mother was told she was clinically obese. As Weiss explains, "My reaction was the same as if I had been told Bea had a potentially fatal allergy, or diabetes. Her weight pattern was no longer a simple parenting hurdle; it was a medical crisis." The decision to intervene forced Weiss to confront her own painful issues surrounding food and weight.

But Weiss is no mommy dearest, trying to slim down Bea to reach some unrealistic goal. After reading The Heavy, I believe Weiss is a mother who loves her daughter so much that she went to extremes that most of us cannot fathom in order to protect her child. Early on, Weiss enlisted the help of a doctor, but there was very little concrete information available to guide her; she had to make much of it up as she went along. And like any parent, she made mistakes. She writes openly and honestly about these mistakes, including letting her daughter be photographed for the Vogue feature. She admits to making controversial choices, but she is unapologetic about them. Weiss's role in her family is "the heavy" -- the one ultimately responsible for the toughest decisions. She writes: "As for Bea, I wasn't trying to make her slender. That wasn't my job. I just needed her to be healthy."

Agree or disagree with Dara-Lynn Weiss's choices, but read her entire story before passing judgment. She made what she believed were the best decisions for her daughter, given the information available to her at the time. Will these choices end up being in Bea's long-term best interest? The jury is still out, and will be for many years.

In 1295, Marco Polo came home to Italy after his epic trip across Asia, and was promptly imprisoned. While incarcerated, the merchant dictated stories about what he'd seen. The result, which came to be known as The Travels of Marco Polo, is considered by some to be the first true example of travel writing. So when William Dalrymple got the bright idea in 1986 to recreate Marco Polo's journey from Jerusalem to Beijing, he knew he would be traveling on the shoulders of giants. Dalrymple's highly acclaimed narrative about his own trip, In Xanadu, shows just how little the world has really changed over seven centuries -- and why a Mongolian Communist Party official might look at the trekker and say, "English people, very, very bonkers."

Dalrymple does not come from the let's-go-to-Tuscany-and-drink-wine school of travel writing. First, the road to Xanadu goes through Syria, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, and China, none of which are now known for their sunny tourist infrastructure -- and certainly weren't known for it in the 1980s. And then, there's Dalrymple himself, who is a somewhat out-of-shape curmudgeon. In eastern Turkey, he describes burqa-clad women at a bustling bazaar: "A respectful six paces behind their menfolk, trailing children and shopping bags, walked a series of shapeless conical sacks." He is funny, nasty, and keenly observant.

Similarly, here he is on a minibus filled with angry old women in Iran: "There was virtually nothing to break the monotony: the odd, sad peasant working away in a tragic attempt to wring vegetable life out of the land, two marooned mullahs inexplicably throwing great stones at each other, a burned-out bus ... Through the middle ran the road, and from it the dust rose in clouds and swept into the bus, blinding the eyes and gritting the mouth."

There is no denying that Dalrymple's writing is evocative. An armchair traveler will easily picture herself scrambling over a ruined castle by his side, or ducking down with him in the back of a coal truck to avoid the attention of a local policeman. But it is also much more respectful and informed than these excerpts might suggest. The author knows a lot about the history of central Asia, his insights into local architecture help explain how Europe's own cities came to be, and he is always willing to engage with locals on their own terms.

In Xanadu takes on particular poignancy because it brings us to places that are now tragically off limits to most Western observers. We follow as the writer makes his way through northern Syria, today embroiled in a violent civil war, or into Abbottabad, where Osama bin Laden was ultimately discovered. Along the way, he lets us peer into the complex history and mores of these ancient cultures that are all too often misunderstood by outsiders. Like all good travel writers, Dalrymple leaves us educated, entertained, and appreciative; Marco Polo would be proud.

Happy 2013! This year it's all about making realistic resolutions. We know that despite best intentions it's hard to stick to goals, so now Everyday eBook is here to help. Here's how -- Resolution number one: Read more ebooks! For every goal, there's an ebook that can teach, entertain, or motivate while you tackle your personal promises. We have eleven excellent recommendations that we hope you'll find useful. So, set reasonable expectations for yourself, read to get inspired, and do your best. With this plan, we think come next year you won't be making these same resolutions again. Everyday eBook wishes health and happiness for you and your loved ones!

May Cause Miracles by Gabrielle Bernstein
Transform your life in forty days. Gabi Bernstein explains how simple, consistent shifts in thinking and actions can lead to the miraculous in our daily lives. Here is her plan for releasing fear and experiencing gratitude, forgiveness, love, and joy.

The Unapologetic Fat Girl's Guide to Exercise and Other Incendiary Acts by Hanne Blank
Proud fat girl and personal trainer Hanne Blank understands the physical and emotional roadblocks that overweight women face in the world of exercise. In this unique guide, she shows how to choose workout options, avoid sports injuries, and get proper nutrition, all without fat-bashing.

Happier at Home by Gretchen Rubin
The author of The Happiness Project returns with a passionate study of domestic bliss. Breaking down everyday life into manageable monthly goals, Gretchen Rubin focuses on home-related themes such as marriage, parenthood, time and possessions, testing strategies to boost joy on the home front.

Super Brain by Rudolph E. Tanzi and Deepak Chopra
Use your brain in a revolutionary new way to achieve health, happiness, and spiritual growth. By increasing self-awareness and conscious intention we become open to the brain's limitless potential, improving the mind-body connection, promoting well-being, and reducing the risks of aging.

Running with the Kenyans by Adharanand Finn
Whether running is your hobby or your religion, Adharanand Finn's journey to the elite training camps of Kenya will amaze you. Part travelogue, part memoir, this incredible quest to uncover the secrets of the world's greatest runners combines practical advice, a new look at barefoot running, and fresh spiritual insights.

Drop Dead Healthy by A. J. Jacobs
The true and hilarious story of a man with an epic goal: to achieve maximal health from head to toe. From diets of raw foods and extreme chewing to gadgets and sex clinicians and sleep experts, A. J. Jacobs did it all and lived to tell about it in this extremely entertaining story of transformation.

The Science of Yoga by William J. Broad
William J. Broad examines an ancient practice and gives a fascinating objective evaluation. He illuminates how yoga can lift moods and inspire creativity, exposes moves that can be dangerous, and presents evidence about our capability for entering states of sexual bliss, while offering a vision of how the practice of yoga can be improved.

Lessons from Madame Chic by Jennifer L. Scott
As a foreign exchange student, California girl Jennifer L. Scott met a Parisian mentor who taught her about the art of French living and that chic sense of style and charm. Each chapter reveals a secret about grooming, dressing, entertaining, and more. Ideal for one who wants a bit of je ne sais quoi in her life.

Mindfulness by Mark Williams, PhD, and Danny Penman, PhD
Find peace in our frantic world with this eight-week plan. You can live a happier and less anxious and exhausting life with the techniques in this book. Practice these simple and straightforward forms of mindfulness meditation -- and it can take just ten to twenty minutes a day for the full benefits to be revealed.

Far From the Tree by Andrew Solomon
In this profound book about family, Andrew Solomon writes about parents who have children living with dwarfism, Down's syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, with children who are criminals, who are conceived in rape, and other exceptional situations. While it might initially seem tragic, Solomon documents the triumphs of love these families experience.

Heads in Beds by Jacob Tomsky
Read this before spending your next night in a hotel bed. Jacob Tomsky's enthralling, indiscreet memoir tells of his life spent working in the hotel industry. He shares the unwritten code of bellhops, the antics in the valet parking garage, housekeeping's dirty little secrets, and tips to get free stuff and upgrades. Happy travels mean a happy new year!

What better time than New Year's Eve to reminisce about a few of our favorite books about partying people and decadence of the most vice-like kind? Authors over the years have certainly nailed down the literary brilliance of laughing and schmoozing, canoodling and boozing. So herewith, before your day-after hangover, some of our favorite eBooks about big parties and the people who frequent them.

Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney
Jay McInerney knows how to write about parties. And with Bright Lights, Big City he demonstrated exactly how to take the tale of one young man, wandering through his life in Manhattan, and turn it into what became known as the voice of a generation. If you fly through Bright Lights wanting more, check out Story of My Life.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
East of Manhattan lies East Egg, holiday home to NYC's elite. It is here that the relatively unworldly Nick Carraway meets a cast of characters including Daisy and Tom Buchanan, and the one and only Jay Gatsby. In Fitzgerald's classic tale, though, a lifestyle consisting of party after party can only lead to disaster, which Gatsby and the rest eventually meet. Bonus: Watch for Baz Luhrmann's film adaptation this spring starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, and Carey Mulligan.

A Ticket to the Circus by Norris Church Mailer
The late Norris Church Mailer turned grief into a timeless tale when she penned her memoir of her marriage to literary legend Norman Mailer. The parties were never-ending for the pair, and the stories that Norris recounts will make you wish that 1) you were there with them, or 2) that she'd lived long enough to tell a thousand more.

Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
Partying never appeared so grotesque as it did in Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting. Trainspotting, a collection of stories chronicling the lives of heroin-affected Scottish youth, is a little bit cautionary tale, a little bit voyeuristic disgust, and a whole lot of punk. If the book just wasn't vivid enough for you, check out Danny Boyle's 1996 adaptation starring the one and only Ewan McGregor.

The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Fitzgerald does it again with the beautiful and heartbreaking tale of newlyweds Anthony and Gloria Patch, babes of the golden age, in The Beautiful and Damned. Life is fabulous for the two, who seemingly have everything two young lovers could want in life. But all that is gold is not glittering, as we soon come to learn in Fitzgerald's novel, which some say is based on his life with his beautiful and troubled wife, Zelda.

Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
What list of party tales would be complete without Bret Easton Ellis? Another '80s literary great, Ellis is the twisted mastermind behind American Psycho – but it's his mid-1980s-penned Less Than Zero that first launched him onto the literary scene. Set in Los Angeles, Less Than Zero is the story of a disillusioned college student who returns from his East-U.S. campus to his home on the West Coast. Partying ensues, as do the resulting lessons involving corpses, prostitution, and addiction. Party on, literati.

“There was once a time when the lawyer knew he looked like an Arab,” writes Sayed Kashua, whose Second Person Singular is quite simply one of the most powerful satirical novels to come out of Israel in our time. Many have chronicled the painful and complex history of the Israeli Arab, trapped in an intractable cultural, religious, and political conflict, but none has done so with Kashua’s deadpan wit, devastating irony, and ability to tell a terrific story.

The ambitious lawyer in question, nameless to the end, is considered one of the best Arab criminal attorneys in Jerusalem. Originally from The Triangle, a concentration of rural Arab villages and towns adjacent to the (West Bank) Green Line, he now lives in an upscale Jewish neighborhood, speaks perfect Hebrew, wears custom suits, drives a black Mercedes, serves elegant sushi at his dinner parties, and loves his wife – the refined, well-educated Leila from Galilee – and his children. His is a carefully constructed life – until the day he picks up a copy of Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata in his favorite used bookstore and a note falls out, a letter in his wife’s handwriting that reads, in Arabic: I waited for you, but you didn’t come.  I hope everything’s all right.  I wanted to thank you for last night.  It was wonderful.  Call me tomorrow? The name on the flyleaf is Yonatan.

The lawyer’s perfect world has turned to ashes. Flooded with jealousy and fear, his repressed insecurities are transformed into mindless fury. Gone is the cultured, liberal, liberated “Israeli.” In his place, a character from the Arab soap operas he scorns, the primitive fanatic with a troubled soul: “Only now, for the first time in his life, did he understand what honor meant. He who spoke out against and even lectured about honor killings … now saw the error of his ways.”

Alternating with the lawyer’s third-person narrative is another story, told in first-person by Amir Lahab, a poor Arab also from The Triangle, who arrives in Jerusalem to pursue a degree in social work. Like the lawyer, Amir is intent on re-creating himself, which means discarding his past, his class, and his heritage. He finds a job as caregiver to a comatose mysterious young photographer named Yonatan, bedridden in the attic of his wealthy mother’s house. Cautiously, Amir assumes his identity. He speaks only in Hebrew, is admitted to Jerusalem’s prestigious Bezalel Institute of Art and Design, and sets about creating a new life and career in Jerusalem as a talented photographer and an Ashkenazi Jew.

To reveal any more of the plot would be to reveal too much. But Kashua, often called the Palestinian Seinfeld (or Larry David meets Edward Said), comes close to the Shakespearean in his handling of the comic and absurdist elements of love and betrayal, of mistaken or fabricated identities, dangerous voyages, purloined letters, bizarre twists of fate. Kashua is a master in the art of representing the schizophrenic experience of being an Arab citizen of Israel and the anguish of those desperate to belong to a society that both scorns and fears them. And so it continues, the delusional intimacy of the second person singular, and the dual nature of the singular Israeli Arab. In a society forever wrestling with fundamental questions of identity and belonging, where (as Jewish and Arab school principals have lamented) if one Jewish child joins nine Arabs on the playground, all of them switch to Hebrew, Kashua has given us a fascinating story and an unforgettable ending.

From 1962 to 1981 -- during the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK; the Vietnam War; the Civil Rights Movement; NASA's Apollo missions; the Watergate Scandal and more -- Walter Cronkite was there. Each night, Americans invited him into their homes, and each night, in his objective yet caring voice, he told them the news. Further, he not only told Americans the news; Cronkite became the paternal figure, the healer of the nation, “the most trusted man in America.” Now, a few years after his death, Douglas Brinkley brings us the life of the legend in the fascinating biography, Cronkite.

No doubt, Walter Cronkite is best known for the CBS Evening News and his famous sign off, "And that's the way it is." But, as you'd expect, and as Brinkley displays, there is much more to Cronkite than those years and that line. Brinkley is able to navigate Cronkite's personal life and professional development -- from his childhood as a Kansas City paperboy to his big stories in WWII (e.g. "Assignment to Hell"), from his marriage to Betsy Maxwell to his early TV jobs ("You Are There"), from his feud with Murrow to his feud with Rather -- all the while sprinkling in small touches, such as his love of dirty jokes and sailing. True, Cronkite never needed any humanizing; he was as human as your next-door neighbor or coworker, as wise and warm as your grandfather; that's how he made you feel. But for the first time, now, Brinkley reinforces that human feeling Cronkite always projected through the television screen. For the first time, Brinkley fleshes out your image of Uncle Walter.

Still, Cronkite isn't just the story of an anchorman. The man lived a history-book life, and within his life are a million other stories -- twentieth-century American politics; the rise and fall of communism; the emergence of radio and then television news, and much more -- so that as you read, not only is Brinkley telling Cronkite's story, but also the story (the history) of the world and beyond.

In reading Cronkite, it's evident that Brinkley loves his subject, and, as a biographer, he should. But as you find out, it's not without reason, as Cronkite isn't like so many childhood heroes who fall from grace as they grow up. Brinkley's book doesn't leave you feeling disillusioned or tricked. Rather it impresses and validates your trust in Mr. Walter Cronkite.

Editor's Note: In his book Assholes: A Theory, philosopher Aaron James presents a theory of the asshole that is both intellectually provocative and existentially necessary. Here, he focuses his expertise on three specific subcategories of asshole.

The task of selecting a single person who is supremely deserving of the name "asshole" poses an extraordinary challenge. Among the vast sea of exemplars, we can hardly compare candidate assholes by any simple metric. We risk comparing apples to oranges. To carry out our unsavory task in good faith, we therefore compare assholes under three subheadings: Sports Assholes (the NBA, in particular); Hollywood Assholes; and Assholes of Worldly Consequence, in society or politics.

In this we assume the following general definition: The asshole is the guy who systematically allows himself special advantages in cooperative life out of an entrenched sense of entitlement that immunizes him against the complaints of other people. Different "senses of entitlement" correspond to assholes of different styles (the Smug Asshole, for instance, acts from a sense that he is plainly superior). The resultant assholery may manifest itself in multifarious ways, in sports, entertainment, or politics and society, as the situation provides.

Turning then to our first subcategory award, we have: the NBA Highest Scorer Award, on the asshole scale.

The top players are: the egomaniacal, "ball don't lie" Rasheed Wallace; Meta World Peace, for his grandiose chosen name and his gratuitous elbow throw; and, finally, fellow Laker Kobe Bryant, for lack of effort in showing sportsmanly humility. (Note that L.A. does alarmingly well in the rankings.)

And the top scorer is .... Mr. World Peace! Because inordinate pettiness speaks volumes. By comparison, Wallace and especially Bryant are unusually fine players. Which is no excuse, and yet is, alas, a mitigating factor: We give better players more leeway, at least up to a point (which Mr. World Peace brazenly crosses).

Turning to our second subcategory, we have: the Academy Award, for best Hollywood asshole (or impersonations thereof).

The candidates are: angry-man Mel Gibson; self-absorbed and delusional Charlie Sheen; and hard-charging “Entourage” character Ari Gold.

And the winner is ... (envelope please) Mr. Gold! He surely reflects the larger Hollywood asshole culture, even where he fails in portraying the real-life Hollywood agent that he is said to depict. Gibson, by contrast, is angry-crazy and so harder to understand. Sheen, in the end, wins (a modicum) of our sympathy. He just may be a delusional man going through a very rough patch.

Turning to our final subcategory, we have the Consequence Award, for the most consequential asshole in politics or society (at least lately).

The candidates are: Steve Jobs, whose controlling executive presence gave the world elegant phones; Dr. House, of “House,” who shows that you can be an asshole doctor as long as lives are saved; and Newt Gingrich, who says of himself, “I think you can write a psychological profile of me that says I found a way to immerse my insecurities in a cause large enough to justify whatever I wanted it to.”

On the basis of grave, existentialist reflections about the resultant course of human history, this committee determines that the winner is ... Newt Gingrich! Gingrich did more than anyone to usher in the age of anti-cooperation and political paralysis in the United States – an age in which legislation is now nearly impossible, even where Republicans and Democrats can fully agree on policy. Since the accomplishment may bring America to budgetary (and other forms of) ruin, Newt can proudly claim the Consequence Award over Jobs' merely having given gadget orgasms to millions, and House's having marginally worsened a medical profession in which assholes were already in abundance.

The task remains to rank our subcategories. That ranking, in turn, shall determine our ultimate winner. I, the committee, submit that we have no better criterion for asshole supremacy than the material consequences of the asshole's assholery on the course of world history. The Consequence Award is thus our gold standard, and the winner of the Consequence Award – Newt Gingrich – is thereby the Supremely Meritorious Asshole Award winner! He is to be congratulated for his years of distinguished public service.

Beth Raymer doesn't have a plan. And she's not entirely and consciously sure about what she's searching for. After her job as a youth counselor goes awry, she moves from one sanity-testing gig to another, following the nearest path to quick cash. After answering a Help Wanted ad that makes no apologies for its offer of work, Beth's life post-counseling finds her posing as a nude dancer who makes housecalls. Though the work's moral foundation is questionable at best, the money is good, and so Beth stays on -- that is, until a delusional man with a rifle threatens her life. Beth Raymer's memoir, Lay the Favorite, picks up shortly after, as she's waiting tables at a Las Vegas hole in the wall. And it's here that she first hears the name "Dink."

Dink makes his living in the high-stakes, fast-paced, often dangerous, man's world of professional sports gambling. On the day Beth walks into his office after getting a tip that he's hiring, she's prepared to stretch the truth to whatever length necessary to find her way into the world -- and Dink eats it up. After all, all he's looking for is someone who shows up with an honest work ethic. So begins one of Beth's most exciting unplanned journeys of all.

From the betting office to the Caribbean and back again, Beth accompanies Dink, his omnipresent wife Tulip, and his ragtag group of employees on the roller coaster ride through their world, earning their respect and Dink's confidence. Beth proves her mettle even further during a run through the amateur female boxing circuit. Through it all, Beth and Dink form a unique bond. There is something almost paternal in Dink's treatment of Beth, but yet they still give Tulip cause for pause and mistrust. Drama ensues. Beth's non-planned life proves anything but idle.

In spite of the excitement, the drama, the dirt, and the romance, Lay the Favorite is, at its heart, a story about the search for personal freedom -- and the myriad ways we can mess up along the way. Raymer struggles, makes questionable choices, lies sometimes, connives at others, uses her looks to her advantage -- and the reader roots for her through it all. Because personal freedom is a beautiful thing, even when it's found in the gross underbelly of Vegas sports betting.

Beth Raymer's Lay the Favorite was adapted for the big screen earlier this year, directed by Stephen Frears, screenplay by D.V. DeVincentis, and starring Rebecca Hall, Bruce Willis, Vince Vaughn, and Catherine Zeta-Jones. I, of course, recommend you read the book first.

I like jigsaw puzzles. I like the whole process of doing them: separating and assembling the border pieces, working on individual sections, finding that elusive piece. Ahhhhh, it fits! The payoff, of course, is revealing the complete picture. Following the 2008 financial crisis, I soon realized we were not getting the whole story from newspapers, magazines, or political talking heads. Each had his or her own particular slant and point of view, with plenty of finger-pointing, scapegoating, and blame to go around. Wall Street and the big banks, unscrupulous mortgage lenders, politicians, the Fed, affordable housing, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and The Community Reinvestment Act all came under fire. Consequently, I began exploring books and movies on the topic in hopes of putting together the assorted pieces to get a fuller -- if not whole -- picture. My latest "missing piece" is Bull by the Horns by Sheila Bair, the former head of the FDIC.

Bair's telling of the story is straightforward, accessible, and covers a tremendous amount of ground. Specific bank failures and deals, TARP, Dodd-Frank legislation and the Volcker Rule, as well as international issues, are all covered -- as is the meaning of the terms and jargon often used in banking and the subsequent reporting on the crisis. Credit Default Swaps, CDOs, derivatives, tranches, robo-signing, Basel II and III all become easily understood for the uninitiated, and play a role in the story. What makes this a particularly fascinating read is her revelations of behind-the-scenes negotiations and hidden agendas of the main characters in this tragedy. Want to know how Tim Geithner as Treasury Secretary fought to protect Citigroup at all costs? Interested in hearing how high-stakes backroom negotiations are conducted? Curious about who was interested in furthering and protecting their political agendas? And how they used the media to manipulate the arguments?

It's all there in Bair's revelations, and in staggering detail. With hundreds of billions in play, you can bet there was plenty of poker. Bair does not hold back on stating her feelings about being the only woman of power at the negotiating table, and how her exclusion from the boys' club impacted some of her strategies and resulting actions, including moments of self-doubt. But Bair is equally unafraid to state her opinions forthright, although some will take issue with her total dismissal of the affordable housing mandate having no role in the eruption, on which other writers have written extensively. In the end, she believes she fought the good fight and is rightfully proud of her accomplishments. Bair admits she sometimes failed in negotiations and compromised too often, in her attempts to protect the American taxpayers. Note: In 2008 and 2009, Forbes ranked Bair as the second most powerful woman in the world.

There are many books and movies about the financial crisis, such as Reckless Endangerment by Gretchen Morgenson, The Big Short by Michael Lewis, "Inside Job" with Matt Damon, On the Brink by Hank Paulson, and Too Big to Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin. Many more will be produced for years to come. Some may ask why bother? What's done is done, move on. But like that unfinished jigsaw on the dining room table, the puzzle begs to be completed and give us the complete picture.

One woman, two men, three eras, and one magical city: a memoirist's dream! Onto this dazzling but well-trod stage strides the fearless Kati Marton, whose Paris: A Love Story is an exciting and elegant paean to the city that is ever at the heart of her high-pressure life as a successful public woman married to two very successful public men.

"Why did no one tell me that we have love on loan?" an inconsolable Marton cries, early in her memoir, as she mourns the sudden death of her adored second husband, the brilliant and indefatigable Richard Holbrooke, architect of the Dayton Peace Accords (which ended the war in Bosnia), and Obama's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Marton is famous in her own right, of course -- an international human rights activist, an award-winning foreign correspondent for ABC News, and the author of seven acclaimed books. Still, adrift and devastated, she retreats once again to an apartment in her beloved Latin Quarter, where she resolves to reinvent her life.

Thus begins her immersion in memories both intimate and thrilling: her family's flight from Budapest in 1957 and their perilous journey to America, the sudden shocking discovery that her maternal grandparents were Jewish and had been murdered at Auschwitz, her youthful romance with the Latin Quarter where Marton studied at the Sorbonne, fell in love, witnessed the violent and exhilarating student uprisings of May 1968, discovered Montaigne, French cinema, and Parisian chic. She returns in 1978 as ABC's foreign correspondent and bureau chief, but this time to the Right Bank; she meets and marries the famous and dashing Peter Jennings, the father of her two children, and begins a fifteen-year love story, played out against the backdrop of world events, "a roller-coaster ride of passionate reunions and agonizing separations." Torn between her love for Jennings and her ambition to become a great journalist, Marton finally divorces him. Soon afterward, she meets the irrepressible Holbrooke, her great and lasting love. They marry in Budapest in 1995, just before the savage summer of Srebrenica and Holbrooke's posting to Sarajevo. Later, when Holbrooke is appointed Ambassador to the UN, they travel together throughout Asia and Africa where, as Marton puts it, "Richard talks to the torturers, I talk to the tortured." During this dramatic period, they retreat often to Paris, which comforts and renews them both.

It is in the final chapters, however, after Holbrooke's tragic death, that Marton gives us the heart of this moving memoir, an exquisite portrait of the city where "sorrow and pain are deemed part of life." This time, the city is hers alone, a magical place where she "no longer live(s) in a protected world of waiting cars and drivers, fixers, first-class travel, and smiling customs officials" but where, once again on the Left Bank, she rereads Proust, takes hot mint tea in the shaded garden of the Paris mosque, discovers the revelatory Musee Nissim de Camondo, and buys her first pair of dangerously high-heeled raspberry pumps. And it is in the cafes, those "fine places for people alone not to feel lonely," where she is once again able to write.

Ryan Holiday's Trust Me, I'm Lying lets you peer behind the curtains of the Internet to see how bloggers and media companies determine what you read, what you share, and even how you think. It's fascinating and disturbing, and it's all true. Trust me.

Holiday knows firsthand what it means to be a media manipulator. As the marketing head at American Apparel and as an independent consultant, he used his understanding of new media -- along with a healthy dose of sleaze and deception -- to make a lot of money for his clients. But then, to hear him tell it, he began to see that he had created a Frankenstein-like monster. This book, then, is both a "tell-all" and cautionary tale. You know exactly what he is talking about. You have read Gawker and Jezebel and Huffington Post and The New York Times. You have seen cat videos, and clicked "like" on Facebook pages. Of course, YOU are immune to manipulation, because you are in on the joke. Wait. You are, aren't you?

In Part One of Trust Me, I'm Lying, Holiday presents a cookbook of techniques that marketers use, including deliberate leaks, clever formatting of websites, using story popularity metrics. He names names and uses stories we all know all too well. For example, he describes how one can place a story with a low-level blog in such a way that it will be picked up by TechCrunch, repeated by BuzzFeed, and then reported as a trend in The Washington Post, which makes it "real." It doesn't matter if the original story was pure deception, or if the mainstream newspaper has high journalistic standards; in fact, the newspaper is ultimately sharing its credibility with a pajama-wearing blogger who only cares about cranking out pageviews.

In Part Two, Holiday shows us the dark side of the system: real people getting hurt as a result of the lying, extortion, snark, and desperate economics behind online journalism. In an interesting twist, several of the examples involve American Apparel being unfairly accused of things, which might inspire schadenfreude. After all, should we really feel bad when the company is hurt by its own tactics? But, what if the accusations plaguing the company really are lies? Are we being manipulated by the book itself? Wheels within wheels; that's what makes this book intriguing.

We are critical readers of books and blogs, so we think we can see through the spin, but sometimes we're wrong. In a famous "Twilight Zone" episode, aliens arrive, ostensibly in peace, bearing a cryptic book that appears to be titled To Serve Mankind. As people are lining up to board a departing spaceship, someone breathlessly arrives to report that they have finally translated it: "It’s a cookbook!" Ryan Holiday would say that blog journalism also serves mankind. He doesn't propose any solutions, but he performs a valuable service by helping us to re-examine what we think we know.

People have strong feelings about some of our lifetime’s greatest minds, often willing to defend personal opinions to the death (or, at least, to an uncomfortable height of tension during cocktail parties). There are some whose minds, though, are undebatedly brilliant: Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Stephen Hawking, Marissa Mayer, Maya Angelou, and many others. Add to this list Christopher Hitchens, whose own brilliance remained evident even through his dying days, as he wrote his last work, Mortality.

Leave it to Hitchens to take a diagnosis of death – an incurable, semi-treatable cancer – and turn it into an opportunity for shared reflection, conversation about the afterlife, and a reason to give thanks. With both eyes wide open, Hitchens confronted his fate and in a slim volume published this year, not quite one year after his December 15, 2011 death, shared his unabashedly upfront thoughts on religion, the experience of sickness, the struggle of reconciling one’s pride with one’s condition, and more. Mortality could just as easily be called “What It’s Like for a Man to Die” – though somehow, that feels more morbid than the actual nature of the book.

There’s a moment in Mortality during which Hitchens talks about the joy he and his friends used to find in gathering over great meals to take part in great conversation. So much seemed about the food, the meal, the nourishment. When his esophageal cancer eventually took the pleasures of eating away from Hitchens, his friends still came, and still conversed. It took this experience for Hitchens to realize that it wasn’t actually about the food for his friends – it was about him: his company, his conversation. And how wonderful of a realization is that?

From the awkwardness of being confronted by a stranger who feels compelled to share a “similar” story (Even though it was a cousin. Whose cancer was in the liver. And who went into remission. And then eventually died anyway.) to his fabulous and succinct advice for writers, Hitchens fits so much into a mere 104 pages. Mortality. It’s what so many of us fear, what so many of us speak of only objectively, and it’s what makes all of us human. Mortality. It’s what Christopher Hitchens faced head-on as one of his life’s greatest events. And we, mere mortals, are lucky enough to be able to revisit that event.

There are certain kinds of people who crave extreme experiences. These people grow up to be anesthesiologists and airplane pilots and stunt drivers. They thrive on setting difficult challenges for themselves and pushing past natural limits, sometimes to the edge of what life should be able to sustain. Jon Krakauer, the author of Into Thin Air, a harrowing memoir from 1997, is one of those people. His story, about an attempt to climb Mount Everest that went very, very wrong, is a thrilling tale that still ranks with the best adventure writing.

Krakauer, a terrific writer who has written well-regarded books about religion and murder (Under the Banner of Heaven), "friendly fire" in Afghanistan (Where Men Win Glory), and a troubled loner (Into The Wild), is also an accomplished amateur climber. In May 1996, he was writing a piece for Outside magazine about the growing commercialization of the Himalayan mountains. Once the exclusive province of technical climbers, the tallest mountains in the world were attracting a new audience: thrill-seekers who could afford guides and Sherpas to help them accomplish previously unimaginable feats. For the feature, Krakauer joined such a guided tour, unwittingly becoming part of the story himself.

Into Thin Air describes the acclimatization process the guides used to train the climbers to breathe at 29,000 feet, where the air is so thin that even with bottled oxygen, climbing has been described as the equivalent to "running on a treadmill and breathing through a straw." There are rivalries among different climbing teams, avalanches, people falling into crevasses, people coughing up blood -- all the good stuff we'd want from an adventure tale. There is a triumphant photo from the top of the world. Then, while the writer is descending to Camp Four, a tent on a windswept ledge at 26,000 feet, with nineteen climbers still above him, a furious storm hits the mountain. This, dear reader, is a literal cliff-hanger.

We armchair travelers read books like Into Thin Air and Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm to experience places and situations that we will otherwise never see. I can say with certainty that I will never stand on a sheer slope of ice being raked by a 100-mile per hour snowstorm. At the same time, these adventure dramas let us imagine whether we would have the courage, stamina, and good judgment to survive the worst.

Earlier in the trip, Krakauer tells of passing the frozen bodies of dead explorers from previous treks. "In order to succeed you must be exceedingly driven but if you're too driven you're likely to die," he observes. "Thus, the slopes of Everest are littered with corpses." This tension is a classic human story, updated with icy clarity. Krakauer found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time; fortunately for us, he lived to tell the tale.

Julian Barnes has made a career of attempting to arrive at greater truths through literature, always promulgating his guiding belief that fiction is "untrue in a way that ends up telling a greater truth than any other information system ... that exists." In Through the Window, a collection of previously published essays (and one short story), Barnes explores those topics that most interest and influence him; to his credit, they are sure to interest and influence any reader of Barnes, as well as anyone who happens to stumble upon this well-crafted compilation.

Barnes has always written for the smart reader, the "proper reader," as he writes in (one of three) essays on Ford Madox Ford, and in Through the Window he examines the underappreciated author; the appreciated author whose nuances the casual reader might have missed; and his favorite subjects -- language in literature, France, the "very French" novel, and throughout, how authors use their medium to tell that "greater truth." "Good prose is like a windowpane," Orwell wrote, and Barnes spends a fair amount of time in these essays exploring what good prose really is -- and how each author conveys truth through their window. In "George Orwell and the Fucking Elephant," he examines how a curmudgeonly author with a penchant for stretching the truth achieved "national treasure" status (as well as what the author in question might have thought of the dubious honor). Orwell has been much appreciated, as has Penelope Fitzgerald, whose subtlety and intelligence Barnes spends much time exploring; add to the mix an essay on Lorrie Moore, whose excellent fiction, Barnes feels, has been misrepresented and you're gifted with a variety of essays that provide a fresh take on authors whom casual readers might initially misunderstand.

Each other piece of this collection deals equally intelligently with Barnes's perennial influences. There is an extremely enlightening piece on translation in Madame Bovary; an essay on language in Edith Wharton's The Reef in which Barnes provides a phrase, "coil-bondage," meant to describe the complicated mash-up of lives and lies and emotions between characters, which works as well for Wharton's uncertain protagonists as it does for his own (and Ford's, as he points out). His closing piece, a comparative look at grief as described by literary greats Joan Didion and Joyce Carol Oates -- with some Samuel Johnson thrown in -- is enlightening for its nuanced look at the themes of perception and description of an emotion many find indescribable. Throughout Through the Window, Barnes's interminable theme -- how do we tell the truth through fiction, and how do we lie, and how does the reader, or even the author, tell the difference? -- is a continual undercurrent. In typical Barnes fashion, he manages to write on an unanswerable question with intelligence. This is an excellent collection for the "proper reader."

If you ask Americans to name their favorite holiday, many will answer "Thanksgiving." It's an interesting choice given how frequently it includes stressful travel and family drama, not to mention the preparation of the year's most labor-intensive meal. So why do we love it? As Sam Sifton, author of the new book Thanksgiving: How to Cook It Well, says, "Thanksgiving … is a celebration of American excess and of American friendship in all its many guises."

But enough about history.

Let's talk turkey. Ready or not we are a scant few days away from the celebration, and Thanksgiving is the perfect book to guide you through the big day with the least amount of fuss and angst.

Over the past twenty-five years, Sifton has prepared many Thanksgiving celebrations, large and small. For a time, he also manned The New York Times emergency hotline on Thanksgiving day, answering every possible question from desperate cooks across the nation. The man knows Thanksgiving. Drawing on that experience, he not only provides fifty timeless and tasty recipes for every step of the meal, including what to do with leftovers, but also delves into the necessary equipment, how to set a proper table, and what drinks to serve. Sifton's Thanksgiving is the primer every home cook from beginner to expert needs to not only survive, but thrive on Thanksgiving.

Now, in the spirit of thanks and giving, we're happy to share with you eleven of Sifton's tips on how to host a wonderful, traditional Thanksgiving dinner:

1. NO appetizers. They spoil the meal. You may serve a lovely soup such as oyster bisque or butternut squash, but no amuse bouche -- or perish the thought -- chips!

2. NO salad. It has no place in a traditional Thanksgiving meal. As Sifton says, "You can have your salad tomorrow."

3. There will be turkey, and only turkey. Please no ham, roast beef, or fish. Fresh turkey is best, but frozen will suffice. It may or may not be brined, but no plastic cooking bags allowed.

4. It's best not to carve the turkey at the table. It's a messy undertaking, and no one needs to see that.

5. There will be traditional side dishes. That's four side dishes to be exact. Stick to what is in season.

6. There will be a table, even if it is constructed out of milk crates and plywood.

7. There will be proper place settings, candles, and dessert forks.

8. Which means there will be dessert. Stick to the classics: apple pie, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, etc.

9. There will be lots and lots and lots of butter, but no garlic.

10. Gravy is the sauce that binds the entire meal together. And how you make it is essential.

11. The bad news: You must clean up before going to bed. The good news: It's acceptable to enlist the help of the guests in the process.

In his chapter titled "Setting The Table, Serving The Food, and Some Questions of Etiquette," Sifton says that every Thanksgiving meal should begin with the host offering thanks to family and friends for sharing the meal. "It is the point of the entire exercise," he writes. This year when I give thanks, I will raise a toast to Sam Sifton for his homage to Thanksgiving.

Before he was a Rough Rider in Cuba or the twenty-sixth president of the United States, before he busted trusts or won the Nobel Peace Prize, before he was simply known by everyone as "Teddy," Theodore Roosevelt spent two years as a commissioner of the NYPD. These two years are usually skipped over, or perhaps barely mentioned at best, when talking about Roosevelt's legacy. But as Richard Zacks shows in his latest book, Island of Vice, during these two years big things were happening for both New York City and Roosevelt -- big things that would lead to even bigger outcomes.

In the early 1890s, New York City was dominated by corruption. Tammany Hall had men in nearly every powerful position in the City, from mayor all the way down to police officers, and all benefited from the bribes that brothels, saloons, and casinos paid out to police captains. It all worked: The mayor wasn't overrun with complaints, the police got their bribes, and everyone enjoyed their vices. But when a reverend -- Reverend Charles Parkhurst -- hired a private detective to take him on a "sin tour" and uncover the city's dirty underbelly, everything changed. What he uncovered, and subsequently made sure the police and newspapers knew, was the addresses of saloons that served alcohol on Sunday (still illegal at this time) and brothels running out in the open. Soon, because of bad press and rising pressure, Tammany Hall was out and a new reform-intensive regime was in. Here, with his mustache, little glasses, and big, horse-toothed smile entered Theodore Roosevelt.

Named one of four new NYPD commissioners, Roosevelt over the next two years would battle the deep-seated corruption, firing hundreds of police officers, hiring hundreds more, and enforcing every law on the books no matter how unpopular. Such stern interpretation and enforcement of the laws -- the very thing that made Roosevelt so beloved and respected initially -- would also prove his downfall, as first the citizens and newspapers, and later his fellow commissioners, would turn on him, all claiming he was a tyrant -- Pulitzer's New York World newspaper even once caricatured Roosevelt saying, "I alone am Right!"

Zacks handles Roosevelt and this history with a balanced hand. There is no hero worship or romanticizing, which is often done with Roosevelt (i.e. his heroic feats in battle and his manliness). No, Zacks shows Roosevelt for the flawed yet impressive man he was, and likewise shows New York City -- and his accomplishments (and failures) there -- in accurate light. However, perhaps most impressive is how Zacks gives so much information without ever losing steam, as he peppers in the time's politics among New York City lore -- Roosevelt and Riis' midnight rambles undercover, Little Egypt's alleged striptease at Sherry's Restaurant, and "Big Bill" Devery's (he'd later bring a baseball team to New York City, a team eventually named the Yankees) constant battles in court, just to name a few -- and shows that 1890s New York City and Roosevelt are indeed quite memorable.

Happy Birthday, Everyday eBook. On November 15, 2011, we welcomed EverydayeBook.com into the digital space. Since then, we’ve covered hundreds of books, recommending to you, our dear followers and readers, some of the best of what we’re reading -- through prose, interviews, author-penned pieces, and more. In honor of our first birthday, we’d like to take a look back at some of the posts from our early days that we think you may have missed and that we’re particularly fond of. Happy eReading!

10 Things You Didn’t Know About Tom Brokaw
By Tom Brokaw
Tom Brokaw has been delivering the news in his distinctive style for decades. His career has taken him all over the world, and has brought him into countless American living rooms nightly. Now, Brokaw gets a little personal on Everyday eBook.

An Introduction to The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, by Alexander McCall Smith
By Alexander McCall Smith
Beloved author Alexander McCall Smith welcomes us into the fantastic world of Precious Ramotswe and The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency.

On the Success of Stieg Larsson’s Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
By Edward Kastenmeier
With over sixty-five million copies sold, and fans worldwide spanning ages, classes, and sexes, it’s clear that the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy is not only an enormous commercial success, it has directly impacted our culture. But why?

How to Read Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace in 5 Easy Steps
By Jennifer Ridgway
Is it worth it? What’s it actually about? Here are a few recommendations for those on the fence about whether or not they should read what may be the most famous Russian novel.

Gone Girl: A Q&A With Gillian Flynn About Her Sharpest Object Yet
By Kristin Fritz
Gillian Flynn, author of Sharp Objects and Dark Places, sat down with Everyday eBook upon the release of her latest mind-blowing novel to talk about inspiration, the dark side of marriage, playing favorites, and more.

A Murakami Primer: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
By Courtney Allison
With the widely publicized release of 1Q84, it’s worth taking a look back at Haruki Murakami’s earlier works. Let's start with The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, a rabbit-hole into Murakami’s world. It’s kind of like "Lost." But in book form. And weirder. Think raining fish.

Lee Child’s Jack Reacher: Rogue Shark or Jack the Knife?
By Christine McNamara
Lee Child's main man is like a shark in more ways than one. Oh, you've not tested the waters he swims in yet? Well get ready to dive in.

6 Must-Read Books for ‘Downton Abbey’ Fans
By Juliet Simon
If you’re taken with the drama, history, and romance in this series and are craving more, try capturing that feeling in book form; it lasts longer than an episode and will transport you just the same.

Perfectly Paired with Wine and Cheese: Julia Child’s My Life in France
By Richard Callison
'Last Saturday, I conveniently found myself at home opening a bottle of wine and tackling one of my favorite dishes, Coq au Vin, from the Mastering the Art of French Cooking cookbook. Nothing gets me in the mood for French cooking more than spending a couple of hours revisiting France through Julia Child's eyes, so before I rolled up my sleeves, I cracked open my well-worn copy of her memoir, My Life in France.'

Remembering Lois Lowry’s The Giver
By Naina Sharma
'I was nervous when I picked up Lois Lowry’s The Giver recently. I was worried that what had seemed profound and poetic as a child would become trite and lack depth as an adult. Luckily, the book, and my memory, did not disappoint.'

Editor's Note: Jim Sterba has been a foreign correspondent and national affairs reporter for more than four decades for the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. In his eye-opening new book, Nature Wars, Sterba explores how Americans have lost touch with our natural landscape. From plundering our forests in the 1800s to conservation efforts and sprawl in the twentieth century, this and more has contributed to our current degraded ecosystems and out-of-control wildlife populations. Sterba's well-researched essays certainly spark our interest in the road back to balance. Now, as Thanksgiving approaches, Sterba gets back to the land and shares his tips on wild turkey hunting.

Wild turkeys have made a miraculous comeback in recent decades from near extinction. From less than thirty thousand in 1920, they are approaching ten million, and counting, and have been transplanted to several states where they didn't exist before -- at least not since before the last Ice Age.

So is this is a great time to hunt your own turkey for Thanksgiving?

Let me count the reasons why not. First, it's hard -- almost impossible in the fall. Second, you have to get up very early. Third, you have to kill a big bird.

If you haven't dropped out yet, I will now reveal the secret fun parts: Do it next spring for the following Thanksgiving dinner. Spring turkey hunting is a fascinating game of deceit. About sex! (Aren't you glad you stayed with me?) When spring mating season begins, hens hear a male gobble and come running. That's right (I'm not saying politically correct), the hens practically line up to be serviced by the gobbler. But once impregnated, the hens go off satisfied. So as the season goes on there are fewer and fewer of them left to … you know. But the gobbler's hormones are still raging! He's willing to travel. This is where you come in.

You get to dress up in all the latest fashionable camouflage, head to toe, your face covered like a stagecoach bandit. Unfortunately, you have to do this an hour or so before dawn so you can get out to a spot not far from where you believe (or have scouted and know) gobblers are roosting -- usually high up in tall pine trees. You put out a plastic hen decoy, plop yourself down up against a tree, and proceed to do your best Julia Roberts (or some other sexy chick of your choice) imitation with a piece of slate, a wooden box, or a reed caller in your mouth.

You purr like a sex kitten, the gobbler gobbles. He's interested and on the way. Now, you can't move. You can't check your smart phone. You can't scratch your nose. If you're good, you'll see him approach. If you're not still, he'll flee in an instant. If it all works, he'll come close, fluff up his feathers in one of the great courting displays in nature. If you can aim your shotgun (No. 2-4 shot, please) without him seeing you move, the magic moment will have arrived. Head and neck shots are preferable for instant dispatch -- you don't want a wounded bird to run away.

If successful, you then have to eviscerate and pluck feathers off your prey. But that's a different story. However, if everybody had to partake of this adventure and turn a dead bird into dinner, just think about how much less animal protein we'd be eating. And think of how much more we'd treasure the protein we hunted and killed for ourselves than the protein in the supermarket diaper packs.

In honor of Rod Stewart's Rod: The Autobiography, here are eight life lessons and playlist suggestions I took away from this fun, juicy, honest book.

1. "Blondes (Have More Fun)": There's no shame in extreme hair maintenance.
Rod devotes the second chapter of his book to his hair, which, let's face it, we all want to hear about. And, as he says, maybe he is a bit extreme with his hair, but how many other people can say they're recognizable for the spiky tips on the top of their heads?

2. "Maggie May" and "Mandolin Wind": Stay true to yourself, and you'll go far.
Both of these songs were hits from Rod's "Every Picture Tells a Story," and also have a very Celtic quality that speaks to Rod's Scottish heritage.

3. "Rhythm of My Heart": Most definitely the rhythm Rod has followed for most of his life, so follow your heart.
Rod is known for being something of a philanderer and womanizer -- something he regretfully cops to in Rod. While I will agree with him that he behaved quite despicably to many of his girlfriends over the years, reading his book gave me more of an understanding of his actions -- he was quite simply in love with being in love!

4. "Forever Young": Sometimes you have to trust your gut … and sometimes, run from it!
Rod almost threw out two of his most famous songs: "Maggie May" and "Forever Young," for being "not good enough!" Always have confidence in yourself and your talents.

5. "Downtown Train": Everyone has a quirky hobby.
And Rod's is building elaborate model trains, railways, and landscapes. Go figure.

6. "Do Ya Think I’m Sexy": You can't please everyone.
Rod's take on disco was a tribute to the Rolling Stones, who had managed to mix disco and rock successfully. While the song gave him many new fans, it also disappointed many of his old fans, who felt he had sold out. Out of embarrassment, he took it out of his show, but then found that people were disappointed.

7. "Infatuation": Dive into what you're passionate about.
Rod is the master of infatuations -- with blondes, model trains, cars, football, and art -- and, lucky for us, he devotes a chapter to each in his book. It's inspiring (for the most part, leaving out the womanizing) to see the passion with which Rod approaches his interests.

8. "I Don't Want to Talk About It": Don't be coy. This is a phrase Rod has never uttered …
Because he lays it all bare in this autobiography -- every sex, drugs, and rock and roll moment -- with humor, candor, and humility.

Susan Conley's reflections of the two years she spent with her family in Beijing, as told in The Foremost Good Fortune, initially appear to present as a simple travel memoir -- but her story is so much more than a travelogue. As a transplant from Maine, Conley's descriptions of modern China transport us to a crowded, exotic city, awakening our senses with the smells, tastes, and customs as she struggles to help her two young sons adjust. But it is when Conley is diagnosed with cancer that we begin to experience the unexpected: a literal and metaphorical journey to finding one's true self while in a foreign land.

As Conley feels more and more unfamiliar with her own body, she equates China and cancer with cultural isolation. While temporarily back home to receive treatment, she realizes: "I’m struck then by how cancer is itself a kind of cultural dislocation. I feel more removed from myself -- more distanced now from the people I love than I ever did in China." This type of introspection, in this instance about the exile she felt in Beijing and the dire challenges ahead of her, is common in Conley's prose, which is often philosophical.

Still feeling disengaged, Conley returns to Beijing to complete her stay with her family, determined to rebuild her family connections. The opportunity to visit the Great Wall and share the ubiquitous meal of dumplings and Sprite with her children is bittersweet, as she is distracted by fear and the term "reoccurrence," but slowly Conley manages to exhale and be present. When she finds herself bonding with her husband, Tony, in a flea market, haggling over a Buddha statue that she thinks will provide spiritual help and healing, we know that China has transformed into a place that can offer her comfort.

Ultimately, The Foremost Good Fortune is an unflinching memoir of travel, motherhood, and recovery that speaks to anyone with a passion for exploration, both of the world and of the self. We do come to care about Conley and her family throughout her journey, during which she learns a lesson that can be of value to us all: It is indeed possible to be at home wherever you are.

With The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell, Mark Kurlansky once again stuns with his unique talent for so comprehensively capturing the larger history of time and place through the history of one very small object. In this case, Kurlansky takes us through the past of New York City by zooming in on the rich narrative of New York's oyster. As Kurlansky says so perfectly, "The history of New York oysters is a history of New York itself -- its wealth, its strength, its excitement, its greed, its thoughtlessness, its destructiveness, its blindness and … its filth."

Kurlansky begins with the Lenape and Munsey Native Americans' consumption patterns and with the history of the oyster in general. We're then taken to the early Dutch settlements of New York, when Manhattan was no more than a village in the southernmost tip of the island and Harlem was a village three hours away. This was a time when the beauty of the Hudson River and its surroundings were extolled by both the Dutch and visitors. Oysters were no exception -- friends and family back in Europe received "rhapsodic descriptions" of huge, delectable oysters. The expansion of New York and the expansion of oyster consumption continued to be inextricably linked, each feeding the other and weaving into the lore and culture of New York.

The first restaurants in New York all started as oyster houses -- we learn particularly about Delmonico's rise to fame and the introduction of the French style of raw oysters to New Yorkers. As the city grows and becomes more of the mass consumption hub it is today, oyster recipes get more lavish and mass quantities of oysters are eaten in a single sitting. Kurlansky particularly spends time on the Gilded Age, which was the height of New York's grand living, and the height of oyster consumption. Through his tracking of oysters, we get a richly developed picture of the culture and politics of New York in the nineteenth century.

Of course, all this consumption comes with a price. Kurlansky gets somber toward the end of the book, detailing the horrifying pollution that slowly killed off oysters in the New York area and made the once vibrant estuary a poisonous pool of gunk. He cites the Clean Water Act of 1972 and does note that the Hudson around New York City is slowly filling with wildlife again -- even some oyster beds are returning, though no one would recommend eating them. Still, The Big Oyster is as much a cautionary tale as a fun romp through the history of New York. Kurlansky impresses the importance of preserving the wonderful bounty the early Dutch enjoyed, and the price we now pay for having violated these lands for so long. But The Big Oyster never scolds -- entertaining and chock-full of information, it simply opens your eyes to the beauty and history on your dinner plate, and the importance of keeping that history alive. Some food for thought, next time we sit down to eat.

The soulful man who gazes out at the reader from the cover of the must-read memoir Who I Am may seem at odds with the enfant terrible, guitar-smashing version of Pete Townshend the public might envision. In fact, in the course of this remarkably touching and very naked self-exploration, this photo of the man who takes you in beyond blue eyes is the perfect image of Townshend.

Townshend begins his mesmerizing story with his earliest memories, beginning with his parents, his mother a singer and father a horn player. He then introduces his grandmother Denny, a complex and dark character with whom he was sent to live for a year in an attempt to “sort her out.” (Needless to say this was an impossible task for a six-year-old.) Of course, later on, sex, drugs, and rock and roll all appear -- in abundance. The other members of The Who, The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, Jimi Hendrix, Bruce Springsteen, Eric Clapton, Eddie Vedder, and many more all make appearances. Most stirring are Townshend’s characterizations of the people to whom he was close and about whom he cared most. Keith Moon, Roger Daltrey, and John Entwistle along with his family comprise the most evocative portraits. But Townshend has clear moments of insight about many others, including Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp (The Who’s managers) and other longtime associates.

Still, it is Townshend's reticence to see himself in the way others might see him that is most alluring. In detailing his days as an art student, enthralled by Gustav Metzger and his theories of auto-destructive art, to his struggles and successes with creating songs for The Who, along with full-length song cycles and what is probably the most successful rock opera of all time, Tommy, Townshend is in many ways cerebral and unexpectedly measured in his self-evaluation.

It is often difficult to round out a memoir, to connect the pieces so that the life appears whole on the page, but Townshend's account of his early experiences and his musings about them help to bring this memoir full circle as they surface throughout the book. This is not to say that Townshend presents himself as someone who has it all figured out – not at all. This is the emotional pull of the narrative: he transports you within his head to his doubts, fears, creative processes, and his very strong romantic streak.

Townshend left rock and roll for a while (actually he tried to leave The Who any number of times) to work as an editor at Faber & Faber, where he mingled with many of the literati and held his own in conversation and through his editing work. Quite apparent in this memoir, and in a lovely way, is a mixture of strong intellect, sensitivity and high flown ideas along with a gentle self-mockery. As you read the last word, you will find yourself cheering what appears to be, at sixty-seven, Townshend’s long-sought achievement of artistic and emotional fulfillment – he knows who he is.

"I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing." -- Dr. H. H. Holmes, confession, 1896

The Gilded Age, from 1865-1900, was an exceptionally transformative and emergent time for American cities, manufacturing, and technology. Unfortunately, the expanding urbanization occurred conjointly with crime and corruption. The Devil in the White City is Erik Larson's magnificent historical account of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, juxtaposed against the story of one of America's first documented serial killers, Dr. H. H. Holmes. Through alternating passages, Larson narrates these diametric stories of good and evil.

The book opens by introducing the reader to Daniel Burnham, a famous Chicago architect and partner of the renowned Chicago architecture firm, Burnham and Root. The firm rose to fame by constructing the city's most distinct buildings, like the Rand McNally (the first all-steel framed skyscraper) and the Rookery buildings. When it was announced in 1890 that the city of Chicago would be hosting the next World's Fair, Burnham and his partner were the clear choice to coordinate the event. The location decision came as a surprise to many (New York City had been the prevailing thought) but Chicago was now in the spotlight.

The competing attraction was the Eiffel Tower of the preceding World's Fair in Paris. Now America's (and Chicago's) reputation was at stake. Crunched for time, faced with personal tragedy (following the death of his friend and business partner, John Root), and facing professional obstacles, Burnham was able to beat the odds and bring together some of the era's most brilliant and talented minds just in time to finish construction of the White City, a nearly impossible feat, and unveil the 1893 World's Fair attraction -- the first ever Ferris wheel. The White City never shone so bright.

At the same time Dr. H. H. Holmes, through charm and disreputable dealings, had become a very successful business owner, who, after learning of the fair's whereabouts, began machinating ways to execute his own dark and grandiose plans. His opportunity came when a plot of land close to the fair site became available. This is where Dr. Holmes built his "castle," a macabre hotel designed with secret rooms, vaults, and a chute that descended to the building's basement -- housing a large kiln where Holmes would dispose of his victims. The construction of the building itself was a ghastly procedure; no construction worker was ever hired for the full construction of the building, a carefully premeditated tactic to prevent anyone from knowing what secrets lay behind each wall. The White City had never experienced a darker moment.

After reading The Devil in the White City, I can guarantee at least one takeaway from it: You'll never look at a Ferris wheel the same way again.

Editor’s Note: Brad Tolinski has been the editor-in-chief of Guitar World, the world’s bestselling magazine for musicians, for more than two decades. He has interviewed and profiled most of popular music’s greatest guitarists, including Eric Clapton, B.B. King, Eddie Van Halen, Jack White, and Jeff Beck. Here, as his new book Light and Shade: Conversations with Jimmy Page hits shelves, Tolinski ponders the phrase “rock god.”

Over this holiday season we will see the release of an avalanche of authorized biographies and intimate tell-alls by some of rock and roll’s biggest names, including Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, Mick Jagger, The Who’s Pete Townshend, and Rod Stewart. Also on that star-studded list is – ahem – my own offering on guitar hero Jimmy Page, Led Zeppelin’s enigmatic mastermind.

It’s not hard to understand the popularity of these books, or our culture’s insatiable desire to “get to know” these musicians on a more personal level. Like most famous people, they tend to be good looking, charismatic, and live their lives in the fastest of lanes. A person imbued with any one of those qualities could justify interest, or even a book, but with musicians there are deeper levels to their ongoing appeal.

The direct and personal nature of music often builds strong emotional bonds between creators and listeners, a relationship that almost begs for deeper understanding and interaction. Singer/songwriters like Springsteen, Jagger, and Young feel this relationship more acutely because it’s their voice that whispers and shouts directly into the ear of the listener. But even instrumentalists like Page can inspire an almost religious devotion from both aspiring musicians and non-musicians attracted by their siren song.

There is no doubt that music is mighty powerful stuff. I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t like some form of it. It is more than just a pastime or light entertainment. Music is almost elemental like water or air or, perhaps more accurately, fire – you don’t really need fire to survive, but the world would surely suck without it.

It’s little wonder that artists who have mastery over something so essential to the quality of existence are deemed special or held in some sort of awe. We often refer to successful pop musicians as “rock gods,” and that may be closer to the truth than we suspect. In many ways, they are our modern-day versions of the Greek god Apollo or the muse Euterpe – super beings who can bend art and nature to their will.

In my book, Light & Shade: Conversations with Jimmy Page, I focus on some of these deeper puzzles of rock and roll and its creation. While Page’s sensational personal life has already fueled several books, I tried to zero in on what makes him truly interesting: his steely command over almost every aspect of sound. Most of it comes from hard work and his ruthless focus on his instrument and recording theory, but there are other dimensions that separate him from the pack.

Page, a student of architecture and painting, has allowed some of those disciplines to inform his overall musical aesthetic. More to the point, his study of metaphysics and vast collection of occult literature – he once owned and ran one of the biggest occult bookstores in London – suggests he knows more than a little about the eternal mysteries of music and its ability to lift the spirit. He even speaks in these terms, citing that Led Zeppelin’s cosmic wallop comes from the ability of the four members of the band to usher in a potent “fifth element.”

Some would call Page and his band’s ability miraculous, and maybe it is. Almost anyone can create some form of melody by singing, whistling, humming, or even playing an instrument, which makes a master musician’s talent more remarkable. We all have an innate sense of how difficult it is to compose something as monumental as “Stairway to Heaven,” and how rare the talent is of someone that can write and record it.

After reading Beth Ditto's heartwarming -- and at times heart-wrenching -- memoir, Coal to Diamonds, you'll wish you were best friends with the rocker chick from Judsonia, Arkansas. The book's striking cover says it all: Ditto is a fearless, fabulous woman whose killer style and punk rock attitude helped her skyrocket to the top of the music industry.

In Coal to Diamonds Ditto recounts her rise to fame from her life as a closeted lesbian in conservative Arkansas to that of the daring lead singer of the successful indie rock band, The Gossip. Looking at Ditto today in her avant-garde garb and dramatic makeup, you would never guess that she grew up in a town where just dancing was considered a sin. Yet it was her experiences in Judsonia that gave Ditto the push to leave behind her oppressive small-town life and forge her own path.

Ditto's memoir opens with sobering tales of the sexual abuse she witnessed and experienced herself as a young girl in Judsonia. "The intense sexism, the male privilege … were simply the way things were, the way things had always been and would always be in Arkansas," Ditto recalls. In the '80s and '90s in Judsonia, women often felt powerless and kept silent about the abuses they faced every day.

Yet it was also around this time that a counterpoint movement was rumbling through the country, especially in the Pacific Northwest where punk rock was beginning to explode. The Riot grrrl movement arrived a little late in Judsonia (most things did, Ditto notes), but once it hit, Ditto found exactly what she needed to come into her own. Riot grrrl brought "the personal is political" angle of second-wave feminism to young women in the grunge and punk scenes, offering them a platform to address misogyny in the music industry and society at large. Ditto writes, "Here was a revolution centered around music that affirmed girls, girlishness, females, and feminism overtly, with all the fuck-you power of punk rock."

With Riot grrrl on her side and a close circle of misfit friends, Ditto fled Judsonia after high school to Olympia, Washington, and then later to Portland, Oregon, to pursue her love of music. These years in Ditto's memoir tell the classic tale of a struggling artist, living in tiny apartments, eating ramen noodles every night, and working odd jobs to make ends meet between band tours. Eventually Ditto and The Gossip make it big, but Ditto never loses sight of where she started and the struggles she had to overcome, and ends her memoir with a priceless piece of advice.

Aside from being a great read, Coal to Diamonds makes you crave Ditto's refreshingly honest and raw music, qualities that also shine through in her writing. Even weeks after finishing the book, I'm still hooked on Ditto's sound -- an intoxicating mixture of Adele, Nirvana, and Cyndi Lauper all wrapped into one. Coal to Diamonds is the story of how Ditto found that incredible voice, in both music and in life.

Check out the sounds of The Gossip on vis Spotify below.

I know Erin McHugh to be a good person -- she is a friend of mine and that can't be easy! And, I know Erin McHugh to be a good writer; she has written more than twenty books on just about every subject imaginable. Now, in One Good Deed: 365 Days of Trying to Be Just a Little Bit Better, McHugh has combined her work and her words.

The life of a writer can be isolating. As a writer accomplishes her work, she can find herself removed from the world. That is just what McHugh experienced, and she felt the absence. It began to affect her ability to interact, to help, to pitch in, to be a good citizen and person. So she came up with an action plan: Do at least one conscious act -- a good deed to benefit someone else -- every day. To make herself accountable to the task, McHugh started a blog to post about her progress. And from that blog grew her book, One Good Deed. Its subtitle is just as relevant: " Trying to Be Just a Little Bit Better."

It doesn't require acts out of the Mother Teresa playbook to do a good deed. It can be simple. Have you ever put a few Peeps into a microwave? Well, Erin did to entertain a couple of kids, who squealed with delight as the yellow bunnies swelled as if they were the Michelin Man, only to shrink back in the air. And, for Erin, some of the acts called for courage in the face of adversity. While reading her exploits, you get to know the woman Erin, and so her book is reminiscent of a memoir. But One Good Deed isn't about Erin, or specifically what she did -- though this aspect is highly entertaining. At its core, One Good Deed is a "how-to." It can be done; we can be good to one another and it can be fun and certainly rewarding. It is said that true leadership is done by example, and in One Good Deed Erin McHugh provides a wonderful example of how to be.