Best of the Month

Spotlight Title: Nixonland by Rick Perlstein

How did we go from Lyndon Johnson's landslide Democratic victory in 1964 to Richard Nixon's equally lopsided Republican reelection only eight years later? The years in between were among the most chaotic in American history, with an endless and unpopular war, riots, assassinations, social upheaval, Southern resistance, protests both peaceful and armed, and a "Silent Majority" that twice elected the central figure of the age, a brilliant politician who relished the battles of the day but ended them in disgrace. In Nixonland Rick Perlstein tells a more familiar story than the one he unearthed in his influential previous book, Before the Storm, which argued that the stunning success of modern conservatism was founded in Goldwater's massive 1964 defeat. But he makes it fresh and relentlessly compelling, with obsessive original research and a gleefully slashing style--equal parts Walter Winchell and Hunter S. Thompson--that's true to the times. Perlstein is well known as a writer on the left, but his historian's empathies are intense and unpredictable: he convincingly channels the resentment and rage on both sides of the battle lines and lets neither Nixon's cynicism nor the naivete of liberals like New York mayor John Lindsay off the hook. And while election-year readers will be reminded of how much tamer our times are, they'll also find that the echoes of the era, and the persistent national divisions it helped found, still ring loud and clear. --Tom

The Chris Farley Show by Tom Farley Jr. and Tanner Colby		A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif
You don't have to be a rabid Chris Farley fan to enjoy The Chris Farley Show, an honest, endearing oral biography about a truly funny, deeply troubled addict that is as likely to make you cry as it is to make you laugh out loud. Made up mostly of excerpts from intimate interviews with family, childhood friends, famous castmates, and writers, The Chris Farley Show is a vivid portrait of a performer, told plainly by the people who knew him best at every stage of his life. These hundred or so interviews piece together the complex back-story of a hugely talented, big-hearted guy who could make the funniest people in the business laugh with "just a look," but whose vulnerability and "puppy dog personality" charmed friends and family into letting him off the hook--preventing him from getting help when he needed it most. Funny and heart wrenching, The Chris Farley Show is a must read for fans of Farley and of the people who loved him (including David Spade, Chris Rock, Tim Meadows), as well as anyone looking for a glimpse into life on the stage. --Daphne		On August 17, 1988, Pak One, the airplane carrying Pakistani dictator General Zia and several top generals, crashed, killing all on board--and despite continued investigation, a smoking gun--mechanical or conspiratorial--has yet to be found. Mohammed Hanif's outrageous debut novel, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, tracks at least two (and as many as a half-dozen) assassination vectors to their convergence in the plane crash, incorporating elements as diverse as venom-tipped sabers, poison gas, the curses of a scorned First Lady, and a crow impaired by an overindulgence of ripe mangoes. The book has been aptly compared to Catch-22 for its hilarious (though not quite as madcap) skewering of the Pakistani military and intelligence infrastructure, but it also can trace its lineage to Don DeLillo, doing for Pakistan what Libra did for JFK conspiracy theory, and Kafka's The Trial, with its paranoid-but-true take on pathological bureaucracy. And when a mysterious bearded man called "OBL" makes an appearance at a Fourth of July party for U.S. military brass, we're coolly reminded of the fickleness of opportunistic policy in unpredictable lands. --Jon
• Read more about The Chris Farley Show • Read the opening excerpt from The Chris Farley Show		• Read more about A Case of Exploding Mangoes • Read Mohammed Hanif on the Pakistan Air Force Academy

The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon		Beijing Coma by Ma Jian
America has a richer literary landscape since Aleksandar Hemon, stranded in the United States in 1992 after war broke out in his native Sarajevo, adopted Chicago as his new home. In The Lazarus Project, his most ambitious and imaginative work yet, Hemon brings to life an epic narrative born from a historical event: the 1908 killing of Lazarus Averbuch, a 19-year-old Jewish immigrant who was shot dead by George Shippy, the chief of Chicago police, after being admitted into his home to deliver an important letter. The mystery of what really happened that day remains unsolved (Shippy claimed Averbuch was an anarchist with ill intent) and from this opening set piece Hemon springs a century ahead to tell the story of Vladimir Brik, a Bosnian-American writer living in Chicago who gets funding to travel to Eastern Europe and unearth what really happened. The Lazarus Project deftly weaves the two stories together, cross-cutting the aftermath of Lazarus's death with Brik's journey and the tales from his traveling partner, Rora, a Bosnian war photographer. And while the novel will remind readers of many great books before it--Ragtime, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Everything Is Illuminated--it is a masterful literary adventure that manages to be epic in scope and intimate in detail. It's an incredbily rewarding reading experience that's not to be missed. --Brad		Like a latter-day Rip Van Winkle, a troubled young man slumbers away for ten years. While he slowly retraces the experiences that brought him into this dream state, the world around him morphs into a nearly unrecognizable place. The place is not a mountain fairyland in pre-Revolutionary America, though, but China at the turn of the 21st century. And our hero is not a beleaguered farmer seeking solace among the mountains and rivers, but rather a promising graduate student named Dai Wei who was shot in the head during the pro-democracy protests at Tiananmen Square in 1989. Beijing Coma, by the critically acclaimed author Ma Jian, is a unexpectedly visceral and daring work of fiction that explores how and why a promising young student would risk his life in the spring of 1989, and also reveals the profound personal consequences of this historic struggle for freedom--long after the CNN cameras stopped rolling. --Lauren
• Read more about The Lazarus Project • Read chapter 1 of The Lazarus Project		• Read more about Beijing Coma • Read an excerpt from Beijing Coma

The Girl of His Dreams by Donna Leon		The Host by Stephenie Meyer
Reading The Girl of His Dreams leaves you no choice but to reconsider what makes a mystery novel so good. Certainly there's no denying the appeal of a hard-boiled crime story, where more often than not a brilliant yet battered P.I. drives you white-knuckled to the edge of your seat, but Donna Leon's Guido Brunetti--at once exactingly inquisitive and disarmingly sensitive--bucks that genre convention entirely. Here in Leon's 17th Brunetti mystery is a man who relentlessly investigates the tragic drowning of a young Gypsy girl, yet--in his thoughtful meanderings through the streets and cafes of Venice--also struggles to understand the human warps and weaknesses that make his beloved city so vulnerable. In the end, it's this pure love and curiosity for life (and, I admit, his lusty appreciation of daily luxuries like prosecco, good coffee, or a burst of sunshine) that make Brunetti such a seductive hero--so much so that you're willing to follow him wherever he goes. --Anne		Stephenie Meyer, creator of the phenomenal teen-vamp Twilight series, takes paranormal romance into alien territory in her first adult novel, The Host. Those wary of sci-fi or teen angst will be pleasantly surprised by this mature and imaginative thriller, propelled by equal parts action and emotion. A species of altruistic parasites has peacefully assumed control of the minds and bodies of most humans, but feisty Melanie Stryder won't surrender her mind to the alien soul, called Wanderer, that inhabits her. Overwhelmed by Melanie's memories of fellow resistor Jared, Wanderer yields to her body's longing and sets off into the desert to find him. Likely the first love triangle involving only two bodies, The Host is unabashedly romantic, and the characters (human and alien) genuinely endearing. Readers intrigued by this familiar-but-alien world will gleefully note that the story's end leaves the door open for a sequel--or another series. --Mari
• Read more about The Girl of His Dreams • Read chapters 1 and 2 from The Girl of His Dreams		• Read more about The Host • Read the prologue and chapter 4 from The Host

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