War Stories: A Graphic History
by Mike Conroy (Collins Design)
War can be good for absolutely somethin’. Comic books. Although Conroy highlights conflicts shown in comic form as far back as the American Revolution, Wild West and the Civil War, Required Reading particularly likes the book’s “Cover Gallery” which recognizes, “The late 1940s and 1950s are widely regarded as the zenith for US war comics, and in particular war comic book covers.” This colorful explosion of war stories is a blast.
The Alternative Hero
by Tim Thornton (Knopf)
With a “High Fidelity”-like obsessiveness about music, Thornton, a drummer with the UK band Fink, nails the ’80s/’90s alternative rock scene with a loving eye and knowing wink. In his delightful, coming-of-age novel, teen Clive Beresford latches onto “the glorious, world-beating Thieving Magpies, back to inject some quality and integrity into what’s swiftly becoming an alarmingly overrated pop landscape.” And when cursing, charmismatic frontman Lance Webster self-destructs onstage one night, Clive dedicates his life (as an adult, he has a dead-end job and love-life to match) to finding out what happened. In hilarious happenstance, Lance ends up living on Clive’s block and they become friends, with Clive pretending he doesn’t know who Lance is.
Tabloid Valley
by Paula E. Morton (University Press of Florida)
A coastal stretch of Palm Beach County was once home to six supermarket tabloids, staffed in part by fearless, headstrong Brits who honed their craft in the pitched battles of Fleet Street’s no-holds-barred papers. The likes of Elvis, Bigfoot, O.J., Bill Clinton and the Olsen twins all graced their pages. Morton gets the inside scoop through interviews with almost three dozen veteran tab reporters and editors. As it says on the book jacket, Shocking!!
Twenties Girl
by Sophie Kinsella (Dial Press)
“Shopaholic” Kinsella gives us an imaginative 20-something London gal, Lara Lington, and a ghost from the 1920s — Sadie, her Charleston-dancing great-aunt. Sadie needs her niece’s help finding a missing necklace (so she can finally rest in peace), but Lara has her own problems: heartbreak, meddling parents and a foundering business. Together the unlikely pair tackle their troubles.
The Founding Fathers Reconsidered
by R.B. Bernstein (Oxford University Press)
Reminding us that the Founding Fathers were “a fractious group,” New York Law School prof Bernstein knocks Jefferson, Adams, Washington, Franklin and company down from their pedestal to let us know they were not gods, but fallible men. And who knew Warren G. Harding was the one who coined the phrase “Founding Fathers,” when as a senator, he gave the keynote address at the 1916 Republican National Convention.