Today’s suggested topic by the folks at Armchair BEA is Best of 2012. Here are five of my favorites, I tried to make some eclectic picks. Let me know if your read any and what you thought. I arranged them in alphabetical order. Flags Over the War­saw Ghetto: The Untold Story of the War­saw Ghetto Upris­ing by Moshe Arens More than any­thing, the book tells of the inabil­ity of humans to set aside ide­o­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences to fight a com­mon enemy. The book chron­i­cles how two groups of Jews were pre­vented by ide­ol­ogy to join and fight the Nazi mur­der machine Guest of Honor: Booker T. Wash­ing­ton, Theodore Roo­sevelt, and the White House Din­ner That Shocked a Nation by Deb­o­rah Davis This well researched book touches on pol­i­tics of the era as well as the frag­ile and dif­fi­cult race rela­tions after the Amer­i­can Civil War. The book exten­sively goes into the events that shaped the break­through meal, start­ing with the end of the Civil War and short biogra­phies of the two main play­ers. It was strik­ing to see how par­al­lel the lives of two men, each at one end of the social spec­trum (an ex slave and a priv­i­leged white) were eerily sim­i­lar. Both men, close at age, got…

Enemies: A History of the FBI by Tim Weiner is a fascinating and well researched book giving an excellent treatment of what basically amounts to domestic spying

Welcome to another edition of Tightwad Tuesday. While looking around for non-fiction books, I saw some really cool free ones and thought that you might like them as well. Authors: If you’d like your book to be featured on Tightwad Tuesdays please email me. For the Kindle: Thompson’s Lucky Star: The Story of a Stalag Survivor [Kindle Edition] by Tony Thompson, Brendan Gisby When Corporal George Thompson of The Buffs was walking to freedom from Stalag IVB after the camp’s liberation in April 1945, he most probably stopped for a moment, looked up at the sky and thanked his lucky star again. That star had kept him alive through five long years of war, the last eighteen brutal months of which he had spent as a prisoner-of-war. As he passed through the huge, intimidating gates of the camp for the last time, George carried with him some mementoes from his time in captivity, among them a very small, dog-eared notebook. The notebook was George’s prisoner-of-war diary, which he had begun the day after he was taken prisoner and in which he had made the final entry on the day of his liberation. Reproducing the actual diary entries and supplementing them…

First thing’s first. Many thanks to Zohar for letting me pontificate and obfuscate on his very cool blog. I’ve been a reader of his for a little while now, and I’m extremely impressed by what he’s got going on here. I’m also extremely thankful for the opportunity to be a part of it. Now that the brown-nosing is out of the way, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Jonathan, and I’m addicted to old books. Well, maybe not “addicted.” Fond of? Intrigued by? Irresistibly drawn to? Hmm. Maybe “addicted” was the right word after all. At any rate, I operate a blog called I Read a Book Once where I offer up armchair literary criticism on both new and old texts, but, as you can probably imagine, the old ones captivate me the most. Which brings me to the whole point of this exercise, a little book called Catch the Gold Ring by John Stephen Strange. As you might surmise, that name is a pseudonym. It’s way too cool to be the genuine article. The author’s real name is Dorothy Stockbridge Tillett, an English writer (and female!) who published 22 mysteries over a nearly 50 year career. Since…

Giveaway: One signed paperback of Death Wish Three pdf ebook versions of Covert Dreams – enter at the end of the post No one likes villains — or, at least, no one admits to it. But if an author crafts villains carefully, imbuing them with disturbing ambitions, giving them access to the tools and resources they need to wreak their own, personal havoc, and notches their peculiar, twisted natures in just the right way, then we have no choice but to love to hate them. And a great thriller is born. James N. Frey, novelist and writing instructor, explains the villainous nature and the essential role villains play in story structure, in his book, How to Write a Damn Good Thriller.“The villain in a thriller is not just evil,” Frey writes. “The villain is evil right down to the soles of his or her feet.” But he adds, “the villain creates the plot behind the plot — the plot that has to be foiled by the hero — and that… is what thriller writing is all about.” Danielle Blanchard Benson Mike Markel Michael Meyer Today, three indie authors: Danielle Blanchard Benson, author of the paranormal thriller, Death Wish; Mike Markel,…

Michael O’Hanlon, author of The Wounded Giant (my thoughts), is a senior fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution, where he specializes in U.S. defense strategy, the use of military force, homeland security and American foreign policy. He is a visiting lecturer at Princeton University and adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, and a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Books by Michael O’Hanlon Q. Why do you refer to America as “The Wounded Giant” and do you think its fair to do so? A. It is of course designed to be a colorful term but I think it’s accurate. The United States remains far and away the world’s superpower in military (and many other) terms. But it is badly hurting and its future dominance – as well as its ability to play a stabilizing role internationally — is in question. This is less from the rise of China (or anyone else) per se, than from the wounds (largely self-inflicted) from which it is currently suffering, starting with trillion dollar annual deficits and an eroding economic foundation. Q. What is the most important thing you would like readers to take away from your book? A. That the…

A well written and sweeping book which touches many subjects and ties them all together in a humane sense rather than the meticulous books we read about history

Ever wanted to know what to get the men in your life besides tools, a silly tie or something which will end up in the attic on January 1? Here are the answers to your prayers. For the “I want to read just one book I could talk about in parties” type of guy: 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami For the “I like emotional books but want people to think I’m reading a war novel” manly man: The Polski Affair by Leon H. Gildin For your “I like intellectual books” boyfriend who wants to impress you: Georg Letham: Physician and Murderer by Ernst Weiss For the “hey dude, it’s a classic” guy:The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller For your uncle that grew a stomach and converted to Buddhism: Across Many Mountains by Yangzom Brauen or Fire Monks by Colleen Morton Busch For your second cousin that keeps saying how he hates the classics: Dracula by Bram Stoker For your neighbor that decorates his house the day after Halloween: Jacob T. Marley by R. William Bennett For your long lost cousin. living in a log cabin and still believes that the South shall rise:The Civil War: A Visual History For your brother…

About: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller is a graphic novel originally published in 1986. The graphic novel, written and drawn by Miller, was originally released in a four-issue limited series called Batman: The Dark Knight. 224 pages Publisher: DC Comics; 10 Anv edition ISBN: 1563893428 My rating for The Dark Knight Returns – 5 Buy & Save on The Dark Knight Returns through the ManOfLa­Book affil­i­ate account on: Ama­zon | Book Depos­i­tory US | Book Depos­i­tory UK More books by Frank Miller Thoughts: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller, a best seller and rightly so, is a story of ideologies and how they skew people’s perceptions of what is right and what is wrong. With those ideologies and perceptions comes the sense of justice and punishment no matter how they might not fit the crime. However, for me, the major point of the book was how we decide what our role in society will be. The book is a scathing commentary on the political system at large. How boobs elected into office are being handled behind the scenes, wielding unimaginable power (nuclear warheads and Superman in this case) and how the idiotic talking heads on TV shape public…

Author and cartoonist Mort Walker is mostly known for creating the comic strip Beetle Bailey in 1950 as well as Hi and Lois in 1954