Latest books read, in no particular order:
Selwyn Raab, Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires---The absolute best history I have ever read about the Five Families of New York and the manner in which official and unofficial America did or didn't deal with the Mafia. (Including, among other things, just why J. Edgar Hoover---when it came to the Mafia---had his head so far up his ass he could give you the play by play of his own root canal procedure.)
Peter Guralnick, Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock 'n' Roll; How One Man Discovered Howlin' Wolf, Ike Turner, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, and Elvis Presley, and How His Tiny Label Sun Records of Memphis Revolutionised the World---The complete story of Phillips and his legend, and some intriguing commentary on some of his musical discoveries including one of the most poignant looks at Phillips's relationship with Howlin' Wolf---and, of Wolf's early life---you'll ever read.
Peggy Noonan, The Time of Our Lives---a terrific collection of her Wall Street Journal columns and other writings.
Dennis McNally, Highway 61: Music, Race, and the Evolution of Cultural Freedom---As told well by way of such stories as those of Bessie Smith, Charlie Patton, Buddy Bolden (legendary jazz trumpeter), Robert Johnson, the Austin High Gang (a group of young Chicago musicians who went jazz nuts in their teen years; Benny Goodman was only the most famous of the group), Louis Jordan, Miles Davis, Jack Kerouac, Elvis, Bob Dylan, and others. (Note: Among other things their common threads included having been born and reared in places adjacent to Highway 61.)
Charles C.W. Cooke, The Conservatarian Manifesto---You could consider this a contemporary application of the former rightward fusionism most upheld and argued by National Review legend Frank Meyer (in In Defense of Liberty and the columns that made up Meyer's splendid lost anthology The Conservative Mainstream) and, more recently, Ryan Sager (in The Elephant in the Room: Evangelicals, Libertarians, and the Battle for the Soul of the Republican Party).
Paul Trynka, Brian Jones: The Making of the Rolling Stones---The Stones themselves and assorted historiographers have often tried to downplay the role of the band's founder and best musician; this biography restores Jones's place and debunks a small volume of the Stones' mythology. (Hint: it only begins with the fallacy that Keith Richards first got hip to open guitar tunings by way of Ry Cooder.) It affirms Jones could be (and often was) his own worst enemy, but it also affirms that Jones's early music passion---and push to form the Stones in the first place after making a small rep of his own around the Cheltenham and London clubs---had as much to do with the foundation of British blues as any other's.)
Bob Woodward, The Last of the President's Men---As in, Alexander Butterfield, the man who installed and later revealed the Nixon White House taping system, then served as chief of the FAA until Gerald Ford asked him to resign.
F.H. Buckley, The Once and Future King: The Rise of Crown Government in America---Argues very persuasively against Americans' apparent hunger for a kind of "elected monarch" as president: We have now entered into a fourth constitution, one of strong presidential government. The executive has slipped off many of the constraints of the separation of powers. The president makes and unmakes laws without the consent of Congress and spends trillions of government dollars; and the greatest of decisions---whether to commit his country to war---is made by him alone . . . He is rex quondam, rex futurus---the once and future king. And, as the author notes, it didn't begin with Obama.
Frances Wilson, How to Survive the Titanic; or, The Sinking of J. Bruce Ismay---Retelling the disaster by way of the enigmatic Ismay's story . . . including the real reason, which Ismay himself couldn't bring himself to disclose at official inquiries, he ended up in one of the lifeboats. (Hint: it actually had nothing to do with any kind of cowardice.)
