BookSpin

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[bookspin]

Number One is Walking:  My Life in the Movies and Other Diversions

by Steve Martin

drawings by

Harry Bliss

Celadon Books

Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Steve Martin has never written about his career in the movies before. In Number One Is Walking, he shares anecdotes from the sets of his beloved films—Father of the Bride, Roxanne, The Jerk, Three Amigos, and many more—bringing readers directly into his world. He shares charming tales of antics, moments of inspiration, and exploits with the likes of Paul McCartney, Diane Keaton, Robin Williams, and Chevy Chase. Martin details his forty years in the movie biz, as well as his stand-up comedy, banjo playing, writing, and cartooning, all with his unparalleled wit.

With gorgeously illustrated cartoons and single-panel “diversions” in Steve and Harry’s signature style, Number One Is Walking is full of the everyday moments that make up a movie star’s life, capturing Steve Martin’s singular humor and acclaimed career in film. The perfect gift from the team who brought you the #1 New York Times bestseller A Wealth of Pigeons.

[bookspin]

The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment

by Thom Hartmann

Berrett-Koehler

Trade Paperback

Taking his typically in-depth, historically informed view, Thom Hartmann examines the brutal role guns have played in American history, from the genocide of the Native Americans to the enforcement of slavery (Slave Patrols are in fact the Second Amendment's “well-regulated militias”) and the racist post–Civil War social order. He shows how the NRA and conservative Supreme Court justices used specious logic to invent a virtually unlimited individual right to own guns, which has enabled the ever-growing number of mass shootings in the United States. But Hartmann also identifies a handful of powerful, commonsense solutions that would break the power of the gun lobby and restore the understanding of the Second Amendment that the Framers of the Constitution intended. This is the kind of brief, brilliant analysis for which Hartmann is justly renowned.

[bookspin]

Happy Money: The Japanese Art of Making Peace with Your Money

by Ken Honda

Gallery Books

Hardcover

Ken Honda—Japan’s #1 bestselling personal development guru—knows that getting rich quick is no way to achieve happiness. Too often, money is a source of fear, stress, and anger, often breaking apart relationships and even ruining lives. We like to think money is just a number or a piece of paper, but it is so much more than that. Money has the ability to smile, it changes when it is given with a certain feeling, and the energy with which it imbues us impacts not only ourselves, but others as well. Although Ken Honda is often called a “money guru,” his real job over the past decade has been to help others discover the tools they already possess to heal their own lives and relationships with money. Now, in practical and accessible language, the “Zen millionaire” explains how to achieve peace of mind when it comes to money. Learn how to treat money as a welcome guest, allowing it to come and go with respect and without resentment; understand and improve your money EQ; unpack the myth of scarcity; and embrace the process of giving money, not just receiving it. This book isn’t to fix you, because as Ken Honda says, you’re already okay!

[bookspin]

Fixing the Fates: An Adoptee’s Story of Truth and Lies

by Diane Dewey

She Writes Press

Trade Paperback

The secrets, lies, and layers of deception about Diane Dewey’s origins were meant for her protection—but eventually, they imploded. Living with her family in suburban Philadelphia, Diane had grown up knowing she was born in Stuttgart and adopted at age one from an orphanage. She’d been told her biological parents were dead. Then, in 2002, when she was forty-seven years old, Diane got a letter from Switzerland: her biological father, Otto, wanted to bring her into his life. With that, her world shifted on its axis.

In the months that ensued, everybody had a different story to tell about Diane’s origins, including Otto when they met in New York City. She struggled to understand what was at stake with the lies. Like a private eye, she sifted through competing versions of the truth only to find that, having traveled throughout Europe and back, identity is a state of mind. As more information surfaced, the myths gave way to a certain elusive peace; Diane discovered a tribe in her mother’s family, found a Swiss husband, gained a voice, and, for the first time, began to trust in the intuition that had nudged her all along. One-part forensic investigation, one-part self-discovery, Fixing the Fates is a story about seeing behind artifice and living one’s truth.

[bookspin]

Baby, Don’t Hurt Me: Stories and Scars from Saturday Night Live

by Chris Kattan

BenBella Books

Hardcover

You may know him as Mango, Mr. Peepers, the gibberish-spouting Suel Forrester or one half of the Butabi brothers. Maybe you remember him as the Gothic high schooler Azrael Abyss, Gay Hitler, or the guitarist in the Cowbell Sketch. Whichever it is, Chris Kattan has earned a spot in the hearts of a generation of Saturday Night Live fans.

Whether channeling characters, delivering unforgettable impersonations like his outlandish Al Pacino, or head-bopping at the Roxbury, Chris Kattan has defied all comparison, expectations, and sometimes gravity, bringing his incomparable style of physical comedy, the likes of which have rarely been seen on SNL.

Now, for the first time ever, Kattan opens up about his years being on Saturday Night Live, performing alongside friends and future legends including Will Ferrell, Jimmy Fallon, Amy Poehler and Tina Fey, along with sharing about his fascinating and unusual childhood and his time hanging out backstage watching Pee-Wee Herman and the late Phil Hartman on The Groundlings stage.

But mostly, Kattan shares seven seasons’ worth of hilarious, and never-before told stories from his wild ride through SNL. From a hysterical and somewhat dark occupation driving a widowed 92-year-old Dutch millionaire on Mulholland Dr. (and her giant poodle Rex), to breaking his neck (literally!) while performing on live television, he chronicles the ups and downs of life in search of the spotlight, and pulls back the curtain on the inner workings of two of comedy’s greatest institutions.?

Provocative and personal, goofy and heartfelt, Baby, Don’t Hurt Me is a window into the world of millennium-era Saturday Night Live, from the rehearsals to the after-after parties, as narrated by your funniest, wised up, weirdest friend—who just so happened to be there for all of it!

[bookspin]

Red Hot and Blue: Fifty Years of Writing about Music, Memphis, and Motherf**kers

by Stanley Booth

Chicago Review Press

Trade Paperback

This collection of over fifty years of writing about the South and its music by Stanley Booth, one of the undisputedly great chroniclers of the subject, is a classic, essential read. Booth's close contacts with many of the musicians he writes about provide a gateway to truly understanding the music and culture of Memphis and other blues strongholds in the South. Subjects include Elvis Presley, Otis Redding, William Eggleston, Ma Rainey, Blind Willie McTell, Graceland, Beale Street and much more.

[bookspin]

How to Build a Boat: A Father, His Daughter, and the Unsailed Sea

by Jonathan Gornall

Scribner Books

Hardcover

Once an essential skill, the ability to build a clinker boat, first innovated by the Vikings, can seem incomprehensible today. Yet it was the clinker, with its overlapping planks, that afforded us access to the oceans, and its construction has become a lost art that calls to the do-it-yourselfer in all of us. John Gornall heard the call. A thoroughly unskilled modern man, Gornall set out to build a traditional wooden boat as a gift for his newborn daughter. It was, he recognized, a ridiculously quixotic challenge for a man who knew little about woodworking and even less about boat-building. He wasn’t even sure what type of wood he should use, the tools he’d need, or where on earth he'd build the boat. He had much to consider…and even more to learn. But, undaunted, he embarked on a voyage of rediscovery, determined to navigate his way back to a time when we could fashion our future and leave our mark on history using only time-honored skills and the materials at hand. His journey began in East Anglia, on England’s rocky eastern coast. If all went according to plan, it would end with a great adventure, as father and daughter cast off together for a voyage of discovery that neither would forget, and both would treasure until the end of their days. How to Build a Boat celebrates the art of boat-building, the simple pleasures of working with your hands, and the aspirations and glory of new fatherhood. John Gornall “tells the inspiring story of how even the least skilled of us can make something wonderful if we invest enough time and love” (The Daily Mail) and taps into the allure of an ancient craft, interpreting it in a modern way, as tribute to the generations yet to come. “Both the book, and place, are magical” (The Sunday Telegraph).

[bookspin]

Nothing’s Bad Luck; The Lives of Warren Zevon

by C.M. Kushins

DaCapo Press

Hardcover

As is the case with so many musicians, the life of Warren Zevon was blessed with talent and opportunity yet also beset by tragedy and setbacks. Raised mostly by his mother with an occasional cameo from his gangster father, Warren had an affinity and talent for music at an early age. Taking to the piano and guitar almost instantly, he began imitating and soon creating songs at every opportunity. After an impromptu performance in the right place at the right time, a record deal landed on the lap of a teenager who was eager to set out on his own and make a name for himself. But of course, where fame is concerned, things are never quite so simple. Drawing on original interviews with those closest to Zevon, including Crystal Zevon, Jackson Browne, Mitch Albom, Danny Goldberg, Barney Hoskyns, and Merle Ginsberg, Nothing’s Bad Luck tells the story of one of rock’s greatest talents. Journalist C.M. Kushins not only examines Zevon’s troubled personal life and sophisticated, ever-changing musical style, but emphasizes the moments in which the two are inseparable, and ultimately paints Zevon as a hot-headed, literary, compelling, musical genius worthy of the same tier as that of Bob Dylan and Neil Young. In Nothing’s Bad Luck, Kushins at last gives Warren Zevon the serious, in-depth biographical treatment he deserves, making the life of this complex subject accessible to fans old and new for the very first time.

[bookspin]

Currently reading:

Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee

by Casey Cep

Knopf

Hardcover

Reverend Willie Maxwell was a rural preacher accused of murdering five of his family members for insurance money in the 1970s. With the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years until a relative shot him dead at the funeral of his last victim. Despite hundreds of witnesses, Maxwell’s murderer was acquitted–thanks to the same attorney who had previously defended the Reverend. Sitting in the audience during the vigilante’s trial was Harper Lee, who had traveled from New York City to her native Alabama with the idea of writing her own In Cold Blood, the true-crime classic she had helped her friend Truman Capote research seventeen years earlier. Lee spent a year in town reporting, and many more years working on her own version of the case. Now Casey Cep brings this story to life, from the shocking murders to the courtroom drama to the racial politics of the Deep South. At the same time, she offers a deeply moving portrait of one of the country’s most beloved writers and her struggle with fame, success, and the mystery of artistic creativity.

[bookspin]

An Improbable Pairing

by Gary Dickson

Greenleaf Book Group Press

Trade Paperback

It began as a simple flirtation . . . In September of 1963, Scott Stoddard, an American graduate student, is traveling to Switzerland, when he meets the Countess de Rovere, a French divorcee; he is smitten, and she is intrigued. What begins as a little coquetry soon becomes a serious love affair, much to the consternation of the Countess’s ex-husband and mother, not to mention the Countess’s friends of European high society. A meeting of equals poses problems enough, but what about one between two people who seem to have so many differences? And when a man of traditional attitudes couples with an independent and self-confident woman, something’s got to give. It won’t be the countess. As their liaison transcends an affair that cannot be dismissed, they all agree that something must be done. An Improbable Pairing is a historical romance that chronicles the enduring themes of a young man’s coming of age and the rebellious love of the mismatched. This pas de deux, set in the golden years of 1960s Paris, Geneva, Gstaad, and Cannes, provides an insider’s peek into the worlds of haute couture, three-star gourmet restaurants, and lavish hotel suites—the domains of rank and privilege. But society’s privileged resist when an interloper threatens to upset their cozy structure.

[bookspin]

Yoga for Amputees

by Marsha Therese Danzig

Sacred Oak Publishing

Trade Paperback

Yes! You can practice yoga as an amputee! This book will show you how. DISCOVER powerful yoga practices to build your balance, strength, confidence and body awareness. LEARN how to adapt your yoga to your individual level of limb loss. REDUCE pain and stress due to limb loss. IGNITE your life with inner and outer transformation. MOTIVATE your amputee clients to better health and well-being in your clinic or rehabilitation hospital.

Yoga offers amputees the flexibility, strength and stamina they are seeking, while also providing emotional, mental and spiritual well-being to help amputees of all levels thrive in life. Featuring step by step poses modeled by fellow amputees, with detailed adaptations for leg and arm amputees, as well as yoga tools specific to amputee challenges, such as yoga for phantom pain, Yoga for Amputees: The Essential Guide to Finding Wholeness After Limb Loss is a comprehensive guide for both amputees and the people who work with them. A must for any amputee wanting to reclaim their health and wellness after limb loss or anyone working in rehabilitation who wants to add yoga to their patient care plan, such as prosthetists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, recreational therapists , kinesiologists and physicians.

[bookspin]

Two friends set out to cross the country in a 1958 Cadillac, rediscovering the delights of auto journeys from those days.

[bookspin]

The Day My Father Died

When LaRue Cook left his editor’s job at ESPN in Connecticut and returned home to Tennessee, he made a living as an Uber driver — and wrote the upcoming book, Man in the (Rearview) Mirror , from which we excerpt this essay.

[bookspin]

See What You Do to Me | TaraShea Nesbit | Granta

‘My intention was to protect myself, and not to have to go back on my word.’

[bookspin]

The Making of the Cranberries’ Haunted Farewell

Dolores O’Riordan’s band and family talk about her troubled last days, the songs she left behind and the creation of the band’s final album, ‘In the End.’

[bookspin]

Behind the Writing: On Research

Sarah Menkedick speaks with Leslie Jamison, Carina Chocano, and Elena Passarello on the art of research.

[bookspin]

The Brutal Economy of Cleaning Other People’s Messes, for $9 an Hour

In “Maid,” Stephanie Land describes what it’s like to be a single mother struggling to survive.