I, Sniper: A Bob Lee Swagger Novelby Stephen Hunter
The Swagger saga continues as the shoot comes back to clear a friend’s name.
He graced the silver screen in Shooter, but now Bob Lee Swagger is returning to familiar territory—in Stephen Hunter’s latest novel, I, Sniper. The retired Marine sniper, making his sixth appearance in an action-packed thriller by Hunter, is now returning to the trenches to clear the name of a fellow shooting legend. After four prominent figures, all of whom were antiwar protesters in the 1960s, are shot by a sniper, federal agents focus their suspicion on Carl Hitchcock, Swagger’s friend and fellow sharpshooter. The Vietnam vet has one opportunity to prove to the FBI that Hitchcock, thought to have killed himself after he became a suspect, was not the shooter but was set up and murdered. “Hunter is back at the top of his game,” Publishers Weekly writes. “He’s the best on the subject of guns and what damage bullets can do to human flesh.”
1938: Hitler’s Gambleby Giles MacDonogh
A new history of the decisive year when Hitler asserted his power.
It would be difficult to attribute Hitler’s ascent to any single event, but historian Giles MacDonogh makes a convincing case that 1938 is crucial year to understanding his reign and brutal hold on power. Using recently unearthed archived material, MacDonogh, who has previously written on German history, sheds new light on a pivotal year that began with the Blomberg-Fritsch Affair, allowing Hitler to reorganize the leadership of the military. MacDonogh, who unearths how seemingly trivial situations led to a war that killed 60 million people, dares to ask the tantalizing “What if?” questions that plague world history. “The depth of his human understanding, the judiciousness of his pickings from source material, and the quality of his writing make this a book at once gripping and grave,” writes The Spectator.
Hellraisers: The Life and Inebriated Times of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O’Toole, and Oliver Reedby Robert Sellers
The story of original bad boys of stage and screen is more sobering than most addiction memoirs.
In a world obsessed with the antics of tabloid starlets and pop stars, the antics of four of Britain’s most notorious film stars may not seem all that interesting. But Robert Sellers’ outrageously entertaining history proves that today’s celebrities don’t have much on Richard Burton, Peter O’Toole, Richard Harris, and Oliver Reed. Although there were fewer paparazzi around to photograph their antics, stumbling out of nightclubs was the least of this quartet’s problems. Reed spiked the drinks of his underage castmates, O’Toole attacked a police officer, Harris rushed into oncoming traffic, and Burton was a legendary wife-stealer. Deeming them the last of the industry’s true “hellraisers,” Sellers traces their sordid, non-sober lives, revealing that addiction is certainly not all fun and games. “This fun-loving celebration of drunkenness proves to be an even more sobering cautionary tale than some of the most serious addiction and recovery memoirs,” The New York Times writes of the four men, just one of whom is living. “And the fact that none could entirely stop drinking, even when it became a life-or-death medical necessity, makes it that much sadder.”
Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity by James Hansen
In time for the Copenhagen summit, global warming seer James Hansen has a dire message.
As the world’s leaders gather in Copenhagen for the Climate Conference this week, they hope their 11-day event will lead to some consensus on global warming, but James Hansen says it may be too late. In the two decades since the climatologist’s testimony to congressional committees in 1988 helped raise the nation’s awareness on global warming, Hansen has continued to study the planet, even advising Al Gore on An Inconvenient Truth. “When the history of the climate crisis is written,” Gore wrote in Time, “Hansen will be seen as the scientist with the most powerful and consistent voice calling for intelligent action to preserve our planet’s environment.” In this foreboding book on the subject, Hansen recounts being censored by the Bush administration on his three decades of research that prove emissions' role in global warming. With Storms of My Grandchildren, the author steps away from his desk as a director at NASA to speak to the general public about the future of the planet we inhabit. “With urgency and authority,” Kirkus Reviews writes, “Hansen urges readers to speak out—taking to the streets if necessary—to protect the Earth from calamity for the sake of their children and grandchildren.”
Mooch: A Novel by Dan Fante
Bruno Dante’s downward spiral again.
Novelist by birth Dan Fante, son of Ask the Dust author John Fante, reintroduces audiences to Bruno Dante in his fourth book, Mooch: A Novel. Dante is no longer the part-time drunk audiences have come to know—at the novel’s beginning, he is the best boiler-room salesman in Los Angeles. But soon thereafter, Dante begins dating coworker Jimmi Valiente, a former stripper, gangbanger, and crackhead who takes a hold over him. Dante thinks he’s prepared to trade his job and 12-step program success for Jimmi, but as he watches all that he’s worked for slip away at the hands of an addictive and equally destructive love-hate relationship, he hesitates. Celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain calls Fante’s followup “a fine novel that manages to be a satire of, and a salute to, the elusive American dream.”
