{"id":6945,"date":"2017-12-07T08:03:54","date_gmt":"2017-12-07T13:03:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6945"},"modified":"2017-12-07T08:03:54","modified_gmt":"2017-12-07T13:03:54","slug":"30-second-book-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6945","title":{"rendered":"30-Second Book Reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"book

photo: pixabay<\/p><\/div>\n

My book reviews have lagged behind my reading ever since this website was down for a month in September. I\u2019ll never catch up! This week and next you\u2019ll get brief reviews of a few books to inspire your holiday shopping. One good thing about books as gifts\u2014they\u2019re easy to wrap!<\/p>\n

P.S. If you click on links here to buy any of these books, as an Amazon affiliate, I receive a penny (or so).<\/p>\n

Non-Fiction<\/span>
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Once in a Great City <\/em><\/a>by David Maraniss \u2013 For the history-lovers on your list, here\u2019s a fascinating social history of my home town, Detroit, in the pivotal 18 months from fall 1962 to spring 1964, when forces were at work that would shape the city irrevocably. Some were invisible, some were not seen. Pulitzer-Prize-winner Maraniss starts his 2015 book with the conflagration that destroyed the Ford Rotunda\u2014a structure first built for the 1934 Chicago Exposition\u2014where every fall my family and thousands of others went to preview the new Ford models and where every December I sat on Santa\u2019s lap. It was a shocking loss, incomprehensible to me at the time, and a lesson transience. The first of many. His discussions of the auto industry and the stellar success of the Mustang, Detroit\u2019s role in the nascent Civil Rights movement, the rise of Motown, and so much else captures \u201cthe precarious balance\u201d of that era, in which the fate of a great American city hung.<\/p>\n

\"The

photo: wikimedia<\/p><\/div>\n

Adolfo Kaminsky: A Forger\u2019s Life<\/em><\/a> by Sarah Kaminsky \u2013 Kaminsky\u2019s daughter has told her father\u2019s story as his first-person account, and it is fascinating (featured on 60 Minutes<\/a><\/em> this past October). An Argentinian Jew in Paris during World War II, a peculiar set of experiences prepared him to help the French Resistance provide identity documents for people on the run from the Nazis. He quickly expanded his skills and, working in secret, prepared forged papers that saved the lives of thousands. After the war, he did similar work for Algerian freedom fighters, then other leftist movements over a thirty-year career. He never took any money for this work, instead supporting himself\u2014hardly making ends meet\u2014through his photography. It\u2019s an nerve-wracking tale, in which every day, every transaction held the risk of betrayal and imprisonment, or worse. If people on your holiday list gravitate to inspirational, heroic stories, Kaminsky\u2019s your man.<\/p>\n

Short Crime Stories<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Black Cat Mystery Magazine<\/em><\/a> \u2013 It\u2019s always exciting to see a new publication, and issue #1 of BCMM suggests this will become a good one. For its debut, the editors played it safe by requesting submissions from some of the country\u2019s leading mystery\/crime short story authors. The result is a knockout! I particularly enjoyed the sly humor of many of the authors\u2014including Alan Orloff, Josh Pachter, Meg Opperman, and Barb Goffman, whose story is appropriately titled, \u201cCrazy Cat Lady.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just to Watch Them Die<\/em><\/a> \u2013 This collection, \u201cinspired by the songs of Johnny Cash,\u201d is grittier than Black Cat, and the connection to the songs is at times somewhat tenuous. Quite a few are set in Cash country, south and west. If you have Cash fans on your list, they\u2019ll appreciate the homage.<\/p>\n

Switchblade<\/em><\/a> \u2013 This is the collection for anyone on your list who thinks they have it bad. These are stories about people so down on their luck the reader\u2019s situation perceptibly brightens. I couldn\u2019t help but think of Dennis Lehane\u2019s distinction between tragedy and noir. In tragedy, he\u2019s said, the hero falls from a great height (think Macbeth<\/em>). In noir, he falls from the curb. Lots of curb-falling here. Maybe just the thing for a grousing in-law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My book reviews have lagged behind my reading ever since this website was down for a month in September. I\u2019ll never catch up! This week and next you\u2019ll get brief reviews of a few books to inspire your holiday shopping. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"30-Second Book Reviews - Have some blanks in your holiday shopping list? Ideas for you!","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[122,52,40,267,126,120],"tags":[1189],"class_list":["post-6945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book","category-crime","category-fiction","category-non-fiction","category-reading-2","category-short-story","tag-gift-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1O1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6945"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6949,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6945\/revisions\/6949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}