Terrorist
Audio. By John Updike, read by Christopher Lane
Updike's latest offers up a probing post-9/11 history lesson on America-its mythology and street realities, religious attitudes, and the myriad nationalities that have borne this country fruit. Lane has his work cut out, and for the most part delivers. August 2006
Welcome to the Monkey House
Audio. By Kurt Vonnegut Jr., read by David Strathairn, Maria Tucci,
and others
Listeners are in for a treat as a masterful cast animates many of Vonnegut's finest short pieces. Vonnegut colors his oft-wondrous works with memorable characters, fantastic realities, pitch-perfect dialogue and heapings of satire and humor-a tall order for any audio actor. But this
group of narrators are veterans of screen and stage, each with a unique voice as malleable as clay. August 2006
The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart
of the Middle East
Audio. By Sandy Tolan, read by the author
Tolan offers listeners an easy-to-follow journey through a maddeningly stubborn conflict that has infused global politics since the 1940s. Based on his 1998 NPR documentary, Tolan personalizes the Arab-Israeli conflict by tracing the intertwined lives of a Palestinian refugee named Bashir Al-
Khairi and a Jewish settler named Dalia Eshkenazi Landau. July 2006
An Ordinary Man
Audio. By Paul Rusesabagina with Tom Zoellner,
read by Dominic Hoffman
For former hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina, words are the most powerful weapon in the human arsenal. For good and for evil, as was the case in the spring of 1994 in Rwanda. Over 100 days, some 800,000 people were slaughtered, most hacked to death by machete. Rusesabagina - inspiration for the movie Hotel Rwanda - used his facility with words and persuasion to save 1,268 of his fellow countrymen, turning the Belgian luxury hotel under his charge into a sanctuary from madness. June 2006
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To Reach the Clouds:
My High Wire Walk Between the Twin Towers
By Philippe Petit
On the morning of Aug. 7, 1974, a black speck appeared in the sky between the rooftops of the two World Trade Center towers. Traffic halted, sidewalks hushed, and thousands craned their necks as it became clear the speck was a man, and the man was walking between the two buildings on a thin steel wire. text only
My 1,000 Americans:
A Year-Long Odyssey Through the Personals
By Rochelle Morton
All of us have done it: lingered on the personals page (shielded, of course, from the eyes of co-workers and loved ones). Just who are these desperate strangers? And who answers their pleas? Have we ever met a couple sprung from the personals? How would our own ad read? What if no one responded? Hold on, let’s not get carried away. This type of heavy lifting is best left to the experts. text only
The Best American Crime Writing
Edited by Otto Penzler and Thomas H. Cook
It’s not as if we needed O.J. in order to detect the connection between crime and entertainment. Lest we forget, though, we still have Jerry Springer, Cops, Amy Fisher, Robert Blake, all those rotten child stars, Allen Iverson, Bum Fights, and now, heinous summer kidnappings. But the glass shield of television tends to repel lasting significance. Other people’s dark days are wiped away by the media’s intermittent blades as if they were dead bugs.
Selling Ben Cheever: Back to Square One in a Service Economy
By Ben Cheever
At first blush, it would be easy to dismiss as superfluous, even insulting, Ben Cheever’s personal foray into the grueling and often thankless world of the service industry. He is: the affluent son of a literary icon; himself a novelist; married to a prominent critic; a former senior editor at Reader’s Digest; and a seeming johnny-come-lately in the face of Barbara Ehrenreich’s first-hand account of life on entry-level pay.
Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography
By Dominic Streatfeild
The latest government anti-drug ad campaign links recreational use to international terrorism, employing fresh-faced teens to utter such unsettling statements as “Today, I helped a terrorist get a fake passport.” In post–September 11 America, the message connecting drug profit and terror is almost shrill.