From Dawn to Dusk of the 1960s, Hollywood Eden details the stories of famous California beach bands like Jan and Dean and The Mamas and the Papas. It includes their optimistic beginnings through their worst moments. Not exactly California Dreamin’ by the end. Hollywood Eden is a well-researched look backContinue Reading
What was causing a horrific smell and strangely common illnesses in a suburb of Los Angeles? Why were sea stars (aka starfish) pulling off their limbs and then liquefying? What was killing animals and people in West Virginia? How are the new “meatless meats” made and why? These are justContinue Reading
Micro Food Gardening is a space-saving way to learn to garden and eat healthier! Plus, it is just fun to get your hands dirty once in a while. No matter the size of your home and yard, you can micro garden. The author cleverly repurposes items many people already haveContinue Reading
What started as a feminist movement to empower females to have the same sexual options as males has turned into The Pornification of America. Raunch culture is everywhere! It’s in advertising, movies, social media, and even music. This book attempts to explain how we got here and why this environmentContinue Reading
I adored Carole King’s Tapestry album throughout my pre-teen years. As a piano student, I finally had something that I could play, and even sing with, that was also playing on the radio. But I neither knew, nor truly cared, about the singer/songwriter who produced the album. However, I snatchedContinue Reading
Wonderworks has a unique concept. Let’s look across time and place to find twenty-five literary tools that most impact writing today. Then, show how they began to be used and how they continue to be used today in both books and film. Finally, how you can use the technique inContinue Reading
You can move along folks. There’s nothing new to see here! Two Meals a Day tries to combine the currently fashionable intermittent fasting with a grain-less, processed sugar-free, and no seed oil diet. It also throws in aerobic exercise, journalizing, Marie Kondozing, and orange light only before bedtime. If youContinue Reading
You’re History takes a unique perspective to music criticism. Finally, the lyrics alone are not the point. “The most captivating music is slippery, telegraphing a secret meaning while asserting its intentions at face value. Music is not always about depth and timber: sometimes the song is best served by aContinue Reading
At its heart, What Unites Us is a memoir of an elderly white man’s life from the casual racism of his youth to the Trump administration’s perceived nationalism. It also attempts to explain what is causing our national chaos and how we can, and should, move forward toward a kinder,Continue Reading
“The world is on the precipice of a cyber catastrophe.“ —from This is How They Tell Me the World Ends. Beginning with zero-days or back doors into famous software like Microsoft Windows, Google and Cisco, hackers have been hacking into our digital information since the 1990s. But the hackers areContinue Reading
Russell Shorto, the author, is not to be confused with his grandfather, Russell Shorto, the Smalltime Mafioso who was the No. 2 man in the small steel mill town of Johnstown between 1946 through 1960. This is the elder Shorto’s story. But more interesting, it is also the story ofContinue Reading
Climate change is happening, whether you believe in it or not. Stay ahead of the curve by reading this excellent and informative guide on How to Prepare for Climate Change. The book begins with a compelling argument shown in a single graph that global warming is occurring in lock stepContinue Reading
The Crown in Crisis is a well-researched and detailed study of the abdication of British King Edward VIII on the brink of World War II. However, non-Anglophiles may find all the characters and what their jobs entail rather confusing. Though I can envision future university students citing this book inContinue Reading
Patricia Highsmith was by all accounts a horrible person, who was beset with Devils, Lusts and Strange Desires. Patricia was a drunk racist anti-Semite. She drank from morning to night. She stated that “black men become physically ill if they did not have sex many times a month” and wereContinue Reading
Raised by parents who met in a psych ward, Stephen’s life was destined to be anything but normal. But who would have thought that Stephen, a shy, mild-mannered university geography student, would become a modern-day Robin Hood? Robbing banks internationally to help the homeless? He was truly The Unusual Suspect.Continue Reading
If you are old enough to remember when vinyl records were the only choice to buy music, you, like me, will love the behind-the-scenes rock music production stories included in the excellent Sonic Boom. In 1958, Jack Warner started Warner Bros Records to cash in on the profits that theContinue Reading