By Geoffrey Gray
Crown | 320pgs
Release Date: August 9, 2011

Summary:
An innocuous man, who boarded a Northwest Orient flight from Portland to Seattle under the name Dan Cooper on November 24, 1971, perpetrated the most daring and mysterious hijacking in American history. Twenty-eight short minutes into the flight Cooper passed a note to a flight attendant demanding $200,000 and threatening to blow up the plane with a bomb he carried in his briefcase. On landing in Seattle, the passengers were released in exchange for the cash and parachutes and the plane once again took off. At an altitude of 10,000 feet, Cooper, later reported erroneously in the media as D.B. Cooper, parachuted out over a dark forest in the Pacific Northwest, and disappeared without a trace. Reporter Geoffrey Gray attempts to shed new light on the infamous crime and explore new leads in Skyjack: The Hunt for D.B. Cooper. With thorough research, firsthand interviews and unprecedented access to Cooper’s FBI file, Gray launches his own investigation and considers an array of suspects, some credible, others outlandish. Read more…

Jane McCloskey writes a loving tribute to her father in Robert McCloskey: A Private Life in Words and Pictures (Smith/Kerr Assoc, 256pgs). The children’s book author is best known for his classic picture books Make Way For Ducklings, One Morning in Maine and Blueberries for Sal. Though these award-winning books were written decades ago, the stories are timeless and remain popular with children today. In her own book, Jane, the writer’s youngest daughter and sister of Sal, presents a lively depiction of their family life in Maine, a place that inspired many of McCloskey’s stories. Jane also touches on the family’s time in New York and Mexico. Though they all shared a very loving bond, she admits that, like any family, there were a few bumps in the road. “Sal’s childhood was less happy than mine, while her adulthood has been happier and more successful,” she writes. Read more…

July 11th marked what would have been writer E.B. White’s 112th birthday. Born Elwyn Brooks White in Mt. Vernon, NY in 1899, the celebrated children’s author passed away in 1985 leaving behind a legacy of beloved stories. Stuart Little, The Trumpet of the Swan and the adored Charlotte’s Web have captivated children of all ages for decades. Publisher’s Weekly recently polled authors, publishers, teachers and librarians on the best children’s books ever published in the U.S., and Charlotte’s Web topped the list. Distinguished nonfiction writer Michael Sims pays tribute to White and delves into the creation of the iconic story of a spider and a pig in the new book The Story of Charlotte’s Web: E. B. White’s Eccentric Life in Nature and the Birth of an American Classic. Read more…

Former Gourmet magazine writer Barry Estabrook provides answers to anyone wondering why today’s supermarket tomatoes taste so bland in his new book Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 240pgs). The author explores tomato farming in South Florida, where the majority of U.S. tomatoes are grown in the winter months. On the surface Florida’s sandy, nutrient poor soil seems an odd choice to grow the red fruit, but the state’s warm winter weather allows the plants to grow in the off season, and farmers compensate by saturating the earth with dozens of pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers. Growers strive to create a uniformly shaped tomato that is hardy enough to survive transport across the country. The actual taste of the produce is no longer a factor, and even the color is not naturally achieved. Green tomatoes are gassed with ethylene to achieve their dull orange-red color. Read more…

Steve Martin, the multi-talented, multi-hyphenate performer and Grammy winning banjo musician is set to perform his new song Me and Paul Revere with bluegrass band Steep Canyon Rangers on PBS’ A Capitol Fourth television special, airing Monday, July 4th at 8pm E.T. According to an interview with USA Today, the comedian based the song on the 1994 book Paul Revere’s Ride, which gives an historical account of the Revolutionary’s midnight ride. The critically acclaimed book, written by Brandeis University history professor David Hackett Fischer, outlines the American patriot’s biography and lays out the historical facts of the battles of Lexington and Concord. Read more…

If the fictional exploits of government spies like Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan and John Le Carré’s George Smiley don’t have the gritty realism some readers crave, they might try picking up a copy of Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures, written by former FBI agent Robert Wittman. Now in paperback, the bestseller reveals details of several cases that Wittman worked while heading up the FBI’s Art Crime Team. His real-life experiences have all the ingredients of a high-octane spy thriller: mob connected thugs, police informants, millions of dollars worth of stolen art and FBI sting operations. The common thread being Wittman, whose chameleon-like ability to slip into different personas helped bring hardened criminals to justice and recover millions of dollars in fine art. Read more…

By Simon Mainwaring
Palgrave Macmillan | 256pgs
Release Date: June 7, 2011

Summary:
Simon Mainwaring, a branding and social media expert who has worked with the world’s most influential corporations, proposes a new business paradigm in We First: How Brands and Consumers Use Social Media to Build a Better World. He envisions a world where companies leverage social media not only for profit, but for the improvement of the community as well. Mainwaring contends the “Me First” corporate greed mentality is unsustainable and harmful to society. Instead, the book offers an alternative to corporations and consumers, where decisions in the production and purchase of goods are made for the benefit of greater good. The idea of “contributory consumption” is introduced, where each commercial interaction contributes to the betterment of the environment, and the world at large. Case studies from global giants such as Pepsi, Toyota and Nike are used to show how new strategies can achieve success. Read more…

Harper Lee

Controversy erupted in April surrounding Marja Mills’ book The Mockingbird Next Door: Life With Harper Lee, when Lee’s law firm released a statement denying any cooperation with the writer. In response to the denial, Mills sent an e-mail through her publisher Penguin Press to the New York Times, stating that “Harper Lee, known as Nelle to many of her friends, and her sister, Alice Lee, were wonderfully generous with their time and insights over the years as I researched my book.” She also produced a signed statement from Alice Lee “affirming she and her sister, Nelle Harper Lee, cooperated with the project.” Read more…

By Erik Larson
Crown | 464pgs
Release Date: May 10, 2011

Summary:
Bestselling non-fiction writer Erik Larson tells the electrifying true story of little known American ambassador to Germany William E. Dodd in In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin. Dodd, previously a professor of history at the University of Chicago, assumed his post in Germany in 1933, at the dawn of Hitler’s power. The ambassadorship to Germany was not considered a plum assignment due to the country’s heavy debt to the U.S., but the professor and his family were initially charmed by members of the Nazi party. Dodd’s daughter, Martha, an unabashed party girl, was particularly taken with the extravagant soirées of Berlin’s social scene and engaged in a number of affairs with the Nazi elite. But, soon the immense evil of the Third Reich began to pierce through the veneer of civility, and the Dodd family grew fearful of Hitler’s greed for power. The ambassador’s warnings of danger to the U.S. State Department went largely ignored, as things grew worse in Germany. Tensions finally came to a head as the family witnessed Hitler’s bloody power-play during “the Night of Long Knives”, when the dictator quashed his opposition. Read more…

Scott Darsney, the climbing partner who accompanied author Greg Mortenson on the 1993 attempt to summit K2, weighed in this week on the controversy surrounding the veracity of the events recounted in the bestselling book Three Cups of Tea. Mortenson has come under fire of late with charges of fabricating parts of the blockbuster memoir, and misappropriating funds from his charity, the Central Asia Institute, for his personal use. Yet, despite the barrage of criticism from the media, Darsney is still firmly in his friend’s camp. “If Jon Krakauer and some of Greg’s detractors had taken the time to have three or more cups of tea with Greg and others–instead of one cup of tea with a select few who would discredit him–they would have found some minor problems and transgressions. But to the extent to call it all ‘lies’ and ‘fraud’? No way,” wrote Darsney in an e-mail to Outside Magazine. Read more…