Maybe you’re looking for a good book, maybe someone on you’re shopping list would appreciate swell words on interesting topics? So here’s a bunch of good ones. I have no idea why I’ve grouped them in multiples of four, but these are all five-star books, that you’ll remember four-ever. Make sure you scroll down because there are lots of categories, things like war stories and sports and rock & roll and great Americans and the Beatles and cowboys & indians … Almost all of these reviews come with free fun facts to keep you interested, and books are a great place to meet people.

Four Damn Good Books – My Rock & Roll Fantasy

Never a Dull Moment: 1971 The Year That Rock Exploded, by David Hepworth
In 1971 Frank Zappa played the Montreux Casino near Geneva. Someone launched fireworks into the rattan ceiling, causing a pretty serious fire and inspiring Roger Glover to write “Smoke On The Water.” Deep Purple was there in Switzerland to record an LP in the Rolling Stones’ mobile van. A potential disaster turned into a rock anthem. The premise of this book is that 1971 is the seminal year in rock history, an assertion that’s hard to argue against after this compelling testimony. Hepworth: “…It was the year that they established the mystique on which the Rolling Stones have run ever since….It was a dream of a new form of living, a fantasy in which you could live the life of a hippie on the budget of a banker.” Wonderful and well written, from the obscure to the acts and albums you thought you knew, the stories are unique and memorable. There are tales about the most epic performances in rock on every page.  When Cat Stevens was 22, between the spring of 1970 and summer of 1971, just 14 months, he wrote, recorded and released: “Where Do the Children Play,” “Wild World,” “Father and Son,” “Tuesday’s Dead,” “Morning Has Broken,” “Moonshadow” and “Peace Train.” The book is simply the definition of why someone would pick up a rock book, namely, great anecdotes about songs, groups and the music scene. Hepworth: “Who’s Next sits at the center of 1971’s claim to be the most perfect moment in the short history of rock & roll (as of 1971) and with each passing year that claim grows stronger … This is largely because of one tune which may well be the best recording of the best year in the history of recording, the five-minute opening cut, ‘Baba O’Riley.’” I will now go back to 1971 more often.

Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan and the Night That Split the Sixties, by Elijah Wald
Dylan’s first professional recordings were as a harmonica accompanist. The back-story is that in 1965, the Newport Folk Festival was just that—an acoustic folk scene. Bob Dylan called Woody Guthrie “the true voice of the American spirit.” Dylan showed up and played a raw and audacious electric set. That handful of songs chapped the old guard, creating a hubbub only Dylan could cause. The book is wonderful because of how compelling Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan are, because it does a fascinating job of defining the folk revolution of the 1950s and ’60s and because it treats the 1965 event at Newport for what it was – the end of the innocence of the folk scene and a coming-out party for blues-based rock. Dylan and Mavis Staples were in love in 1965; and Mavis has said she regrets not marrying him. Bonus fact: Though he wrote it, Dylan has since always regarded “All Along the Watchtower” as a Jimi Hendrix song.

Please Be with Me: A Song for My Father, Duane Allman, by Galadrielle Allman
I admit, I’m a captive audience because of my affinity for the music, the musician and the legend of Duane Allman, but I was still blown away by Galadrielle’s writing, her approach and the spiritual journey she takes on in this book. I’ve read Skydog, My Cross to Bear and One Way Out, so I expected redundancy. What happened instead is a completely new take on the Allman Brothers Band in the light reflected by Duane through his daughter. The author presents deep points of view from new characters, and the effect is personal, emotional and bittersweet. An ambitious, revealing, loving discovery mission is pulled off beautifully by Galadrielle. David Hepworth on the live recording at the Fillmore East: “…The two guitarists and two drummers of the Allmans played like a large truck that had found a way to handle like a Ferrari, in the process rendering all comparable attempts to record the rock jam as ragged and clumsy … Within six months [of that recording] Duane Allman was dead in a motorcycle accident. He’d already played with the world’s finest musicians, put his name on some of the signature records of the age, been widely acclaimed for the soulfulness and uncanny maturity of his playing and on the weekend of March 13th [1971] had taken his band to the mountaintop and recorded there. He was 24.”

Van Halen Rising: How a Southern California Backyard Party Band Saved Heavy Metal, by Greg Renoff
The first night Van Halen played only original songs was May 9, 1976, at the Golden West Ballroom (in Southern California), opening for UFO. This is really an unmatched rock book and I’ll tell you why: Almost everything else written in recent years is a straight chronological narrative filled with rockers banging groupies, rockers in rehab and rockers having relationship problems. In 1978 Van Halen played their first gig after releasing their first album, opening for Ronnie Montrose and Journey; later that same year they opened for Black Sabbath. Van Halen Rising has an actual story and it’s unbelievable, focusing on the brothers and their neighborhood friends and the band they formed. The story limits itself, essentially, to the period of time from when the boys are in their early teens until 1978 when they finally made it. Van Halen has sold ten million copies, two million in the first year, arguably the greatest debut album in rock history. Van Halen was essentially recorded live, costing just $54,000; in that same year, 1978, it cost $400,000 to record Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. An amazing success story beautifully written without the need to reel you in with gratuitous T&A.  Rock on Greg, there will never be another Van Halen.

Four Damn Good Books – Legendary Sports Stories

When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi, by David Maraniss
When Lombardi reached Green Bay, the table was already set by a brilliant scout named Jack Vainisi, who had already signed HOFers: Paul Hornung, Bart Starr, Jim Taylor, Ray Nitschke, Forrest Gregg, Jim Ringo, Willie Wood and Jerry Kramer. I’ve read maybe six five-star sports books in last two years (Boys in the Boat, etc.), and this book is perhaps the best of all. In 1957, the year before Lombardi arrived, the Pack was 1-10-1 and was coached by Scooter McLean, prompting sportswriting legend Red Smith to say, “The Packers underwhelmed 10 opponents, overwhelmed one and whelmed one.” Maybe it’s all the great players and that golden era of football that make this telling so memorable, but more likely, it’s simply Lombardi – the very name, the three Italian syllables – who evokes a snowy gridiron, modern gladiators lined up helmet to helmet, their collective breath visible like that of a bison herd on the frozen plain.  LOMBARDI, distinctively American and the essence of America – flawed, original, legendary. Lombardi and his wife Marie often ate steak sandwiches and threw back a few beers at Leo’s in New Jersey.  Often, just before closing time, they’d buy a sandwich and beer for the skinny young crooner who would stop by their table—Frank Sinatra.

56: Joe DiMaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports, by Kostya Kennedy
Streak game number 30: Streak is extended when Joe hit a ball that took a bad hop off future HOFer Luke Appling’s shoulder. Streak game number 36: Versus the Browns, Joe hits a clean single in the eighth after the pitcher refused to walk him. Streak game number 38: One on one out in bottom of the eighth, Manager Heinrich asks Joe to bunt to stay out of the double play, instead Joe doubled to right field. Joe was a butthead but he could hit. The streak is a marvel to this day, and this daily diary is a great read. Joe hit in 61 straight games at age 18 with the San Francisco Seals; the 56-game streak ended in Cleveland, and the next day Joe started a 16-game hitting streak. Here you’ll find everything one could want in a sports book, as the hitting streak: happened in a golden era with all-time teams and players, involves a nearly impossible feat, sports’ ultimate Holy Grail, and is the story of Joe DiMaggio, one of the most elite and misunderstood athletes in the history of team sports. During the streak, Joe would smoke two packs of Camels and drink 23 half-cups of coffee a day. This is a magical telling of the magical number, a powerful, sentimental reminder of why we love baseball.

Twelve Mighty Orphans: The Inspiring True Story of the Mighty Mites Who Ruled Texas Football, by Jim Dent
So on the cover of this book old-school sports announcer Verne Lundquist is quoted: “This may be the best sports book ever written.” When I read this, I chuckled, Verne, you must be kidding. From the very first page I found myself apologizing for not taking Verne seriously. If not the best sports book, then damn close. You gotta meet Hardy Brown and the Mighty Mites of the Masonic orphanage in Texas. Hardy Brown of the Mighty Mites went on to be known as the meanest man in the NFL (for real). He knocked out 21 players in 1951 alone. His highlight reel was banned by the NFL, but HOFer Ronnie Lott got a hold of it and patterned his game after Brown. Unlikely and almost unbelievable, this is a hidden gem about a long-ago era and the insane power of football in this country. Jim Dent kills it.

The Last Season: A Father, a Son and a Lifetime of College Football, by Stuart Stevens
It’s a home run, ahhh, touchdown. Well played Stuart, you have a great Pops. The Big Ten used to be called the Western Conference and before that, the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representatives (catchy). Football is important; it provides a direct link to many of the things we hold dear and value as Americans. Red Blaik, football coach at Army in their heyday: “There never was a champion who to himself was a good loser; there is a vast difference between a good sport and good loser. The purpose of the game is to win; to dilute the will to win is to destroy the purpose of the game.” The college game can be deadly serious, but this book reminds us that, for millions of Americans, the will to win is almost always overshadowed by a Saturday social ritual where team-school-country are blended in a state fair atmosphere that is simply part of who we are. In 1878 the Yale football captain was Walter Chauncey Camp, a New Haven native. If Yale was the first football factory, it is said, then Camp was the foreman. To an outsider, this American fixation on football is often ridiculed as a misplacement of priorities. Stuart’s book proves otherwise. Football is simply the catalyst for a uniquely American form of human interaction.

Four Damn Good Books – People You Should Know

Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller Sr., Ron Chernow
John D. Rockefeller’s children had to earn their money doing chores.  For example, they got two cents for killing flies, ten cents for sharpening pencils, five cents for practicing music and two cents per day for abstaining from candy. I guess popular opinion is that John D. was a crook. I can’t agree. He more closely resembles today’s hyper-combative pro athlete, always looking for and ready to exploit the loophole, the gray area or the unwritten rules to gain a competitive advantage. I found myself admiring and kinda cheering for him, because ultimately, he was just more committed, smarter and prepared to work harder than anyone else. In a first-rate biography that shows that you can learn a lot from a billionaire, Rockefeller is on record as declaring, “A man has no right to occupy another man’s time unnecessarily,” and “Success comes from keeping ears open and mouths closed.”

Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates
“In America it is tradition to destroy the black body … it is heritage … the (black) soul was the body that fed the tobacco and the (black) spirit was the blood that watered the cotton and these created the first fruits in the American garden.” I try to never say, “I know how you feel,” because it trivializes the plight of the person you say it to and because most of the time it’s untrue, if not disingenuous. It’s a fabulously silly thing for a white man to say to a black man. So I don’t know how the author feels, but I know why he feels that way: He tells us with a kick-to-the-balls dose of honesty and straightforward language that simply feels revolutionary. “All my life I’d heard people tell their black boys and black girls to be twice as good, which is to say accept half as much.” If you’re willing to look at racism, the ongoing white-on-black hate that is in America’s DNA, then these are words you need to read. The book is written as a letter – a love letter it turns out – to the author’s son. But as if to illustrate that love can be conveyed through even harsh words and concepts, the father-to-son letter is purposely void of hope – at least false hope. And it is in that sledgehammer of candor, in the message that – for blacks in America, there can be no expectation of things getting better and no aspiration to anything that looks like what used to be called the American Dream – this book takes you by the lapels and shakes the shit out of you.

How About Never – Is Never Good for You?: My Life in Cartoons, Bob Mankoff
“If you don’t have a silly bone in your body you’re not gonna have a funny bone either.” So fun. So funny. The author is a cartoonist, a quite accomplished one. He has written a memoir that basically just focuses on the cartoonist part of his life and he kills it. Self-deprecating, graceful, skilled storytelling, and the best part, it’s filled with fantastic cartoons from New Yorker and elsewhere. Like this one (picture this): A dog in a business suit walks into a bar and the bartender says: “Scotch and toilet water?” These types of cartoons are perhaps the most underrated form of genius. Life really should be considered a laughing matter.

After Visiting Friends: A Son’s Story, Michael Hainey
A little boy’s dad dies. He wants to know why, how? The newspaper account of his father’s  death – a small snippet really – is no help, but contains the phrase “Passed away after visiting friends.” For the young boy, and the man he would become, the words are haunting. He digs. He finds stuff. Heartbreak happens, triumph happens, epic storytelling happens.

Four Damn Good Books – Cowboys & Indians

The Frontiersmen: A Narrative, Allan W. Eckert
If you think Hugh Glass (think The Revenant) was a badass, wait until you get a load of Simon Kenton (aka, Simon Butler). Epic, detailed, at many times riveting, the account of Kenton’s capture and ordeal at the hands of the Shawnee is worth the price of admission on its own – quite simply white-knuckle thrilling. This sprawling story of the U.S. frontier starting before the American Revolution uses Kenton’s life as one of its common threads, and while the stories of the many white frontiersmen are fascinating in the extreme, the rich picture this book paints of Native Americans, on their virgin land, in their unspoiled mindset, is a treasure. Many brave men, moments of brilliant discovery, injustice around every bend in the river and a singular account of the heartbreaking reality of beauty and blood that were part of the land just west of the Thirteen Original Colonies. In the 1600s, 400 million beavers populated the North American continent – there was literally a beaver dam every half mile on every stream and on every watershed in North America. The French explorer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac was sent to the Great Lakes area and ended up founding Detroit, in part, to protect France’s interest in the beaver trade. Alas, no more beaver on the Detroit River; the last sighting was in 1934.

The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America, Thomas King
Native people, who had held title to some 138 million acres in 1887, would see that figure reduced to around 48 million acres, much of it desert. An American Indian writes a book about Indians. He succeeds. Irreverently, intelligently, irresistibly. It’s a far-reaching, spraying-to-all-fields look at the actual experience of Native Americans filled with tasty facts, good-natured humor and the heartbreaking reality of dreams lost, promises broken, cultures destroyed and land desecrated. The United States and Canada signed well over 500 treaties.  In the United States, the first treaty was signed with the Delaware in 1778, and the last one with the Nez Perces in 1868 – a significantly smaller number were ultimately honored. Funny, smart, honest, revealing, and like all books about the people who were here first, sad, embarrassing, depressing, unfair. His “North American” approach (covering American and Canadian tribes) is enlightening and his modern-day perspective is compelling.

Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History, S.C. Gwynne
Some believe the Comanche were the most dominant and influential tribe in U.S. history. This book reveals the pure power of the Comanche in their glorious ecosystem, the violent collision with the white man and the unlikely encounter with the Parker family. Comanche controlled large chunks of five states, 240,000 square miles. Their range, Comancheria, is said to have encompassed 200 million acres, only the western Sioux had comparable acreage. The result? A legendary Indian leader, and ultimately, the making of John Ford’s classic western The Searchers. By the end of this book, I stood in awe of the Comanche and astounded by white hate and the incredibly flawed U.S. Indian policy. What a waste! “All recent American cinema derives from John Ford’s The Searchers,” film critic Stuart Byron. The 40-year war between the Comanche and the whites was the most protracted war on the North American continent.

Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Jefferson and the Opening of the American West, Stephen Ambrose
Stephen Ambrose turned me on to the joy of reading history, first in his World War II classics like Band of Brothers, and ultimately with a series of other books about landmark American happenings. This is the epic account of the journey of Lewis & Clark, the original American camping trip. It’s an outdoor adventure packed with our majestic American landscapes, flora and fauna witnessed for the first time and an obsessed, possibly crazy group who wouldn’t be stopped by natural and human roadblocks. With the Louisiana Purchase, roughly one-third of what is now the United States was purchased for $15 million, about 4 cents per acre. That would be 1 million square miles, larger than Britain, France, Germany, Spain and Portugal combined.

Four Damn Good Books – Made in America

The Way You Wear Your Hat: Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of Livin’, by Bill Zehme
By the dawn of the sixties, Sinatra’s closet included over 150 suits that he only described as “sharp.” I listen to Sinatra music at least once every week. I find it perfectly natural sliding from heavy metal to singer-songwriter to the Great American Songbook, because, well because, greatness is greatness. This isn’t your typical Sinatra book. It’s not about the music per se, it’s about style – style as defined by the man who invented it. Sinatra carried a money clip that held denominations big and new; he never carried credit cards. It’s the story, breezy and quote-filled, of literally how he dresses (how he wears his hat), lights a cigarette, acts in a restaurant, approaches women. Frank’s drink: three or four ice cubes, two fingers of Jack Daniels, the rest water, in a traditional rocks glass. Said Sinatra: “This is a gentleman’s drink.” All fun, all class, that’s Sinatra.

Mr. Adams’s Last Crusade: John Quincy Adams’s Extraordinary Post-Presidential Life in Congress, by Joseph Wheelan
Simply wonderful. Inspiring. So many of our early American leaders are among our very best, maybe because there was such a full plate of things to be accomplished. Of Adams’s determined efforts to carry out James Smithson’s wishes (the obscure English chemist whose generous gift resulted in the Smithsonian), and of his faithful promotion of science, historian Robert V. Remini wrote: “No one since Benjamin Franklin accomplished as much in advancing the cause of science in America.” While generally hazed as a president, John Quincy Adams defined service, righteousness and patriotism in the congressional run that followed his presidency. Adams entered the House as a freshman congressman at the age of sixty-four, believing that if the people summoned him, he was obligated to obey that summons. His principles and bipartisanship serve as examples for the ages, and as the very last of the revolutionary founders, in many ways, the best was saved for last. “If the Union must be dissolved, slavery is precisely the question upon which it ought to break,” Congressman John Quincy Adams. Boy, could we use a man of character like John Quincy Adams now.

The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey, by Rinker Buck
“The Americans today who like to whine all the time because they say that taxes are too high and that government costs too much should leave their television sets behind for a while and go out and see the country they live in.” This book is a gift – to travel, to discovery, to family, to America. The concept is straightforward: Rinker and his brother set out to travel the Oregon Trail from beginning to end in the twenty-first century. They aim to do it the way it was originally done: with mules pulling a prairie schooner, etc. Perhaps as many as 800,000 distinctive, black Missouri mules – branded with a large “U.S.” on their rumps – were sent to Europe during World War I. It’s a wonderful history lesson not just about the Trail, but about so many other things that make this country great and exasperating and one of a kind. At one point the author writes that on the trail of our ancestors, overlooking one of its great rivers, “I found the soul of my country.”

The Wright Brothers, by David McCullough
McCullough’s a stud, one of the very best American storytellers and this is a great tale. Growing up, the story of the Wright Brothers seemed as commonly told as The Three Little Pigs or Robin Hood, but I should confess that after the names Orville and Wilbur and Kittyhawk, I knew not much. As a youngster, I had missed that they were humble bicycle sellers/mechanics, that they were daredevils before there was such a thing, that they had that good cop–bad cop synergy that is so important to a successful partnership. In McCullough’s telling, we learn that the brothers were adamant about using their own money and unwilling to have their life’s work benefit a foreign land before the U.S. government had its chance. Smart, determined, self-motivated, pugnacious, humble, loyal, naive, practical, fanciful. These are some of the key ingredients you would use to stir up an inventor, someone undeterred by the impossible. This is simply a story of genius, American-grown genius. There’s no better example of what can be accomplished when you truly commit to something. The book crowns Orville and Wilbur American royalty.

Four Damn Good Books – Racial Injustice

Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America, by Jill Leovy
First-rate and well written. An explosive, polarizing topic and a narrative that slaps you in the face from the first page. The Los Angeles Police Department is short on officers and resources; they use it as an excuse for not solving murders, but people on the streets say the real reason is that LAPD and society at large simply don’t care if blacks kill other blacks. Though the Los Angeles black population is in decline, L.A. blacks die in the same numbers as blacks in cities with much larger black populations like New Orleans, Washington, D.C., Chicago and Detroit. The white population says blacks don’t respect life, that they’d rather use or gangbang than take responsibility. Perspective can be a chilling truth or a damn lie. Still, there’s one powerful fact: Blacks in L.A. (and many other places in urban America) are marginalized to the point of occupying an impossibly small space – physical space, like a handful of neighborhoods or a few square miles cut out of a city landscape. That space becomes the entire world, and since these people are poor in the extreme, with no prospects and no way out, the only avenue to status or hope or respect, is to be in complete control of this shrinking space (like the South L.A. neighborhoods illustrated in this book) – and if that means killing, so be it.  Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance or conscientious stupidity.”

The New Jim Crow: Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander and Cornel West
Powerfully written and backed by ridiculously compelling statistics, the authors paint an unassailable picture of the great lengths America will go to to ensure that blacks remain the perpetual underclass. Throughout American history, from slavery to Jim Crow to modern-day incarceration, politicians have triggered a collapse of resistance to change to appeal to the racism and vulnerability of lower-class whites, a group that is eager not to be trapped at the bottom of the totem pole below blacks. The book asserts that incarceration – disproportionately ensnaring blacks – is simply the latest form of slavery in America (or in other words, The New Jim Crow) and it is institutionalized – not happening by chance but by the wheels of a political and societal machine. Only 2 percent of Americans thought drugs were a problem when the war on drugs started in 1980. The war on drugs started anyway. President Clinton’s “tough on crime” stance resulted in the largest increase in federal and state prison inmates of any U.S. president. Using the patriotic cover of tough on crime and anti-drugs, American civil liberties were trampled.  Law enforcement budgets and resources soared and it became easier to make arrests (drug suspicion), imprison people (an angry mob of judges and juries) and keep them in jail (mandatory minimums) – all of which conspired against poor blacks. In 2006 one in 14 black men, one in nine between the ages of 20 and 35, were in jail. The ratio for whites was one in 106. The New Jim Crow paints a bleak picture of our racial reality: (1) the “American dream” does not apply to blacks, (2) we have made virtually no progress toward racial equality in the past 50 years and, (3) racism against blacks is so ingrained into our country’s DNA that it will forever be our national shame.

Blood Brothers: The Fatal Friendship Between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X, by Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith
This is a one-of-a-kind story of two fascinating people whose lives intersect at the definitive moment. Ali, known as Cassius Clay for most of the book, was naive and talented and easily influenced. He wanted a taste of the sugar he was sure would come as the result of his 1960 Olympic gold medal. He talked big. Cassius Clay to a Soviet reporter about US race relations: “We’ve got qualified people working on that problem and I’m not worried about the outcome. To me the USA is still the best country in the world, counting yours.” Malcolm was street smart, a gifted speaker, an ex-con. He was more serious about the Nation of Islam than anyone, even Elijah Muhammad. Malcolm X, called “Detroit Red,” was arrested in 1946 for burglary and served 77 months in a Massachusetts prison. The gravitational pull of one to the other was near mystic, Malcolm drawn to Ali mostly because he wanted Ali’s star power to shine a light on the Nation of Islam, Ali drawn to Malcolm because of his cult of personality and Ali’s need for a mentor. Ali flunked the military intelligence test twice.  He was prohibited from service, but the military came to its senses, lowered the intelligence standard in 1966 and Ali ultimately got drafted. In telling of their personal encounter, instead of full-blown biographies of the two, the authors create a fast-paced and gripping moment in time. That time ended when Ali was forced to make a choice between Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X. Malcolm X was killed February 26, 1965, in the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan by the Nation of Islam, shot with a sawed-off shotgun followed by sprays of bullets from two other shooters.

Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County: A Family, a Virginia Town, a Civil Rights Battle, by Kristen Green
The landmark Supreme Court case Brown vs. Board of Education happens, and on paper, there is no more segregation in America’s public schools. In practice, things are far from peacefully blended, especially in Virginia’s Prince Edward County. Instead of integrating their public schools, the local school and county officials decide to close them. For most of the white kids, this means finding a new private school; for most of the black kids, it means no school at all – your life’s education has now ended, the last grade you finished is where it all ends. It turns out that the author’s grandparents were complicit in these acts, or at best, looked the other way. It’s an interesting story, well told. Though the author tries time and again to create an underlying feeling of hope – that her family is not tied to a despicable act that fucked over an entire generation of blacks – she can’t, revealing perhaps the biggest takeaway of the book: Racism is embedded so deeply in the fabric of America that time can’t/isn’t healing it. We now know that a segregated school, a segregated society, are inherently UNEQUAL. A half a century ago, people knew this as well, perhaps not empirically, but certainly according to the most basic code of what’s right and wrong. We need to say out loud that depriving an individual of opportunity and therefore success, hope and happiness is pure evil, and evil is what was done in Prince Edward County.

Four Damn Good Books – John, Paul, George, Ringo

Beatlesongs, by William J. Dowlding
John believed that “Help!” was one of the best songs he ever wrote. If you want to go song by song through The Beatles canon, this is the book I’d pick. The Beatles had fifty-six Top ten hits. It’s not really a narrative, it’s a fact book, and it goes through the albums (that would be The Beatles British LPs) in chronological order with a page or two dedicated to each song. Songwriter Jerry Leiber on “Eleanor Rigby”, “I don’t think there’s ever been a better-written song.” On those pages the author provides writing credits with a percentage value (like sixty percent Paul, forty percent John; very handy), recording date(s) and location, song and instrument contributors and swell quotes by The Beatles cast of characters.  

Still the Greatest: The Essential Songs of The Beatles’ Solo Careers, by Andrew Grant Jackson
It’s 1970 and The Beatles have broken up (life’s not fair). But the music didn’t end, it just got divided up four ways. A big part of why the Fabs parted is because each one wanted to make his own music without getting bossed around or disrespected by the other three.  So off they went, to make music as individuals, but the author like many of us, couldn’t handle the break-up so he created the ultimate what if? What if, starting in 1970, you took the best tracks on John, Paul, George and Ringo’s solo records and viewed them as a Beatles album? Well, what you’d get is a bunch of damn good records and a sad, but insightful glimpse of what might have been. For example, if you consider the tracks The Beatles as individuals recorded in 1970, The Beatles as a group could have produced an album, as a follow-up to Let It Be, that included the songs: “Instant Karma,” “Give Peace A Chance” and “Working Class Hero” by John, “Maybe I’m Amazed” and “Every Night” by Paul, “My Sweet Lord,” “What Is Life” and “All Things Must Pass” by George and “Beaucoups of Blues” by Ringo. It’s a fun read that perhaps leaves one longing for the four lads we collectively knew back when, yet the more intimate takeaway is that it was never about a foursome, rather it was about individuals who shared a moment in time but were always in tune with the call of their individual musical destiny. As standalone musicians, these four stand alone, and apart, their music provides the cure to the malady that they are no longer together.

Can’t Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America, by Jonathan Gould
Books about The Beatles tend to have an angle – that is, they are written from a certain perspective or they dissect a moment in time, a time frame, an event, a performance. What stands out about Gould’s take is that he casts a wide net (this is pretty much a Beatles story from beginning to end) but still manages to spend quality time at all the right places. In the process he provides data points that even the experienced Beatles reader will find Fab and he delivers fresh perspective on many of the side streets I find most compelling about them, like: (1)  the music, making it and what it means, (2) their personal lives, where they came from and why it matters and (3) the societal context, how and why they are relevant in our past, present and future. Money can’t buy you love, but it can buy you a pretty nifty Beatles book, and every Beatles fan should read at least one more.

I, Me, Mine, by George Harrison
We all know that there’s really no comparison to George Harrison. Beautiful person, fantastic musician, spiritual, compassionate, gone, missed. George wrote the lyrics to Cream’s hit song “Badge.” It’s not like George to talk about George so this is a rare peek behind a normally-pulled-tight curtain, not in the blockbuster tell-all context, more like the shy boy has agreed to speak kind of way. If you like George, you need to read this; if you don’t like George, you’d be a better human if you did. Either way, this book is a good place to start. George believed, “Friends are all souls we’ve known in other lives, we’re drawn to each other … Doesn’t matter if I’ve only known them for a day because we met somewhere before.”

Four Damn Good Books – Warriors for Democracy

The Longest Day: The Classic Epic of D-Day, June 6, 1944, by Cornelius Ryan
On the deck of a D-Day ship, Technical Sgt. Roy Stevens sought out his twin brother. “I finally found him, he smiled and extended his hand, and I said ‘No! We will shake hands at the crossroads in France like we planned’ … We said goodbye and I never saw him again.” The film version, even with John Wayne and Henry Fonda, can indeed feel like a very long day, but the book is a wonderfully straightforward narrative filled with poignant anecdotes of soldiers and civilians. Sidney Dawe was a schoolteacher who for 20 years, put together the crossword puzzle for London’s Daily Telegraph.  It never repeated the same clue twice. In the days leading up to the D-Day invasion, he came under surveillance of Scotland Yard. It turns out, completely by chance, that his puzzles during the spring of 1944 contained words that included Overlord, Utah and Omaha. The book shatters some myths set down by the more famous movie, and in other cases it provides names and details that create a rich, personal backdrop for what transpired that fateful day. For example, in the movie, actor Red Buttons played a soldier whose parachute gets wrapped around a church steeple. That was real. It was a private named John Steele who dangled from the steeple in Sainte-Mère-Église. He teetered there for about two hours (playing dead and in great pain) before being captured by the Germans. June 6, 1944: a day of logistics and luck (of both kinds), bravery and destiny, the results of which have in so many ways shaped our world.

Boys of ’67: Charlie Company’s War in Vietnam, by Andrew West
When FDR died, any chance of fighting colonialism in Vietnam died with him. The boys of 1967 were much like the “Band of Brothers” Stephen Ambrose wrote of, in that they were citizen soldiers who came running at first ask, were trained together as a unit, deployed as a unit, and ultimately, died (mostly) as a unit. Our government believed that if we showed our determination in Vietnam, Hanoi would not put up a challenge. We made this mistake repeatedly starting in 1961.  In point of fact, the enemy was always more serious about his country than we were. The author does a wonderful job of weaving the story, especially in the use of letters home. In 1966 382,010 American men got drafted, the single largest yearly draft call of the Vietnam War. Very moving, very sad, what a waste of the best and the brightest. Vietnam: over 58,000 killed, over 150,000 wounded, $111 billion.

Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor, by James M. Scott
Pearl Harbor gets bombed, and as Americans, we want revenge. In the minds of certain military men, revenge can only mean one thing: bomb Tokyo. It was a ridiculous idea. For starters, you’d need to figure out how to launch your big bombers from the deck of a carrier—to some, a suicidal notion. I’d heard the term Doolittle’s Raid, but never knew what the big deal was. Said the Miami Daily News, “His deeds are in sharp contrast to his name.” This is moving history. The against-all-odds success of the raid (if you can call it that; the raid was poorly planned, and it was a miracle a single bomb landed in Japan), and the far-reaching fallout from it are staggering. Target Tokyo reinforces two powerful lessons: evil has no limits; and there is no match for the determination of the human spirit.

The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War, by A. J. Baime
Great storytelling about Henry and Edsel Ford and how they converted the company they built into a war materiel juggernaut by using their ingenious principles of mass production. In five war years, 18,000 B-24 Liberators were turned out.  In contrast, in the 40 years since its inception, only 1,500 747s have been built. We tend to think of America as a leader in all things, but in the years leading up to World War II that simply wasn’t the case. We essentially had no Navy. Unlike Germany and other nations that had been involved in post-WWI military conflicts and who were investing heavily in their military super-structures, the U.S. was focused on domestic issues, had significantly downsized its Army and maintained only a scant supply of the implements of war. Each B-24 had 360,000 rivets. In short, we were caught with our pants down.  The manner in which we would pull them up and begin kicking some ass, started with the factories in Detroit. Firing up those factories, retooling them, filling them with American workers and American sweat, came about when the sleeping giant stirred. “No man can tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it,” FDR declared in a December 1940 fireside chat. “We must be the great arsenal of democracy.” The creation of this arsenal remains a shining moment and a world-changing accomplishment.