American Gangsters: The Life and Legacy of Al Capone, by Charles River Editors

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• Explains the legends and separates fact from fiction regarding Capone's most famous hits, including the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. 
• Includes pictures of Capone and important people, places, and events in his life. 
• Includes a Table of Contents

2.5 stars, upped to three because it was free on Amazon and I didn't hate it.

The authors of this book, the Charles River Editors, could have done a much better job with...um, editing: timelines went backward and forward; punctuation was missing or in the wrong place; the word "somehow" was used every time someone survived an assassination attempt; and so on.

I also expected more "fact vs. fiction" as promised in the synopsis--at least more than a few paragraphs at the end.

Prozac Nation, by Elizabeth Wurtzel

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"Full of promise" is how anyone would have described Elizabeth Wurtzel at age ten, a bright-eyed little girl who painted, wrote stories, and excelled in every way. By twelve, she was cutting her legs in the girls' bathroom and listening to scratchy recordings of the Velvet Underground. 

College was marked by a series of breakdowns, suicide attempts, and hospitalizations before she was finally given Prozac in combination with other psychoactive drugs, all of which have worked sporadically as Elizabeth's mood swings rise and fall like the lines of a sad ballad.

This memoir, both harrowing and hilarious, gives voice to the high incidence of depression--especially among America's youth.

Prozac Nation is a collective cry for help, a generational status report on today's young people, who have come of age fully entrenched in the culture of divorce, economic instability, and AIDS. 

"This private world of loony bins and weird people which I always felt I occupied and hid in," writes Elizabeth, "had suddenly turned inside out so that it seemed like this was one big Prozac Nation, one big mess of malaise. Perhaps the next time half a million people gather for a protest march on the White House green it will not be for abortion rights or gay liberation, but because we're all so bummed out." 

Writing with a vengeance (Nirvana, Joni Mitchell, and Dorothy Parker all rolled into one), Elizabeth Wurtzel will not go gentle into that good night. She wants off medication, she wants a family, and most definitely, a life worth living.




My Thoughts Prior to Reading Prozac Nation
I don't understand why this book gets such low reviews.  I bet those reviewers have never suffered from Depression and think it's all made-up.

My Thoughts as I Started to Read
Oh, wow.  She GETS me.  I wish I had read this book twenty years ago.

My Thoughts Halfway Through
The title is Prozac Nation.  Where's all of the talk about Prozac itself?

My Thoughts as I Neared the End
Oh, for the love of all that's holy.  This woman is so full of herself.

My Thoughts after Finishing Prozac Nation
Elizabeth Wurtzel is so annoying!  No wonder there are so many neutral and negative reviews.  I can't believe I ever had this at the top of my TBR.

The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg

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A young woman walks into a laboratory. Over the past two years, she has transformed almost every aspect of her life. She has quit smoking, run a marathon, and been promoted at work. The patterns inside her brain, neurologists discover, have fundamentally changed.

Marketers at Procter & Gamble study videos of people making their beds. They are desperately trying to figure out how to sell a new product called Febreze, on track to be one of the biggest flops in company history. Suddenly, one of them detects a nearly imperceptible pattern—and with a slight shift in advertising, Febreze goes on to earn a billion dollars a year.

An untested CEO takes over one of the largest companies in America. His first order of business is attacking a single pattern among his employees—how they approach worker safety—and soon the firm, Alcoa, becomes the top performer in the Dow Jones.

What do all these people have in common? They achieved success by focusing on the patterns that shape every aspect of our lives.

They succeeded by transforming habits.

In The Power of Habit, award-winning New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be changed. With penetrating intelligence and an ability to distill vast amounts of information into engrossing narratives, Duhigg brings to life a whole new understanding of human nature and its potential for transformation. 




I love stuff like this!

The Power of Habit created so many "aha!" moments and the desire to challenge myself.  Thanks to this book and the stories therein, I purchased a FitBit -- with which I am already completely head-over-heels in love -- to get in the habit of exercising more.  I'm more aware of my own patterns and those of my children, which I hope will make me a better parent.  And it helps to know why I crave certain things, even when I tell myself that I don't really want them.

Highly recommended.

Don't Get Too Comfortable, by David Rakoff

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Don't Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class, The Torments of Low Thread Count, The Never-Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems 

David Rakoff takes us on a bitingly funny grand tour of our culture of excess. Whether he is contrasting the elegance of one of the last flights of the supersonic Concorde with the good-times-and-chicken-wings populism of Hooters Air; working as a cabana boy at a South Beach hotel; or traveling to a private island off the coast of Belize to watch a soft-core video shoot—where he is provided with his very own personal manservant—rarely have greed, vanity, selfishness, and vapidity been so mercilessly skewered. 

Somewhere along the line, our healthy self-regard has exploded into obliterating narcissism; our manic getting and spending have now become celebrated as moral virtues. 

Simultaneously a Wildean satire and a plea for a little human decency, Don’t Get Too Comfortable shows that far from being bobos in paradise, we’re in a special circle of gilded-age hell.




I don't get the hype surrounding the likes of David Rakoff and David Sedaris.  I don't find either one charming, or witty, or funny.  I read this book as part of a challenge and have no desire to read any of his other works.

Wine and War: The French, The Nazis, and the Battle for France's Greatest Treasure, by Don & Petie Kladstrup

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The remarkable untold story of France’s courageous, clever vinters who protected and rescued the country’s most treasured commodity from German plunder during World War II.

In 1940, France fell to the Nazis and almost immediately the German army began a campaign of pillaging one of the assets the French hold most dear: their wine. Like others in the French Resistance, winemakers mobilized to oppose their occupiers, but the tale of their extraordinary efforts has remained largely unknown–until now. This is the thrilling and harrowing story of the French wine producers who undertook ingenious, daring measures to save their cherished crops and bottles as the Germans closed in on them. Wine and War illuminates a compelling, little-known chapter of history, and stands as a tribute to extraordinary individuals who waged a battle that, in a very real way, saved the spirit of France.

"To be a Frenchman means to fight for your country and its wine." 

–Claude Terrail, owner, Restaurant La Tour d’Argent

I received this book from my grandfather (?) a decade ago.  I wish I had read it when he was still alive so I could talk to him about the events in this book.  Like me, he was a Francophile and we shared stories of the different trips we took around France.  He fought in WWII, but never spoke about his time code-breaking.  I wonder if discussing this book could have opened that door.

This was an interesting look at the economics of wine during Hitler's reign and the Occupation of France.  The histories of the different vineyards, the details of the wines, and the stories of the owners--some who were left to run the vineyards and others who were in hiding or sent to concentration camps--make this book come alive.

And though war is a solemn subject, humor makes itself known throughout the novel.  My favorite is the section about the wolves:


The grapes had an "exhilarating effect" on the wolves.  "I suspect the stomach of the wolf is so constructed that the fermentation of the fruit juices proceeds rapidly after the animal has eaten the grapes.  At any rate, intoxication is frequently the result." 

Monsieur Le Brun says he recalls seeing a drunken pack running by his home.  "...the wolves were all intoxicated.  That was what caused them to run into the town in the first place, and it was also what saved the townsfolk after they had come in.  They were too drunk to remember that they were wolves...they just lay down in the street, stupidly drunk."

This book isn't for everyone: if wine isn't your cup of tea drink of choice, or you don't care about French wines, then you'll probably find this too dry to swallow.*

* pun not intended, but it totally works

If You Ask Me (And of Course You Won't), by Betty White

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It-girl Betty White delivers a hilarious, slyly profound take on love, life, celebrity, and everything in between.

Drawing from a lifetime of lessons learned, seven-time Emmy winner Betty White's wit and wisdom take center stage as she tackles topics like friendship, romantic love, aging, television, fans, love for animals, and the brave new world of celebrity.  

If You Ask Me mixes her thoughtful observations with humorous stories from a seven- decade career in Hollywood. Longtime fans and new fans alike will relish Betty's candid take on everything from her rumored crush on Robert Redford (true) to her beauty regimen ("I have no idea what color my hair is and I never intend to find out") to the Facebook campaign that helped persuade her to host Saturday Night Live despite her having declined the hosting job three times already.

Featuring all-new material, with a focus on the past fifteen years of her life, If You Ask Me is funny, sweet, and to the point--just like Betty White.




I love Betty White.  I think she is a brilliant comedienne and one of the most down-to-earth celebrities in Hollywood.  But I didn't love this book.

I don't really know what the point of the book is supposed to be, so I came away from it thinking nothing more than "Huh, okay."  In fact, I'm scratching my head and wondering why this book was written and published.  I didn't learn anything that I didn't know before.

Wait!  That's not true.

I didn't know that she was born and raised in Los Angeles: I'm still convinced that she's from St. Olaf.

In the Garden of Beasts, by Erik Larson

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The time is 1933, the place, Berlin, when William E. Dodd becomes America’s first ambassador to Hitler’s Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history.

A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant daughter, Martha. At first Martha is entranced by the parties and pomp, and the handsome young men of the Third Reich with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the “New Germany,” she has one affair after another, including with the suprisingly honorable first chief of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels. 

But as evidence of Jewish persecution mounts, confirmed by chilling first-person testimony, her father telegraphs his concerns to a largely indifferent State Department back home. Dodd watches with alarm as Jews are attacked, the press is censored, and drafts of frightening new laws begin to circulate. As that first year unfolds and the shadows deepen, the Dodds experience days full of excitement, intrigue, romance—and ultimately, horror, when a climactic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler’s true character and ruthless ambition.

Suffused with the tense atmosphere of the period, and with unforgettable portraits of the bizarre Göring and the expectedly charming--yet wholly sinister--Goebbels, In the Garden of Beasts lends a stunning, eyewitness perspective on events as they unfold in real time, revealing an era of surprising nuance and complexity. The result is a dazzling, addictively readable work that speaks volumes about why the world did not recognize the grave threat posed by Hitler until Berlin, and Europe, were awash in blood and terror.




For all of its dehumanization and repugnance, WWII fascinates me.  No matter how much I read, I can't wrap my head around the atrocities committed by the Nazi Party.

I usually read accounts of the war from the early 1940s, so I was interested in this book's focus on the 1930s.  There were so many people -- American, German, and Russian -- that I hadn't heard of before.  At times, it was hard to remember who was who, but Larson does a good job of reminding you who each person is and how each relates back to William or Martha Dodd.

This book focuses on the lives of the Dodds during the nearly five years they spent in Berlin.  Larson doesn't delve into the lives of Dodd's wife and son; instead, he produces an interesting juxtaposition between father and daughter.

William.  Poor, old, boring William.  I don't think descent into war would have changed if someone else had been the Ambassador, but Dodd was certainly not the right person for this position.  He was an introvert who preferred reading and writing to participating in the social niceties required of such a post.  And he certainly didn't have the cojones to stand up to his superiors back in the States, much less those who reported to him in Germany.

His daughter Martha, however, was his complete opposite: flirtatious, ambitious, and the life of the party.  She was power-hungry, selfish, and held no qualms about going from lover to lover & pitting them against each other.

Neither protagonist was very endearing.  Since this is a book about the beginning of the Holocaust, that's not too unexpected.

Erik Larson covers a vast amount of information; wait until you're in a position to concentrate before delving into this non-fiction account.

Escape from Camp 14, by Blaine Harden

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A New York Times bestseller, the shocking story of one of the few people born in a North Korean political prison to have escaped and survived.

North Korea is isolated and hungry, bankrupt and belligerent. It is also armed with nuclear weapons. Between 150,000 and 200,000 people are being held in its political prison camps, which have existed twice as long as Stalin's Soviet gulags and twelve times as long as the Nazi concentration camps. Very few born and raised in these camps have escaped. But Shin Donghyuk did.

In Escape from Camp 14, acclaimed journalist Blaine Harden tells the story of Shin and through the lens of Shin's life unlocks the secrets of the world's most repressive totalitarian state. Shin knew nothing of civilized existence: he saw his mother as a competitor for food; guards raised him to be a snitch; and he witnessed the execution of his own family. Through Harden's harrowing narrative of Shin's life and remarkable escape, he offers an unequaled inside account of one of the world's darkest nations and a riveting tale of endurance, courage, and survival.



Well, that was sobering.  I had absolutely no idea -- NONE -- that things were so bad in North Korea; I felt sick to my stomach on more than one occasion.  It was really hard to listen to the account of Shin's life in Camp 14: starvation; torture; lack of parental affection; and worse.

I can't even...

It really puts things into perspective, you know?  I have a good job, a wonderful husband, two great children, fantastic friends, and a loving extended family.  I don't live under a constant threat of execution.  I'm not in a constant state of hunger.  When I'm cold, I can put on warm clothes, sturdy shoes, and a comfy coat.  If I disagree with a government policy, I won't be arrested for sending a letter or expressing my opinions.

I listened to the audiobook version, as narrated by the author.  He did a great job with the voice-over work, but the editing was shoddy.  Maybe it's because I work in multimedia production that I noticed the timing and voice quality issues, or maybe it's because I listen to a lot of audiobooks.  In either case, I'm surprised that Blackstone Audio released this recording as their final product.

Surviving the Angel of Death, by Eva Mozes Kor and Lisa Rojany Buccieri

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Eva Mozes Kor was just 10 years old when she arrived in Auschwitz. While her parents and two older sisters were taken to the gas chambers, she and her twin, Miriam, were herded into the care of the man known as the Angel of Death, Dr. Josef Mengele.

Subjected to sadistic medical experiments, she was forced to fight daily for her and her twin's survival. In this incredible true story written for young adults, readers will learn of a child's endurance and survival in the face of truly extraordinary evil.

The book also includes an epilogue on Eva's recovery from this experience and her remarkable decision to publicly forgive the Nazis.Through her museum and her lectures, she has dedicated her life to giving testimony on the Holocaust, providing a message of hope for people who have suffered, and working for causes of human rights and peace.




I don't know why I continue to do this to myself.  Hey, I think, I haven't read anything scary in a few days.  Why not pick up a WWII memoir?

You would think I'd know better.  Clearly, I am a glutton for punishment.  But I am fascinated by the atrocities and heroics of the early 1940s, so I read on.

Josef Mengele was a truly horrifying doctor  human being monster who experimented on Jewish prisoners held at Auschwitz concentration camp.  He was especially interested in twins: how they came to be; how they were the same and different; how he could create twins and multiples in order to grow the Aryan German race.  He would inject one twin with a deadly disease and when that child died, he would kill the other one so he could study the differences between the two.

Like I said, horrifying.

I imagine Eva Mozes Kor as an old woman, sitting in an old leather chair in a small cozy room, recounting her story for posterity.  I can't even begin to imagine the strength involved for a child of ten to survive Mengele's experiments.

This is a great book for younger teens who are learning about the Holocaust.  It's not terribly graphic and feels more like a grandmother telling her grandchildren about growing up during that time period.

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn

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Two Pulitzer Prize winners expose the most pervasive human rights violation of our era—the oppression of women in the developing world—and tell us what we can do about it.

An old Chinese proverb says “Women hold up half the sky.” Then why do the women of Africa and Asia persistently suffer human rights abuses? Continuing their focus on humanitarian issues, journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn take us to Africa and Asia, where many women live in profoundly dire circumstances—and some succeed against all odds.

A Cambodian teenager is sold into sex slavery; a formerly illiterate woman becomes a surgeon in Addis Ababa. An Ethiopian woman is left for dead after a difficult birth; a gang rape victim galvanizes the international community and creates schools in Pakistan. An Afghan wife is beaten by her husband and mother-in-law; a former Peace Corps volunteer founds an organization that educates and campaigns for women’s rights in Senegal.

Through their powerful true stories, the authors show that the key to progress lies in unleashing women’s potential, that change is possible, and that each of us can play a role in making it happen.


***Trigger warning: this review contains information about sexual assault that may be upsetting to survivors***

I finished this book a few days ago, and it's taking me longer than expected to gather all of my thoughts and feelings.

First and foremost: Holy. Smokes.

I thought I'd dealt with some pretty crappy events in my life, but nothing compares to what hundreds of millions of women endure: sex trafficking; forced prostitution; government-sanctioned gang rape; female genital mutilation; maternal health and mortality; and brutal attacks. All based on gender. All because they are women.

As horrifying as the stories and statistics show, there also some incredible sources of inspiration: Mukhtar Mai, the young Pakistani woman who was gang raped as a form of "honor revenge" on the orders of a tribal council. Rather than commit suicide, as was expected of her, she pressed charges. Though her life was in jeopardy and the courts were less than helpful, she carried on. Even when then-President Pervez Musharraf threatened her, took away her passport, and put her under house arrest, she continued to fight.

The book is filled with such stories. And my sensitive self cried during most of them.

The book also lists different ways that individuals can help! The first thing I did when I finished listening to the audiobook? I set up a Kiva account. I am now the proud lender of four differing projects in four areas of the developing world. I can't change the whole world, but I can help individuals improve their own lives.

The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win, by Gene Kim

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Bill is an IT manager at Parts Unlimited. It's Tuesday morning and on his drive into the office, Bill gets a call from the CEO.

The company's new IT initiative, code named Phoenix Project, is critical to the future of Parts Unlimited, but the project is massively over budget and very late. The CEO wants Bill to report directly to him and fix the mess in ninety days or else Bill's entire department will be outsourced.

With the help of a prospective board member and his mysterious philosophy of The Three Ways, Bill starts to see that IT work has more in common with manufacturing plant work than he ever imagined. With the clock ticking, Bill must organize work flow, streamline interdepartmental communications, and effectively serve the other business functions at Parts Unlimited.

In a fast-paced and entertaining style, three luminaries of the DevOps movement deliver a story that anyone who works in IT will recognize. Readers will not only learn how to improve their own IT organizations, they'll never view IT the same way again.


I know what you're thinking.

Wow.  A fictionalized account of ITIL and Agile methodologies.  That sounds so...exciting.

Tommy Lee Jones is skeptical

But it is!

Imagine my surprise when I was completely sucked into Bill's world.

IT Operations isn't always a fun place to work: servers crash; applications freeze; vulnerabilities are everywhere; and customers--both internal and external--scream for support.

So how do you manage all of the Work in Progress (WIP), emergencies, and planned work?  It's enough to give any professional geek a panic attack.

Enter our heroes: ITIL and Kanban. 

These Best Practice methodologies will help Bill and his team revolutionize how IT functions and contributes to the business at large.

The Phoenix Project takes a dry subject and turns it into an understandable narrative.  Certain concepts that I didn't quite grasp when I studied for my ITIL certification became crystal clear during the course of this book.

I'm really looking forward to implementing a Kanban board with my team at work.

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, by Barbara Ehrenreich

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Millions of Americans work for poverty-level wages, and one day Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that any job equals a better life. But how can anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 to $7 an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich moved from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, taking the cheapest lodgings available and accepting work as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing-home aide, and Wal-Mart salesperson. She soon discovered that even the "lowliest" occupations require exhausting mental and physical efforts. And one job is not enough; you need at least two if you intend to live indoors.Nickel and Dimed reveals low-wage America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity -- a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate strategies for survival. Instantly acclaimed for its insight, humor, and passion, this book is changing the way America perceives its working poor.


How much money do you make?  More than $15 an hour?  More than $20?  Then you need to read this book.  From an intellectual standpoint, of course I knew that people who work minimum-wage jobs have it tough.  But wow.  I had no idea how bad it was.

This was quite eye-opening and has changed the way I view the dramatic differences in salaries. How can billionaire owners of franchise restaurants and retail stores treat their employees -- the people who keep their businesses running -- so poorly?  No health care.  Back-breaking work.  Not enough money to find a safe place to live or a healthy meal to eat.

How do people afford to live when making minimum wage? Answer: they barely survive.

Scary, scary stuff.

The Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch

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A lot of professors give talks titled "The Last Lecture." Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can't help but mull the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?

When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave--"Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams"--wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because "time is all you have...and you may find one day that you have less than you think"). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living.

In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humor, inspiration and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. 


Beautiful and heartbreaking. I was afraid to read/listen to this for the longest time, because I was sure that I was going to end up a blubbering mess. Instead, I feel hopeful. Randy Pausch knew how to live. What an inspiring person.

A Child Called "It" (Dave Pelzer #1), by Dave Pelzer

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This book chronicles the unforgettable account of one of the most severe child abuse cases in California history. It is the story of Dave Pelzer, who was brutally beaten and starved by his emotionally unstable, alcoholic mother: a mother who played tortuous, unpredictable games--games that left him nearly dead. He had to learn how to play his mother's games in order to survive because she no longer considered him a son, but a slave; and no longer a boy, but an "it."

Dave's bed was an old army cot in the basement, and his clothes were torn and raunchy. When his mother allowed him the luxury of food, it was nothing more than spoiled scraps that even the dogs refused to eat. The outside world knew nothing of his living nightmare. He had nothing or no one to turn to, but his dreams kept him alive--dreams of someone taking care of him, loving him and calling him their son.


Good lord. For such a harrowing topic, you would think that you'd feel some sort of emotion when reading this book. Everything is written with a clinical slant: "mom did this and then this. then the next day, mom..." over and over again, throughout the entire book. It's supposed to be from the point of view of an abused child, but the voice is way too adult and therefore comes across too business-like.

I don't really understand the point of this book. It's a recap of all sorts of horrible abuse, but that's about it. No understanding as to what made is mother turn into an abuser, nor why his father ignored the situation.

It's a shame that this was so poorly written. It could have been very compelling.