Wanderer Of The Wasteland – Zane Grey, 1923 ★½

Lost in the Desert

Just as the American West proved a land of reinvention for generations of European migrants, so would it be for many Western authors. Of all the fiction writers who focused their talents on six-guns and stampedes, none exercised a license for reinvention quite like Zane Grey.

Alexander Hamilton – Ron Chernow, 2004 ★★★★

Celebrating America's Own Alexander the Great

Dying on the battlefield was a fate avoided by the major figures of the American Revolution, unless you extend that battlefield to one of ideals. That was my core takeaway reading Ron Chernow’s bestselling biography on Alexander Hamilton, who survived the war only to die in a brave, bizarre duel over political differences 21 years later.

Me And Hitch – Evan Hunter, 1997 ★★★

Two for the Birds

The movie business makes for strange bedfellows. How else to explain the collaboration of Evan Hunter, gritty, streetwise creator of The Blackboard Jungle and the 87^th Precinct series of police procedurals under the penname “Ed McBain”; with that genteel and sophisticated Master of the Macabre himself, Alfred Hitchcock? Hardly birds of a feather, but what about results?

Tintin In America – Hergé, 1932 [Revised 1945] ★½

Dawn's Early Light

No great artist should be judged by their earliest published work; when plying one’s craft it takes time to develop a signature style and voice. You might think such consideration a bit much when said creation involves popular entertainment aimed mainly at children. But in such a case achieving the right calibrations can be even harder.

Case in point: The legendary Belgian cartoonist Hergé.

The Derby – Bill Levy, 1967 ★★½

The Most Exciting 200 Minutes of Sports

Since 1875, the Kentucky Derby has been drawing the greatest race horses ever known. Okay, not Man O’ War or Seabiscuit, or famous 20^th century racehorses outside North America. But hundreds of top American thoroughbreds have beaten their hooves along the dirt track of Churchill Downs for what is often called “the most exciting two minutes of sports.” After nearly 100 years of this, Bill Levy wrote a coffee-table book commemorating the event.

The Playboy Interviews With John Lennon & Yoko Ono – David Sheff, 1981 ★★★½

No Time for Fussing and Fighting

John Lennon had the most fascinating life of any ex-Beatle, despite it being so much shorter. In a succession of distinct if not exclusive public identities, he went from blissful dreamer to tortured artist to committed radical to party-hearty studio rat and finally bread-baking papa. Much of that time he was in the company of his lover Yoko Ono, a conceptual artist who saw in John’s celebrity an opportunity to advance big ideas and challenge stereotypes.

Masterpieces Of Mystery: The Golden Age, Part I – Compiled by Ellery Queen, 1977 ★★

What Was So Golden about the Golden Age?

Detective fiction long ago moved from the whodunit to the whydunit; today it often employs a complicated, psychological approach. So what can be learned from this anthology of mystery writers from its simpler Golden Age?

Do any of them still stand up to modern scrutiny, apart from Agatha Christie, still the reigning Shakespeare of the form? After reading through these 350 pages, I’m still wondering.