One is a big best
seller, a timely as today's headlines. The other is
a true work of literary scholarship, a terrific
read. Both belong on your bookshelf.
"The Big Short" by Michael Lewis (Norton, $27.95,
266 pages) sub-titled "Inside the Doomsday Machine"
is not about losers but about winners. These
winners were willing to put their money where their
mouths were -- willing to place their bets on an
economy going sour and south. One worked in hedge
funds, another explored the wondrous (for him)
possibilities of credit default swaps ­
something most knew nothing about. And there are and
were others. A Lewis sampling brings them up close
and financial and gives the reader a view from
inside on the great financial collapse we all lived
and suffered through in one way or another. NOTABLE
READING;
"Koestler" by Michael Scammell
(Random House, $35.00, 689 pages) is the first
authorized bio of Arthur Koestler and what a book it
is. This what a page turner is all about. Its
sub-title says it is about "The Literary and
Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic."
For those legions who read "Darkness at Noon," for
those who read "Thieves in the Night," this
biography of the author of those works is required
reading as it should be for the rest of us. Like
an artist with words, Scammell paints the
definitive portrait of this literary figure - -warts
and all. Koestler lived (1905-1983) despite
peripatetic behavior that would have leveled
another man much earlier on. We are there through
his three marriages, the drugs, his womanizing, his
manic depression. We are there as he escapes from
occupied France. And we are there observing the way
he wrote, what drove him and the famous friends
and acquaintances he met along the way. Brilliantly
researched and written,"Koestler" is top shelf
stuff. HIGHLY NOTABLE READING
"Canyon Wilderness of the Southwest"
by Jon Ortner (Welcome Books, $18.95, 240 pages) is
billed as a traveler's mini edition and that it is
and a wonderful one at that containing 200
photographs that present a stunning panorama of the
western wilderness. The price is right and the book
is terrific & shy; for your coffee table, for a
gift, as a collectible.
