Delhi Noir
edited by Hirsh Sawhney (Akashic)
Chaos is a word that aptly describes India’s capital city. With more than 15 milion people, how could it be any other way? This of course, makes it fertile ground for another in the “Noir” series, which began with Brooklyn in 2004. Among the characters we’re introduced to in the 14 original stories are a young con artist who works the bus station, thieves who target a yuppie drug addict and various other scammers, cops and crazies.
The Slippery Year
by Melanie Gideon (Knopf) A lot of bad things happen to a lot of people — when they’re growing up or when they’ve grown up. And lately, a lot of those stories end up as memoirs. But not for San Francisco mom and wife Melanie Gideon. Her memoir is based on a good life, not bad. It’s subtitled “A Meditation on Happily Ever After,” but don’t let that scare you away. She raises questions of regular life as an adult, what some think of as middle-age malaise, many can identify with. And she writes with wit, too.
Why Iceland? How One of the World’s Smallest Countries Became the Meltdown’s Biggest Casualty
by Asgeir Jonsson (McGraw-Hill)
Fearsome Vikings discovered Iceland. Hedge funds knocked it down. It was a humiliating tumble for the former financial powerhouse, which was proud of its status in Europe. A late bloomer, Iceland had been the last country in Europe to be settled, the Nordic nation rapidly caught up with its wealthier relations. It was all fine until October 2008, when country’s banking system collapsed in a week. Written by an Icelandic economist, “Why Iceland” chronicles the meltdown, in the context of the nation’s history.
King of Heists
by J. North Conway (Lyons Press)
On an October day in 1878, thieves broke into the Manhattan Savings Institution, a formidable fortress of a building at Bleecker and Broadway, and made off with nearly $3 million — that’s something like $50 million(!) in today’s dollars. Three years in the planning, the heist was masterminded by George L. Leslie, an architect and ladies’ man who led a double life. Conway, a college prof and ex-newspaperman, follows this Guilded Age tale in a way that makes it a hot news story even though it happened more than a century ago.
Long Story Bit by Bit: Liberia Retold
by Tim Hetherington (Umbrage)
From 1989 on, Liberia, founded by freed American slaves, was wracked by civil war. Three presidents in a row left office, let’s just say not by losing an election. Photographer/filmmaker Hetherington spent more than four years in Liberia, at one time one of only two journalists living behind rebel lines. The result is a collection of vivid photos, oral histories and personal observations which, together, create a picture of a country many of us know little about.