One More Thing
Stories and Other Stories
by B.J. Novak (Knopf)
With this hilarious story collection, Novak (Ryan from “The Office”) proves himself a top-notch absurdist. Among his stories, some as brief as two lines, are “The Comedy Central Roast of Nelson Mandela.” Here he has Mandela recalling his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance: “I said nothing bothered me more than man’s injustice to his fellow man. However, this was before I heard the sound of Gilbert Gottfried’s voice.”
He also offers discussion questions at the end, such as, “Do you think discussion questions can be unfairly leading sometimes? Why?”
The Book of Jonah
by Joshua Max Feldman (Henry Holt)
Jonah Jacobstein is on the partner track in his Manhattan law firm and has two beautiful women who want to marry him. But then, everything changes in Feldman’s debut novel that parallels the Old Testament tale of man’s suffering for God.
Things head downhill when he tells a Hasidic Jewish man on the subway that he feels guilty on Yom Kippur. Then, he hears voices at a party telling him the client he is about to work for will strain his moral code. With two breakups, the loss of a job and a move to Amsterdam, our hero undergoes an existential crisis.
Train
Riding the Rails That Created the Modern World — from the Trans-Siberian to the Southwest Chief
by Tom Zoellner (Viking)
Don’t let too much time wasted traveling on New Jersey Transit steer you away from Zoellner’s enchanting and informative travelog, in which he explains why trains are essential.
Next time Required Reading watches the scenery from Secaucus to Metro Park, we’ll be imagining the broad expanse of the Tran-Siberian or the sky-high vistas of the Beijing-to-Lhasa train.
Defiant
The POWs Who Endured Vietnam’s Most Infamous Prison, the Women Who Fought for Them, and the One Who Never Returned
by Alvin Townley (Thomas Dunne Books)
The goings-on at the infamous North Vietnamese prison camp dubbed the Hanoi Hilton are well-known, thanks in part to its famous alum, Sen. John McCain.
Lesser known, but even worse, was a camp that prisoners called Alcatraz, where Hanoi sent the POWs they considered “most dangerous, ungovernable, militant, intransigent . . . and influential with other prisoners.”
Townley shines a light on their courage and what their families back home went through.
George Washington’s Secret Six
The Spy Ring That Saved the American Revolution
by Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger (Sentinel)
When Nathan Hale was executed by the British as a spy in 1776, George Washington needed to replace him.
He got six spies. The Quaker merchant, tavern keeper, longshoreman, Long Island businessman and print shop proprietor have all been identified. But the sole woman spy is still, to this day, known only as Agent 355.
“Fox & Friends” host Kilmeade and author Yaeger deliver a fine history lesson.