Nixon’s Darkest Secrets
by Don Fulsom (Thomas Dunne))
As a White House correspondent, Fulsom covered presidents Johnson to Clinton. But it’s Richard Nixon who still holds his attention. “This was a president who was corrupt to the core — a pardoned criminal. He was a reporter’s dream,” Fulsom tells Required Reading. Among his “secrets” are that candidate Nixon sabotaged the 1968 Vietnam peace talks (LBJ called it treason) and was such a heavy drinker that aides called him “Our Drunk” behind his back.
Duke Sucks
A Completely Even-Handed, Unbiased Investigation into the Most Evil Team on Planet Earth
by Reed Tucker and Andy Bagwell (St. Martin’s Griffin)
Post features writer Tucker and friend Bagwell are grads from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and still haven’t gotten over that schools intense rivalry with Duke — particularly its basketball team. Hard to argue with their funny sentiments such as “some institutions are just vile — the Taliban, Kim Jong-il, Jay Leno . . . they correctly engender a hatred in most logical human beings.”
An Exclusive Love
by Johanna Adorján, translated by Anthea Bell (Norton)
The Stockholm-born author has written the story of her Holocaust-survivor grandparents, who committed suicide together at their suburban Copenhagen home — 46 years after the war ended. Stricken with heart ailments, Pista Adorján had months to live. His wife, Vera, could not live without him. Their granddaughter recreates that day in minute detail and tells of their life through interviews with friend and relatives from their native Hungary and those who knew them after the war.
Sister Queens
The Noble, Tragic Lives of Katherine of Aragon and Juana, Queen of Castile
by Julia Fox (Ballantine)
These two royals were the most sought-after princesses in Christendom, before their legacies went south. Now Fox, who last wrote on Jane Boleyn, gives us a detailed account of the lives of these daughters of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain. Both women, Fox explains, met their tragic fates of divorce and widowhood with dignity, clinging to family ties and religious conviction.
Cain’s Legacy
Liberating Siblings from a Lifetime of Rage, Shame, Secrecy and Regret
by Jeanne Safer (Basic)
The author, a psychotherapist, had an older brother, but the two were never close — she admits to not even grieving when he died at age 64. Naturally, her specialty is sibling relationships. Starting with tales from the Bible — Cain and Abel — Safer spends most of her book illustrating sibling conflict through case studies and interviews, with instances ranging from obligatory civility to mutual resentment, estrangement, manipulation and even criminal exploitation. And she offers suggestions for how to heal the rifts.