Opinion

REQUIRED READING

Queens Noir

edited by Robert Knightly (Akashic)

New York City’s biggest borough (in size – Brooklyn beats it in population) gets the “Noir” treatment with the latest in the mystery series which has already tackled Manhattan, Brooklyn and The Bronx. The anthology is set in three sections – “Queens on the Fly: By Sea, Horse, Train, Plane and Silver Screen”; “Old Queens”; and “Foreign Shores.” And while in “Buckner’s Error,” Joe Guglielmelli visits Shea Stadium, no one has been able to solve the real mystery of last year’s Mets collapse.

Defying Dixie

The Radical Roots

of Civil Rights, 1919-1950

by Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore (Norton)

In her well-researched (167 pages of footnotes!) history, Yale professor Gilmore shines a light on some lesser-known chapters of the Civil Rights Movement. Starting when black WWI soldiers returned home to face continuing discrimination, she shows how labor, left wing and Communist groups were the ones in the forefront of the call for full equality, while mainstream groups played it cautiously. And while Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and their colleagues from the 1950s and ’60s certainly are American heroes, here, we’re introduced to their antecedents like Pauli Murray, a lesbian who tried to integrate the University of North Carolina in 1938, and Lovett Fort-Whiteman, an activist who moved to Moscow and later died in Stalin’s gulag.

The Adventures of Eddie Fung

Chinatown Kid, Texas Cowboy, Prisoner of War

by Judy Yung (University of Washington Press)

OK, who is Eddie Fung? He was the only Chinese-American soldier captured by the Japanese in WWII. As a POW, he was forced to work on the notorious Burma-Siam railroad made famous by the film “The Bridge on the River Kwai.” The 14 months of grueling jungle labor cost 12,500 POWs their lives. In addition to his heroic wartime experiences, Fung’s metamorphosis from San Francisco Chinatown kid to Texas cowboy offers a fascinating window on the Asian-American experience.

How to Build a Robot Army

by Daniel H. Wilson (Bloomsbury USA)

His tongue firmly planted in cheek, Wilson, a Popular Mechanics contributing editor, performs a valuable service in preparing robots for battle. With space-age illustrations by Richard Horne, Wilson also teaches us how to use our robots to thwart an alien invasion, slay a vampire clan, repel Godzilla and much, much more. Plus, check out the cool, shiny-metallic green page edging.

Four Letter Word

edited by Joshua Knelman and Rosalind Porter (Free Press)

The four-letter word in question is a good one – love. Get an early start on Valentine’s Day with this imaginative anthology of “Invented Correspondence From the Edge of Modern Romance,” which laments the loss of the classic form of romantic communication.