Books of the Multiple Days

Things are certainly busy at the library, and I feel bad about missing a post or two.  To make up for it, I’ll throw a few books up here.  The first new book is God Save the Fan by Will Leitch.  Sports fans may be familiar with him as the former editor of the Web site, Deadspin, but for those who aren’t: Deadspin became famous after challenging certain personalities within ESPN, and calling shannanigans on certain practices they have in sportscasting and athlete-coddling.  The result?  ESPN became banned from even mentioning Deadspin on air.  Will Leitch takes on sports, media, and the big-business of team owners and administration. I’ve mentioned this book before, but Leitch and I went to the University of Illinois, and both lived in the same town (Mattoon, IL) as children, so I am a little biased.  Great book either way.

The next book is The Missing Piece Meets the Big O by Shel Silverstein.    Simple illustrations and compassionate stories make up the bulk of Silverstein’s non-poetry work, but most are only familiar with The Giving Tree.  This one, however, is a sequel.  In the first book, The Missing Piece, a larger missing piece is searching for something to complete him.  In this sequel, a Missing Piece looks for the momentum to carry itself on a similar journey, but equally as engaging.

And finally, to continue my nuclear paranoia highlighted previously:  Broken Arrow: America’s First Lost Nuclear Weapon. Can you imagine the United States losing a nuclear weapon at the beginning of the Cold War, somewhere in the ocean between North America and the Soviet Union?  Well it happened.  A few pilots, realizing their Alaskan plane was going down, parachuted out, and set the autopilot to (hopefully!) fall into the middle of the ocean.  It was found years later, miles from its predicted final destination, bomb in tact.  It get’s weirder:  there’s a crew member who was never accounted for.  What happened? Does anyone know How scary is that?!

Anyway, there’s a few things you can look into for your weekend reading.