Archive for Items Categorized 'Other Genres', only excerpts shown, click title for full entry.

Building the Star of India

by David M. Cox

Would you be able to tell from the cover photo that this is a 22″-long model?? With thousands of parts, many fully functional? You do have to be a rocket scientist to build these things—or you have to know the fellow who wrote this book and can build yours.

Space Odyssey

by Michael Benson

The movie is still fantastic. It has aged very, very well. Michael Benson tells the story of its conception, gestation and birth. He did his job so well that our reviewer was too involved and engrossed to actually write a proper review, but, please, check out his attempt . . .

Orbiting Ray Bradbury’s Mars

by Gloria MacMillan, editor

Bradbury is on the A-list of classic sci-fi literature. This book examines his work through various prisms—literary, sociological, scientific. It also deals with how Bradbury was adapted to film and television. It will satisfy both Bradbury fans and Bradbury scholars

The Watch Book

by Gisbert L. Brunner & Christian Pfeiffer-Belli

Sure, smartphones tell time—but that’s not what the engineering marvels and artworks that are the mechanical wristwatch are about. This book showcases 18 makers and highlights of their work.

Gone With The Wind on Film

by Cynthia Marylee Molt

It was the highest-earning film for a quarter century. It set records for the total number of Oscar nominations and wins at the time. You’ve seen it, probably more than once. Before you watch it again, read this book!

Psycho, The Birds and Halloween

by Randy Rasmussen

Three classic horror films. Rasmussen’s prose takes us scene by scene into their terrors and madness. A diverting book. Light your candle on your great-grandmother’s skull, swipe away the cobwebs and, dear Speedreaders readers, read all about it.

The Rooster Bar

by John Grisham

A tale of law students growing disillusioned—about their chosen profession, their mediocre school, crushing student loan debt. The students hatch a plan, and as so many plans hatched over a drink or three, things go a bit off the rails.

Scale Auto Magazine

Executive Editor: Mark Savage

What had been a hobby for pre-teen male gearheads back into the late 1950s and 1960s has grown up. Scale Auto Magazineprovides today’s (mostly adult) hobbyists with information and inspiration. Editor Mark Savage and his team do this well, publishing a handsome and useful magazine every other month.

Take Five, the Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond

by Doug Ramsey

A serious, thoughtful biography of a jazz saxophonist by a jazz critic and musician who knew his subject personally. This spells real insight, and, in fact, this book ought to be a model to all biographers.

Dunkirk 1940 Through a German Lens

by Alan Ranger

Dunkirk has always remained a controversial topic in terms of strategy and goals. This book skirts the whole issue and instead introduces into the record several hundred snapshots taken by German soldiers.

Sticky Fingers

by Joe Hagan

At the best of times, Rolling Stone magazine was, and once more is, so much more than merely a chronicle of the music industry or popular culture. It showcased heavy-hitting political reporting and writers who would become literary luminaries. This masterful biography offers a look behind the curtain.