It's almost Memorial Day weekend and TheBlaze Books has got you covered with book recommendations to start the summer right.
The following five book suggestions/summaries are excerpted from the June 2014 edition of TheBlaze Magazine.
You'll have to pick up the magazine to find out all 10 of the books we recommend.
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From the second you pick up Christopher Reich’s financial thriller "The Prince of Risk"—which begins with a Secret Service officer losing control of a car carrying the Treasury secretary, chairman of the Federal Reserve and chief executive of the New York Stock Exchange as it careens through the security gates and toward the White House, only to get shot at and blown up—you won’t be able to put the book down. If you have even a passing interest in intelligence or national security more broadly, you will love this book. "The Prince of Risk" is like "24"—except terrifyingly realistic. Oh, and "Jack Bauer" is a hotshot hedge fund manager. [Be sure to check out our full review, excerpt and author interview]
If you like baseball, politics, history, Americana and/or beer, George Will's newest book,"A Nice Little Place on the NorthSide," is the perfect summer read. As we learn, while the Cubs have remained perpetually putrid on the field, the friendly confines of Wrigley Field have played an integral role in U.S. history, with its ivy-covered walls touching the lives of everyone from presidents Reagan and Kennedy to its namesake, the gum-magnate Wrigleys, to personalities like the larger than life (literally), round-as-a-keg and filled-with-beer-too Hack Wilson, not to mention gangster Al Capone. While "Men at Work," the best-selling baseball book of all time may be Will’s most successful baseball work, this short ode to the homely park at the corner Clark and Addison will surely warm the hearts of baseball fans and non-baseball fans alike. [Be sure to check out our write-up, and both parts of our author interview]
Greg Gutfeld’s "Not Cool" is one long, running, rollicking Gregalogue (non-"RedEye" fans, Google it) with an intriguing point: The Left wins because the Left is cool, despite the fact that at its root its ideology and outcomes are thoroughly uncool and that the Left has become "the man" it forever despised. Along the way, Gutfeld roasts well-known figures for their hypocrisy and mendacity, peppering in hilarious one-liners on each page. Beneath the veneer of an entertaining and snarky book however, there is real substance to "Not Cool." [Be sure to check out our full review, author interview and quote list]
While thought-provoking and eye-opening, Thomas Sowell’s prose makes reading "Black Rednecks and White Liberals" effortless, and you will be surprised and enlightened by its takeaways. Sowell seeks to understand what it is that makes certain cultures successful and disabuses us of many of our pre-conceived notions on the topic, as his title suggests. Sowell’s overarching thesis is that those cultures that are disenfranchised, free from the stultifying welfare state, almost always and everywhere by virtue of their position are forced to work harder, study harder and exploit market inefficiencies in order raise their lot and succeed in the face of entrenched elites within a few generations. Before Amy Chua’s "Triple Package," there was Sowell’s "Black Rednecks and White Liberals."
Classical liberal British MEP Daniel Hannan takes us on a trip from freedom’s very beginnings to today, along the way showing us that it is the institutions of the Anglosphere that are responsible for civilization—institutions built on a foundation of freedom, justice and Judeo-Christian ethics. Hannan’s book is a reminder that the liberty we hold dear is thoroughly unique, an aberration in world history. Liberty is an idea, not something passed down through the bloodstream, and we must do all we can to preserve, protect and defend it if the West is to endure. [Be sure to check out our full review, author interview and quote list]
