Books to Check Out

As many of you know I am an avid reader of fiction and non-fiction. The Lovely Sharon is a reader as well. You might want to check out some of the books I have read in the last several months.

Author John Sandford has several series of fictional works. Wikpedia has the following information about Sandford: John Sandford is the pseudonym of the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and best-selling novelist John Roswell Camp. Camp was born on February 23, 1944, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He received a B.A. in American History and a Masters in Journalism from the University of Iowa. Camp worked for the Miami Herald from 1971 to 1978. In 1978 he moved to Minneapolis and started working for the Saint Paul Pioneer Press as a features reporter before becoming a daily columnist at the newspaper in 1980. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1980, for a series of stories on Native American culture. In 1986 he won the Pulitzer for Non-Deadline Feature Writing for a series of stories collectively titled "Life on the Land: An American Farm Family". The series, written during the midwest farm crisis, followed a typical southwest Minnesota farm family through the course of a full year. He stopped writing full-time for the Pioneer Press in 1989, although he didn't stop entirely until the next year. In 1989 Camp wrote two novels that would become the first books of his two best-selling series. Both novels, The Fool's Run of the Kidd series and Rules of Prey of the Prey series, were accepted and due to be published three months apart. The Fool's Run was published under the name "John Camp", but the publisher asked Camp to provide a pseudonym for Rules of Prey so it was published under the name "John Sandford". After the Prey series proved to be more popular, with its charismatic protagonist Lucas Davenport, The Fool's Run and all of its subsequent sequels have been published under the "Sandford" name. In 2007 Sandford started a third series featuring Virgil Flowers, who previously was a supporting character in Invisible Prey.

During the last few months I have read Sandford’s Naked Prey, Broken Prey and Wicked Prey books. They were terrific reads. I plan to read more of the Prey Serious. The Sandford Website is http://www.johnsandford.org/

A non-fiction book you may consider if you are interested in Cuban History or in Bacardi Rum is Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause byTom Gjelten, a correspondent for National Public Radio. I provided some legal services to a relative of Mr. Gjelten and was fortunate to speak with him on the phone a couple for times and engage in several email communications. Mr. Gjelten sent me an enscribed copy of this book and a nice note. Although Bacardi rum is made in Puerto Rico and other Carribbean countries, the Bacardi family and the rum were of Cuban descent. This book is well written and is an interesting history of the family, the business and Cuba and I highly recommend it.

When I first started dating the Lovely Sharon, she turned me onto Stuart Woods books. Mr. Woods has a series of books about lawyer Stone Barrington. These books are quick fast reads. In the last couple of years a few of the Barrington Books did not quite grab me. With that said, I found the latest entry in the Barrington Series, Bel- Air Dead, to be quite enjoyable. Like all of the Barrington books, this is a fast read with lots of action, beautiful women, murder, jets, and big money. Stuart Wood’s Web site is http://www.stuartwoods.com/.

A very informative, well written and easy to read book is the recently published history of the investment bank Goldman Sachs. Many of the current and former government financial decisions makers came out of or went back into Goldman Sachs. A recent book, Money and Power; How Goldman Sachs came to Rule the World by William Cohan, almost reads like a novel. Cohan asserts that all of Wall Street in general exerts a tremendous influence over the federal government, in terms of helping to write the regulations of financial systems, but he argues that Goldman Sachs in particular has used its power. According to Cohan, "Goldman Sachs especially has been very, very good at getting right up against that line of wrongdoing. They know exactly where that line is, and they're very careful most of the time to just stay on this side, and they help influence the way regulations are enforced."

I am currently reading a new biography of Robert Redford.