Husband and wife author-team Jung Chang and Jon Halliday tackle the controversial topic of China’s legendary leader Mao Tse-tung in their latest scathing biography, Mao: The Unknown Story. Seeking to critically analyze Mao’s policies through several key events in China’s history, from the harsh Long March to the vicious Cultural Revolution, Chang and Halliday call attention to the millions of Chinese who became silent, unnamed victims as the result of these tumultuous events and Mao’s ambition to completely control 20th-Century China. Chang and Halliday write a compelling, and at times appalling, narrative backed up by thoroughly and exhaustively researched facts garnered from archives all over the world.

Mao, the Unknown Story, by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, seems to be a book that should be required reading for anyone interested in East Asia.

- Japundit.Com

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When the Boston Red Sox rested the World Series Championship from the New York Yankees in early 2005, they ended 86 years of the so-called Bambino Curse, but Steve Goldman and the rest of the team from Baseball Prospectus are here to tell you the real reasons behind the Sox’s new strategy and sudden success. Goldman gives fans an insightfuly and deeply researched study into the real reasons behind how baseball games are won and lost, including what led the Sox to understand Johnny Damon’s true value and make Keith Foulke a closer as opposed to Mariano Rivera. Through carefully researched evidence that builds suspense in its rundowns and analyses of the historic seven-game AL playoff, Goldman and his team proved that the real reason behind the curse of the Red Sox wasn’t because of Babe, but decades of inept and bigoted ownership and management.

“The only force strong enough to take on religious extremism,” Bruce Feiler concludes at the end of his latest book, “is religious moderation.” It is this notion that gives Where God Was Born : A Journey by Land to the Roots of Religion a dimension far above and beyond the usual fodder one reads with biblical commentary. Feiler explores the highly volatile areas of Iran, Iraq, and Israel using starting from the book of Joshua in the Bible, from the invasion of Canaan to David and Solomon’s successive reigns, to Babylonian capitvity and Diaspora. Feiler’s travel companion, archeologist Avner Goren, also feeds the reader with, perhaps, a more objective view of the region’s history in addition to its more recent troubles. But what makes this book so powerful is that Feiler’s moral vision transcends people, nationality, land, and even religion itself.

Martini has built a fan-favorite character in Paul Madriani, a San Diego defense attorney with a habit of taking on almost impossible cases. This time it’s Army Sargeant Emiliano Ruiz, a soldier who served in Panama and the first Gulf War and had been freelancing as a security guard when his boss, Madelyn Chapman who owns a computer software company that sells a controversial security program to the U.S. Government, is murdered with two gunshots to the back of the head (referred to in ballistics as a “double tap,” something only an excellent marksman can carry out). He’s being accused of the crime, but when Madriani begins investigating the incident, he discovers a seven-year gap in Ruiz’s resume. Was Ruiz doing dirty work for the Special Ops? Madriani has to find out, and more importantly, he has to save the sympathetic Ruiz from a lifetime stint in prison — or worse.

Kurt Vonnegut is now 82-years-old, but his steel sense of black humor and barbed critiques are just as sharp as ever in his latest book A Man Without a Country, which is a collection of short vignettes, essays, and articles, many of which have seen the light of day on the web and have become extremely popular already. Vonnegut fans will enjoy this piece’s usual infusion of cynicism and social awareness, in which Vonnegut spews bile at so-called “psychopathic personalities” or “smart, personable people who have no consciences,” many of whom can be found in the Bush’s administration. America’s invasion into Iraq was motivated by the need for oil and people, Vonnegut accuses, are just “chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power.”

Visit Kurt Vonnegut’s Official Website.

The follow-up to Gregory Maguire’s revisionist 1995 tale Wicked about Elphaba Thropp — better known as the Wicked Witch of the West whose watery demise is familiar to anyone who remembers The Wizard of Oz — is this year’s Son of a Witch, about Elphaba’s afore-hinted-to son, Liir. In the ruins of the Emerald City where many residents have been victim to the barbaric Yunamatas, travel caravan leader Oatsie Manglehand discovers the body of a badly-injured but still alive boy and takes him to the Superior Maunt, who in turn identifies the boy as Liir. The thin and mute Candle revives Liir with her haunting music and secret affections, and all the while we learn of Liir’s backstory, including scenes from his boyhood, his trek to the Wizard’s Castle with Dorothy, his search for the imprisoned princess Nor, and a long tour in the Munchkinland Army. However, nothing will prepare Liir for Candle’s shocking secret. Maguire fills his narrative with vivid characters and heartfelt lessons of love, loss, forgiveness, and moving on.

Visit Gregory Maguire’s Official Website.

After her smash debut 2000 novel White Teeth that earned her comparisons to Charles Dickens and E.M. Forster, Zadie Smith’s sophomore effort On Beauty is no less socially conscious, humorous, or powerful, touching upon the themes of multiculturalism, liberalism versus conservativism, affirmative action, and prejudice in all its various forms. Howard Belsey and and Monty Kipps are rival art history professors teaching at Wellington College near Boston, but find themselves and their respective families woven together when Howard’s son and Monty’s daughter begin a romance. While the relationship eventually sours and Howard and Monty’s rivalry is kicked up a notch, it is Howard’s wife Kiki and Monty’s wife Carlene who strike up an unsual bond. Add to that Howard’s and Monty’s own inter-family problems such as infidelity, children who suddenly decide to change careers, and personal struggles to find emotional, intellectual, and sexual connections, and Zadie Smith’s story becomes a dense, engaging work that cements Smith’s place as a true literary force.

Publisher: Random House.

The Civil War may be an old, familiar explored subject to the literary world, but leave it to E.L. Doctorow to pen a riveting and deeply-moving tale in The March, specifically, General William Tecumseh Sherman and his Union soldiers marching through Georgia and the Carolina’s slashing and burning anything in their path while freeing black slaves. Doctorow does more than simply to retell a dry, historical account, he give dimension and soul to his characters, from the moody and complex General Sherman himself to Pearl, a despised plantation owner’s daughter who passes as a drummer boy. The characters are electrifying realistic and colorful, weaved together in a heartbreaking tale about a war so personal and tragic, it’s a wonder how the nation could recover from such a costly and painful event.

Publisher’s website: Random House.

After 2004’s The Preservationist which brought us the story of Noah and his brood, David Maine is back with his new novel Fallen, detailing the first recorded murder of the Bible with brothers Cain and Abel, rival sons of Adam and Eve. The story begins with Cain as a fearful, elderly, and marked man in exile, forced to wander the desert for killing his brother. Readers then get the story in reverse as the narrative flashes back to the murder, Cain’s scorn for Abel’s innocence, his own lust and greed, and the days just after Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden, and how they coped with being the world’s first husband and wife. Maine is detailed, true to the original concept, and often times very poignant and funny. He gives these biblical stories a modern sensibility while explore the psychological portraits of these mythical characters.

In The Myth of You and Me, Leah Stewart weaves a heartfelt tale about friendship, love, memories, and betrayal. Cameron Wilson and Sonia Grey had a friendship that was closer than anything in either of the two young girls’ lives, but something happened during college that irreparably tore these two best friends apart. Now, Cameron lives with Oliver Doucet, a 92-year-old historian whom she is close to and cares for. One day, Sonia sends Cameron a letter out of the blue, which she refuses to answer, but when Oliver passes away two months later, he leaves Cameron with one last task: deliver a mysterious package to Sonia for her upcoming nuptials. Reluctantly, Cameron returns to the place where she grew up to find Sonia, recalling old memories and familiar faces as the plot builds towards its conclusion and answers the questions: What happened to so disasterously tear two best friends apart? and What’s in Oliver’s package?

Visit Leah Stewart’s Official Website.