Do not dismiss this as some laser blasting, time traveling with little green men of a book (I read and like those as well by the way) Set in a hot and steamy modern Thailand, Bacigalupi has envisioned a world where drought and pest have withered all but the most artificial of crops and corporations fiercely protect their property rights of newly engineered seed. With many character at different levels in the food chain “The Windup Girl” lets you see life in this world from all angels. In a world where the only true currency is food it seems that it is our humanity is the first victim of starvation.

Anne Garrels takes you on a fascinating journey into the world of today's war correspondent. In the fall of '02 and spring of '03 she was documenting what the build up to war was doing to the Iraqi people. Go behind the scences to see what today's reporters go through to bring us the stories from the front line. You'll read about the bribing every reporter does simply to get in and out of the country, how every new conflict reunited old colleagues as well as rivalries, and the different tricks of the trade reporters use to get the stories in on time (like reporting naked to prevent government thugs from interrupting her broadcast.

When I was growing up faith was something that was a sacred and private matter. Your faith was something you no more discussed with strangers than your love life. Times have changed; people wear their faith on their sleeve, and on their ties, and on their car’s bumper. Every politician must explain their own personal relationship with the all-mighty. God Is Not Great is one of the latest books which discusses the relevance of faith in the modern world. With humor and wit Christopher Hitchens walks through many of the arguments against faith. Out of the most recent publications about atheism this is my favorite. If you, like me have come to question the morality of a church that spends more time protecting pedophile priests than it does the poor; a faith that turns killers into martyrs; a religion that declares divine ownership of land, then it may be time for you to give this good book a read.

Over the years I've heard many different CIA spook stories; "The CIA created aids", "the CIA brought Crack to the ghetto", "the CIA used LSD on prison inmates". Well as it turns out at least one of these claims is fact (I won't say which). The CIA has a jaw dropping history, at one point they actually studied the flight patterns of bats to see if they could be used to bomb Tokyo. Mr. Weiner has gathered it all together after a great deal of research and it makes for fantastic reading.

If Cartman from “South Park” wrote a social manifesto I image that it would be very similar to Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs and I mean this in the best possible way. So many of Klosterman’s observations ring true that, between laughs, I find myself nodding yes again and again. It is a special mind that can see parallels between the Trix Rabbit and Sisyphus or how the show “Saved by the Bell” says so much about my generation. At times the most irreverent insights can also be the most can be the most profound and this is what makes the book so much fun.

In the early 1990s a group of deep sea divers heard of a good fishing spot and decided to dive on it. What they reeled in was bigger than any of them had imagined. They discovered a German U-boat our government had no record of sinking and the German government had no record of losing. So how did it wind up on the Jersey coast? Three men died trying to answer that question. Kurson has written a non-fiction book with the excitement and intrigue of any novel. If you enjoyed Into Thin Air or The Perfect Storm then you'll love Shadow Divers.

James Lee Burke is one of my favorite mystery writers and his latest may well be his greatest. The Tin Roof Blowdown begins in those chilling moments before Katrina tore a hole through the heart of The Big Easy. When the town's least desirable take advantage of the ensuing chaos, Detective Dave Robicheax is left to pick up the pieces. Burke never holds back when writing about the racism and ugliness that was brought to the surface by that terrible storm and in the end, that it is what makes this mystery so powerful. Highly recommended!

World War Z is brain munching fun brought to you by the expert in all things zombie, Max Brooks. This is a very straight faced account of a zombie pandemic and the subsequent world wide war to exterminate the zombies. Told as a series of dispatches from the survivors we learn of the origins of the pandemic and watch as a series of tales begin to form a larger picture. It is often the case that horror stories, and zombie tales in particular, are used to poke fun at society and Brooks certainly does in World War Z, it doesn’t take much to guess which U.S. administration Brooks used as a model for the one in his book. This is a terrifically fun read on so many levels that it could only be brought to us by the son of Mel himself.