Book Reviews Episodes

Mark Wahlberg's "Unreasonable Ideas" production company has optioned Collateral Damage for a Documentary. Mark Shaw's book connects the dots between the 1962 death of Marilyn Monroe, the 1963 assassination of JFK and the 1965 death of ace investigative journalist and TV personality Dorothy Kilgallen, with Bobby Kennedy playing a lynchpin role. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-herlihy/message

Carol Lynley had a remarkable 40 year career in films, TV and on the stage. And who could ever forget The Poseidon Adventure ? She was a hardworking actress who graduated from model to teen actress to adult roles during the turbulent 1960s when social and cultural norms were changing. But she adapted to the times. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-herlihy/message

Michael Dobbs was Moscow Bureau Chief for the Washington Post. He has written seven books. King Richard and several others deal with presidential crises. For King Richard he listened to the Nixon tapes at the presidential library in Yorba Linda for a first hand account of how the coverup that forced the President's resignation unfolded. The book zeroes in on the first 100 days of 1973 after the January 20th second inaugural. This was the timeframe when the fate of the Nixon presidency was sealed...

The rise of the Mexican American community in California is notable in many fields. But back in the middle of the 20th Century until the 1970s, The future was littered with struggle, poverty and lack of opportunity. Frank Barajas takes us through that period when giants like Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta were laying the groundwork for the emergence of Mexican Americans as a political, social and economic force to be reckoned with. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-herlihy...

Award winning author J.L. Torres, discusses his critically acclaimed collection of short stories, Migrations. The Puerto Rican journey back and forth between the island and New York is the locus of the strong women and men he profiles. Inaugural winner of the Tomas Rivera Prize, this is a book which brings us to the heart of being Puerto Rican --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-herlihy/message

The Evangelical Right has played a prominent role ensuring its agenda is part of the national debate especially during the presidential elections of 2016 and 2020. But is that agenda soundly based in scripture as they would have us believe ? Dr. Obery Hendricks a biblical scholar, social activist and one of the foremost commentators on the intersection of religion and politics, debunks that agenda as not being based in scripture. And argues that it is largely antithetical to Christ's teaching. ...

Escape to the Stars is a work of science fiction, but with an African American protagonist and hero. All too often the science fiction genre and space travel/adventure stories leave out people of color, and author Mark Sneed rectifies that shortcoming and gives us a unique and new perspective in his sixth novel. Christian Drake the protagonist unlike most space adventurers seems to have a live and let live tolerance for the aliens he encounters - another singular characteristic in science fictio...

In his debut novel - which is an ambitious trilogy - Jarrett has written a work about life's second chances. But a second chance is not always guaranteed to be better than your first chance: it all depends what you make of it. He has a keen eye and incorporates life lessons from his stint as an expat in Thailand into the plot. This is a well crafted work which earned glowing praise from Kirkus Reviews. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-herlihy/message

A closed circle mystery set in the Canadian Rockies as an early Winter sets in, Maeve Martin has come to this mountain top artists' retreat center to focus on the next chapter of her career. At 34 being a lead dancer is fading away. Only seven artists and staff are in residence but beneath the surface lurks vicious intrigue and deception. A freak avalanche isolates them from the outside world and then one of the seven is found dead. Maeve's quest for self realization turns into a nightmarish str...

Linking the 1962 death of Hollywood star Marilyn Monroe and the 1965 death of ace investigative reporter Dorothy Kilgallen with the assassination of JFK might seem like a stretch at first blush. But that is exactly what investigative author Mark Shaw accomplishes when he connects the dots to all three cases. And the lynchpin is Bobby Kennedy. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-herlihy/message

Chris Bail's new book " Breaking the Social Prism - How to make our platforms less Polarizing," analyzes how we got to this crisis point and steps to defuse the situation. The echo chambers, social prisms that distort users and their comments plus political tribalism is a poisonous trifecta that only social media users can change. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-herlihy/message

Money Matters is a story of two sisters on two different trajectories of life, money, men and personal values. The plot plays out against the seedier side of life in Southern California with major themes of Surveillance Technology, Undocumented Immigration, the 2010 Gubernatorial race and Drug Cartels featuring prominently. It's also a detective mystery with coming of age overtones. A complex and well crafted novel. Finney captures the voice of a 27 year old Valley Girl to a T: no mean feat for ...

It's hard to know who to trust in a world of fake news and online relationships. So trusting yourself and listening to your own intuition is more critical than ever. Particularly as ever pervasive Artificial Intelligence supplants human beings in the workforce and service industries. AdaPia shows us how to effectively integrate intuition into our data driven business and life decisions. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-herlihy/message

Gabriel Garcia Marquez the great novelist famously said that every human being has three lives: the public, the private and the secret. Cate Holohan's latest domestic thriller manipulates that complex trifecta of life's intersections. A romance and planned wedding are upended in a violent home invasion, with a shocking ending I wasn't expecting. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-herlihy/message

A Good Mother is Lara Bazelon's debut legal thriller novel. A Law Professor at University of San Francisco, School of Law, Lara was formerly a Public Defender in Los Angeles and brings a practitioner's experience to this courtroom drama, featuring the savvy and street smart attorney Abby Rosenberg. A compelling thriller with unexpected plot twists and turns that kept me on edge ! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-herlihy/message

Dangerous Conjectures tells a tale of the way we were, in the three months leading up to the 2020 Covid lockdowns. Set in Berkeley, California, the novel relates the story of a young professional couple caught up in a "through the looking glass" world of Qanon, misinformation, opioid addiction and marital deception as the Covid 19 pandemic was poised to unleash its lethal fury on America. The hobgoblins of America's dark psyche flare up into an existential threat to the protagonists, Julia and A...

Poverty in the United States is more widespread than in the other developed OECD countries due to our skimpy social safety net. For instance, 60% of Americans will experience poverty sometime in their life between 18 and 75 years of age. 60 % ! On the other hand we reduced senior poverty from 35% in 1959 to 8% today so we have had targeted successes. Professor Rank breaks down the myths of poverty in our midst. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-herlihy/message

Two women Emanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna won the 2020 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for developing the gene editing technique known s CRISPR-CAS9. But in 2018 the first humans were born with edited genes in China, twin girls Nana and Lulu. Their unique human status in the history of mankind came as a result of a rogue genetics researcher who defied all the bioethics standards of science and he was jailed for his illicit efforts by the Chinese Government. Professor Hank Greely renowned bio...

Labyrinth of the Wind is the critically acclaimed debut novel of Madhav Misra, our guest in the Meet the Author series. Madhav takes us back in time to the late 1970s when Teheran, Iran was an international city, awash in petrodollars, governed by the autocratic Shah whose rule vacillated between westernization and brutal police state repression. Against this complex backdrop, Madhav weaves a love story entwined with 1970s terrorism, the last days of the Pahlavi Dynasty and the rise of fundament...

Labyrinth of the Wind is the critically acclaimed debut novel of Madhav Misra. Set in Teheran, Iran in the late 1970s as the Shah's regime is coming to an end and the fundamentalist Islamic Revolution of Ayatollah Khomeini is unfolding it is a complex story of a young expat's struggle to serve several masters. A fascinating look back to a Westernizing Iran awash in petrodollars and fabulous wealth but also poverty. And even the Shah wanted to build a nuclear capability for Iran over 40 years ago...

Deceit and Dirty Money is Jim Herlihy's debut novel written in the late 1990's - a simpler and gentler time before 911, Global financial crises, cell phones, the internet and electric cars. Set in San Francisco, this financial thriller with classic San Francisco Noir overtones, satirizes the City's social elite. Jim also gives an insider's explanation of the writing process and how he developed his unique voice and writing style. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-herlihy/me...

A new Meet the Author series kicks off today at The San Francisco Experience. David Eugene Perry's debut novel is set in Orvieto, Italy. With a tip of the hat to Dan Brown, this mystery thriller weaves together an intricate plot of murder, intrigue and suspense which threatens to bring down the Catholic Church. The protagonists, Lee and Adriano are a gay couple from San Francisco on sabbatical in Orvieto, 75 miles North of Rome. But instead of a relaxing re-charge of batteries, they are ensnared...