Beautiful books are waiting for me

Yesterday featured my finest visit to the library in weeks, nay, months! I had four excellent holds awaiting. The only question is whether I can burn through them in the next few weeks (in one case I will probably eat the fine.)

Here they are:

The Dead Hand by David Hoffman. This one is about the end of the Cold War, the legacy of WMD and DOOMSDAY MACHINES!!!! Check out this article by Hoffman about the Soviet doomsday machine that may still kill us some day. PD Smith, who covered this topic in his own book, Doomsday Men, has another good piece on the subject.

The Hawk and the Dove by Nicholas Thompson. This book looks at the Cold War through the lens of the great realist George Kennan and the creator of the national security system, Paul Nitze. The reviews are gushing on this one and the subject matter is perfect for me.

Death Troopers by Joe Schreiber. If you want to bum out your lit fic friends at the bookstore, make them come into the scifi section with you. There will be plenty of eye rolling and mockery of book covers. Sci fi fans themselves will do the same to the little section of Star Wars and Star Trek novels tucked away at the back of the sci fi section. I am often one of those eyerollers.

I make an exception for this book because of the author. He is one of the few horror writers, Sarah Langan also comes to mind, that I think are fabulous writers in a debased genre. Anyway the story is about zombies attacking a Star Destroyer and a prison barge. We shall see.

Blood's a Rover by James Ellroy. This is the one I am most excited about. No one writes quite like Ellroy, but he require some concentrated reading time. I need to go hide somewhere with this one. If you don't know him, his hard bitten style has morphed into a speed freak translating jazz numbers in words approach. He is all dark underbelly, all the time. It has been a long, long wait for the novel and maybe you have worried that perhaps he has gone soft, fear not. Part one of the book is titled Cluster fuck. In all caps mind you. So excited to read this one.