CONELRAD READ ALERT

THIRTY SECONDS OVER NEW YORK

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 14:55:28 GMT

The cover of the 1977 paperback edition of Robert Buchard�s thriller Thirty Seconds Over New York features a menacing Chinese military officer in the lower right-hand corner and above him, a commercial airliner headed straight into the World Trade Center. Needless to say, in view of later real life events, the pulpy image is quite provocative. The story, however, does not concern...

RISE OF THE VULCANS: The History of Bush�s War Cabinet

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 19:48:51 GMT

James Mann�s informative and entertaining RISE OF THE VULCANS chronicles the lives and careers of George W. Bush�s war cabinet including the neocons like Paul Wolfowitz who made the Iraq War possible. The chapter that really caught CONELRAD�s eye is entitled �In the Midst of Armageddon� and it recounts the continuity of government (COG) exercises that took place during the Reagan and HW...

THE FIELD GUIDE TO SPONSORED FILMS

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 19:00:07 GMT

Rick Prelinger has been preserving �ephemeral� films for decades, but THE FIELD GUIDE TO SPONSORED FILMS is his first published guide to historically significant films that were commissioned for production by American advocacy groups, businesses, charities, local governmental offices, etc. (full disclosure: CONELRAD...

KEEP WATCHING THE SKIES! American Science Fiction Movies of the Fifties

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 18:59:14 GMT

Keep Watching the Skies! is THE bible for sci-fi and monster movie nerds. It goes into such detail about these genre films from the fifties that it almost defies credulity. If you have a favorite giant bug movie from the golden age of atomic sci-fi it is a dead-bang certainty that it is deconstructed in Mr. Warren�s epic, two volume tome (it is the combined edition that CONELRAD recommends)....

DEATH ON THE CHEAP: The Lost B Movies of Film Noir!

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 18:22:32 GMT

Death on the Cheap: The Lost B Movies of Film Noir! is the ideal book for the adventurous film noir fan who wants to branch out and see movies that are decidedly lower brow than the classics of the genre like DOUBLE INDEMNITY and KISS ME DEADLY, etc. Arthur Lyons�s highly entertaining book is included here because it highlights several anti-commie film noirs including the certifiably great THE...

THE WOMAN ON PIER 13

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:35:44 GMT

The Woman on Pier 13 is the published screenplay for the film of the same name that was originally released to theaters in 1949 under the vastly more entertaining title of �I Married a Communist.� However, on orders from studio owner Howard Hughes, it was quickly pulled and saddled with its blander, less memorable title. This is a pity because the film and its screenplay are...

SHADOW ON THE HEARTH

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 18:49:42 GMT

�Oh, we�ve been ready for this for a long time.� He smiled knowingly. �Our country wasn�t so dumb.� -- Jim Turner, Civil Defense Security Official, to housewife Gladys Mitchell after an atomic attack on the United States in Judith Merril�s Shadow on the Hearth Shadow on the Hearth (1950) was the first published novel by the respected editor and writer...

IS THIS TOMORROW: AMERICA UNDER COMMUNISM!

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 17:23:19 GMT

As David Hadju points out in his brilliant book The Ten-Cent Plague, the comic book was a huge mass-market medium to be reckoned with in the 1940s and early 1950s. In its heyday, the format reached more kids than television, radio or books. Father Louis Gales was one of the people who...

AMERIKA: THE TRIUMPH OF THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 20:31:23 GMT

AMERIKA, the behemoth ABC television miniseries was one of the most controversial events in TV history. �Amerika,� the book by Brauna E. Pouns, is a tie-in novel based on Donald Wrye�s teleplay. The publicity surrounding the television incarnation of AMERIKA helped land the book on the best seller lists in February of 1987. �Amerika� the novel is almost as wooden as its source material, but...

THE COLD WAR ENCYCLOPEDIA

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 19:07:49 GMT

There are more recent reference books on the Cold War, but Thomas Parrish�s 1996 The Cold War Encyclopedia is by far the best. In a relatively concise 490 pages Mr. Parrish manages to cover all the important people, places, events, etc. that made the Cold War such a fascinating period in world history. It is all here, the major and the minor: The Hotline, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Berlin...