Non-Fiction

Title: Hollywood Through My Eyes The Lives & Loves of a Golden Age Siren
Author: Monica Lewis with Dean Lamanna
Genre: Non-Fiction Sub-Category: Memoir
Reviewed by : Hodge Wood

ISBN (for Amazon store): 1934980889

HOLLYWOOD THROUGH MY EYES is the intimate portrait of "America's Singing Sweetheart": Monica Lewis. It chronicles a young girl's rise from Depression-era Chicago, through the glamour and grit of New York City's nightclub scene and live broadcasting (including the very first Ed Sullivan Show), and finally to the privileged environs of Beverly Hills as the wife of top MCA/Universal executive and producer Jennings Lang.

Follow Monica as she gets her first job with Benny Goodman, sings on the radio with Frank Sinatra, tours war-torn Korea with Danny Kaye, goes out on the town with Ronald Reagan, clowns with Red Skelton at MGM, and opens her Beverly Hills mansion to an impressive list of Who's Who including Senator Ted Kennedy, Barbra Streisand, Clint Eastwood, Ava Gardner, Steven Spielberg, and the Beatles.

Title: W.I.A. (Wounded in Action)
Author: Thomas C. Robison
Genre: Non-Fiction Sub-Category: Biography
Reviewed by: Bob Flournoy

ISBN (for Amazon store): 1453596402

Based on actual events and set against the historical backdrop of America’s longest war, Wounded in Action tells the compelling and gripping story of courage and determination of one of the Army’s most elite combat soldiers as he faces the realities of surviving near fatal wounds and struggles to overcome the life changing devastation inflicted on his mind and body from the explosion of an enemy landmine.

Title: Follow Me: The Life and Adventures of a Military Family
Author: Elizabeth Carroll Foster
Genre: Non-Fiction Sub-Category: Memoir
Reviewed by: Charlene Rubush

ISBN (for Amazon store): 1450207545

On September 6, 1949, the author was a bride and clueless as to the twists and turns her life would take as the wife of a US Army officer. Her husband served sixteen months at the end of WWII and completed his three-year obligation in the reserve forces. Meantime, he tried to complete college and enlisted in the Oklahoma National Guard while at the University of Oklahoma. The Guard unit was recalled to service with the 45th Division at the outbreak of the Korean War.
Elizabeth was ill-prepared for the kind of life she would experience as a military wife, the frequent moves from pillar to post while rearing four children, the separations from her husband, and parting from her friends and making new ones. Without a support system, she learned that military wives depended on each other.

It wasn't an easy life, but it offered many exciting adventures and presented friendships in many places. Her children adapted well to the nomadic lifestyle, despite transferring from school to school in midterm. Would she have made the commitment had she known what it entailed? She would have because it was a life of wonderful adventures shared with her husband, her children, their dog, and many, many friends.

Book Title: The Insurgency in Chechnya and the North Caucasus
Author: Robert Schaefer
Reviewed by: Edward Cox
Genre: Non-fiction Sub-Category: History

ISBN (for Amazon store): 031338634X

The shocking events of the Moscow airport terrorist attack make it clear that the North Caucasus insurgency is still strong – despite the Kremlin’s announcement in 2008 that the conflict was “over.” Find out why Russia has been promised a “year of blood and tears” in 2011 and what this means for the Sochi Olympics in 2014. For the first time, a military expert on both Russia and insurgency offers the definitive guide on activities in Southern Russia, explaining why the Russian approach to counterterrorism is failing and why terrorist and insurgent attacks in Russia have sharply increased over the past three years.

The Insurgency in Chechnya and the North Caucasus: From Gazavat to Jihad is a comprehensive treatment of this 300 year-old conflict. Thematically organized, it cuts through the rhetoric to provide a contextual framework with which readers can truly understand the "why" and "how" of one of the world’s longest-running contemporary insurgencies, despite Russia's best efforts to eradicate it.

A fascinating case study of a counterinsurgency campaign that is in direct contravention of US and Western strategy, the book also examines the differences and linkages between insurgency and terrorism; the origins of conflict in the North Caucasus; and the influences of different strains of Islam, of al-Qaida, and of the War on Terror. A critical examination of never-before-revealed Russian counterinsurgency (COIN) campaigns explains why those campaigns have consistently failed and why the region has seen such an upswing in violence since the conflict was officially declared "over" less than two years ago.

The book's features include: information drawn from the North Caucasus Incident Database (NCID), compiling every violent incident in the region over a two-year period; charts showing the complex strategies of the insurgency and the Russian counterinsurgency campaigns; declassified intelligence reports; as well as maps and a bibliography. Presented through the lens of counterinsurgency theory, this incisive analysis explores the historic roots of each issue, the key players, and the farthest-reaching effects. It is the first doctrinal analysis (classified or unclassified) produced on the conflict in over 10 years and is already being used as a textbook at the Program on Terrorism and Security Studies at the Marshall Center.

Title: Surviving Serendipity
Author: Lawrence J. Enders, M.D.
Genre: Non-Fiction Sub-Category: Memoir
Reviewed by: Joyce M. Gilmour

ISBN (for Amazon store): 1462856667

Lawrence J. Enders, a cadet at Cretin High School, St. Paul, Minnesota and Dr. Enders today.