Madison Taylor

‘Those Guys have all the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN”; By Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller; Little-Brown; 2011; 748 pages; $27.99.

After almost 750 pages, “Those Guys have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN” doesn’t really conclude. It stops.

In most cases that would seem anticlimactic. Not so here. After all, ESPN at age 30 is only really getting started. From a tiny dream of less-than-visionary founders to create an all-sports station for a strictly Connecticut audience, a cultural phenomenon that mirrors America’s dependence on television, sports and entertainment emerged as the bona fide giant of a new world order created by cable TV. Indeed, it can be said that cable TV didn’t create ESPN. ESPN launched cable TV into something nearly all wanted in their homes.

The saga of ESPN and its rise from the unlikeliest of media outposts in Bristol, Conn. isn’t so much a story of the often startling fascination with sports in America — although that’s a huge chunk of it. In a larger sense, it’s an examination of the popular culture cultivated in a cablesphere that embraced a crew of snarky broadcasters who delivered information in ways rich — or in some cases poor — with commentary. Indeed, the way ESPN anchors and analysts interacted with the audience from the start is the forerunner of how cable news broadcasters engage viewers. Along the way it’s created a reactionary breed of information consumers, perhaps to the detriment forever of news production.

“Those Guys have All the Fun” refrains from such judgments, it merely tells what the authors call the story of ESPN, not the history. Still, there are facts aplenty as the book chronicles what the writers call the network’s climb to “global domination.” It’s a fascinating read and a compelling story that allows readers to frame their own opinions.

With 30 years of anecdotes from a colorful cast of characters, there is no shortage of rich territory to mine for writers Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller. The two collaborated on the equally engaging and lively look at entertainment, comedy and culture in “Live from New York: An Uncensored History of ‘Saturday Night Live.’” Shales, a Pulitzer Prize winner formerly of the Washington Post, is perhaps the top television critic in America. Miller, author of “Running in Place Inside the Senate” is nearly his equal in gleaning information from subjects who aren’t always the easiest to interview. Think bombastic and bullying former basketball coach Bob Knight, who is among the hundreds of ESPN’ers who agreed to sit and be questioned.

Shales and Miller use the oral history format put in place for their work about “Saturday Night Live” to also tell the story of ESPN. The narrative is driven largely — almost entirely — by quotes from nearly  anyone affiliated with the network from its rather timid beginning (Australian Rules Football, anyone?) to last year with its triumphant broadcast of the World Cup.

And at the start, absolutely no one thought it had a chance of succeeding, much less overtaking the big three major networks that dominated the sports broadcasting landscape for decades.

While the background players may not be names those who watch ESPN recognize, they comprise the core information about ESPN’s creation, its early stumbles and the exceptional successes with college basketball that helped turn the network into a sought after service rather than a passing joke on “The Tonight Show.” To be sure, ESPN’s rise to cable goliath was built upon gaining the rights to the NFL, Major League Baseball and the NBA, but those things were obtained through shrewd business maneuvering, a work ethic bordering on the insane and the phenomenal success of SportsCenter, a show that cost nearly nothing to produce but built the network’s early and very loyal audience. SportsCenter is the foundation upon which ESPN successfully constructed its future.

A litany of producers, directors and executives who made pivotal and sometimes controversial decisions are interwoven with the anchors and analysts most viewers more easily recognize. From George Grande and Chris Berman to Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann to Stu Scott, Hannah Storm, Erin Andrews and Scott Van Pelt the book crackles with anecdotes about missteps; triumphs; creative differences; a work-hard, party-hard culture; and a rather troubling history of workplace issues related to mistreatment of women. For example, it wasn’t uncommon in the 1980s for the Playboy channel to be on in the newsroom.

Ultimately, ESPN grew because it learned from its mistakes — like launching a trendy and hip ESPN2 with Olbermann, its resident bad boy, wearing a leather jacket even Fonzie wouldn’t find cool during the first broadcast. The network now operates on a myriad of cable stations and on platforms that include print and online reporting. It’s most visible successes include the award-winning Sports Century series or the more recent 30 for 30 sports documentaries.

As it’s grown, ESPN has become a target for criticism — much of it justified. It was, after all, the network that brought America the horrid LeBron James program “The Decision” last summer, a show emblematic of the self-absorbed athlete the ESPN culture has created. It’s a highlight-driven and opinionated world where winning is all that truly matters.

In that way, “Those Guys have all the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN” is the story of modern America.

‘Unbroken’, By Laura Hillenbrand, Random House, 473 pages, $27.

To call Laura Hillenbrand a finder of long forgotten stories is something of a disservice. The former Washington Post reporter turned non-fiction author is really so much more.

Hillenbrand not only tracks down figures and events from decades ago that for one reason or another are relegated to the margins of history, but she returns them to center stage. It’s a feat accomplished with a superb blend of exhaustive research, endless questions, a keen eye for the nuances of a story and suspense-inducing prose.

Her first book, the highly acclaimed “Seabiscuit: An American Legend” took on the story of a California-bred racehorse that for a brief time in the 1930s reached mythical status despite never running in a Triple Crown race. In “Seabiscuit” Hillenbrand used everything at a reporter’s disposal to paint an indelible image of a time and people. The horse is merely the conveyance for a fascinating story about the unlikely partnership between a millionaire businessman, a trainer and jockey. The book was a finalist for the National Book Critics Award and is widely thought to be among a handful of the best non-fiction books about sports ever written.

Topping the success of “Seabiscuit” would be daunting enough. But Hillenbrand is further challenged by a severe form of chronic fatigue syndrome, an illness that ended her career as a newspaper reporter. As a result, Hillenbrand’s meticulous work takes time to complete.

Seven years later, Hillenbrand is back and this time with a book of far greater scope and import than “Seabiscuit.”

The results are the same.

“Unbroken” is Hillenbrand’s latest, a story she first unearthed while researching “Seabiscuit.” As she pored through newspaper archives of California newspapers, Hillenbrand saw the name Louis Zamperini crop up time and again. The reasons were brutally simple. In the mid-to-late 1930s, the Torrance, Calif. native was among the best distance runners in the United States. As a student at The University of Southern California he qualified for the 1936 Olympics in Berlin as a miler.

That was just the start of what was supposed to be a brilliant track career. Observers of that time thought Zamperini might be the first to crack the four-minute mile barrier.

But World War II interfered. Zamperini, like many men of his generation, was never the same. In fact, he was altered in ways most could never fathom.

Zamperini’s World War II story is one of those astonishing footnotes of heroism to one of the bloodiest conflicts in global history. In fact, any number of his experiences alone would make a noteworthy book.

A B-24 bombardier, Zamperini and his crew in 1943 went down due to failing engines in a rickety aircraft while on a mission to find another lost airplane and crew. Only three men survived the initial crash into the vastness of the Pacific Ocean and one ultimately perished in the raft while waiting for help that would never arrive.

Together Zamperini and pilot Allen Phillips survived with almost no food or potable water for a remarkable 47 days. They endured high waves, a typhoon, a Japanese sniper and eating whatever raw fish or birds the could snare.

Ultimately, they washed ashore on an island that was under enemy control. The Japanese held them, first as unreported and tortured captives and later prisoners in some of the most brutal POW and labor camps seen in wartime.

That’s where the real nightmare begins.

Hillenbrand does a remarkable job of putting all of these pieces together to develop a sense not only of place but of time. Who knew, for example, that during World War II more than 35,000 Army Air Forces planes were lost in either combat or accidents — and only a fraction of those were in combat. Missing airmen, in either training or battle, were a common occurrence.

For members of the Army Air Forces, the idea of being killed during a crash was preferable to the alternatives: Consumed by sharks or imprisoned by the Japanese. The latter were ritually starved, beaten or forced to work for the Japanese war machine. Zamperini and others have hellish tales about brutality at the hands of their captors. Many who made it home never recovered.

Hillenbrand’s research includes years of going through newspaper accounts, diaries, long-forgotten notebooks and the documentation of war crimes trials in Japan. Her interviews with men in their 80s and 90s uncover layers of harsh memories.

Part of Hillenbrand’s work includes listening to audio tapes recorded in 1952 of a then little-known North Carolina preacher named Billy Graham so she could document the exact words Graham used during a series of tent revivals, words that eventually saved Zamperini from a host of demons that might have otherwise cost him everything.

The book jacket touts “Unbroken” as a “World War II story of survival, resilience and redemption.”

It is all of that and then some.

My reading list just got longer, and I’m pretty damned happy about it.

Yes, my friend and Times-News colleague recently deposited the second book in Stieg Larssen trilogy, “The Girl Who Played with Fire” on my desk. I can’t wait to read it. I’ve been waiting a few months to catch up on the antics of oddball yet uncanny investigator and computer hacker Lisbeth Salander and what kind of misadventure she might find next with journalist Mikael Blomkvist. I was pretty much hooked after Michael loaned me the first book, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”

My reading list just got longer, and I’m pretty damned happy about it.

Yes, my friend and newspaper colleague at the Times-News Michael Abernethy recently brought me the second installment of the

So while I’m anxious to read it, I’ll bide my time. You see, every book must wait its turn.

And “The Girl who Played with Fire” may have to wait for awhile.

After Christmas is my favorite time of year when it comes to books. My spouse usually replenishes my depleted reading list with a flurry of titles I’ve either mentioned casually or pointed to emphatically at Barnes and Noble saying “There, this one. Get this one. No, not that one, THIS one.”

This year the book I pointed to with the greatest of gestures was the new one by Laura Hillenbrand, whose previous credits include “Seabiscuit,” simply one of my favorite sports book of all time.  “Unbroken” is about Louis Zamperini, a world class distance runner in the 1930s, who was a miler on the 1936 U.S. Olympic team. Like most men of his generation, his goals and plans were rudely and savagely interrupted by World War II. What happened to him in the Pacific Theater is compelling and terrifying stuff. Now in his 90s, Zamperini is the ultimate survivor. His story makes me ashamed that anyone in my generation finds the time to complain about anything.

I’m in the last few chapters of that one. A review is forthcoming.

Then I’ll move on to the other titles on the list. Here they are.

1. The Pleasure was Mine, By Tommy Hays, 255 pages, St. Martin’s Griffin

This book is the selection for .the Alamance Reads program, a month dedicated locally to books and authors. Tommy Hays, who directs the Great Smokies Writing Program at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, will be in our community for a series of programs surrounding his book. It’s a great chance to meet an author and learn about the craft. The kickoff event is tonight (Jan. 18) at the Paramount. Here’s a listing of the others.I hope to finish this one quickly. The word-of-mouth reviews from folks I talk to are glowing in their praise. It appeals to me because it’s a Southern story and I’m a sucker for Southern fiction.

The book jacket synopsis: “The Pleasure was Mine” is a hopeful, engaging rendering of Page Marshbanks, who is slowly losing his wife of 50 years, yet getting to know his son and grandson in a whole new way. It is a moving, romantic and even comic story about the power and resilience of family.

Favorite jacket review blurb: “His subject matter, his sense of the South and Southerners, his ability to reflect on the deep in the ordinary are reminiscent of James Agee’s “A Death in the Family” and Eudora Welty’s “Delta Wedding.”

2. Stoneman’s Raid, 1865; By Chris J. Hartley, 393  pages; John F. Blair, publisher (Winston-Salem)

This one came in to the office a couple of months ago as a copy for review. I was instantly drawn to it. Stoneman’s Raid is little more than a footnote to the Civil War but it’s a particularly regional one for North Carolina and southern Virginia residents. And besides, a song was written about it. “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.”

That in and of itself is enough.

Because I grew up in Danbury, a North Carolina village within hailing distance of the Virginia border, Stoneman’s Raid has always held a certain fascination. Stoneman’s troops marched through Danbury as part of the raid. A marker in front of the old county courthouse notes this historic moment, which actually occurred after Lee surrendered at Appomattox. An old foundry was the target of the raid. Cannonballs were made in Danbury then shipped down the Dan River. The rock furnace still stands and is a tourist destination.

But just flipping through the pages a couple of months ago tells me the book pretty fascinating. With tons of regional references from Danville, Va. to Salisbury. Hartley has uncovered a tons of interesting details about the raid and Stoneman himself — a somewhat disgraced Union officer who hoped the raid would improve his standing in ranks.

Book jacket synopsis: “After leading a failed raid in the Chancellorville campaign and later earning the dubioushonor of being the highest-ranking Union prisoner of war, Stoneman was described as ‘one of the most worthless officers in the service’ by Edwin Stanton. The 1865 raid was his last chance at redemption.”

Favorite jacket review blurb: “Stoneman’s Raid 1865 fills a woeful gap in North Carolina’s Civil War history. Chris Hartley’s carefully researched account filled with personal anecdotes from the time period accurately details what Tar Heels were thinking and feeling as the war’s loss hit home”

3. “The Last Boy:” Mickey Mantle and the end of America’s Childhood; By Jane Leavy; 387 pages; Harper

At the rate I read these days, I should be picking this one up at about the time pitchers and catchers report in February. That’s perfect.

Mickey Mantle remains a compelling figure for men of my generation, even though he’s one of the most written-about athletes of that period. He was a hero to many, a mystery to others. I wasn’t a Mantle fan but I find his journey fascinating. I’m also interested in a female author’s take on a great athlete and charismatic figure who was also a notorious womanizer whose pursuit of sex and alcohol undoubtedly forced an early end to his career — and his life. Mantle’s story has often been recounted in fawning detail by the men who admired him.

Leavy, a former writer for the Washington Post, has one winner of a biography to her credit. Her most recent book is the definitive bio on former Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Sandy Koufax. “Sandy Koufax, a Lefty’s Legacy” is one of the top sports biographies of the past 10 years — and it was about very reclusive subject.

Book jacket synopsis: “It is an uncommon biography with literary overtones; not only a portrait  of an icon but an investigation  of memory itself.”

Favorite jacket review blurb: “The only thing about this book that is better than Jane Leavy’s vivid prose is her astonishing reporting.”

4. The Girl who Played with Fire; Stieg Larsson; 630 pages, Vintage Crime

Larssen’s trilogy is something of a publishing phenomenon. Larssen was a reporter and magazine editor in Sweden who deposited the manuscripts with a publisher just before his death in 2004. He never lived to see his wild success, which includes a film adaptation of his first novel, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” He’s widely hailed as among the best of the modern-era crime novelists.

Millions of readers around the world are hooked. The third and final installment, “The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest” remains on most bestseller lists right now.

Book jacket synopsis: “Mikael Blomkvist, crusading publisher of the magazineMillennium, has decieed to run a story that will expose an extensive sex trafficking operation. On the eve of its publication, two people are brutally murdered, and the fingerprints found on the murder weapon belong to his friend, the troubled genius hacker Lisbeth Salander.”

Favorite jacket review blurb: “Like all the great stories of just avengers that populate literature, this trilogy is secretely comforting, making us think that all is not lost in this imperfect and deceitful world or ours”

5. Glory in the Fall: Greatest Moments in World Series History; Peter Golenbock, 398 pages; Union Square

First things first: Peter Golenbock isn’t on my short list of favorite sports non-fiction authors. Far from it. He’s the author of “Personal Fouls,” a book that deservedly took down the troubled coaching tenure of Jim Valvano at N.C. State — but also a book riddled with errors and a good bit of supposition. He’s also the engineer of a weird book about Mantle that portrayed itself as a fictional account of a real person.

It was pretty lame. Actually, make that exceptionally lame.

But on plus side, Golenbock authored the best biography I’ve seen about the late player and manager Billy Martin. I even love the title: “Wild High and Tight.” I think Billy would’ve approved.

Glory in the Fall puts Golenbock on a better path. Administering the work of others — from Eliot Aimof and Roger Kahn to Peter Gammons and Tom Verducci — to tell one story after another about memorable World Series events.

I may save this one for the fall.

‘Zero History,’ by William Gibson, G.P. Putnam and Sons, 404 pages, $26.95.

Trying to pigeonhole author William Gibson is a trickier prospect than Gibson’s own estimable gift for peering around corners and predicting what’s next for global popular culture. In many ways he defies most conventional fiction categories.

That wasn’t the case in 1981 when the South Carolina native cooked up a new term — cyberspace — for something that didn’t really exist yet and has now become a part of the popular lexicon. And it certainly wasn’t true in 1984 when “Neuromancer,” his first novel, announced a new voice in science fiction. A word was even coined to describe Gibson’s work, “cyberfiction.”

Since then, though, Gibson has evolved. Oh, elements of science fiction are certainly still in play. But Gibson has largely outgrown it, branching into areas that seem equal parts spy thriller, action-adventure, industrial drama and psychological examination — with just enough Twittering and references to Macbooks and spy technology to keep the cyberfiction guise alive.

What can be said without hesitation is that he is a noir stylist of the first order, which is what holds his latest novel, “Zero History,” together so well.

In “Zero History,” Gibson returns to familiar turf. Once more he explores the strange world of Belgian industrialist Hubertus Bigend, who isn’t the typical boardroom corporate operator. As in “Pattern Recognition” and “Spook Country,” Gibson’s most recent work, Bigend is the engine that drives a story loaded with espionage, double-dealing, corruption, regret, redemption and rebirth all geared toward finding the coolest clothing on the planet and selling it to the military.

If it sounds implausible, that’s because it is. Gibson’s estimable literary sleight of hand makes it all work.

Bigend heads a conglomerate known as Blue Ant, a European company that seems to operate in the shadows but still in broad daylight. For specific tasks, Bigend assembles crews of specialty freelancers who aren’t typically on the company payroll. They aren’t typical in many other ways either. One is Hollis Henry, a vagabond former rock star from the ‘90s. Bigend puts her together with Milgrim, a one-time Russian translator and drug addict who emerged from a lengthy and troublesome rehab with half a missing life to somehow locate or rebuild. Milgrim himself becomes one of Bigend’s projects and a valuable resource for his ability to notice things others might overlook.

One of the true joys of “Zero History” is Milgrim’s emergence from doe-eyed zombie to a man in charge of his own path and ideas. Bigend is a mystery to Milgrim, and vice-versa.

Eating his croissant, he wondered what Bigend might be up to with designer combat pants. He was a good listener, careful to not let people know it, but Bigend’s motives and modus eluded him. They would seem almost aggressively random.

Gibson’s colorful narrative is too engaging to put down. “Zero History” is full of intriguing observations and unusual descriptions — like Raymond Chandler spit from a time machine.

In the traffic of Marylebone Road, stopping and starting, she kept noticing a dispatch rider, armored in samurai plastics, the back of his yellow helmet scarred as if something feline and huge had swatted him and almost missed, his clumsy looking fiberglass fairing mended with peeling sliver tape. He seemed to keep passing them somehow, rolling forward between lanes. She’d never understood how that worked.

“Zero History,” of course, builds to an illogical conclusion. But that’s OK because the ride is so much fun. It makes you wonder what project Bigend and his crew might take on next.

We’ll see.

“The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine,” Michael Lewis, 2010, W.W. Norton and Co., Inc., 266 pages.

The standard advice for an investigative journalist to “follow the money” has been bandied about so often on movies and TV it’s almost become a cliché.

That doesn’t mean it’s wrong, simply old school. And in a world overwhelmed by information — much of it highly suspect — some old-fashioned digging has never been needed more.

That’s what makes Michael Lewis so invaluable. Perhaps no one in the non-fiction market today can pursue a money trail as well as Lewis who seems to have a unique antenna for what makes something unique or valuable and writing about the people who turned that knowledge into success.

Along the way he seems to find the most surprising things. In his best-selling book “Moneyball,” Lewis uncovered a new way of evaluating baseball talent — a system now used by most Major League teams. His most recent book, “The Blind Side,” revealed a subtle change in strategy employed by professional football coaches to protect their quarterbacks. It revolutionized one position, which led to huge paydays for athletes previously underpaid in relation to their more flashy counterparts.

Now Lewis takes on Wall Street — again — in “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine.”

It’s hard to believe a subject could be timelier. “The Big Short” follows a calamitous two-years on the U.S. stock market, an economic downturn that plunged the nation into a depression and a multi-billion-dollar federal bailout of banks and other financial institutions. Just this month a financial reform package was approved by Congress to try and ensure the misdeeds and wayward calculations leading to the implosion of 2008 won’t be replicated.

Lewis is perhaps the reporter and writer best equipped to tackle this subject. He did, after all, began his career working on the stock market, a job that led him to write his first book, “Liar’s Poker.” It was a tough expose on the often hapless and shoddy practices used and hidden amid the greed, confusion and foolishness at the highest levels of American finance.

In “The Big Short” Lewis goes back to his roots and finds that frighteningly little has changed in a world where people bet billions of dollars with seemingly little clue about how their own machinations actually work or what the ramifications of guessing wrong might be.

In fascinating detail Lewis finds the people who were the big winners when the financial world was rocked to near demise because of a shaky foundation loosely constructed on bad mortgages — something that had become the latest get-rich-quick scheme for investors and their advisers who gleefully and stupidly bankrolled their own demise.

The losers were easy to spot in the wreckage following the collapse of September 2008. It was a who’s who of traditionally powerful Wall Street firms that today either no longer exist or are hopelessly crippled: Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch to name but a few.

The winners were a lot of little guys who spent the previous two years trying to warn everyone of the carnage ahead. And when nothing appeared to change — they bet the other way.

Lewis, who has the ability to make complex subjects easily understood, tells a compelling story not only about high finance, hubris, ignorance and greed but also of the individual people who actually understood what was happening and their combination of excitement and alarm that no one else seemed to be catching on.

The characters on all sides are fascinating in their own ways and Lewis does a stellar job of intermingling them all with a narrative that’s just technical enough but not overwhelming. Readers don’t have to know much about money, hedge funds or investments to enjoy it.

As a result, “The Big Short” provides a clear picture of the events leading up to what will be recalled as one of the significant historical events of this century. Historians will note that the institutions that suffered most had only themselves to blame.

And Lewis provides another reminder of something all should remember. Never assume the person in charge is smart.

The Imperfectionists, By Tom Rachman, The Dial Press (Random House), 2010, 272 pages.

The premise of “The Imperfectionists,” is an impressive one: Quirky characters battle personal demons and professional decline at an English-language newspaper based in Rome. Put in some breathtaking passages about Italy and a few metaphors about the slow death and ultimate demise of print journalism and the potential emerges for a book teeming with cultural significance. It might even become a perceptive and invaluable chronicle of the early part of this century.

Not so fast.

Writer Tom Rachman’s first novel has many of the pieces required to tell a great story but the former foreign correspondent for the Associated Press and editor of the International Herald Tribune in Paris is also missing quite a few more. What there is after about 270 pages of credible prose, then, is a story that doesn’t feel complete — a literary vision only partially fulfilled.

“The Imperfectionists,” a title it’s assumed refers to the main characters and the job they love to hate, is basically the saga of not only a decrepit business, but a disabling way of life. The daily newspaper at the center of the story, generically referred to throughout as “the paper,” isn’t a great publication but it’s not truly a horror either. Founded by a millionaire industrialist for a reason even he’s not clear about, “the paper” bumps along without real reason to exist over decades. Even after the industrialist dies in the early 1960s, his puzzled family members, who live in  Atlanta where the owning company is located, pump just enough money into the enterprise to keep it going in the founder’s memory. Since they have no idea why he started the newspaper to begin with, their goal to keep it afloat is equally murky.

So once more the presses keep rolling for reasons no one is too clear about.

This sets in motion years of inert management from another continent by a succession of the founder’s relatives who have only a vague interest in whether the paper survives or not.

Rachman weaves this tale by focusing each chapter on a different character associated with “the paper.” The chapters are punctuated with a short italicized synopsis of how the newspaper began and key points in its history.

It’s a narrative device that could work if only the characters were more fully developed. What Rachman delivers are the usual eccentrics fairly common to newspapers: Fresh-faced reporter wannabes who have no idea what they’re doing and given no direction; egomaniacal freelancers; burned out reporters relegated to obituary writing; workaholic editors who never seem to leave the building; and embittered copy editors who both long to be fired but are desperate to stay at their desks.

Imperfect people in an imperfect world operating in an imperfect job where perfection is expected each day.

 Rachman’s writing style is engaging and “The Imperfectionists” is a breezy read with one or two fascinating plot twists. But in the end it feels much lighter than it should be — as if so much more could be said.

Sort of like a newspaper.

Kitchen Confidential, Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, Anthony Bourdain, Harper Collins, 312 pages. UPDATED EDITION, includes 22 more pages of interviews and excerpts from other books by Bourdain.

This is why it pays to check the bargain table at Barnes and Noble.

A couple of months ago I made nighttime pass through the massive bookstore at Alamance Crossing and found “Kitchen Confidential” on the buy three, get one free table. I’d seen Anthony Bourdain in his role as host of “No Reservations” on the Travel Channel and knew the man would eat some seriously strange food. His yearly caustic romps on the Bravo reality show “Top Chef” let me know he has a singular wit — one that can cut like a paring knife. Apparently he’s one helluva chef, too.

But I had no idea that “Kitchen Confidential” with the subtitle “Adventures in the Culinary Underworld” would be the funniest nonfiction book I’ve read since Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, 1972.” And Thompson had Nixon to work with. Nothing beats great material.

While  Bourdain doesn’t have Nixon to kick around, he does offer the kind of riotous observations and pungent commentary that sticks with you for a long time. Who knew cooks could be so,well, crazed?

Bourdain, now chef-at-large for Les Halles in New York, was hardly famous when “Kitchen Confidential” was first published in 2000. The book would be life-changing, vaulting him from working chef to something all in the restaurant world covet or detest — celebrity chef. The updated paperback includes a new afterward by Bourdain, outlining what’s happened since “Kichen Confidential” rocked the restaurant world not only in America but globally. A lenghy question and answer session is also included in which Bourdain talks about changes in restaurants, dining out, why chefs eat better than anyone else and the growth of the celebrity chef industry.

In many ways, he says, the food business is a better one today than the one he wrote about in 2000.

It would have to be.

Equal parts autobiography, confessional and cultural expose, Bourdain describes a murky world populated by clueless owners, mob bosses, drug-addled, alcoholic and egomanical chefs, drug-dealing sous chefs, Ecuadorian line cooks, illegal alien dishwashers, psychotic bread savants, culinary school washouts and thieving bartenders. Bourdain is quite comfortable with all of that. In fact, he is one of them — a former heroin-using, boozing wretch who worked endless hours often disolving into madness.

Food is the bond that ties these frayed pieces together. And even that isn’t always enough when the bills come due and not enough plates are going out the door.

Bourdain’s path starts him at a pretty standard seafood restaurant in a tourist town to culinary school and then to New York where he moves from one place to another working his way up the line. He careens from one hilarious adventure to another as he navigates the quirky people drawn to a job that starts at 10 in the morning and often doesn’t end until the last bars are closed.

“Kitchen Confidential” lives up to its name in every way. While Bourdain didn’t set out to be a whistle-blower on some pretty shoddy food and business practices, he finds them anyway. It’s a riot to read but also a warning for unsuspecting diners. For example, if fish is the special on Monday, avoid it. In fact, steer clear of fine-dining restaurants on Monday as a general practice. It’s leftover day. And chefs at fine dining establishments save the best specials for Tuesday through Thursday, preferring not to waste their efforts on less discriminating weekend customers.

Anyone serious about dining out should read it and not only be delighted but educated.

Bourdain may indeed be the Hunter S. Thompson of food. If so, then that’s a good thing for the restaurant world. Someone needs to be the one to say filet migon, lobster and truffle oil are overrated.

Now if I could just find his other books on the bargain table …

I was talking to a friend the other day about books and authors and the name Larry Brown came up. I hadn’t thought about Larry Brown in a long time — and I should. In fact anyone who loves Southern fiction that’s spare and true ought to think about Larry Brown every day.

Brown, who died of a heart attack at age 53 in 2004, left Mississippi with lots more to accomplish and a good deal of unfulfilled promise. He was a late starter, a literary force of nature and he was taken too quickly. “The Rabbit Factory” is the last Brown book I read, back in 2008 while on vacation in Nags Head. But I think it’s time to revisit a few others in my library — starting with the book that began my irrestitable attraction to his work, “Big Bad Love.”

The Rabbit Factory, By Larry Brown, Touchstone, 339 pages.

The late Larry Brown emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s as one of the finest Southern novelists of the past two decades. No one, not even the esttimable Harry Crews, writes about chain-smoking, beer-drinking, hard-scrabble southerners quite the Larry Brown used to.

Brown, a firefighter who became a writer because he really had no other choice, announced as much with a collection of short stories called “Big Bad Love” in the 1980s. The tales captured the ultimate truths and often sad choices that men and women in rural Mississippi face daily. He followed that with the novels “Joe” and “Dirty Work” are modern classics about relationships, moral bankruptcy and the wages of war. Often wrongly compared to fellow Mississippian William Faulkner, Brown’s great achievement were stories told directly with simple prose.

“Rabbit Factory,” published after Brown’s death in 2004, continues down that path but also appears to be Brown’s great effort to leave a lasting legacy in Southern fiction.

Using an all-too-common plot device of interwoven tales, Brown concocts a strange campfire stew of ner’do-wells, sad crooks, dreamers, drifters, drinkers and those with uncomplicated minds suddenly thrust into situations where complicated issues must be resolved — and quickly.

At least three storylines might be able to stand alone as novellas or short stories. But strewn together as a ragged tapestry there are too many holes.

As always, though, Brown delivers quality writing and characters that can’t be  ignored. A few might even gnaw at the back of your brain for a spell.

Other fiction by Larry Brown

Big Bad Love
Joe
Dirty Work
Facing the Music
Fay

Essays
Billy Ray’s Farm

Non-fiction
On Fire