In the mids 80s, Monty Python’s Graham Chapman wrote his autobiography. He titled it A Liar’s Autobiography, and the preface was by the six co-authors. Now, Derek DelGaudio has published his own, called Amoralman, a chain of memoirs about people who lie, cheat and steal, as well as magicians who simply deceive. Spot the difference?

DelGaudio’s story is much more cohesive. It is a very well-constructed collection of memories, often introduced by mysterious stories that later play into the memoir and are thereby explained. He keeps the reader’s interest, because really, no one ever knows where this is going.

DelGaudio was/is the product of a broken marriage. He lacked drive, ambition and persistence. No friends, no relatives, a gay mother, and an unsociable loner. That is until he discovered magic and a magicians’ store. He was so enamored of it all he practiced until he was a polished expert, and took a job at the store, impressing customers and getting them to buy their own. Never finished high school. …

Black Magic is an attitude that successful American Blacks all seem to have in profusion and variations. According to Chad Sanders in Black Magic, it can be many different things, from drive to perseverance to empathy to connections. In his delightful and wide-ranging collection of interviews and personal memoirs, Sanders develops the concept of Black Magic into a very real strategy that make the difference in Black careers. It is a fascinating and most worthwhile investment to make –for them and for readers.

Growing up Black in America can be torture. Good parents find they must teach their children to twist themselves into numerous contortions to avoid trouble, from beatings to arrests to death. Blacks have to be extra careful, extra aware, and extra vigilant. They must instantly evaluate every word and gesture from whites, and find a way to dress and speak that works in their particular situations. It’s a crazy way to live, but if they can master all the necessary tricks, they can develop tools that leverage their own talents. They have turned their blackness into a concrete advantage. …

The pandemic has given the people of the world an(other) opportunity to pivot. It could be the opportunity to get together over issues in common. It could be the opportunity to alter the paths mankind and the nations of the world have been blindly rolling down. John Feffer has put together a whole congress of activists from all over the world. In The Pandemic Pivot, they add comments from their specialties and how things have unraveled for their concerns because of the pandemic. Their eloquent opinions are a common sense, sensible and often profound analysis of the state of society. It is a delightfully different kind of book, a sort of informal report card by expert watchers and witnesses. …

The history of Central America is the history of outside interference and destruction. It began with the Spanish invaders, the reason Columbus Day is a day of mourning throughout the region. In the first 150 years, the Spanish oversaw a reduction in population from 5–6 million to just 600,000 by 1800. In Aviva Chomsky’s Central America’s Forgotten History, the mistreatment of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua are all different, a cornucopia of tactics that have kept them all violent, vile and oppressive — just the way America wanted it. It’s a horrifying, if comprehensive run through the descent of a once balanced society into violence, poverty and constant fear. It is a story of murder, slaughter, torture and dispossession. …

Nothing is forever. Every society turns over, just like every empire and religion and being. In Samuel Cohn’s All Societies Die, the idea is to learn what makes that happen at the societal level. For me at least, it doesn’t work.

The book attempts to list all the many factors that might cause a society to fall, fail or fade away. Cohn talks about the fall of the Roman Empire, which lasted nearly 800 years. It had been defending itself from outsiders and rebellions for centuries, but the rot was likely from within. …

Bellingcat is a lovely invented word that perfectly describes a new discipline- tracking down the hidden truth and lassoing the culprits — the powerful — using open source data. In We Are Bellingcat, founder Eliot Higgins tells the remarkable and always fascinating — when not totally gripping — story of how it came to be, how it found itself front and center on the world stage, and how it achieved its numerous, significant accomplishments. It’s an exciting book, because all of their campaigns will be familiar to all readers. …

True environmentalists don’t buy into The Green New Deal. They think all the encouraging words from other environmentalists are bright green lies. Because at bottom, all the positive noises are simply a sop to industrialized society and the giant industries that run it. And according to Bright Green Lies, the book, it’s all about maintaining the current opulent lifestyle, and continuing to destroy the planet. No sacrifices will be made that might slow the consumer economy.

This dramatic, sane and passionate book lays out the lies with evidence like simple math and direct observation. It is a straightforward deconstruction of things like “renewable” energy, “sustainable” agriculture and pointless optimism that it is not too late if mankind would just take any kind of action right now. The book is wide-ranging and constantly challenging of common knowledge and perceptions. …

Raunch culture is a self-explanatory term Bernadette Barton uses to describe the decline and fall of the USA in The Pornification of America. It means women are subservient and mere objects, men rule, and they are gauche, vile, rude, crude and cruel about it. Images of naked and near women are everywhere. And under the Trump administration, all this has become uncontroversial, normal, accepted and expected. It is the patriarchy gone wild.

It makes for a fast-paced, constantly evolving challenge of a book. …