Snap Judgement

Countless drive-by chroniclers have taken potshots at Paraguay, a quirky land with a penchant for pompous and bloody leaders. Now comes Gimlette, a British lawyer and travel writer, whose giddy romp renders this landlocked South American nation part Dachau, part Disney World. Gimlette writes well, but this is a pretty pen in service to a dark mind: cannibals, tin-horn tyrants, whisky priests and errant gringos, served up with heaps of British public-school flippancy. This isn't Paraguay, warts and all. It's all warts.

--Mac Margolis

Protestant Boy

by Geoffrey Beattie

In this honest, insightful memoir, Beattie revisits the North Belfast area in which he grew up, the notorious "murder triangle" where more than 600 people were killed during the Troubles. A psychology professor now living in Manchester, the author draws upon his training to explore his Ulster Protestant past, weaving together vivid stories of his family's history--his grandfather's experiences in the trenches of the Somme, his mother's stubborn quirks--with the violence that unfolded outside his childhood home. Beattie's enlightening memoir becomes our own window into the hearts and minds of a community drenched in blood.

--Sarah Sennott