Every so often a book comes out that, at first glance, just screams to be read. The Plot to Kill God by Paul Froese is one of those books, not only for its arresting title but because of its subject; the Soviet Union's attempt to remove religion from its society. The problem is the book doesn't hold up to its promise. The book dithers between settling down as either a history or a sociological study of the issue, chooses neither and proceeds to try and sit in the no mans land in between, sucking out almost any useful value it could have had. While the book does maintain some use, it's sorely lacking in every field and simply not worth the read, to say nothing of buying it.

Every now and again, a book comes along that uncovers hidden lines of communication, that explores the strange synchronicities that are practically the definition of that bit of wisdom that reminds us that truth is stranger than fiction. The uncrowned king of such secret history no doubt remains Greil Marcus, whose Lipstick Traces is a tour of the bizarre web that runs from late medieval heresies to the bleeding edges of punk rock. The new book Apocalypse Jukebox written by David Janssen and Edward Whitelock follows along similar lines, beginning with the edges of the religious imagination and diving into the heart of popular music to uncover meanings that we've all been singing about for years without knowing.

The cast of characters ranges from the usual suspects, like Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, to musicians not normally considered part of the apocalyptic tradition, including Sleater-Kinney, Devo and Green Day. In American Idiot, for instance, Janssen and Whitelock find an apocalypse of drowning in the ordinary, of a culture closer to Huxley's Brave New World than the Who's teenage wasteland.

News Director Robert Glass interviews author Remy Stern on his book But Wait... There's More, a history of the infomercial business. Along the way they discuss the origin of Infomercials, infomercial scams, Kevin Trudeau, the Home Shopping Network, and much more.

For more information on But Wait... There's More you can read the WHRW News review of the book here or you can visit the publisher's website for more information.

At approximately 10:30 this morning a shooting spree occurred at the American Civic Association building in Binghamton, New York where immigrants are educated on the citizenship process. There are 14 confirmed dead, including the gunman, identified as 41-year-old Jiverly Wong.

Wong entered the building at approximately 10:30 AM Friday morning, with two handguns, a 9 millimeter with extended clip and a .45 caliber, and a satchel of ammunition and what appeared to be survival gear. He had previously blocked the back door of the ACA building with a borrowed car. Upon entering the building, Wong fired upon the two receptionists, killing one and severely wounding the other. According to Zikuski, “Shooter just came in and shot her” and that the gunman was “no stranger to the Civil Association.” The wounded receptionist managed to crawl under a desk where she proceeded to call the authorities, according to Police Chief Joseph Zikuski. Police arrived within two minutes of the call, with Zikuski arriving just a minute afterwards.

The gunman who went on a shooting spree at the American Civil Association building in Binghamton, New York is dead, according to police reports.

The man was 42-year-old Jiverly Voong, a Johnson City resident who had recently been laid off from IBM. Armed, not with the assault rifle of Binghamton Mayor Matt Ryan's description, but with two handguns, and blocking the back door with his car, he walked into the ACA's front door and began shooting at around 10:30 am today, taking more than 40 people in the building hostage. After a long standoff with police, the gunman reportedly took his own life. The event brought a massive force of police from the Binghamton area, including a SWAT team of sharpshooters, a bomb squad, and an FBI hostage negotiator.

State officials are currently saying that there are a total of fourteen people dead, including the gunman, with at least six to twelve people taken to area hospitals. Gov. Paterson himself will be in Binghamton for a press conference at 5:00.

“The Shape of Things,” written by Neil LaBute and directed by Fred Weiss, showed in Fine Arts Studio A Friday and Saturday night with a matinee on Sunday, It is the story a nerdy but sweet English student, Adam (Jason Kaplowitz), who falls for a sophisticated art student, Evelyn (Rebecca Cohen), who transforms him into a stylish and confident stud. As we follow his transformation, we witness the unsure responses of Adam’s two friends, fiancés Philip (CJ Buckle) and Jenny (Kourtney Smith).

The play poses questions pertaining to the nature of art. What is the relationship between art and society? Between art and sex? But “Shape” makes no headway at any point in attempting to illuminate any of this. The closest is comes is in one of Adam’s speeches: “When Picasso took a shit, he didn't call it art. He knew the difference. That's what made him Picasso.” Nice try.

Adam and Evelyn meet in front of a statue of God in a gallery. He’s the security guard, she’s about to deface the statue. The whole thing reeks of artificiality. It’s irritating cute, and rings false.

Judicial Review. Two words which encapsulate the primary purpose of the Supreme Court. In some ways it is the most powerful of the three branches of our government. Yet, by contrast, at its inception it was almost powerless, overlooked by all and confined to a small conference room in the buildings of another department. John Jay once referred to the court as “This great Abortion” and alleged that it would never grow to the power necessary for it to have meaning. Cliff Sloan and David McKean’s The Great Decision: Jefferson, Adams, Marshall, and the Battle for the Supreme Court is an excellent examination of the one court case that catapulted the Supreme Court from obscurity into national prominence.

Hundreds of pages of books have been dedicated to Iran in recent years. Most of them follow in the vein of the execrable Robert Baer book The Devil We Know or Ali Ansari's average Confronting Iran, viewing Iran solely through its interactions with the United States and its neighbors. Iran's history is reduced to buzzwords, Mossadeq, the Shah, Ayatollah Khomeini and more show up, but only as character actors playing a predetermined part, and then wandering back into the scenery of the stage. As for actual histories of Iran, they are few and far between. In the past ten years there have been, perhaps, half a dozen general histories of Modern Iran, no histories of the Iran-Iraq War, no biographies of the Shah, and only two biographies of Ayatollah Khomeini. This made Gholam Reza Afkhami's biography of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, The Life and Times of the Shah, a potentially groundbreaking and fantastic book. Instead, it's average, barely, with its horrendous flaws standing out in sharp contrast the subtleties of its successes. Worth reading, perhaps, but not for the reasons that would be expected.

There's a curiously large genre of books that's hard to describe. They're non-fiction and describe an aspect of the modern world, but are not serious enough in subject or approach to be considered current affairs books. On the other hand, they're too serious, though humorous all the same, to be considered humor books. It's a large and overpopulated genre, and because of its broad, and yet not truly serious, nature it's hard for any book in it to truly stand out. However, But Wait... There's More by Remy Stern, is a fantastically magnificent book in its own right and is one of the best to ever come out of the genre.

The Sens Army Blogcast: Week 5.