A higher loyalty Truth, lies, and leadership

Note to self By Gayle King. Read by a cast that includes Oprah Winfrey, Jane Fonda, Jimmy AUDIO Carter and Chelsea Handler. (Simon & Schuster Audio.) King organized a parade of the famous, from John Lewis to Kermit the Frog, to write letters to their younger selves, offering the wisdom that age has won them - read by the equally famous, a higher loyalty By James Comey. Read by the author. (Macmillan Audio.) The former F.B.I. director reads his own memoir, recounting his now infamous battles with the president. miss subways By David Duchovny. Read by the author and Tea Leoni, with West Duchovny. (Macmillan Audio.) To record the audiobook version of his new novel, Duchovny enlisted the help of his wife and daughter, adding much warmth to the story of a woman whose quest for something more plays out against the backdrop of a technicolor New York City, the favorite sister By Jessica Knoll. Read by Ashlie Atkinson, Jenni Barber and Aja Naomi King. (Simon & Schuster Audio.) A new thriller by the author of "Luckiest Girl Alive" follows a group of backstabbing reality television stars who are so busy competing for social media fame that they don't see the fatal danger lurking in their future, tradition By Brendan Kiely. Read by Alex McKenna and Robbie Daymond. (Listening Library.) This young adult novel tells the story of a new student on a hockey scholarship to an elite prep school. There is sex, love and friendship, and the stumble to figure it all out. "I have a weakness for memoirs, especially those written by journalists. And there are few braver reporters than those who covered the civil rights movement. John N. Herbers was one of those newsmen, first for United Press International and then The New York Times. I have been reading his book, deep south dispatch, which is co-written with his daughter, Anne Farris Rosen. Herbers, who died in 2017, delivers a gripping and painfully vivid account of the mid-20thcentury South and the racial violence that many whites simply did not want to be told about in the pages of the newspaper or hear of on radio and television. But eventually, and thanks in part to activists and reporters such as Herbers, whites in the South and beyond could not turn away. Writing about the 1955 publicity around the trial of Emmett Till, Herbers writes: 'The public reaction to photographs of Till's beaten and bloated body was so visceral that Till may as well have been dangling from a tree on the courthouse lawn.' " - JONATHAN MARTIN, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, ON WHAT HE'S READING.

*Starred Review* For all the preconceptions readers will bring to this hot-button book, it is, first, an origin story of one of just seven men to lead the FBI for more than 3 years over the bureau's 83-year history. (Comey's predecessor, Robert Mueller, had the second-longest tenure, at 12 years, after J. Edgar Hoover's 37.) Bullied as a new kid in elementary school, and scarred by an armed robbery in his family's home as a teen, Comey would launch his career battling wrongdoers as diverse as the New York Mob, Martha Stewart (insider trading), and future U.S. attorney general Alberto Gonzales (warrantless domestic wiretapping), leading ultimately to the FBI directorship in 2013. Comey clearly lays out the high ethical and moral protocols demanded of those who work at the FBI, but his story is also that of an Everyman trying to keep his head above the swirl of misdeeds committed by those in power who should have done better, from Hillary Clinton's reckless use of an email server to former U.S. attorney general Loretta Lynch's ill-advised meeting with Bill Clinton on that tarmac in Phoenix, Anthony Weiner's sexual predilections, and Donald Trump's unceasing efforts to breach the wall separating the Justice Department from White House influence. Comey's responses to those and other events weren't flawless or even always courageous, as the author candidly, almost painfully admits, but they make this compelling, soul-searching account a reminder of just how difficult yet consequential it is, in these or any other times, to do the right thing.--Moores, Alan Copyright 2010 Booklist

The ex-FBI director-whose firing by President Trump, over the FBI's investigation of Russian government interference in the 2016 election, sparked a furor-reopens that case and others in this piercing and candid memoir. Comey revisits conflicts between duty and politics under three presidents: as deputy attorney general, wrangling with the Bush White House over the legality of interrogation procedures such as waterboarding; in a dramatic scene, guarding the hospitalized attorney general John Ashcroft from White House officials' bedside efforts to reauthorize illegal surveillance programs; and overseeing the FBI's probe of Hillary Clinton's emails (he revisits and explains the actions that, it has been claimed, cost her the election). Comey mines his recollections for leadership lessons, with Barack Obama, whom he admires, furnishing the best examples. His damning portrait of Trump, on the other hand, is a study in unethical, off-putting anti-leadership: he likens Trump to a Mafia boss for pressuring him to show personal loyalty and drop the investigation of Trump's national security adviser Michael Flynn, cringes at Trump's defensive and crass denials of claims that he consorted with Russian prostitutes, and "desperately tr[ies] to erase myself from the president's field of vision" at a gathering to avoid Trump's unpleasant schmoozing. This is a troubling and important account of the clash between power and justice. (April) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.