New Book - Reckless Road by Marc Canter

I finished Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude by Robert Baer, and I would highly recommend it for anyone who's interested in why America's relationship with the Middle East is so fucked up. It was a fascinating book, often detailing Baer's firsthand accounts from when he was in the CIA. The blind eye we have when it comes to Saudi Arabia is pretty infuriating.

I have now moved on to Reckless Road: Guns N' Roses and the Making of Appetite for Destruction by Marc Canter. I'm about 30 pages in, and I can already proclaim it a must-have for any Guns N' Roses fan. Canter -- whose family owns the famous Canter's Deli in LA -- grew up with Slash and, sensing early on that Slash was something special, documented pretty much everything in Slash's rise to prominence. The book has a TON of pictures from early gigs, shows, rehearsals, etc., as well as concert posters, flyers, ticket stubs, set lists, etc., and not only for GNR, but also for the various bands that the members of GNR were in beforehand. The book also has first-person narratives from the various members of the band, as well as friends and former band members. Not only that, but the book is available at www.enhancedbooks.com, which has videos and audio interviews that correspond with -- and enhance, if you will -- many of the pages in the book. So far so good.