Ill Advised

Kept him from ever running for the presidency, and certainly should have kept him from running for reelection. Ferrell discusses possible cover-ups in the presidencies of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, and leaves readers to draw their own conclusions about George Bush's arrhythmic heart and the possibility of Dan Quayle as sudden, accidental president of the United States. As the 1992 election campaign heats up, some commentators are already watching for Bush's.

ALA Best Fiction for Young Adults * New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age A riveting, scorching—and hilarious—autobiography by the award-winning author of Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes and Deadline. From trying to impress a member of the girls’ softball team (with disastrous dental results) to enduring the humiliation of his high school athletic club initiation (olives and oysters play unforgettable roles), Chris Crutcher’s memoir of the tricky road to adulthood is candid, disarming, laugh-out-loud funny, relevant, and never less than riveting. He vividly describes a temper that was always waiting to trip him up even as it sustained him through some of the most memorable mishaps any child has survived. And how did this guy (he lifted his brother’s homework through the entire tenth grade) ever become a writer, not to mention the author of fourteen critically acclaimed books for young people? The frontier may be mild, but the book is not. Fans of Tara Westover’s Educated, Jack Gantos’s Hole in My Life, and Walter Dean Myers’s Bad Boy will laugh, will cry, and will remember. “Funny, bittersweet and brutally honest. Readers will clasp this hard-to-put-down book to their hearts even as they laugh sympathetically.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)