Hale Storm: The Incredible Saga of Baltimore's Ed Hale, Including a Secret Life with the CIA

I thoroughly enjoy nonfiction, especially humorous essays and memoirs. Last Call at the 7-Eleven is a collection of selected columns written by Kevin Cowherd, a nationally-syndicated humorist and sports writer for The Baltimore Sun. What a hilarious read! Kevin Cowherd's essays run the gamut and had me laughing out loud as I zipped through this snappy number. Each essay is only a few pages-originally published individually in a newspaper column format in The Baltimore Sun-and were like snack-sized bits of humor. I giggled my way through columns with titles like "That Barney is Such a Reptile" and "Real Men Don't Wear Pajamas". One of my favorites, "Surgeons Good Enough for Celebrities", brought up a salient point-the American public tends to "measure surgeons...(by the) famous patients they have cut open." I'm a huge fan of nonfiction humor writing and really enjoyed this book. Cowherd is witty and hyperobservant. He's still writing for the newspaper, though his focus seems to have shifted to a more sports-based column, I still had a chuckle while reading a recent column. Some of the references in this book are pretty dated-it was published back in 1995 and the columns were culled from over 1200 written from the late 80s to the mid-90s. Cowherd also has a tendency to repurpose some of his favorite sayings and metaphors, but I'm guilty of that myself. The book is a breezy read that packs a humorous punch on scores of topics. You can read a few columns here and there without a huge committment; the book lends itself to that reading style.