The Secret Parts of Fortune: Three Decades of Intense Investigations and Edgy Enthusiasms

A blast! A quirky and original series of reports on subjects both profound and bizarre. But with a literate eye and a graceful tone that is engaging and riviting. These are terrific essays and together, they comprise a dazzling read.As good as it gets.

I have to confess being unfamiliar with Ron Rosenbaum until reading his excellent, perceptive book "Explaining Hitler." What a pleasure, then, that he has followed that book up with this collection of his magazine work extending over the past three decades. The essays collected here are a mixed bag showing Rosenbaum's extensive range, from amusing short pieces to long works in depth. Some personal favorites include his early exploration of the world of phone phreaks (in which Rosenbaum predicted, correctly, that computer hacking was the wave of the future - this in 1971!), his exposure of the Henry Lee Lucas serial killer hoax, his slightly crazed looks at TV culture via the war over canned laughter and the eminence of Mr. Whipple in toilet paper advertising, a short but incredibly horrible glimpse of early 60s teen film star Troy Donahue debauched and decrepit in the early 70s, his explorations into the world of the Kennedy assassination mythos, a brief, horrified look at Bill Gates' house, and his wonderful exposure of Yale's weird Skull and Bones fraternity. Every piece is well worth your time and several are worthy of close rereading. Rosenbaum is a fine writer, improving continuously as this collection shows (and he started at a very high level), and I'll be looking for his magazine pieces from now on.

Ron Rosenbaum got a lot of attention a couple of years ago with his amazing book "Explaining Hitler", which was about all the different theories people have come up with to account for that figure's almost overwhelming evil. However, he has been writing journalism for thirty years that explores the hidden underside of contemporary culture--the "gnostic knowledge", if you will, of the modern world. This book is a thick, satisfying collection of much of that work. Some of the best stuff: an exploration of Kim Philby and the information about him that Graham Greene might have taken to his death. An amusing expose of the naked "posture photos" that used to be required of every freshman at Ivy League universities. His Hitler essay that first appeared in the "New Yorker" magazine. The inside poop on the secret society of "Skull and Bones." There is also a lot of terrific "literary journalism"--the best essay I've ever read on J.D. Salinger, which first appeared in "Esquire"; along with his famous take on the underappreciated Charles Portis, which got his books back into print. Also, perceptive stuff on Martin Amis and an explanation of how the lost art of the "close reading" of the old-fashioned "New Critics" is better than post-modernism at explaining the world. Rosenbaum is definitely *not* a conspiracy theorist; his real subject is how human beings respond to mystery. He contrasts his own shifting views on the JFK asassination ("Oswald's Ghost") with the fatal paranoia that eventually overcame the late Danny Casolaro. This is an endlessly fascinating book--highly recommended for mystery lovers, history buffs, and fans of the weird and unexplained.

Not that Ron Rosenbaum is exactly "new": he's been one of the better US magazine journalists for 2 or 3 decades now. This is a collection of some of his best pieces from the 70's through the present. One of them, "Secrets of the Little Blue Box," changed my life profoundly when I read it in Esquire in 1973; it and the other pieces from the 70's ("Troy Donahue is what he always was," notably) paint a vivid portrait of that strange time. All of the pieces in the book, investigative and opinion alike, are well thought out and display the author's erudition and clear thinking.Over all, the best pieces in this collection reminded me of no less than Joan Didion's "The White Album" and "Slouching Towards Bethlehem." Unlike Joan Didion, Rosenbaum has not yet (and never will, one hopes) veered off into writing schlocky Hollywood melodramas. His later pieces are as sharp as the earliest ones, and all (well, almost all) will hold your attention as well as, or better than, the latest from le Carré.