This Friday, December 15, is the last day to order from Amazon.com using free Super Saver Shipping and still receive books in time for Christmas giving. So I’m gonna put aside my regular look at the New York Times bestseller list this week and instead point out some matching sets of books perfect for readers of your list.

Today: books for conspiracy buff
Tuesday: celebrating the season
Wednesday: armchair traveling
Thursday: on the lookout for UFOs and strange creatures
Friday: lost classics of literature


Trauma Room One: The JFK Medical Coverup Exposed, by Charles A. Crenshaw, MD, and J. Gary Shaw — Cosimo’s Book of the Month for December — finally reveals the secrets that the doctors who tried to save President John F. Kennedy at Parkland Hospital in November of 1963 agreed, either out of respect or fear, not to publish. Crenshaw, one of the Dallas surgeons who worked on JFK, here relates what he never had to opportunity to tell the Warren Commission and explores the new medical disclosures and discoveries that have emerged on the startling medical cover-up of the JFK assassination.

The Prankster and the Conspiracy: The Story of Kerry Thronley and How He Met Oswald and Inspired the Counterculture, by Adam Gorightly, is a fascinating look at one of the 1960s counterculture’s most fascinating characters. Kerry Wendell Thornley — a writer, philosopher, Zen dishwasher, enlightened prankster, and, possibly, an Oswald double with disturbing ties to the Kennedy assassination — was a lifelong provocateur linked to many of the fringe elements of the time. He helped create the spoof religion called the Discordian Society and its tract, the Principia Discordia. He coined the term “paganism” to describe various nature religions. And he befriended Robert Anton Wilson, inspired the “Illuminatus,” and gave his anarchic support to the “Bavarian Illuminati,” a brilliant prank.

In Gonzo Science, science commentators Jim and Allen Richardson expose the fault lines in modern science, remove the linchpins of established theories, resolve anomalies, and present alternatives to mainstream assumptions. The Richardson brothers investigate: theories that threaten the Big Bang; evidence of an exploded planet in our solar system; what really causes UFOs; why life on Earth may have evolved from outer space; the misuse of science that creates nuclear waste and genetically modified foods; how the community of professional skeptics has gone wrong; cutting-edge research in astronomy, plasma physics, biology, archaeology, cold fusion, consciousness, and history; and more. More faithful than the believers and more skeptical than the skeptics, they’re funny, too.

Misdiagnosed: Was My Wife a Casualty of America’s Medical Cold War? is journalist A. Robert Smith’s examination of the mysteries surrounding the death of his wife, Jane. Her death certificate states that she died of “metastatic carcinoma of unknown primary,” medical lingo for a cancer whose source remains a mystery, but that explanation fails to reveal how Jane was placed in harm’s way by health-care practitioners who belittle one another’s valuable skills, refuse to cooperate, misdiagnose (or make no attempt to diagnose), and who believe that their treatment plan is the only plan, thereby putting the patient at risk. This poignant story, told through Jane’s private journals, is a cautionary tale for everyone caught in the crossfire of America’s medical “cold war.”

Catholics at a Crossroads: Coverup, Crisis, and Cure, by Eileen P. Flynn, is the story of the greatest crisis ever to face the Catholic Church: the sexual molestation of minors by priests and the way the church hierarchy tried to cover up the situation, endangering more children in the process. Once it became common knowledge in 2002, the ugly reality of a dysfunctional institution corrupted by the complicity of cardinals and bishops in the sins of a relatively small number of molesting priests has brought a powerful institution to disgrace. Unable to postpone coping with this tragic reality, its leaders have been forced to begin the recovery process. But will it go far enough? More than 60 million people in the U.S. are in a position to choose to let the church be or to demand changes. Here is a penetrating analysis of how the unthinkable happened and what exactly the Catholic Church needs to do to remedy the situation.

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