Perhaps all of Jonathan Ames’ problems–and the genesis of this hilarious book–can be traced back to the late onset of his puberty. After all it can’t be easy to be sixteen with a hairless “undistinguishable from that of a five year old’s.”

This wonderfully entertaining memoir is a touching and humorous look at life in New York City. But this is life for an author who can proclaim “my first sexual experience was rather old-fashioned: it was with a prostitute”–an author who can talk about his desire to be a model for the Hair Club for Men and about meeting his son for the first time.

Often insightful, sometimes tender, always witty and self-deprecating, What’s Not to Love? is an engaging memoir from one of our most funny, most daring writers.

Brad Orville has always wanted hair – lots of it, preferably thick and wavy – but he started going bald in the seventh grade. What makes it worse is the fact that his smart and charming brother Compton has a full head of gorgeous locks, still going strong as they enter middle age. But then Compton suffers a traumatic brain injury and Brad must take care of him 24/7. Yet Compton – even in his addled state – seems to somehow thrive, marrying the woman of his dreams, Peaches, while Brad turns to booze, Internet dating, and a toupee for solace. Happiness however might be a lot closer than Brad ever imagined, and it doesn’t even involve fake hair.

Brad Orville has always wanted hair – lots of it, preferably thick and wavy – but he started going bald in the seventh grade. What makes it worse is the fact that his smart and charming brother Compton has a full head of gorgeous locks, still going strong as they enter middle age. But then Compton suffers a traumatic brain injury and Brad must take care of him 24/7. Yet Compton – even in his addled state – seems to somehow thrive, marrying the woman of his dreams, Peaches, while Brad turns to booze, Internet dating, and a toupee for solace. Happiness however might be a lot closer than Brad ever imagined, and it doesn’t even involve fake hair.

This book is a management manual with particular emphasis on the control of projects across all sectors of government, civil society and industry. It covers the gamut through planning, organization, responsibility, communication, contracts and montoring.

This book is a provocative tale of one burning, passionate woman (C.C Brighton) who grappled murderously with her humanity, her faith, lust and some demons. Her love for God explodes on the pages in equal proportions as the memories of sexual encounters drip from the pages. Will she conquer the demons that she fights or not?

Is this what the Koran is all about?

With the Koran as their legal and moral justification, the Taliban executed women and girls in soccer stadiums. Anonymous in oppressive burqas - invisible in life, invisible in death - brought into the stadium in the back of pick-up trucks and forced to kneel on the ground, then shot in the back of the head to the obvious pleasure of the bearded young and old men milling around and shouting Allahu Akbar, God is Great.

Scenes from a soccer stadium in Kabul after the Taliban took power.

A sixteen year old Iranian girl from the town of Neka is hung from a crane and agonizes for more than forty-five minutes, the movements in her black burqa, the only indication that inside that black sack-like robe an innocent girl is slowly choking to death. The town's people looking up at that obscene garment, sealed at the top with a hangman's knot that is slowly strangling the struggling teenager, sob and condemn the Mullahs - Islamic scholars, interpreters of the Koran - for condemning the young girl to this horrible, lingering death. The girl's crime ... having pre-marital sex.

Scenes from Iran, 2004

"Look, teacher," a child cried out during a school evacuation as flames exploded out of the twin towers, "The birds are on fire." The birds, human beings jumping to their death to escape the fire that was consuming them courtesy of young Muslim men whose leader Muhammad Atta claimed would be rewarded by the God of the Koran with virgins by the score once their killing work, in His name, was done.

Scenes from New York, September 11, 2001

Read Pain, Pleasure and Prejudice
and make up your own mind.