I heard about this crazy book at the tail end of an episode of NPR’s ‘Fresh Air’ and I almost missed out on it, since I thought it was going to be all ads loaded up at the end of the podcast.

The bulk of the episode featured journalist Anne Applebaum; a conversation about her new book “Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine” on Stalin’s forced collectivization and the resulting famine in Ukraine that killed millions and was intended to break the spirit of Ukrainian nationalism while strengthening the USSR.  Throughout this period Stalin killed, by some estimates, more people then the Holocaust, and it was largely ignored or hidden from the rest of the world, and effectively erased from history until the fall of the Soviet Union.

Once I finish “Red Famine”, I’ll probably have to pick up “The Obama Inheritance”, a collection of fifteen short stories that cover a variety of insane topics.  The story goes that each author was told to dive into the astounding number of and astoundingly stupid conspiracy theories centering around President Obama and his administration, and pick out their favorite one to go to town on.

I wish ‘Fresh Air’ had spent more time on this book what with the time traveling secret agents, Supreme Court judges who can clone themselves, kung fu androids out for justice, a race of ancient lizard people, and humans coexisting with dinosaurs.  This collection sounds bizarre, quirky, fantastic, outlandish and all the more ridiculous because there are probably more than a few Trump supporters and Fox News fans that will cite these stories as verifiable historical accounts.

I hope these end up attaining a Philip K. Dick meets Ishmael Reed rolled up with some Buckaroo Bonzai levels of entertainment.  In short, these stories sound pretty awesome and from just the few minutes ‘Fresh Air’ was able to spend teasing the collection.

Plus it’s short stories, and we all know that’s about I can handle right now. And I mean… lizard men.