Bibliomania

Jesse Sublett

Year
1. The Night Inspector: A Novel by Frederick Busch
2. Angels Flight by Michael Connelly
3. The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead
4. Borderlands by James Carlos Blake
5. Bad Men: Outlaws & Gunfighters of the Old West by Bob Boze Bell
6. Red Devil: To Hell and Back With Cancer by Katherine Russell Rich
7. Interstate Dreams by Neal Barrett Jr.
8. Tomcat in Love by Tim O'Brien (Paperback version published in 1999)
9. Conversations With Wilder by Cameron Crowe
10. Marking the Sparrow's Fall: The Making of the American West by Wallace Stegner (Paperback version published in 1999)

Decade
1. The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition by Caroline Alexander
2. The West of Billy the Kid by Frederick Nolan
3. Comeback by Richard Stark
4. Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson by Robert Polito
5. Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West by Stephen Ambrose
6. Empty Quarter by David Marion Wilkinson
7. Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches From the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz
8. The Black Echo by Michael Connelly
9. Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson
10. Liquor, Guns & Ammo by Kent Anderson

Desert Island
1. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
2. Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command by Andrew Gordon
3. The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett
4. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
5. Cockfighter by Charles Willeford
6. In the Rogue Blood by James Carlos Blake
7. Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje
8. Billy the Kid: The Bibliography of a Legend by J.C. Dykes
9. Birds of America by John James Audubon (first edition)
10. Boiled in Concrete by Jesse Sublett

Maybe you're a very hip book fiend, or maybe John Grisham lights your fire and you only buy books in mall stores or racks at the airport next to the Chee-tos, but I'm telling you right now, the world is a much hipper place today because of a very small press called Dennis McMillan Publications. In the last decade and a half of the 20th century, by publishing deluxe limited edition volumes or limited-run trade editions, Dennis McMillan has helped ignite (or revive, in some cases) the careers of important, incredibly hip writers like Frederick Brown (The Freak Show Murders), Howard Browne (Halo in Brass), Leigh Brackett (No Good From a Corpse), Kent Anderson (Night Dogs), and Ken Harrington (Dia de Los Muertos). McMillan was also keenly instrumental in boosting the profile of the late, extremely great Charles Willeford, by having the guts and brains to publish Willeford's absurdist classics like Kiss Your Ass Good-bye and New Forms of Ugly. He also recently reprinted The Difference, Willeford's long out-of-print western (originally issued by Crown in 1971 as Hombre From Sonora, by "Will Charles"). With even more great, vital new titles on the way, including a Willeford collection called Writing and Other Blood Sports, it looks to be a McMillan millennium ahead. To find out more or to order books, check out the Web site for Dennis McMillan Publications: http://www.dennismcmillan.com/.