Pg. 69: Ruthanne Lum McCunn's "God of Luck"

The latest entry at the Page 69 Test: Ruthanne Lum McCunn's God of Luck.

About the book, from the author's website:

Ah Lung and his beloved wife, Bo See, are separated by a cruel fate when, like thousands of other Chinese men in the nineteenth century, he is kidnapped, enslaved, and sent to the deadly guano mines off the shore of Peru. Praying to the God of Luck and using their own ingenuity, the couple never loses hope of some day being reunited.

Among the early praise for God of Luck:

"Based on historical events, this novel brings to life a little-known aspect of Chinese history; between 1840 and 1875, close to one million men were stolen from southern China to labor in Latin America. The author does a clever job of interweaving the novel's two perspectives, and her clear voice and simple yet elegant style easily turns this work into a real page-turner."
--Library Journal

"With God of Luck, Ruthanne Lum McCunn has turned her descriptive and sensitive storytelling skills to the little known coolie trade to Peru. She beautifully combines the hardships and brutality of the kidnapping of a Chinese man, conditions on the slave ships, and the bitterness of back-breaking labor in a foreign land with the sadness and determination of a wife and family back home. Never separating history from its impact on individual people, McCunn has reached into her characters' hearts to bring readers a story of emotional depth and truth."

--Lisa See, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

"Wise and spellbinding, God of Luck is partly history we didn't know, partly the Odyssey and the Amistad, partly the grit of a tough Chinese slave in Peru and a plucky survivor in China. Mostly, it is a story about the great collective us."

--Gus Lee, China Boy, Chasing Hepburn, and Courage

"Once again Ruthanne Lum McCunn opens a window onto another little-known chapter in the history of Chinese experience in the Americas. With amazing detail and riveting power, Ah Lung's story will keep readers spellbound and cheering to the final page."

--Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, Farewell to Manzanar andThe Legend of Fire Horse Woman

"God of Luck is a meticulously researched and beautifully written tale of early Chinese migration to the Americas. Sparing us little of the grim details, Ruthanne Lum McCunn shows how ordinary people can muster extraordinary courage and hope through difficult times. God of Luck is a splendid read."

--Franklin Odo, Director, Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program, Smithsonian Institution

Learn more about the novel at Ruthanne Lum McCunn's website.

Ruthanne Lum McCunn, an Eurasian of Chinese and Scottish descent, was hailed by the Dallas Times in 1985 as "an American-Chinese author of remarkable talent." Her award-winning work has been translated into eleven languages, published in twenty-two countries, and adapted for the stage and film. Her books include the classic Thousand Pieces of Gold, which has sold over two hundred thousand copies, as well as the novels The Moon Pearl and Wooden Fish Songs.

The Page 69 Test: God of Luck.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Scott Barrett's "Why Cooperate?"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Scott Barrett's Why Cooperate?: The Incentive to Supply Global Public Goods.

About the book, from the publisher:

Climate change, nuclear proliferation, and the threat of a global pandemic have the potential to impact each of our lives. Preventing these threats poses a serious global challenge, but ignoring them could have disastrous consequences. How do we engineer institutions to change incentives so that these global public goods are provided?

Scott Barrett provides a thought provoking and accessible introduction to the issues surrounding the provision of global public goods. Using a variety of examples to illustrate past successes and failures, he shows how international cooperation, institutional design, and the clever use of incentives can work together to ensure the effective delivery of global public goods.

Among the early praise for Why Cooperate?:

"An idealistic as well as sensible prescription for how to tackle in a practical manner the genuinely complex issues of our new global era."
--Zbigniew Brzezinski, Counselor and Trustee, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)

"Scott Barrett offers a simple yet powerful architecture for the different incentives that make international cooperation, in matters as diverse as measles and oil spills, greenhouse gases and nuclear proliferation, necessary or unnecessary, achievable or unachievable. Like his earlier Environment and Statecraft (Oxford 2003) this one is game theory at its most lucid, most valuable and most accessible -- an exciting and rewarding book."
--Thomas C. Schelling, 2005 Nobel Prize for Economics Laureate and Distinguisted University Professor, University of Maryland

"Scott Barrett deals with some of the most important global issues of the day with a clarity and lightness of touch which never betray the complexity and depth of the problems. Cooperation among nations is essential for such consequential issues as nuclear warfare, health, climate change, and economic development. Barrett goes beyond the net gains from cooperation to stress the different reactions to be expected as the gains and costs of cooperation are differently distributed. His distinctions will open up new paths in both policy formation and development."
--Kenneth J. Arrow, 1972 Nobel Prize for Economics Laureate and Professor of Economics, Stanford University

"As interdependence among nations has increased dramatically, bringing globalization into the midst of acrimonious debates, the question of who provides international public goods, and in what way, has assumed great urgency. Scott Barrett, in a magnificent book, has explored this problem in all its complexity and provides answers that are of immense value. Barrett's book should become a classic."
--Jagdish Bhagwati, Columbia University

Scott Barrett is Professor and Director of International Policy at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He was previously an advisor to the International Task Force on Global Public Goods, and drew upon his work for the Task Force in preparing this book. He wrote the book while on sabbatical as a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, Yale University. He is well-known for his work on international environmental agreements, Environment and Statecraft: The Strategy of Environmental Treaty-Making (2003), for which he received the Erik Kempe Prize.

The Page 99 Test: Why Cooperate?.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Christopher Lane reading?

This weekend's featured contributor to Writers Read: Christopher Lane, Herman and Beulah Pearce Miller Research Professor, Northwestern University, and the recent recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship to study psychopharmacology and ethics. His new book is Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness.

About the book, from the Yale University Press:

In the 1970s, a small group of leading psychiatrists met behind closed doors and literally rewrote the book on their profession. Revising and greatly expanding the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM for short), they turned what had been a thin, spiral-bound handbook into a hefty tome. Almost overnight the number of diagnoses exploded. The result was a windfall for the pharmaceutical industry and a massive conflict of interest for psychiatry at large. This spellbinding book is the first behind-the-scenes account of what really happened and why.

With unprecedented access to the American Psychiatric Association archives and previously classified memos from drug company executives, Christopher Lane unearths the disturbing truth: with little scientific justification and sometimes hilariously improbable rationales, hundreds of conditions — among them shyness — are now defined as psychiatric disorders and considered treatable with drugs. Lane shows how long-standing disagreements within the profession set the stage for these changes, and he assesses who has gained and what’s been lost in the process of medicalizing emotions. With dry wit, he demolishes the façade of objective research behind which the revolution in psychiatry has hidden. He finds a profession riddled with backbiting and jockeying, and even more troubling, a profession increasingly beholden to its corporate sponsors.

Learn more about Christopher Lane at his faculty webpage, and read his recent op-ed contribution to the New York Times, "Shy on Drugs."

Writers Read: Christopher Lane.

--Marshal Zeringue

Victor Gischler's "Shotgun Opera," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Victor Gischler's Shotgun Opera.

About the book, from the publisher:

Mike Foley can never forget the night he tagged along with his brother on a job for the mob that ended in a hail of bullets. Now his brother is dead, Mike’s making wine in Oklahoma, and life is almost as good as it gets when you’ve been hiding out for forty years. Until his past comes calling.

Mike’s nephew Andrew needs to disappear, and he needs to do it yesterday. Hanging with the wrong kind of friends, he’s seen something he shouldn’t have, and now he’s running for his life with an assassin on his trail. The consummate professional hit woman, Nikki Enders is the most lethal of a deadly sisterhood. And Andrew Foley is next on her extermination list. Unless Uncle Mike can stop her. As kill teams descend on Foley’s farm, one pissed-off ex-tough guy is about to take a final, all-or-nothing stand with shotguns blazing....

And the author's choice for director of a film adapted from the novel is...:

I forget who said it, but somebody remarked Shotgun Opera would make a cool John Woo film. I guess I don’t have any problem with that. Shotgun Opera certainly has enough action. And it might have been excellent author J.D. Rhoades who said it reminded him of those Transporter films. That would be cool too. All of my novels have a cool dose of action, but it was Shotgun most of all that I wanted to have a “nonstop” feel, and so the above comparisons seem pretty good to me. If you took John Woo and a healthy pinch of that Robert Rodriguez quirkiness, I think you’d have it.

Read on to find out who Gischler would cast in the adaptation.

Visit Victor Gischler's Blogpocalypse.

The Page 69 Test: Shotgun Opera.

My Book, The Movie: Shotgun Opera.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: "The Devil, The Lovers & Me"

The latest feature at the Page 69 Test: Kimberlee Auerbach's The Devil, The Lovers & Me: My Life in Tarot.

About the book, from the author's website:

An irresistible memoir for anyone who's ever wondered what's coming next...

Kimberlee Auerbach has tried everything. She's been in therapy. She's seen a Reiki Master. She's even given hypnosis a try. Nobody can give her what she wants... to know her future is going to be bright, that everything will be okay. So she makes an appointment with Iris Goldblatt, "tarot card reader and mirror of the soul." Instead of predicting the future, each card sparks a memory: like the time Kimberlee tried to be wild, and caught crabs from an Argentine painter; or the night her father "proposed" at Morton's Steakhouse (presenting her with an engagement ring for her boyfriend to use); or the moment Kimberlee found the strength to kick out her freeloading ex. In a Wizard of Oz-like twist of fate, Kimberlee realizes she had the answers all along-that's it's not about looking to the future, it's about trusting yourself along the way.

Exuberantly alive and refreshingly candid, The Devil, The Lovers & Me, will take you on a journey down one woman's path, only to reflect yours back. You, too, will see yourself in the cards ... The Devil, The Lovers, even the Fool.

Among the early praise for the book:

"Kimberlee Auerbach made me laugh, love, and leap into the future, open-armed, right along with her. if she's got a handful of cards, she knows how to deal them! Bravo!"
—Maria Dahvana Headley, author of The Year of Yes

"So fresh and original you don’t want it to end. An enchanting debut."
—Naomi Wolf, bestselling author of The Beauty Myth

"Frank, funny, and fiercely insightful."
—Susan Shapiro author of Lighting Up and Five Men Who Broke My Heart
"Warning: there will be times when you will be laughing so hard that you won't realize that you are also crying.... A shining example of what it means to be humorously flawed and gloriously alive."
—Courtney Martin, author of Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters

Learn more about the book and its author at the The Devil, The Lovers & Me website, Kimberlee Auerbach's MySpace page, and the Crucial Minutiae blog.

The Page 69 Test: The Devil, The Lovers & Me.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Giles MacDonogh's "After the Reich"

The latest feature at the Page 99 Test: Giles MacDonogh's After the Reich: The Brutal History of Allied Occupation.

About the book, from the publisher:

When the Third Reich collapsed in 1945, the Allied powers converged on Germany and divided it into four zones of occupation. A nation in tatters, in many places literally flattened by bombs, was suddenly subjected to brutal occupation by vengeful victors. Rape was rampant. Hundreds of thousands of Germans and German-speakers died in the course of brutal deportations from Eastern Europe. By the end of the year, Germany was literally starving to death. Over a million German prisoners of war died in captivity, where they were subjected to inadequate rations and often tortured. All told, an astounding 2.25 million German civilians died violent deaths in the period between the liberation of Vienna and the Berlin airlift. A shocking account of a massive and vicious military occupation, After the Reich offers a bold reframing of the history of World War II and its aftermath. Historian Giles MacDonogh has unearthed a record of brutality which has been largely ignored by historians or, worse, justified as legitimate retaliation for the horror of the Holocaust. Drawing on a vast array of contemporary firstperson accounts, MacDonogh has finally given a voice to tens of millions of civilians who, lucky to survive the war, found themselves struggling to survive a hellish peace.

Among the praise for After the Reich:

"Throughout time it has been the victor who has written history, but here historian MacDonogh examines the darker side of the Allied occupation of defeated Germany ... Of interest to students of modern Europe, complementing W.G. Sebald’s On the Natural History of Destruction (2003) and other studies of history from the point of view of the vanquished."
—Kirkus Reviews

"MacDonogh has written a grueling but important book. This unhappy story has long been cloaked in silence since telling it suited no one. Not the Allies, because it placed them near the moral nadir of the Nazis; nor the Germans, because they did not wish to be accused of whitewashing Hitler by highlighting what was, by any standard, a war crime. Giles MacDonogh has told a very inconvenient truth."
—Nigel Jones Sunday Telegraph (London)

"VE Day on May 8, 1945 mocked the subsequent condition of Europe. As crowds in London, Paris and New York celebrated the declaration of peace, much more misery and death lay ahead. Two, perhaps three million Germans perished in the years that followed: in captivity; from hunger and casual violence; and above all, during the expulsions of ethnic Germans from the east, which the western Allies had agreed with the Russians before hostilities ended. Giles MacDonogh's book chronicles this saga from the liberation of Vienna to the 1948 Berlin Airlift and 1949 formation of Konrad Adenauer's government in Bonn. It makes grimmer reading than most war stories, because there is little redemptive courage or virtue. Here is a catalogue of pillage, rape, starvation, inhumanity and suffering on a titanic scale.... [After the Reich] book brings together many stories that deserve to be much better known in the West."
—Max Hastings Sunday Times (London)

“Giles MacDonogh's After the Reich is important and timely. He has a profound understanding of Germany, which he communicates in a humane and engaging style. Though he is sensitive to the sufferings of the Germans after the war, he never loses sight of the fact that this was an occupation that the Western powers got right. After the Reich is a remarkable book, with a rich cast of characters, and it has oblique relevance to our own problems in the wider world.”
—Michael Burleigh, author of The Third Reich: A New History and Sacred Causes

Learn more about After the Reich at the publisher's website.

Giles MacDonogh is the author of several books on German history, including The Last Kaiser: A Life of Wilhelm II and Frederick the Great as well as histories of Berlin and Prussia. A graduate of Oxford University, MacDonogh has written for the Financial Times, the Times (London), the Guardian, and the Evening Standard.

The Page 99 Test: After the Reich.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Steve Brewer's "Cutthroat"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Steve Brewer's Cutthroat.

About the book, from the author's website:

Solomon Gage is a "troubleshooter" for billionaire Dominick Sheffield and his family, handling the shadier aspects of their international business, along with assorted interpersonal problems. When fetching third-generation Sheffield Abby Maynes from an Oakland crackhouse, Solomon is subjected to her drug-fueled mumblings, and hears something he shouldn't have. Always vigilant and fiercely loyal to Dominick, Solomon asks around about the "Africa deal." Turns out the Sheffield sons are involved in some dirty dealings in an effort to gain a stranglehold on the global urnium market.

Solomon's troubles only increase when he can't convince his boss of the boys' scheming, and African mercenaries arrive in San Francisco to protect the interests of the Nigerian government.

Among the advance praise for the novel:

"Steve Brewer delivers a taut geopolitical thriller with sure-handed plotting and muscular prose. Cutthroat grabs you from behind, like a man with a knife who won’t let go until he’s done with you."
—Bill Fitzhugh, author of H 61 Resurfaced

"Solomon Gage, trusted employee of billionaire Dominick Sheffield, has one of those jobs you can't put on a résumé. He's a fixer, an odd-jobber, a go-to guy. Today his assignment is to pull Sheffield's granddaughter out of a crack house, which he does but not before the girl mumbles something that, not too far down the road, will cause Solomon to put his life at risk to save his boss from his own conniving sons. What starts as a fairly standard thriller slowly develops into an intriguing story about personal loyalty, family betrayal, and conspiracy. Brewer, author of the Bubba Mabry and Drew Gavin mysteries, is an experienced genre hand, but the lightly Shakespearean overtones here are something new for him. He makes it work, though, as he does the dark tone, similar to the Parker novels (written by Westlake-as-Stark), but with a more sympathetic lead. The book ends with the promise of a sequel, and that's a good idea: readers will want to continue getting to know Solomon Gage."
—Booklist

Learn more about Steve Brewer and Cutthroat at his website and his blog.

Steve Brewer is the author of the Bubba Mabry mystery series and the Drew Gavin mystery series in addition to a handful of stand alone crime novels.

The Page 69 Test: Cutthroat.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Ayun Halliday reading?

The latest contributor to Writers Read: Ayun Halliday, author of Dirty Sugar Cookies: Culinary Observations, Questionable Taste and other works.

Halliday "has an absolutely incisive wit, and a remarkably deft way with words," Ken Albala recently wrote, and that is clearly evident in her entry, so please read on.

One title that popped up in her write-up:

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk whose name I can never pronounce or spell without assistance. I loved the repetitive description of one character as a 'big moosie." I loved that this was in this macho phenomenon that everybody, even me, has heard about by now. I remember renting the movie shortly after it came out and being surprised at how good it was.

Writers Read: Ayun Halliday.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: T. Lynn Ocean's "Southern Fatality"

The latest feature at the Page 69 Test: T. Lynn Ocean's Southern Fatality.

About the book, from the publisher:

Jersey Barnes thinks she has retired from a risk-filled career as a private security specialist. A sexy, hard-hitting brunette, she’s ready to enjoy her newfound free time and is looking forward to leaving home without a weapon.

But when her boyfriend asks her for a simple favor, she can’t turn him down. What should be a routine surveillance job lands Jersey smack-dab in the middle of a high-stakes cover-up, a double kidnapping, and a scheme that may steal millions of dollars from hard-working Americans.

With input from her business partner, Ox (a Lumbee Indian whose savory looks she can’t quite ignore), a comedic group of her aging father’s poker buddies, a computer hacker named Soup, and a faithful dog, Jersey sets out to prevent what might be the cyber crime of the century

In Southern Fatality, T. Lynn Ocean serves up an action-packed, sun-soaked adventure set in the historic port city of Wilmington, North Carolina.

Among the advance praise for Southern Fatality:

"Ocean reinforces her reputation for creating strong Southern heroines with this sexy, fast-paced adventure, the first in a new series to feature Jersey Barnes... Ocean’s tightly woven, fast-moving plot keeps readers entertained right up to the explosive ending."
--Publishers Weekly

"T. Lynn Ocean is the South's answer to Janet Evanovich. Hang on. Southern Fatality is a wild, witty, and sexy ride that never lets up."
--Karin Gillespie, author of the Bottom Dollar Girl series

"Ocean puts the D in dangerous."
-- John Hart, New York Times bestselling author of The King of Lies

"Southern Fatality reads like a string of firecrackers -- one bang after another. The action is nonstop and the tone is smart and sassy."
--Carolyn Haines, author of Penumbra and Fever Moon

Read an excerpt from Southern Fatality and learn more about T. Lynn Ocean and her writing at her website.

A freelance writer for more than ten years, Ocean has published in magazines nationwide. She is the author of the novels Fool Me Once and Sweet Home Carolina.

The Page 69 Test: Southern Fatality.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: "Faith in the Halls of Power"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: D. Michael Lindsay's Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite.

About the book, from the publisher:

Evangelicals, once at the periphery of American life, now wield power in the White House and on Wall Street, at Harvard and in Hollywood. How have they reached the pinnacles of power in such a short time? And what does this mean for evangelicals -- and for America?

Drawing on personal interviews with an astonishing array of prominent Americans -- including two former Presidents, dozens of political and government leaders, more than 100 top business executives, plus Hollywood moguls, intellectuals, athletes, and other powerful figures -- D. Michael Lindsay shows first-hand how they are bringing their vision of moral leadership into the public square. This riveting volume tells us who the real evangelical power brokers are, how they rose to prominence, and what they're doing with their clout. Lindsay reveals that evangelicals are now at home in the executive suite and on the studio lot, and from those lofty perches they have used their influence, money, and ideas to build up the evangelical movement and introduce it to the wider American society. They are leaders of powerful institutions and their goals are ambitious -- to bring Christian principles to bear on virtually every aspect of American life.

Along the way, the book is packed with fascinating stories and striking insights. Lindsay shows how evangelicals became a force in American foreign policy, how Fortune 500 companies are becoming faith-friendly, and how the new generation of the faithful is led by cosmopolitan evangelicals. These are well-educated men and women who read both and The New York TimesChristianity Today, and who are wary of the evangelical masses' penchant for polarizing rhetoric, apocalyptic pot-boilers, and bad Christian rock. Perhaps most startling is the importance of personal relationships between leaders -- a quiet conversation after Bible study can have more impact than thousands of people marching in the streets.

Faith in the Halls of Power takes us inside the rarified world of the evangelical elite -- beyond the hysterical panic and chest-thumping pride -- to give us the real story behind the evangelical ascendancy in America.

Among the praise for the book:

"This important work should be required reading for anyone who wants to opine publicly on what American evangelicals are really up to."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"An impressive and admirably fair-minded book: anybody who wants to understand the nexus between God and power in modern America should start here."
--The Economist

"People of faith have an enormous impact on our society. Michael Lindsay's brilliant book has the story everyone else has missed. You must read this book."
--Senator Bill Frist, M.D. (R-TN)

"Jesus tells his followers to 'be in the world but not of the world.' This has created tension for the faithful from the first century Church until today. D. Michael Lindsay takes the reader where faith meets politics and culture. This book explores how modern evangelicals struggle to apply the principles of Christ to an ever-changing society. Faith in the Halls of Power provides crucial insights into how evangelicals are influencing and being influenced by our world."
--Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR)

"For more than three decades evangelical Christians have been self-consciously assuming positions of leadership across virtually all sectors of American society. Michael Lindsay's fact-filled book, based on his unique collection of personal interviews, presents a striking self-portrait of this new elite and how they reached power."
--Robert D. Putnam, Professor of Public Policy, Harvard University, and author of Bowling Alone

"Quick, which of these fellows exercises more influence upon American life: Michael Moore or Rick Warren? If your answer is Michael Moore, you should read this book. It's an engaging account of how evangelical leaders like Rick Warren and many, many others have swept into the halls of power -- from the White House and corporate boardrooms to the Academy and Hollywood. Through interviews with more than 350 evangelicals in leadership positions, Michael Lindsay provides a fresh, valuable portrait of a powerful force in modern America."
--David Gergen, Advisor to Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton

Read more about Faith in the Halls of Power at the Oxford University Press website.

Lindsay has several interesting posts at the OUP Blog: "God Goes To Harvard" (about changes in faith on campus), "Onward Christian Soldiers" (about faith in the military), and "Introductions: Michael Lindsay, Karen Hughes and America" (about how he secured an interview with Karen Hughes).

D. Michael Lindsay is a member of the sociology faculty at Rice University where he is also the Faculty Associate of Leadership Rice and Assistant Director of the Center on Race, Religion, and Urban Life.

The Page 99 Test: Faith in the Halls of Power.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Dara Horn reading?

The latest contributor to Writers Read: Dara Horn, author of In the Image and The World to Come.

One novel she tagged is "very suspenseful and raises all kinds of fascinating questions, and ultimately provides some extremely disturbing and wonderfully unredemptive answers. I'm waiting impatiently to find someone with whom to discuss it." Read on to learn more.

Horn received her Ph.D. in comparative literature from Harvard University in 2006, studying Hebrew and Yiddish. Her first novel, In the Image, published by W.W. Norton when she was 25, received a 2003 National Jewish Book Award, the 2002 Edward Lewis Wallant Award, and the 2003 Reform Judaism Fiction Prize. Her second novel, The World to Come, published by W.W. Norton in January 2006, received the 2006 National Jewish Book Award for Fiction, was selected as an Editor's Choice in the New York Times Book Review and as one of the Best Books of 2006 by the San Francisco Chronicle, and has been translated into nine languages. In 2007 Horn was chosen by Granta magazine as one of the Best Young American Novelists. She has taught courses in Jewish literature and Israeli history at Harvard and at Sarah Lawrence College, and has lectured at universities and cultural institutions throughout the United States and Canada.

The Page 99 Test: The World to Come.

Writers Read: Dara Horn.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: John Leland's "Why Kerouac Matters"

The latest feature at the Page 69 Test: John Leland's Why Kerouac Matters: The Lessons of ‘On the Road’ (They’re Not What You Think).

About the book, from the publisher:

Legions of youthful Americans have taken On the Road as a manifesto for rebellion and an inspiration to hit the road. But there is much more to the novel than that.

In Why Kerouac Matters, John Leland embarks on a wry, insightful, and playful discussion of the novel, arguing that it still matters because at its core it is a book that is full of lessons about how to grow up. Leland’s focus is on Sal Paradise, the Kerouac alter ego, who has always been overshadowed by his fictional running buddy Dean Moriarty. Leland examines the lessons that Paradise absorbs and dispenses on his novelistic journey to manhood, and how those lessons — about work and money, love and sex, art and holiness — still reverberate today. He shows how On the Road is a primer for male friendship and the cultivation of traditional family values, and contends that the stereotype of the two wild and crazy guys obscures the novel’s core themes of the search for atonement, redemption, and divine revelation. Why Kerouac Matters offers a new take on Kerouac’s famous novel, overturning many misconceptions about it and making clear the themes Kerouac was trying to impart.

Among the early praise for Why Kerouac Matters:

"Having immersed himself in Beat culture while writing Hip: A History, Leland, a New York Times reporter and former editor-in-chief of Details, makes a convincing case that Jack Kerouac's most famous novel has endured for half a century because it's a book about how to live your life. The lesson isn't about impulsive self-gratification, as many readers believe, aided by Kerouac's tendency to go vague in his most emotionally critical passages. Leland reminds us that narrator Sal Paradise was always looking to settle down into a conventional life, and Kerouac, Leland says, was generally of a conservative mindset. Framing On the Road as a spiritual quest, Leland deftly combines the biographical facts of Kerouac's life with discussions of his literary antecedents in Melville and Goethe, as well as the inspiration he took from contemporary jazz, finding in bebop's rhythms a new way to circle around a story's themes.... Leland's insights provide new layers of significance even for those familiar with the novel."
--Publishers Weekly

"An engaging, smart and fresh take from New York Times reporter John Leland, Why Kerouac Matters mixes serious discussions of Kerouac and his legacy with glib, colloquial sidebars. Leland riffs on Kerouac's alleged anti-Semitism ("he certainly quacked like one"); his facial hair ("America's ongoing goatee problem"); "his use of weed, Benzedrine, morphine, alcohol"; comparative sex lives, with lists of Sal's fictional trysts vs. Kerouac's real ones; and what Kerouac's zeitgeist novel has meant for later generations. Leland calls it "a slacker bible for the last half century."
--Regina Weinreich, author of Kerouac's Spontaneous Poetics and editor of Kerouac's Book of Haikus

"Leland offers a close reading of On the Road, providing enough trenchant analysis to make the book an excellent primer not only on Kerouac's novel, but the Beat movement in general. Some of the parables and metaphors in the text that may have gone over the head of the average first-time reader are nicely addressed, and reveal that Kerouac was a writer capable of greater gravitas than he is often given credit for, even if it is expressed in the rather rough-hewn language of the autodidact. Rather than being part of a manufactured movement, Leland enshrines Kerouac in the same legion of American letters as Melville and Whitman."
--Gerry Donaghy, Powells.com

Read an excerpt from Why Kerouac Matters, and learn more about the book at the publisher's website.

John Leland is a reporter for the New York Times and former editor in chief of Details magazine. He is also the author of Hip: The History.

The Page 69 Test: Why Kerouac Matters.

--Marshal Zeringue

Edmund White's most important books

Edmund White's novels include Fanny: A Fiction, A Boy's Own Story, The Farewell Symphony, and A Married Man. He is also the author of a biography of Jean Genet, a study of Marcel Proust, The Flâneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris, and his memoir, My Lives. His latest novel is Hotel de Dream.

White recently told Newsweek about his five most important books.

And he addressed two other book-related issues:

A classic book that, upon rereading, disappointed:

John Fowles's The Magus was thin at a second look.

A much-recommended book that you've resisted reading:

I've never read anything by Margaret Atwood — maybe because I found her double reputation as a feminist and a Canadian daunting.

Read about White's most important books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Ben Kiernan's "Blood and Soil"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Ben Kiernan's Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur.

About the book, from the publisher:

For thirty years Ben Kiernan has been deeply involved in the study of genocide and crimes against humanity. He has played a key role in unearthing confidential documentation of the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge. His writings have transformed our understanding not only of twentieth-century Cambodia but also of the historical phenomenon of genocide. This new book — the first global history of genocide and extermination from ancient times — is among his most important achievements.

Kiernan examines outbreaks of mass violence from the classical era to the present, focusing on worldwide colonial exterminations and twentieth-century case studies including the Armenian genocide, the Nazi Holocaust, Stalin’s mass murders, and the Cambodian and Rwandan genocides. He identifies connections, patterns, and features that in nearly every case gave early warning of the catastrophe to come: racism or religious prejudice, territorial expansionism, and cults of antiquity and agrarianism. The ideologies that have motivated perpetrators of mass killings in the past persist in our new century, says Kiernan. He urges that we heed the rich historical evidence with its telltale signs for predicting and preventing future genocides.

Among the early praise for the book:

"In exploring the global 'prehistory' of the horrific forms of societal violence usually associated with the twentieth century, Kiernan identifies key factors that have been consistently associated with genocidal episodes. His book makes an original contribution to our understanding of the phenomenon."
—Michael Adas, Rutgers University

“Ben Kiernan’s Blood and Soil is a major work explaining myths and metaphors that have underwritten genocide for six hundred years—earlier within the bowels of the western tradition; now commonplace practice far beyond that tradition. In seeing genocide as linked to issues of land as well as race, nation, and expansion, Kiernan has opened up social, political, and economic analysis to the struggle for land and the control of property. Such an approach is unique as it is provocative. It is inspired by the author’s profound reading of Cambodia and Southeast Asia. Blood and Soil provides an angle of vision rarely found in those who start (and stop) with a European base of scholarship. The book opens up new questions and formulations on the nature of state inspired murder. It merits a close reading of the dark side of terror, often commented upon, but rarely probed.”
—Irving Louis Horowitz, Rutgers University

“Blood and Soil is a stunning achievement. The idea for the project was clearly a prompting of the heart, but the argument itself is a thing of pure intellect. It surveys thousands of years, visits every corner of the world, and stares with scarcely a blink at the worst horrors the world has ever known. As an act of scholarship, it simply stands alone.”
—Kai Erikson, Yale University

“Ben Kiernan’s book is a major contribution to genocide studies — a first attempt to tell the history of genocidal events, from Sparta to Darfur. Blood and Soil is a well-researched, detailed account of many instances of mass killings and the reasons for their occurrence. It will no doubt give rise to controversy, new research, and new insights.”
—Yehuda Bauer, Yad Vashem

"With this book, [Kiernan] examines genocide globally, venturing a framework by which genocide may be recognized and analyzed.... Covering instances of genocide on every continent ... Kiernan notes haunting continuities across cultures and time periods.... A bold and substantial work of unprecedented scope, this book is international history at its best."
—Booklist

Read an excerpt from Blood and Soil, and learn more about the book at the Yale University Press website.

Ben Kiernan is the A. Whitney Griswold Professor of History, professor of international and area studies, and the founding director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University. His previous books include How Pol Pot Came to Power: Colonialism, Nationalism, and Communism in Cambodia, 1930–1975 and The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-1979.

The Page 69 Test: Blood and Soil.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Collaborator of Bethlehem," the movie

Matt Beynon Rees' debut novel, The Collaborator of Bethlehem, is the first in a series about Palestinian sleuth Omar Yussef. Rees lives in Jerusalem.

Earlier this year he applied the Page 69 Test to the novel; now he has imagined a film adaptation of the story for My Book, the Movie.

His entry opens:

The spark for my novel The Collaborator of Bethlehem was my friendship with a Palestinian in late middle-age who lives in the Dehaisha Refugee Camp, a southern neighborhood of Bethlehem. I admired this man deeply for his integrity and decency, despite the violence engulfing his community during the intifada. But I also found him to be extraordinarily prickly. He would become angry at me for my misunderstandings of Palestinian life, for my friendships with others whom he didn't trust, or simply for not having to undergo the same humiliations that were a daily source of pain to him. I made considerable allowances for the pressures under which he lived and enjoyed his wonderful insights and great humor, but even so it was difficult to face his occasional wrath.

On a break from covering the intifada for Time Magazine, in a hotel room in Rome, I decided to turn my friend into Omar Yussef, the schoolteacher forced to turn detective in a lawless Bethlehem. It struck me that instead of feeling hurt by my friend's outbursts, I could view them as research. Omar made it possible for me to grow even closer to my friend.

When I wrote the book, I always had this friend's image, voice and thinking in my mind. I didn't need to place an actor in the role of Omar Yussef -- though I believe that's a good technique for writers seeking to make their characters concrete in their own heads. I always had this friend -- and other friends on whom the main characters are based -- before me.

But as soon as the book sold to Soho Press in the U.S., people began to ask, "Who'll play the lead in the movie version?" [read on]

Read more about the novel at Matt Beynon Rees' website and his blog.

The Page 69 Test: The Collaborator of Bethlehem.

My Book, The Movie: The Collaborator of Bethlehem.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: "Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Richard Lyman Bushman's Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling.

About the book, from the publisher:

Joseph Smith, America’s preeminent visionary and prophet, rose from a modest background to found the largest indigenous Christian church in American history. Without the benefit of wealth, education, or social position, he published the 584-page Book of Mormon when he was twenty-three; organized a church when he was twenty-four; and founded cities, built temples, and attracted thousands of followers before his violent death at age thirty-eight. Rather than perishing with him, Mormonism migrated to the Rocky Mountains, flourished there, and now claims millions of followers worldwide.

In Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, Richard Bushman, an esteemed American cultural historian and a practicing Mormon, tells how Smith formed a new religion from the ground up. Moving beyond the popular stereotype of Smith as a colorful fraud, the book explores the inner workings of his personality–his personal piety, his temper, his affection for family and friends, and his incredible determination. It describes how he received revelations and why his followers believed them.

Smith was a builder of cities. He sought to form egalitarian, just, and open communities under God and laid out a plan for ideal cities, which he hoped would fill the world. Adopted as the model for hundreds of Mormon settlements in the West, Smith’s urban vision may have left a more lasting imprint on the landscape than that of any other American.

He was controversial from his earliest years. His followers honored him as a man who spoke for God and restored biblical religion. His enemies maligned him as a dangerous religious fanatic, an American Mohammad, and drove the Mormons from every place in which they settled. Smith’s ultimate assassination by an armed mob raises the question of whether American democracy can tolerate visionaries.

The book gives more attention to Joseph Smith’s innovative religious thought than any previous biography. As Bushman writes, “His followers derived their energy and purpose from the religious world he brought into being.” Some of the teachings were controversial, such as property redistribution and plural marriage, but Smith’s revelations also delved into cosmology and the history of God. They spoke of the origins of the human personality and the purpose of life. While thoroughly Christian, Smith radically reconceived the relationship between humans and God. The book evaluates the Mormon prophet’s bold contributions to Christian theology and situates him culturally in the modern world.

Published on the two hundredth anniversary of Smith’s birth, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling is an in-depth portrayal of the mysterious figure behind one of the world’s fastest growing faiths.

Among the praise for the book:

“Remarkable. . . . A tale that’s as colorful, suspenseful and unlikely as any in American history ... Bushman earns a place for his biography on the very short shelf reserved for books on Mormonism with appeal to initiates and outsiders, too.”
—New York Times Book Review

“A fascinating definitive biography.... Stirs deeper questions about American religious convictions and how they shape lives and culture.”
—The Christian Science Monitor

“An exhaustively researched and beautifully written biography of Mormonism’s enigmatic founder.”
—Christianity Today

"Fascinating. . . .Bushman captures all the harrowing events of Smith's short life, rife with converts and cabals, while meticulously dissecting the revelations that continue to haunt the Smith story."
—The Providence Journal

“Well-researched and lucidly written. . . . An excellent source for learning about the Mormon faith.”
—The St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Read an excerpt from Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling and learn more about the book from the publisher's website.

Richard Lyman Bushman is Gouverneur Morris Professor of History, Emeritus, at Columbia University. His From Puritan to Yankee: Character and Social Order in Connecticut, 1690—1765 won the Bancroft Prize in 1967. His other books include Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism (1984), winner of the Evans Biography Award; King and People in Provincial Massachusetts (1985); and The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (1992).

The Page 99 Test: Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Paul Levy reading?

The latest contributor to Writers Read: Paul Levy, a broadcaster and expert writer on food & wine and the arts.

According to one capsule biography: "With Ann Barr (and synchronically Gael Greene), [Levy] coined the word 'foodie' (and some say, exemplified the concept). He has won many British and American food writing and journalism prizes, including two commendations in the national British Press Awards, in 1985 and 1987."

Levy's entry includes several books for foodies, a couple for Wagner fans, and several novels ... including one that he didn't much care for. Read on.

Levy's most recent book is The Letters of Lytton Strachey, which he edited for Farrar Straus Giroux and Penguin.

Visit Paul Levy's website.

Writers Read: Paul Levy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Dave Zeltserman's "Bad Thoughts"

The latest feature at the Page 69 Test: Dave Zeltserman's Bad Thoughts.

About the book, from the publisher:

When he was thirteen years old, Billy Shannon came home from school one day to find his mother being murdered in their California home. Dying slowly of asphyxia, she drowned in her own blood. Twenty years pass, and Bill Shannon is a cop in Cambridge, Massachusetts, living with his wife, Susie and trying to get a handle on the nightmares that have plagued him for most of his adult life. Every year, as the anniversary of his mother's death approaches, the nightmares of his mother's killer get progressively worse until the blackouts come, and then Shannon disappears to return home days later without a clue of what he has done while gone. The twentieth anniversary of his mother's death is quickly approaching and Shannon desperately needs to figure out what he has been doing during his black outs, especially since women have started dying in the same grisly manner as his mother. His nightmares are getting worse and the evidence against him is stacking up ...

Among the praise for Bad Thoughts:

"A compellingly clever wheels-within-wheels thriller. An ingenious plot, skillfully executed"
—Elliott Swanson, Booklist

"This fast-paced, gritty psychological tale balances the fine line between mystery and horror"
—Library Journal

"Bad Thoughts is an ambitious genre-bender combining the paranoia and existential dread of the best noir with a liberal dash of The Twilight Zone. Not to be missed."
—Poisoned Pen's Booknews

"Dark, brutal, captivating -- this is one hell of a book, the kind of book that doesn't let go of you once you start it. Dave Zeltserman is clearly the real deal."
—Steve Hamilton, Edgar Award-Winning author of A Stolen Season

"...And it's at this point that the genre gets bent. After that, it's a wild ride. I was reminded a little of Blood Dreams, a novel by the late Jack MacLane, published by Zebra just after the era of the knives-in-fresh-fruit covers. Joe Lansdale's Act of Love had one of those covers, come to think of it. Zeltserman's book would rest comfortably on the shelf beside them. If you're looking for a hardboiled anybody-can-die-at-any-time book that's a change of pace from the usual, look no further."
—Bill Crider, Murder among the Owls and A Mammoth Murder

"Bad Thoughts is dark -- Edgar Allan Poe dark, and I put the book down feeling as though I’d just run through a gloomy, damp, filthy alley. Which is exactly what Zeltserman was going for, wasn’t it?"
—James Winter, January Magazine

Read more about Bad Thoughts at the publisher's website and at Zeltserman's website and his blog.

The Page 69 Test: Bad Thoughts.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thomas Mallon's list

Novelist and critic Thomas Mallon is the author of Henry and Clara, Dewey Defeats Truman, and Bandbox. His latest novel, Fellow Travelers, is set in McCarthy-era Washington, D.C.

He contributed "The List" to The Week magazine last week.

One title on Mallon's list:

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

Its subtitle is “A Novel Without a Hero.” But what a heroine — and what a narrator. One of the most cynical and entertaining novels ever written. At its center, Miss Rebecca Sharp, who “had the dismal precocity of poverty ... she had been a woman since she was 8 years old.” In the first chapter she flings Johnson’s Dictionary from the window of a carriage; in the 66 that follow she rewrites every existing definition of moral behavior.

Read more about Mallon's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Ian Stewart's "Why Beauty Is Truth"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Ian Stewart's Why Beauty Is Truth: The History of Symmetry.

About the book, from the publisher:

At the heart of relativity theory, quantum mechanics, string theory, and much of modern cosmology lies one concept: symmetry. In Why Beauty Is Truth, world-famous mathematician Ian Stewart narrates the history of the emergence of this remarkable area of study. Stewart introduces us to such characters as the Renaissance Italian genius, rogue, scholar, and gambler Girolamo Cardano, who stole the modern method of solving cubic equations and published it in the first important book on algebra, and the young revolutionary Evariste Galois, who refashioned the whole of mathematics and founded the field of group theory only to die in a pointless duel over a woman before his work was published. Stewart also explores the strange numerology of real mathematics, in which particular numbers have unique and unpredictable properties related to symmetry. He shows how Wilhelm Killing discovered “Lie groups” with 14, 52, 78, 133, and 248 dimensions-groups whose very existence is a profound puzzle. Finally, Stewart describes the world beyond superstrings: the “octonionic” symmetries that may explain the very existence of the universe.

Among the praise for Why Beauty Is Truth:

Anyone who thinks math is dull will be delightfully surprised by this history of the concept of symmetry. Stewart, a professor of mathematics at the University of Warwick (Does God Play Dice?), presents a time line of discovery that begins in ancient Babylon and travels forward to today's cutting-edge theoretical physics. He defines basic symmetry as a transformation, "a way to move an object" that leaves the object essentially unchanged in appearance. And while the math behind symmetry is important, the heart of this history lies in its characters, from a hypothetical Babylonian scribe with a serious case of math anxiety, through Évariste Galois (inventor of "group theory"), killed at 21 in a duel, and William Hamilton, whose eureka moment came in "a flash of intuition that caused him to vandalize a bridge," to Albert Einstein and the quantum physicists who used group theory and symmetry to describe the universe. Stewart does use equations, but nothing too scary; a suggested reading list is offered for more rigorous details. Stewart does a fine job of balancing history and mathematical theory in a book as easy to enjoy as it is to understand.
--Publishers Weekly

Werner Heisenberg recognized the numerical harmonies at the heart of the universe: "I am strongly attracted by the simplicity and beauty of the mathematical schemes which nature presents us." An accomplished mathematician, Stewart here delves into these harmonies as he explores the way that the search for symmetry has revolutionized science. Beginning with the early struggles of the Babylonians to solve quadratics, Stewart guides his readers through the often-tangled history of symmetry, illuminating for nonspecialists how a concept easily recognized in geometry acquired new meanings in algebra. Embedded in a narrative that piquantly contrasts the clean elegance of mathematical theory with the messy lives of gambling, cheating, and dueling mathematicians, the principles of symmetry emerge in radiant clarity. Readers contemplate in particular how the daunting algebra of quintics finally opened a conceptual door for Evaniste Galois, the French genius who laid the foundations for group theory, so empowering scientists with a new calculus of symmetry. Readers will marvel at how much this calculus has done to advance research in quantum mechanics, relativity, and cosmology, even inspiring hope that the supersymmetries of string theory will combine all of astrophysics into one elegant paradigm. An exciting foray for any armchair physicist!
--Booklist

Stewart’s book is a good-humoured, panoramic history of the development of mathematics from Babylonian times to the present. He discusses the big ideas and the often unconventional characters who shaped them. Much of this will be unfamiliar and surprising to non-mathematicians.... Stewart tackles the problem of accessibility by spicing his account with stories of some of the greatest eccentrics ever to have solved a quadratic equation. Why Beauty is Truth is worth reading for these alone.
--Financial Times

Ian Stewart has been publishing good popular accounts of math and mathematicians for several years. With this new book, he is completely comfortable with his subject and at the height of his powers. This tale takes us through the remarkably sordid history of group theory, a somewhat abstract branch of mathematics that has fostered the notion that symmetry and beauty are paramount to our understanding of the world. The result is a surprising intellectual romp that is itself quite beautiful.
--SEED Magazine

Learn more about Why Beauty Is Truth at the author's website and in Stewart's brief essay about the book at Britannica Blog.

Ian Stewart is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Warwick and Director of its Mathematics Awareness Centre. His many books include From Here to Infinity, Nature’s Numbers, Does God Play Dice?, The Problems of Mathematics, and Letters to a Young Mathematician. His writing has appeared in New Scientist, Discover, Scientific American, and many newspapers in the U.K. and U.S.

The Page 99 Test: Why Beauty Is Truth.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five essential works about Judaism

Ruth Wisse, whose Jews and Power has just been published by Schocken, teaches Yiddish literature and comparative literature at Harvard. She selected a five best list of essential works about Judaism for Opinion Journal.

One title on the list:

Tevye the Dairyman by Sholem Aleichem (1894-1914)

No one did more than the Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem (1859-1916) to forge the connection between Jewishness and comedy, and no character does it better than Tevye the Dairyman. In Aleichem's Tevye stories, set in Russia and collected in various forms over the years, the monologues of this first stand-up Jewish comedian treat many of the crises that Jews experienced in confronting modernity. A traditional father of many daughters (whittled down to three in the musical adaptation "Fiddler on the Roof"), Tevye must face both their challenges to his paternal authority and the dangers posed by the czarist regime. He does so with a philosophical humor that many readers attribute to Jewishness itself. "What does it say in the prayer book? We're God's chosen people; it's no wonder the whole world envies us." Whenever I teach this work, filled with specifically Jewish quotations and expressions, students of other minorities -- especially those from religious families -- recognize Tevye's predicaments, and they appreciate the moral balance he strives to maintain between metaphysical confidence and the disillusioning evidence presented by daily life.

Read more about Wisse's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: "The Spanish Bow"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Andromeda Romano-Lax's The Spanish Bow.

About the book, from the author's website:

In a dusty, turn-of-the-century Catalan village, the bequest of a cello bow sets young Feliu Delargo on the unlikely path of becoming a musician. Anarchist Barcelona and the court of the embattled monarchy in Madrid teach him his first serious lessons in creativity, principle, and passion — and their consequences. When he meets up with the charming and eccentric piano prodigy Justo Al-Cerraz, their lifelong friendship and rivalry orchestrate a tumultuous course for them both. Over the span of half a century of creative struggle and international turmoil that sees them paying house calls on Picasso one year and being courted by dictators the next, they make glorious music together, and clash over virtually everything else: love, politics, and the purpose of art. When the tensions propelling a war-torn world toward catastrophe bring Aviva, an Italian violinist with a haunted past, into their lives, Feliu and Justo embark upon their final and most dangerous collaboration.

Among the early praise for the novel:

“An impressive and richly atmospheric debut.”
—New York Times Book Review

“...for sheer scope and ambition, this is a tough debut to beat.”
—Publishers Weekly

“The book is almost dizzyingly episodic, but bound together by Feliu's lifelong struggle with the question of the proper relationship between music and politics, a subject Romano-Lax handles with finesse. ... A deft, inventive debut.”
—Kirkus Reviews

"This riveting historical page-turner moves inexorably toward a heartrending crescendo."
—Booklist

Read an excerpt from The Spanish Bow, and learn more about the book and author at Andromeda Romano-Lax's website.

Romano-Lax worked as a freelance journalist and travel writer before turning to fiction. Among her nonfiction works are travel and natural history guidebooks to Alaska and Mexico, as well as a travel narrative, Searching for Steinbeck's Sea of Cortez: A Makeshift Expedition Along Baja's Desert Coast.

The Page 69 Test: The Spanish Bow.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Michael Mazarr reading?

The latest contributor to Writers Read: Michael Mazarr, a professor at the National War College and author of numerous books and articles on various aspects of U.S. defense policy and international security. His entry opens:

I'm a professor at an American War College, which is a timely, slightly depressing, but also heartening (given the amazing quality and inspirational character of our students) vocation to have at the moment, all events considered. My reading lately has been in support of my teaching and curriculum design work. [read on]

Mazarr's new book is Unmodern Men in the Modern World: Radical Islam, Terrorism, and the War on Modernity.

About the book, from Cambridge University Press:

Five years into the war on terror, we still don't understand the supposed "enemy." Official analyses of radical Islam remain simplistic and unhelpful for understanding the motivations and mindsets of people still characterized simply as "evildoers who hate freedom." This book offers a new way of understanding this challenge and figuring out what to do about it. It concludes with specific policy suggestions for a new approach to replace the badly-failing current strategy. This book approaches radical Islam by putting it into a comparative context. It makes a big, bold argument about the character of the threat and the nature of world politics in this provocative and wide-ranging examination of radical Islamists.

Among the early praise for Unmodern Men in the Modern World:

"Michael Mazarr’s Unmodern Men in the Modern World represents a valuable integration of the scholarship on the political and intellectual origins of anti-modernist extremist movements in Germany, Russia and Japan of the twentieth century with that regarding the origins and nature of radical Islamism in recent decades. Mazarr has read widely and thought clearly. Even for readers who dissent from Mazarr’s policy prescriptions, Unmodern Men contains insights of value for policy makers, scholars, analysts, students and interested citizens. It is also evidence of a welcome and important phenomenon, namely the closing of a gap between the world of serious scholarship in the humanities and social sciences and that of policy debate in Washington, DC."
--Jeffrey Herf, author of Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich, and Professor of History, University of Maryland, College Park

"Michael Mazarr provides a penetrating insight into the nature of jihadism by showing how it is the latest in a long line of extreme reactions to modernization. He separates valid lessons of history from invalid ones in assessing how liberal democracies can best respond. In so doing, he persuasively demonstrates how the ‘war on terror’ in its current form is misdirected and counterproductive."
--Paul R. Pillar, Visiting Professor, Security Studies Program, Georgetown University

"This book tackles the big issues underlying the war on terrorism. It rightly sees the ideological core of the global jihadi movement as a critique of modernity -- of American and European versions of the nation-state -- and a contest over the future of global politics. Insightful, clear and controversial, this is a thesis that will be much discussed."
--Mark Juergensmeyer, Director, Arfalea Center for Global & International Studies, University of California-Santa Barbara. Author of Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence

Read an excerpt from Unmodern Men in the Modern World and learn more about the book at the publisher's website.

Writers Read: Michael Mazarr.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Paul Hoffman's "King's Gambit"

The latest feature at the Page 99 Test: Paul Hoffman's King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game.

About the book, from the author's website:

As a child, Paul Hoffman lost himself in chess. The award-winning author of the international bestseller The Man Who Loved Only Numbers played to escape the dissolution of his parents' marriage, happily passing weekends with his brilliant bohemian father in New York's Greenwich Village, the epicenter of American chess. But he soon learned that such single-minded focus came at a steep price, as the pressure of competition drove him to the edge of madness.

As an adolescent, Hoffman loved the artistic purity of the game — and the euphoria he felt after a hard-fought victory — but he was disturbed by the ugly brutality and deceptive impulses that tournament chess invariably brought out in his opponents and in himself. Plagued by strange dreams in which attractive women moved like knights and sinister men like bishops, he finally gave up the game entirely in college, for the next twenty-five years.

In King's Gambit, Hoffman interweaves gripping tales from the history of the game and revealing portraits of contemporary chess geniuses into the emotionally charged story of his own recent attempt to get back into tournament chess as an adult — this time without losing his mind or his humanity. All the while, he grapples with the bizarre, confusing legacy of his own father, who haunts Hoffman's game and life.

In this insider's look at the obsessive subculture of championship chess, the critically acclaimed author applies the techniques that garnered his earlier work such lavish praise — the novelistic storytelling and the keen insights — to his own life and the eccentric, often mysterious lives of the chess pros he knew and has come to know. Intimate, surprising, and often humorous, it's both Hoffman's most personal work and his most compelling.

Among the early praise for King's Gambit:

"If you enjoy playing chess, this will be the most fascinating, best-written book that you have ever read. If you have no interest in chess, then get ready to enjoy a fascinating, fast-moving story with unforgettable characters many of whom just happen to be chess players."
—Jared Diamond

"Hoffman's masterful, exhaustive tale of chess, its soaring triumphs and crushing discontents is filled with enough international intrigue and warped, shady characters to pass for the latest James Bond sequel. Along with the stereotypical lunatic Russian grandmasters ('the normally even-keeled Russian asked that his chair be X-rayed and dismantled to make sure [Bobby] Fischer hadn't implanted a harmful radiation emitter inside it'), chess-crazed Bulgarians, Canadians, Libyans and the occasional American plow through the contemporary chess world in search of victory. In clear, thoughtful prose, Hoffman (The Man Who Loved Only Numbers ) describes the players ("[Short] doesn't glare at his adversary, slam down the rooks, twist the knights into the board, rock back and forth, tap his feet or pace the tournament hall snorting like a feral animal") and the game.... Hoffman has achieved something singular: a winning, book about the 'royal game' that will satisfy the general reader, kibitzer and grandmaster alike."
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Introduced to chess by his father when he was only five, Hoffman found a refuge in the game during an adolescence marked by family stress. Returning to the game decades later in a period of personal and professional crisis, he found himself fascinated not just by chess itself, but by the inner life of its players. Among the questions he seeks to answer are why chess is so addictive, how the champions handle victory and defeat and why the game is played primarily by men.... [A trip in 2004 to the World Chess Championship in Libya], which included nerve-shattering encounters with a police-state bureaucracy, reveals the author's expertise as a storyteller as well as his own high-amateur competence at the chessboard... Those who relished Stefan Fatsis's portrayal of Scrabble junkies (Word Freak, 2001) will find this another fascinating glimpse into a competitive game world filled with quirky and brilliant addicts."
—Kirkus

Read an excerpt from King's Gambit, and learn more about the book at Paul Hoffman's website and blog.

Paul Hoffman was president of Encyclopaedia Britannica and editor in chief of Discover magazine, and is the author of Wings of Madness and The Man Who Loved Only Numbers. King's Gambit is his eleventh book.

The Page 99 Test: King's Gambit.

--Marshal Zeringue

J. Crusie & B. Mayer's "Don't Look Down," the movie

Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer have collaborated on two novels: Don’t Look Down and Agnes and the Hitman.

In the latest entry at My Book, The Movie, Mayer explains how he and Crusie use characters from movies to help picture their characters as they're writing the novels.

About Agnes and the Hitman, from Mayer's website:

Agnes Crandall, a food columnist better known as Cranky Agnes, is getting ready for the big society wedding that’s going to be held in her back yard when a guy with a gun breaks into her kitchen and tries to kidnap her dog. Agnes accidentally kills him. Shortly after that, a guy with a gun (Shane, just Shane) breaks into her bedroom and tells her he’s there to protect her. Good thing, too, because then things go really badly and it’s pretty much Agnes and Shane against the world, at least the part of it that’s armed and coming for Agnes.

About Don’t Look Down, from Mayer's website:

Jenny Crusie writes Lucy Armstrong, a film director with family problems – why is her sister so depressed, her niece so unhappy, and her ex-husband so intent on getting her back – and career problems – why is the star so determined to do his own stunts, the ingenue so determined to seduce the stunt double, and that Green Beret stunt double so damn attractive? Bob Mayer writers J. T. Wilder, a Green Beret who has his own troubles including the goofball actor he’s doubling for, the stunt coordinator who’s gunning for him (literally), and the director who looks like Wonder Woman and keeps distracting him from his mission. And that’s before the CIA, the Russian mob, and the one-eyed alligator show up.

Visit My Book, The Movie: Jennifer Crusie & Bob Mayer's Agnes and the Hitman and Don't look Down to find out who the authors had in mind for their characters when they wrote these novels.

Read an excerpt from Agnes and the Hitman and an excerpt from Don’t Look Down, and learn more about the books at Jenny Crusie's website and Bob Mayer's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Craig McDonald's "Head Games"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Craig McDonald's Head Games.

About the book, from the author's website:

In a dusty cantina on the far side of the Rio Grande, larger-than-life and recently widowed crime writer Hector Lassiter and Bud Fiske, a callow young poet sent by True Magazine to profile Hector, are handed a carpet bag. Inside they find the stolen head of Mexican general Francisco "Pancho" Villa — a long missing relic that may point the way to a fortune in lost treasure or a blood-and-thunder death...

In the dank, hallowed halls of Yale University creep the members of the Skull & Bones, a secret society shrouded in whispers. They are a fraternity whose members include media barons, über executives and politicians, including three generations of men called Bush — and their sanctum sanctorum's trophy cabinet is purportedly packed with the stolen bones of long-dead luminaries...

In a '57 Bel Air, Hector, Bud, and the beautiful Alicia tear through the desert with a trunk full of human heads. Caught in a crazy crossfire, they lead all manner of headhunters on a breakneck chase across Lost America. U.S. intelligence services, murderous frat boys, the soldier of fortune who stole Pancho's head from its grave, and the specter of a dead Mexican legend all want Villa's head — though they might settle for Hector's...

Among the praise for Head Games:

"Head Games is terrific, a real discovery, informed by — but never weighed down by — Craig McDonald's intimate knowledge of pulp fiction, politics, history, literature, film noir and all manner of frontiers. A truly original debut that leaves one eager to see what this writer will do next."
—Laura Lippman, author of What the Dead Know

"Moves like a bullet, like a trajectory of magnificent artistry and line-on-line of almost casual, throwaway description. The beautiful, understated humor running like a sad song all through the whole novel ... I'm beyond impressed."
—Ken Bruen, author of American Skin

"Reading Craig McDonald's Head Games was like reliving those wonderful and exciting, tequila-fired weekend border-town tours of my youth in the '50's. A different character, vivid and lively, waiting around every new corner of the artfully twisted plot. The time and place are captured perfectly, and story never falters as it dashes to the surprising ending. It made me homesick for El Paso the way it was."
—James Crumley, author of The Last Good Kiss

"In McDonald's fun, deft debut, set mostly in 1957, Sen. Prescott Bush has sent out the call: bring me the head of Pancho Villa, the late Mexican revolutionary. Reminiscent of James Crumley's Milo Milodragovich PI novels ... this slick caper novel touches chords of myth, history, loss and redemption just enough so you can hear echoes faintly under the gunfire."
—Publishers Weekly

"A turbulent tale of murder, conspiracy and political intrigue. McDonald's Spillane-like fictional debut has its roots in a real historical question: Did the Bush family really help hide Pancho Villa's head in the inner sanctum of Skull and Bones? Not for the faint-hearted."
—Kirkus Reviews

"In his debut novel McDonald mixes history, legend, and fantastic characters to play the best kind of Head Games. Where has this guy been? The newest recipe for great fiction? One pulp novelist, one poet, two Hollywood legends, a secret society and a plot scored by Ennio Morricone. This is Head Games. Next book please, Mr. McDonald."
—Crimespree Magazine

Read an excerpt from Head Games and learn more about the novel and author at McDonald's website and his Crimespace page.

Craig McDonald is an award-winning journalist, editor and fiction writer. His short fiction has appeared in literary magazines, anthologies and several online crime fiction sites. His nonfiction books include Art in the Blood, a collection of interviews with 20 major crime authors which appeared in 2006, and Rogue Males: Conversations and Confrontations About the Writing Life, a second collection of interviews to be published by Bleak House Books.

The Page 69 Test: Head Games.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Michael Elliott's "Custerology"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Michael Elliott's Custerology: The Enduring Legacy of the Indian Wars and George Armstrong Custer.

About the book, from the publisher:

On a hot summer day in 1876, George Armstrong Custer led the Seventh Cavalry to the most famous defeat in U.S. military history. Badly outnumbered and exhausted from a day of forced marches, Custer’s forces were quickly overwhelmed by warriors from the Lakota Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes. The Seventh Cavalry lost more than half of the 400 men who rode into the Indian camp, and every soldier under Custer’s direct command was killed.

It’s easy to understand why this tremendous defeat shocked the American public at the time. But with Custerology, Michael A. Elliott tackles the far more complicated question of why the battle retains such power for Americans today. Weaving vivid historical accounts of Custer at Little Bighorn with contemporary commemorations that range from battle reenactments to the unfinished Crazy Horse memorial, Elliott reveals a Custer and a West whose legacies are still vigorously contested. He takes readers to each of the important places of Custer’s life, from his Civil War home in Michigan to the site of his famous demise, to show how more than a century later, the legacy of Custer still haunts the American imagination. Along the way, Elliott introduces us to Native American activists, Park Service rangers, and devoted history buffs; draws us into the arcana of Custerology and the back rooms of High Plains bars; and reveals how Custer and the Indian Wars continue to be both a powerful symbol of America’s bloody past and a crucial key to understanding the nation’s multicultural present.

By turns dramatic and meditative, Custerology moves seamlessly between past and present, delivering both a bracing narrative and a potent reminder of why we care so much about history in the first place.

Among the early praise for the book:

“Michael Elliott’s Custerology is vivid, trenchant, engrossing, and important. The American soldier George Armstrong Custer has been the subject of very nearly incessant debate for almost a century and a half, and the debate is multicultural, multinational, and multimedia. Mr. Elliott’s book provides by far the best overview, and no one interested in the long-haired soldier whom the Indians called Son of the Morning Star can afford to miss it.”
—Larry McMurtry

“That any writer could find a fresh approach to George Armstrong Custer and the Battle of the Little Bighorn is a phenomenon. Yet Michael Elliott presents a fresh approach by relating the public obsession that has flourished for 131 years to its continuing resonance in the present and, almost certainly, the future.”
—Robert Utley, author of Custer and Me: A Historian’s Memoir

Read an excerpt from Custerology and learn more about the book at the University of Chicago Press website.

Michael A. Elliott is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of English at Emory University. He specializes in the literature and culture of the United States from the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth century. He also teaches and writes about contemporary Native American literatures. His teaching interests include the nineteenth-century novel, race in American fiction, Native American literature, and cultural studies. A recipient of fellowships from the American Philosophical Society, the Charles Warren Center at Harvard University, and the Beneicke Library at Yale University, Elliott’s research frequently focuses on the way that narratives travel across genres: fiction, ethnography, history, the law. He is the author of The Culture Concept: Writing and Difference in the Age of Realism (Minnesota, 2002) and, with Claudia Stokes, the co-editor of American Literary Realism: A Methodological Reader (NYU, 2003).

The Page 99 Test: Custerology.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Austin Grossman reading?

The latest contributor to Writers Read: Austin Grossman, author of the acclaimed debut novel Soon I Will Be Invincible.

About the novel, from the publisher:

Doctor Impossible — evil genius, diabolical scientist, wannabe world dominator — languishes in a federal detention facility. He's lost his freedom, his girlfriend, and his hidden island fortress.

Over the years he's tried to take over the world in every way imaginable: doomsday devices of all varieties (nuclear, thermonuclear, nanotechnological) and mass mind control. He's traveled backwards in time to change history, forward in time to escape it. He's commanded robot armies, insect armies, and dinosaur armies. Fungus army. Army of fish. Of rodents. Alien invasions. All failures. But not this time. This time it’s going to be different...

Fatale is a rookie superhero on her first day with the Champions, the world's most famous superteam. She's a patchwork woman of skin and chrome, a gleaming technological marvel built to be the next generation of warfare. Filling the void left by a slain former member, we watch as Fatale joins a team struggling with a damaged past, having to come together in the face of unthinkable evil.

Soon I Will Be Invincible is a thrilling first novel; a fantastical adventure that gives new meaning to the notions of power, glory, responsibility, and (of course) good and evil.

Among the praise for the novel:

"Austin Grossman has a superpower himself — it's called writing. This book is a new, winning, smart and funny way of interpreting our world. It's terrific."
—Douglas Coupland, author of JPod and Generation X

"It’s a hugely enjoyable book."
—Andi Shechter, January Magazine

"The realm of comic book heroes and villains gets a dose of realism in this whimsical debut from game design consultant Grossman.... However fantastical, the characters (including a 'genetic metahuman' and 'an elite fairy guard') are thoughtfully portrayed.... Grossman dabbles in a host of themes — power, greed, fame, the pitfalls of ego — in this engrossing page-turner, broadening the appeal of an already inviting scenario."
—Publishers Weekly

"Distilling the motley spectrum of doomed super-villains from half a century of comics into one impressive anti-hero, Austin Grossman's raucously madcap debut novel, Soon I Will Be Invincible, races along like a roller coaster with its lug nuts loosened.... Light and adhesive as Spider-Man's web, Soon I Will Be Invincible is tailored for summer reading like a superhero's (or super-villain's) form-fitting costume."
—Thane Tierney, Bookpage

"Riding the current wave of enthusiasm for superpowered mutants in film and fiction, Grossman's first novel peeks intimately inside the psyches of both superheroes and supervillains.... With remarkable ingenuity, [he] assembles an entire menagerie of superheroes and criminal masterminds completely from scratch. Costumed crime-fighter mavens naturally attracted to this latest rendition of superheroic derring-do may wind up itching to see it on the silver screen."
—Booklist

"In a world where BlackBerry-carrying superheroes grace the cover of GQ, being a supervillain known as the "angriest dork in the world" isn't easy. A heartbreaking genius of staggering evil, Doctor Impossible avenges lost love, a lonely adolescence, and a plethora of foiled doomsday devices. (That fungus army seemed foolproof!) Every comic-book cliché in this witty, stunning debut is lovingly embraced, then turned inside out."
—Steven Leckart, Wired

For more reviews, an excerpt, and other links, visit Austin Grossman's website and the Soon I Will be Invincible website.

Writers Read: Austin Grossman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Parnell Hall's "Hitman"

The latest feature at the Page 69 Test: Parnell Hall's Hitman.

About the book, from the publisher:

"What Mr. Hall does to the private eye formula is very funny, but it is not frivolous. His puzzles, for all their manic nonsense, are fiendish constructions of sound logic."-The New York Times Book Review

Private Eye Stanley Hastings doesn't want for idiosyncrasies, as fans of this long-running "unconventional" and "very funny"(The New York Times) mystery series know. For instance, he doesn't carry a gun. So he seems a particularly improbable choice, among all of New York City's private investigators, for the cold-eyed Martin Kessler.

Not that Kessler requires firepower. He's got a gun of his own-an automatic with a long, ugly silencer - although he'd like to retire it. A contract killer who wants out of the game, Kessler hires Stanley mostly to watch his back in the event that someone of similar professional skills is shadowing him. Someone is, in fact, only Stanley fails to spot him and dead bodies are soon piling messily up.

There's an obligation a PI owes a client, so Stanley figures, and in the face of a situation that with more luck or diligence he might have averted, he determines to sort it out. The hapless PI thus begins an odyssey that will take him from a seedy topless bar to a plush corporate boardroom, and ultimately a Manhattan courtroom, in his attempt to uncover just what did go down, and why, during his client's last, decidedly dirty job.

Among the praise for the Stanley Hastings mystery series:

"What Mr. Hall does to the private eye formula is very funny, but it is not frivolous. His puzzles, for all their manic nonsense, are fiendish constructions of sound logic."
--New York Times

"Like Agatha Christie ... Hall knows how to plant clues and red herrings. Only he's a lot funnier."
--Denver Post & Rocky Mountain News

"First-class fun from start to finish."
--Booklist

Read an excerpt from Hitman and learn more about the book at the author's website.

The Page 69 Test: Hitman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: James R. Benn's "The First Wave"

Today's feature at the Page 99 Test: James R. Benn's The First Wave.

About the book, from the author's website:

The pursuit of truth in wartime is never as dangerous as when it forces a choice between the greater good and the life of a loved one. For Lt. Billy Boyle, that choice is as hard as the unforgiving rocky landscape of Algeria where the American Army receives its baptism of fire in the Second World War. A headquarters staff officer serving with General Eisenhower, Billy finds himself in the lead landing craft of the invasion of French Northwest Africa on a wet November morning in 1942. Having wished for a safe desk job, Billy finds that his police background and family connections have instead landed him in the role of Special Investigator charged with looking into low crimes in high places for his “Uncle Ike”. With one mission already under his belt, Billy finds himself in the vanguard of the first invasion of the war and rapidly entangled in French politics as Allied forces attempt to ready themselves for Rommel’s vaunted Afrika Korps. When corpses begin to appear before the Germans have even appeared, Billy is put on the case to find out if the cause is enemy action, or plain old-fashioned greed. Torn between solving this case and finding the missing Diana Seaton, a British spy held by renegade French fascists, Billy seeks a way to deal with both, hoping that “some Frenchie doesn’t put a bullet in my head before I give the Germans and Italians their chance at it.”

The First Wave is a novel about the ultimate choice that war can force on an individual, and how one man struggles to make that choice an honorable one. Billy Boyle tells his story in his unique voice, a reluctant hero slowly coming to grips the moral and physical minefields of the Second World War.

Among the early praise for The First Wave:

"'The First Wave' finds Boyle coming ashore in the 1942 Allied landing in French North Africa. He’s on a dangerous, if vague, mission to rally support from officers in the Vichy government forces in Algiers and to free a group of French resistance fighters, his English girlfriend among them. A better cop than secret agent, Boyle also gets wind of a smuggling ring that’s depriving soldiers of the new miracle drug, penicillin, and during the course of his investigation discovers that even in the middle of a war a combat hospital offers no refuge from noncombat crimes like drug trafficking, high-stakes gambling, rape and murder. In granting Boyle a measure of maturity, Benn takes care not to put a muzzle on him. The brash kid from Southie is still open, direct and fearless in his manner (and in his wonderfully loose-jointed use of the English language) and in no danger of losing his cover as a “happy-go-lucky Yank.” But even amid the excitement of the spirited wartime storytelling, Benn allows Boyle’s experiences to change him in ways both subtle and dramatic. Becoming sensitized to the status of female officers — paid half the salary of men, unable to issue an order to the lowliest private and denied the dignity of a salute — is one of those subtle ways. Seeing himself from the perspective of a people whose country his own has invaded is a more striking leap for Boyle, as is his new willingness to judge foreigners by their own standards. In one painful moment of introspection, he even questions his family’s rigid beliefs. Where he comes from, that’s real bravery."
--Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review

"Take a young Irish cop. Turn him into a lieutenant on Eisenhower's personal staff ... set him ashore on the coast of French North Africa along with the first wave of invading American troops. And watch the mayhem, mystery, and murder that are bound to follow...Benn follows up his first World War II mystery (Billy Boyle) with another danger-filled episode and delivers a cross-genre tale that is at once spy story, soldier story, and hard-Boyled detective. Bullets, babes, and bombs give Billy Boyle a bad time before he solves the case, but you'll have a good time reading about it. Highly recommended for all mystery collections."
--Library Journal (starred review)

"...combines conventional sleuthing and crackerjack adventure as the body count rises ... and the clock runs down ... Benn's wide-eyed hero retains his appealing earnestness and infectious spirit, and his escapade is refreshingly free of camp."
--Kirkus

"Billy Boyle returns in a rousing adventure.... This series brings alive WWII for me...a very believable, entertaining, and educational read.... I enjoyed the cover art as much as the book, and look forward to the further adventures of Billy."
--Deadly Pleasures Magazine

"A solid follow up to Benn's first novel, The First Wave makes me look forward to his next."
--Robert B. Parker, author of the Spenser, Sunny Randall, and Jesse Stone mystery novels.

"A triple dose of excitement with a murder mystery within a spy thriller within a World War Two adventure story. Benn skillfully transports us to North Africa at the time of the first Allied invasions with likable Boston Irish hero Billy Boyle. This is the kind of old fashioned story that one can describe as a 'rattling good read'."
--Rhys Bowen, Agatha and Anthony Award winning author of the Molly Murphy and Evan Evans mystery series.

"What a great read, full of action, humor and heart. James R. Benn is a remarkable writer and his hero, Billy Boyle, is equally remarkable and memorable. Lieutenant Boyle is a marvelous creation and we're keen to stick with him as he races to solve mysteries in the midst of war. Equal parts spy thriller, war story and murder mystery, with a dollop of romance that's never sweet, this is just a terrific book. More please!"
--Louise Penny, author of A Fatal Grace and winner of the Dilys, New Blood Dagger and Arthur Ellis awards.

"A captivating story that has all the essential elements: murder, espionage, and romance."
--Karen E. Olson, author of the Annie Seymour mystery series

Learn more about the Billy Boyle WWII Mystery Series at James R. Benn's website.

The Page 99 Test: The First Wave.

--Marshal Zeringue

Dalia Sofer's most important books

Dalia Sofer was born in Iran and fled at the age of ten to the United States with her family. She received her MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College in 2002 and has been a resident at Yaddo.

Her debut novel, The Septembers of Shiraz, was published this summer.

She recently told Newsweek about her five most important books.

And she addressed two other book-related issues:

A Certified Important Book you've never read:

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. We're all products of the time we live in and its political events, so I'd like to read it ... but it's just so long.

A book you'd like to share with your children:

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. It's a letter from an aging father to his young son. And it contains all these brilliant ruminations on life, love, religion, friendship and space. And the writing is absolutely crystalline and gorgeous.

Read about Sofer's most important books.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Ken Albala reading?

The latest contributor to Writers Read: Ken Albala, Professor of History at the University of the Pacific and author of a new book, Beans: A History.

About the book, from the publisher:

This is the story of the bean, the staple food cultivated by humans for over 10,000 years. From the lentil to the soybean, every civilization on the planet has cultivated its own species of bean.

The humble bean has always attracted attention - from Pythagoras' notion that the bean hosted a human soul to St. Jerome's indictment against bean-eating in convents (because they "tickle the genitals"), to current research into the deadly toxins contained in the most commonly eaten beans.

Over time, the bean has been both scorned as "poor man's meat" and praised as health-giving, even patriotic. Attitudes to this most basic of foodstuffs have always revealed a great deal about a society.

Beans: A History takes the reader on a fascinating journey across cuisines and cultures.

Among the praise for Beans:

"A vividly entertaining history of the humble bean takes the reader on a curious, surprising and exciting journey across epochs, continents and cultures."
--Raymond Blanc

"Who ever knew that beans were so complicated and interesting. Told in fascinating detail by Ken Albala, Beans: A History is an instructional book that reads like a novel."
--Charlie Palmer

"Here is the first biography of beans, presented by Ken Albala in vivid prose. Gut-buster or aphrodisiac, lowly legume or savior of civilization, the bean is more significant than we ever realized."
--Darra Goldstein, Editor-in-Chief of Gastronomica

"Lucky Beans, who have at last found their Homer. Who knew that the history of the Western world and parts of Asia, could be illumined through the evolution of the lowly bean in its multiple forms from fava to soy? No one is better equipped than this skilled historian to wrap history, science, legend, folklore and fakelore in an entertaining narrative that delights while it informs. This is the most digestible bean dish I've ever encountered and all I want is more."
--Betty Fussell, author of The Story of Corn and I Hear America Cooking: The Cooks and Recipes of American Regional Cuisine

"Beans is a lyrical book. It is a tale well told, filled with unusual twists and turns, with surprises popping up in almost every paragraph."
--Andrew F. Smith, editor of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America

"Fresh and engaging from the start ... A must have for any serious foodie."
--Telegraph

Ken Albala is Professor of History at the University of the Pacific. His other books include: Eating Right in the Renaissance, University of California Press, 2002; Food in Early Modern Europe, Greenwood Press, 2003; Opening Up North America, with Caroline Cox, Facts on File, 2005; The Banquet: A History of Fine Dining in Western Europe, 1520-1660, University of Illinois Press, 2006; and Cooking in the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Elizabethan England, Greenwood Press, 2006.

Visit his blog, Ken Albala's Food Rant.

Tracie McMillan interviewed Albala about Beans for Salon.

Writers Read: Ken Albala.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: "An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Brock Clarke's An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England.

About the book, from the official website:

“I, Sam Pulsifer, would like you to know that I take full responsibility for burning down the home of Emily Dickinson. However, I cannot take credit for the other literary blazes that were inspired by mine. At least, I don't think I can.”

As a teenager, it was never Sam Pulsifer’s intention to torch an American landmark. He certainly never planned to kill two people in the blaze. To this day, he still wonders why that young couple was upstairs in bed in the Emily Dickinson house after hours.

After serving ten years in prison for his crime, Sam is determined to put the past behind him. He finishes college, begins a career, falls in love, gets married, has two adorable kids, and buys a nice home. His low-profile life is chugging along quite nicely until the past comes crashing through his front door.

As the homes of Robert Frost, Edith Wharton, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and even a replica of Henry David Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond go up in smoke, Sam becomes the number one suspect. Finding the real culprit is the only way to clear his name — but sometimes there’s a terrible price to pay for the truth.

An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England is a literary tour de force — a brilliant skewering of every memoir every written and a novel that will have readers underlining their favorite passages and reading them aloud.

Among the early praise for the novel:

"Funny, profound . . . Larded with grabby aphorisms . . . memorable images and bittersweet epiphanies, Clarke's novel is an agile melding of faux-memoir and mystery. Spot-on timing gives it snap, and a rich sense of perversity ... lends texture. It's a seductive book with a payoff on every page."
—People Magazine ("Critic's Choice," four-stars)

"Clarke's novel sizzles. . . . This straight-faced, postmodern comedy scorches all things literary, from those moldy author museums to the excruciating question-and-answer sessions that follow public readings... They're all singed under Clarke's crisp wit.... [An Arsonist's Guide] is written in an innocent, deadpan voice, packed full of Sam [Pulsifer]'s bittersweet observations and fueled by Clarke's satire.... Literature, Clarke suggests in this witty lament, is somehow the pain and salve of our lives. We're drawn to stories like a moth to you know what."
—Washington Post Book World

"Wildly, unpredictably funny.... An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England is as cheerfully oddball as its title. Its cover art includes a tiny cartoon sketch of a green-frocked literary lioness garlanded in flames, and that captures the irreverence of the author, Brock Clarke's, enterprise. Although it is his fourth book, it feels like the bright debut of an ingeniously arch humorist, one whose hallmark is a calm approach to insanely improbable behavior.... The parodies here are priceless ... Sharp-edged and unpredictable, punctuated by moments of choice absurdist humor."
—Janet Maslin, New York Times

"This absurdly hilarious mystery about a bumbler's guilt-consumed life skewers the whole memoir thing and offers a fact/fiction-blurring meditation on the risky business of self-deception.... A searingly funny book. Grade: A-"
—Entertainment Weekly

Read an excerpt from An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England and learn more about the book at the official website.

Brock Clarke is the author of The Ordinary White Boy, What We Won’t Do, and Carrying the Torch. He has twice been a finalist for a National Magazine Award in Fiction. His work has appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, OneStory, the Believer, the Georgia Review, and the Southern Review; in the Pushcart Prize and New Stories from the South anthologies; and on NPR’s Selected Shorts. He teaches creative writing at the University of Cincinnati.

The Page 99 Test: An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Eric Stone's "Grave Imports"

Today's feature at the Page 69 Test: Eric Stone's Grave Imports.

About the book, from the author's website:

A routine investigation into a Chinese art supplies company unearths a smuggling ring. The trail leads through a warehouse filled with looted antiquities in the boomtown of Shenzhen, just north of Hong Kong; to the lair of a vicious ex-South Vietnamese general now living in Thailand; and finally to the murderous Khmer Rouge in the ancient temples and more recent killing fields of Cambodia. Based on the sordid facts of the illegal trade in stolen Cambodian art, Grave Imports is a hotpot of high adventure in exotic locales, fascinating characters, international commerce, terrible crime and one mixed-up, reluctant hero trying to shed light into some of the darkest corners of Asia.

Among the early praise for Grave Imports:

"Ray Sharp (The Living Room of the Dead) earns a living investigating Asian companies as possible investments for U.S. businesses. A routine probe into a Chinese art-supplies company has Ray following an antiquities smuggling ring from Hong Kong to mainland China to Cambodia. It is 1995, and art smuggling is a money maker for a Vietnamese ex-general, the Khmer Rouge, and every lowlife in Southeast Asia. What starts as a fast-paced thriller turns into a deeper social novel concerned with poverty, slavery, and the best and worst of the human condition. This will appeal to fans of John Burdett and Colin Cotterill, as well as patrons who enjoy exotic Asian settings and a mystery plot with some substance."
—Library Journal (starred review)

"A complacent reader will not get the full affect of books such as Grave Imports. It is a mystery/thriller but it is also a commentary on the modern world, its foibles and its fancies. The world seen through Ray Sharp's eyes is not a pretty world, it is not nice and heart, but it has heart and hope. The story starts with a statue of heads, it ends in a temple of a head — a fitting symbol of this thriller for the thinking man."
—Front Street Reviews

"The exotic and dangerous East comes to vibrant life in Grave Imports by Eric Stone. Bristling with fascinating details about culture, customs, and history, the story hurls the reader on a violent journey into the dark underworld of illicit art transportation and sales. Relax into your favorite easy chair. You're in for a wild and riveting ride."
—Gayle Lynds, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Spymaster

"Eric Stone knows Asia up, down, and sideways, all of which are positions his characters find themselves in. He takes you to places so riveting, through the eyes of people so appealing, it makes you wish you were in on the action, running with them through the streets of Hong Kong, Bangkok, and everywhere else they go."
—SJ Rozan, Edgar Award winning author of In This Rain

"A multi-course Asian feast of a novel, Grave Imports is an engaging odyssey into a world of exotic plunder, where heritage and humanity are sold down the river by zealous warlords and high-living thugs. Dig in, savor the spice, and come back for seconds."
—Dan Fesperman, author of The Prisoner of Guantanamo

"Grave Imports is a terrific read. Stone's keen eye for the Asian landscape always finds the compelling image, the startling fact. The story is harrowing and believable. And his hero, Sharp, is a refreshingly humble soldier in his fight against what is wrong and evil in the world."
—T. Jefferson Parker, author of L.A. Outlaws

"Gangster genocidal revolutionaries, greedy gangster generals, and an assortment of well-heeled graspers and ruthless anglers plague Stone's Ray Sharp in Grave Imports as the hustle is on in the underground market of rarified antiquities. Sharp, who slips between the gloss and the back alleys of Asia, may not have an inside line with the Buddha, but he knows it's the past that anchors us to our sins, and it's in how we try to make it right in the present that counts."
—Gary Phillips, author of Bangers and Citizen Kang

"In this intriguing tale of loss and redemption, Eric Stone takes the reader on a wild ride through the ruined temples, sordid back alleys, and the damaged soul of Cambodia. Grave Imports is a smart and compelling thriller."
—Dianne Emley, author of Cut to the Quick

Read an excerpt from Grave Imports and learn more about book and author at Eric Stone's website.

The Page 69 Test: Grave Imports.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Proust’s Lesbianism," the movie

The current feature at My Book, The Movie: Elisabeth Ladenson's Proust’s Lesbianism.

Ladenson's entry opens:

I have always been amazed that Hollywood had not until now recognized the tremendous cinematic potential of academic literary criticism.

She then explains how this (hypothetical, for now) film adaptation will happen and who will star in it. One of my favorite screenwriters gets the gig on this project, too. Read on.

Proust’s Lesbianism (Cornell University Press, 1999), has been described by one reviewer as “a breakthrough for gender studies, gay and lesbian studies, queer theory, and Proust studies," and has been published in French translation as Proust lesbian (Epel, 2004) with a preface by Antoine Compagnon.

About the book, from the publisher:

For decades, Elisabeth Ladenson says, critics have misread or ignored a crucial element in Marcel Proust’s fiction -- his representation of lesbians. Her challenging new book definitively establishes the centrality of lesbianism as sexual obsession and aesthetic model in Proust’s vast novel A la recherche du temps perdu.

Traditional readings of the Recherche have dismissed Proust’s “Gomorrah” — his term for women who love other women — as a veiled portrayal of the novelist’s own homosexuality. More recently, “queer-positive” rereadings have viewed the novel’s treatment of female sexuality as ancillary to its accounts of Sodom and its meditations on time and memory. Ladenson instead demonstrates the primacy of lesbianism to the novel, showing that Proust’s lesbians are the only characters to achieve a plenitude of reciprocated desire. The example of Sodom, by contrast, is characterized by frustrated longing and self-loathing. She locates the work’s paradigm of hermetic relations between women in the self-sufficient bond between the narrator’s mother and grandmother. Ladenson traces Proust’s depictions of male and female homosexuality from his early work onward, and contextualizes his account of lesbianism in late-nineteenth-century sexology and early twentieth-century thought.

A vital contribution to the fields of queer theory and of French literature and culture, Ladenson’s book marks a new stage in Proust studies and provides a fascinating chapter in the history of a literary masterpiece’s reception.

Among the praise for Proust’s Lesbianism:

"Carefully orchestrated.... Ladenson scours Proust's early work ... and converts the scattered evidence of lesbianism into a genuinely thought-provoking synthesis."
—TLS

"A remarkably close reading of Proust's remarkably long novel, Ladenson's persuasive book will change the way we interpret Á la recherche du temps perdu.... Ladenson's prose is also quite gratifying to read — a rare thing in the Academy that makes this erudite book both provocative and immensely entertaining."
—Virginia Quarterly Review

"Through a series of finely articulated, close re-readings of Proust's Recherche, this book . . . provides us with what amounts to be no less than a systematic reassessment of the novel's entire sexual economy, the cornerstone of which being precisely what has been so far mostly ignored or dismissed by critics: Proust's representation of female homosexuality. A brilliant contribution to both the field of queer studies and Proustian criticism."
—Eugene Nicole, Modern & Contemporary France

"Elisabeth Ladenson has written the sort of book we all dream of writing -- a book that figures something out no one has understood before but in a manner so utterly persuasive that afterward its point seems to go without saying. After reading Proust's Lesbianism, the reader says, 'but of course,' to what in all the decades of reading Proust no one had been able to see. On top of its completely convincing argument, the book is so gracefully written, so elegant and clear that it makes what Ladenson has achieved seem simple, deceptively simple. Ladenson has managed to produce a book of scholarship that is a pleasure to read, a major contribution to knowledge, and a complete tour de force. I'm green with envy."
—Jane Gallop, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Elisabeth Ladenson is Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.

Earlier this year she applied the Page 69 Test to her latest book, Dirt for Art's Sake: Books on Trial from Madame Bovary to Lolita.

The Page 69 Test: Dirt for Art's Sake.

My Book, The Movie: Proust’s Lesbianism.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Philip Gordon's "Winning the Right War"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Philip Gordon's Winning the Right War: The Path to Security for America and the World.

About the book, from the publisher:

A new strategy for American foreign policy that looks beyond Iraq and changes the way we think about the war on terror.

Six years into the “war on terror,” are the United States and its allies better off than we were before it started? Sadly, we are not, and the reason is that we have been fighting – and losing – the wrong war.

In this paradigm-shifting book, Philip H. Gordon presents a new way of thinking about the war on terror and a new strategy for winning it. He draws a provocative parallel between the world today and the world of the Cold War, showing how defense, development, diplomacy, and the determination to maintain our own values can again be deployed alongside military might to defeat a violent and insidious ideology. Drawing on the latest scholarly research, his own experience in the White House, and visits to more than forty countries, he provides fresh insights into the nature of the terrorist challenge and offers concrete and realistic proposals for confronting it.

Gordon also asks the question “What would victory look like?” – a topic sorely missing from the debate today. He offers a positive vision of the world after the war on terror, which will end not when we kill or capture all potential terrorists but when their hateful ideology collapses around them, when extremists become isolated in their own communities, and when Americans and their allies will again feel safe. His vision for promoting these goals is achievable and realistic, but only if the United States changes course before it is too late. As we look beyond the presidency of George W. Bush, we must seize the opportunity to chart a new course to security for America, the West, and the world at large. The stakes could not be higher.

Among the early praise for the book:

“A powerful critique of, and a sound strategic alternative to, the flawed assumptions and self-defeating prescriptions of George W. Bush’s misguided and mislabeled ‘war on terror.’”
—Zbigniew Brzezinski, former U.S. national security adviser and author of Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower

“Philip H. Gordon offers wise advice on how to think about the threats and challenges facing the United States in the wake of the Iraq disaster. He puts forward a clear vision of a less militarized foreign policy that actually stands a chance of reducing the numbers of enemies we face, rather than increasing them as we have done in the recent past.”
—Francis Fukuyama, author of America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy

“Philip H. Gordon has written an absolutely brilliant book, informed by a deep understanding of the successes and failures of U.S. foreign policy since World War II. Winning the Right War is the most clearly argued critique yet of the Bush administration’s flawed approach to defeating jihadist terrorism. It shows how the United States can contain – and ultimately defeat – the terrorists who would destroy us.”
—Peter Bergen, author of The Osama bin Laden I Know and Holy War, Inc.

“After four years of war in Iraq, the resurgence of Al Qaeda, and a steadily diminishing influence in the world, the United States needs a strategy for recovery. This book provides it. Philip H. Gordon’s prescription is prudent, deeply informed, and workable. The next administration would be wise to take this strategy as a starting point for the way forward.”
—Steven Simon, senior fellow, Council on Foreign Relations, and coauthor of The Age of Sacred Terror and The Next Attack

“‘Either you’re with us or you’re with the terrorists.’ This was President Bush’s challenge to the rest of the world in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Over the succeeding six years his administration’s conduct of the ‘global war on terror’ has managed to push hundreds of millions of Muslims onto the wrong side of that divide. Drawing upon America’s successful conduct of the Cold War, Philip H. Gordon suggests how this competition must be radically recast if the extremists are to be marginalized and the terrorists rejected by their own societies.”
—James Dobbins, director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at RAND, and former U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan

Read an excerpt from Winning the Right War and learn more about the book at the publisher's website.

Philip H. Gordon is the senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at The Brookings Institution, having previously served on the National Security Council staff as director for European affairs. He is the author or co-author of five books on international affairs and U.S. foreign policy, and his articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Foreign Affairs.

The Page 99 Test: Winning the Right War.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Nicholas Thompson reading?

The latest contributor to Writers Read: Nicholas Thompson, a senior editor at Wired Magazine who has also worked for Legal Affairs, the New America Foundation, and The Washington Monthly.

One book he tagged:

Richard Rhodes's Arsenals of Folly, the third part in his epic cycle about the Cold War. It covers a lot of the same ground that I'm covering in my book on Paul Nitze and George Kennan -- and it covers it quite well. The structure is a little jarring: he opens with a chapter on Chernobyl, takes one through the life of Gorbachev, and then begins a narrative about US policy from Truman through the end of the conflict. It's very good. If it's not as strong as The Making of the Atomic Bomb, that's setting a rather high standard. [read on]

Thompson's book on George Kennan, Paul Nitze, and the Cold War is scheduled to come out in 2009, published by Henry Holt. Among the articles he's written based on it: "Mirror Image: Could Iraq Be Vietnam in Reverse? What George F. Kennan's 1966 Senate Testimony Can Tell Us About Iraq in 2006."

Visit Nick Thompson's website.

Writers Read: Nicholas Thompson

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Matthew Pearl's "The Poe Shadow"

Today's feature at the Page 99 Test: Matthew Pearl's The Poe Shadow.

About the novel, from the publisher:

“I present to you ... the truth about this man’s death and my life.”

Baltimore, 1849. The body of Edgar Allan Poe has been buried in an unmarked grave. The public, the press, and even Poe’s own family and friends accept the conclusion that Poe was a second-rate writer who met a disgraceful end as a drunkard. Everyone, in fact, seems to believe this except a young Baltimore lawyer named Quentin Clark, an ardent admirer who puts his own career and reputation at risk in a passionate crusade to salvage Poe’s.

As Quentin explores the puzzling circumstances of Poe’s demise, he discovers that the writer’s last days are riddled with unanswered questions the police are possibly willfully ignoring. Just when Poe’s death seems destined to remain a mystery, and forever sealing his ignominy, inspiration strikes Quentin – in the form of Poe’s own stories. The young attorney realizes that he must find the one person who can solve the strange case of Poe’s death: the real-life model for Poe’s brilliant fictional detective character, C. Auguste Dupin, the hero of ingenious tales of crime and detection.

In short order, Quentin finds himself enmeshed in sinister machinations involving political agents, a female assassin, the corrupt Baltimore slave trade, and the lost secrets of Poe’s final hours. With his own future hanging in the balance, Quentin Clark must turn master investigator himself to unchain his now imperiled fate from that of Poe’s.

Following his phenomenal debut novel, The Dante Club, Matthew Pearl has once again crossed pitch-perfect literary history with innovative mystery to create a beautifully detailed, ingeniously plotted tale of suspense. Pearl’s groundbreaking research–featuring documented material never published before – opens a new window on the truth behind Poe’s demise, literary history’s most persistent enigma. The resulting novel is a publishing event that, through sublime craftsmanship, subtle wit, and devious twists, does honor to Poe himself.

Among the praise for The Poe Shadow:

"To his already prodigious command of mystery and intrigue, Matthew Pearl now adds a deeply genuine affection for and masterly insight into the life, work, and strange fate of Edgar Allan Poe; and the result is an even more compelling work than the extraordinary 'Dante Club,' one that confirms Pearl's position at the very forefront of contemporary novelists."
--Caleb Carr, bestselling author of The Alienist and The Italian Secretary

"Matthew Pearl has now created a two-book franchise on the cusp of mystery, literature and historical fiction. First he worked Longfellow and Oliver Wendell Holmes into 'The Dante Club.' Now, in 'The Poe Shadow,' he teases a globe-trotting 19th century mystery out of this summer's most surprising 'It' guy, Edgar Allan Poe."
--Janet Maslin, CBS Sunday Morning

"Pearl takes us back to those few lost days through the inquiries of Quentin Clark, a Poe-mad young Baltimorean who is dismayed not just by the writer's death but by the press's apathetic reponse to the news... A wonderfully knowing tone... 'The Poe Shadow' is thick with intrigue and thicker still with carefully researched details... He doesn't just disinter Poe's story; he disinters the language of Poe's time."
--New York Times Book Review

"The Poe Shadow belongs firmly in the Dupin/Sherlock mold of cerebral armchair investigations revolving around detailed study of newspapers and the welcome return of inverted clue logic -- not why something is , but why it isn't . This retro-ratiocination breathes refreshing life into the genre by returning to first principles. Beneath the cloak of this well-paced detective story and its understated wit, however, is a scholarly piece of work, a meticulously researched and detailed discussion of the events surrounding Poe's death. In fact, one wonders where reality ends and fiction begins, a question that Pearl dutifully discusses in the afterword. As a period piece the book is gloriously and sumptuously detailed, and if I ever get to Baltimore in the mid-19th century, I daresay I shall not be surprised by what I find."
--Jasper Fforde, Washington Post Book World

Read an excerpt from The Poe Shadow and learn more about the book at Pearl's website.

Check out the MySpace page for Quentin Clark, the protagonist of The Poe Shadow.

Matthew Pearl is the New York Times bestselling author of The Dante Club and The Poe Shadow and the editor of the Modern Library editions of Dante’s Inferno (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) and Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue: The Dupin Tales.

The Page 99 Test: The Poe Shadow.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Mark Billingham's "Buried"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Mark Billingham's Buried.

About the book, from the author's website:

The past is a shallow grave ...

Teenager Luke Mullen is missing. Last seen by schoolmates getting into a car with an older woman, it is unclear whether he has disappeared voluntarily or been abducted.

Police looking for the boy are pretty certain they are dealing with a kidnap. The son of a former police officer, Luke has no history of being out of touch, no track record of truancy or misbehaviour. And they know that the longer he is missing, the more likely he is to turn up dead.

Then the videotape arrives…

On special assignment to the Kidnap Unit, Detective Inspector Tom Thorne searches desperately for the boy, and for anyone who might have a grudge against him or his family. As someone who had put away a lot of tough villains in his time, Luke’s father is asked to come up with some names. A list is drawn up, but it is the omission which intrigues Thorne – a man who threatened ex-DCI Tony Mullen, served his time, and is now the main suspect in an unsolved murder. Has Mullen simply forgotten the man's name in the emotional trauma of his son’s disappearance? Or is he hiding something?

When the kidnapper demonstrates, shockingly, that he is not afraid to kill, Thorne knows he does not have the luxury of time. He must dig hard and deep into past cases and past lives. He learns that secrets are as easily hidden as bodies, and that even if Luke Mullen is still alive, making assumptions is the quickest way to get him dead and buried.

Among the praise for Buried:

"Billingham’s greatest achievement is the steady and relentless orchestration of tension. His thrillers are journeys into the most disturbing aspects of the human psyche."
--The Daily Express

"A masterpiece of plotting, police procedure and criminal insight."
--Daily Mirror

"Mark Billingham is master of a rough-and-tumble crime writing which has liberated itself from the iron hoops of sameness that confine so many police procedurals. What is so impressive is how real his characters are."
--Guardian

"Tom Thorne is the most interesting cop in British crime fiction at present."
--Times (London)

Download the first chapter of Buried.

Mark Billingham's first crime novel Sleepyhead was published in 2001. Featuring London-based detective Tom Thorne, it was an instant bestseller in the UK. The second novel, Scaredy Cat was published in July 2002 and was followed by Lazybones, The Burning Girl, Lifeless and Buried. The newest Tom Thorne novel Death Message was published in the UK in August 2007.

Read Billingham's June 2007 interview with Ali Karim at The Rap Sheet.

The Page 69 Test: Buried.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best: books about fashion

Woody Hochswender, a former features editor of Harper's Bazaar and style reporter for the New York Times, is the author of The Buddha in Your Rearview Mirror. He selected a five best list of books about fashion for Opinion Journal.

One title on his list:

Dressing the Man by Alan Flusser

Men are creatures (and sometimes victims) of fashion, too. While teaching how to select and wear clothes is Alan Flusser's mission in "Dressing the Man," this handsome book's subtitle reflects its subversive philosophy: "Mastering the Art of Permanent Fashion." We tend to think of fashion and permanence as mutually exclusive. But Flusser makes a strong case for certain enduring principles of dress, based on the correct proportions and colors for your frame and face. He offers some of the most detailed how-to's imaginable and illustrates his points by using various paragons of fashion (Cary Grant, Fred Astaire, the Duke of Windsor). This is the one indispensable book on men's fashion. Personal architecture -- that is the starting point of style.

Read more about Hochswender's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: James R. Gaines's "For Liberty And Glory"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: James R. Gaines's For Liberty and Glory: Washington, Lafayette, and Their Revolutions.

About the book, from the publisher:

They began as courtiers in a hierarchy of privilege, but history remembers them as patriot-citizens in a commonwealth of equals.

On April 18, 1775, a riot over the price of flour broke out in the French city of Dijon. That night, across the Atlantic, Paul Revere mounted the fastest horse he could find and kicked it into a gallop.

So began what have been called the “sister revolutions” of France and America. In a single, thrilling narrative, this book tells the story of those revolutions and shows just how deeply intertwined they actually were. Their leaders, George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette, were often seen as father and son, but their relationship, while close, was every bit as complex as the long, fraught history of the French-American alliance. Vain, tough, ambitious, they strove to shape their characters and records into the form they wanted history to remember. James R. Gaines provides fascinating insights into these personal transformations and is equally brilliant at showing the extraordinary effect of the two “freedom fighters” on subsequent history.

Among the advance praise for the book:

"This is history that's hard to put down. With the insight of a masterful historian, James R. Gaines has woven a fascinating portrait of two remarkable men into a vivid evocation of an era. He has created a book that makes you remember with nostalgia that America was once the symbol of freedom to the world."
—Robert A. Caro, author of Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson

"Though a stoic frontiersman from Virginia and a hot-blooded French teen aristocrat seem like improbable allies, George Washington and Marquis de Lafayette formed an unusually strong bond.... Gaines adroitly weaves their lives into the larger historical narrative, devoting equal time to military strategy and colorful characters like the chevalier d'Eon, a cross-dressing spy. A-"
—Michelle Kung, Entertainment Weekly

"Exciting, well-wrought narrative strikes a terrific balance between George Washington's stoic endeavors to galvanize a new American republic and the Marquis de Lafayette's efforts to foment ideas of liberty and equality in despotic France.... A marvelous reliving of history through the lives of two key players who were also devoted friends."
—Kirkus Reviews

"James Gaines' new book elegantly portrays the two great republican revolutions of the late 18th Century -- and reminds America the debt it owes to France in gaining its liberty.... His portrait of the relentlessly optimistic Lafayette, swept away by the excesses of the French Revolution and driven into prison and exile, is poignant."
—Evan Thomas, Newsweek

Read an excerpt from For Liberty and Glory and learn more about the book and author from Gaines's website and the publisher's website.

James R. Gaines is a longtime journalist, magazine editor, publishing executive, media consultant, and author. His books include Wit's End: Days and Nights of the Algonquin Round Table and Evening in the Palace of Reason.

The Page 69 Test: For Liberty and Glory.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Aurelie Sheehan's "History Lesson for Girls"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Aurelie Sheehan's History Lesson for Girls.

About the book, from the publisher:

A beautiful and resonant novel about a friendship that shaped a life during a decade of instability

Everyone remembers age thirteen. For Alison Glass, it was 1975, the year she moved to Weston, Connecticut, with her bohemian parents and her horse, Jazz. Life was about trying to navigate the hypocrisies of an unfamiliar affluent town and figuring out how she might blend in at school — despite her status as the new girl with a back brace for scoliosis. Kate Hamilton, the popular daughter of an egomaniacal New Age guru — the "sham shaman" — and his substance-loving wife, was an unlikely friend, the strong girl Alison regarded as her saving grace. Bonding over their love of horses, they rode away the afternoons, creating a private world for themselves as a way to survive the excesses of their surroundings and the adults who cast them adrift in such a tumultuous time. With the clarity of hindsight, Alison looks back on how the tumult inevitably broke through.

Set against the backdrop of the often hilariously tacky and disturbingly reckless 1970s, Aurelie Sheehan's luminous History Lesson for Girls is at once an emotional inquest and an elegy for a friendship that meant everything. As Alison traces the giddy highs and crushing lows that made her the person she was at thirteen, a picture emerges of a friendship that simply couldn't survive the weight of the shadows under which it was forged. Combining the poignancy and elegance of The Virgin Suicides with the sharp observational eye of The Ice Storm, History Lesson for Girls is an enchanting tribute to the lingering influence of friendship and significance of personal history.

Among the praise for the novel:

"[Sheehan's] language remains carefully off-kilter, gorgeously specific and shot through with unobtrusive wit."
--Kirkus Reviews

"A tender, unflinching, and distinctive view of how girls grow up."
--Booklist

Read an excerpt from History Lesson for Girls, and learn more about the book at the publisher's website.

Aurelie Sheehan is the author of a collection of short stories, Jack Kerouac Is Pregnant, and another novel, The Anxiety of Everyday Objects. She has received a Pushcart Prize, a Carmargo Fellowship, and the Jack Kerouac Literary Award.

The Page 99 Test: History Lesson for Girls.

--Marshal Zeringue

Penelope Trunk’s list

Penelope Trunk’s syndicated career column appears in The Boston Globe and hundreds of other publications worldwide. Her first book is Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success.

She contributed "The List" to The Week magazine this week.

One title on Trunk's list:

Self-Help by Lorrie Moore

This book taught me to write short and direct sentences. I bought this book as a gift for everyone I knew because it’s so fun to read and so short. Giving long books as gifts is so intrusive of a person’s time. I had a boyfriend who gave me long books as gifts and in hindsight I see it as controlling.

Read more about Trunk's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Alan Furst reading?

The latest contributor to Writers Read: Alan Furst, author of Night Soldiers (1988), Dark Star (1991), The Polish Officer (1995), The World at Night (1996), Red Gold (1999), Kingdom of Shadows (2000), Blood of Victory (2002), Dark Voyage (2004), and The Foreign Correspondent (2006).

He mentions a few enticing titles, and:

A book I read last summer, Alberto Moravia's The Woman of Rome, is another great anti-fascist novel -- rare in being written from a woman's point-of-view by a man. [read on]

Visit Alan Furst's website and read an excerpt from The Foreign Correspondent.

Check out a few more titles favored by the author.

The Page 99 Test: The Foreign Correspondent.

Writers Read: Alan Furst

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Colin Cotterill's "Anarchy and Old Dogs"

Today's feature at the Page 69 Test: Colin Cotterill's Anarchy and Old Dogs.

About the book, from the publisher:

A blind retired dentist has been run down by a logging truck on the street in Vientiane just opposite the Post Office. His body is duly delivered to the morgue of Dr. Siri Paiboun, the official and only coroner of Laos. At the age of seventy-three, Dr. Siri is too old to be in awe of the new Communist bureaucrats for whom he now works. He identifies the corpse, helped by the letter in the man’s pocket. But first he must decipher it; it is written in code and invisible ink. The dentist’s widow explains that the enigmatic letters and numbers describe chess moves, but they are unlike any chess symbols Siri has previously encountered. With the help of his old friend, Civilai, now a senior member of the Laos politburo, and of Nurse Dtui (“Fatty”), Phosy, a police officer, and Aunt Bpoo, a transvestite fortune-teller, Dr. Siri solves the mystery of the note to the blind dentist and foils a plot to overthrow the government of Laos.

Among the praise for the Dr. Siri Paiboun series:

“Keeps a perfect balance between the modern mysteries of forensic science and the ancient secrets of the spirit world.”
—New York Times Book Review

“Paiboun’s droll wit and Cotterill’s engaging plot twists keep things energetic.”
—Entertainment Weekly

“Exotic locations; a world that few of us know well; crisp, intelligent, and often witty writing; and, most of all, a hero unlike any other.”
—Philadelphia Inquirer

“This witty and unusual series just keeps getting better.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Once again, Cotterill demonstrates his extensive knowledge of Laotian history and his ability to create memorable characters.”
—Library Journal (starred review)

“With such a compelling cast of characters, the twisty mystery comes as a nice bonus.”
—Booklist

Colin Cotterill is the author of The Coroner’s Lunch, Thirty-Three Teeth, and Disco for the Departed -- all featuring Dr. Siri Paiboun -- and other works.

Visit his website and his Crimespace page, and learn more about the "Dr. Siri" novels at the Soho Press.

The Page 69 Test: Anarchy and Old Dogs.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. XCIX: "Ancient Rome on Five Denarii a Day"

The current feature at the Page XCIX Test: Philip Matyszak's Ancient Rome on Five Denarii a Day.

About the book, from the publisher:

A time-traveler’s guide to sightseeing, shopping, and survival in the city of the Caesars

Welcome to Rome, city of the Caesars!

This informative and entertaining guide provides everything that any tourist needs for a journey back in time to ancient Rome in AD 200. All you need is your imagination and a toothbrush — this book does the rest, describing all the best places to stay and shop, what to do, and what to avoid.

The guide first gives advice on arranging the sea journey to Italy, and then describes the road to Rome and what to see on each of the city’s famous seven hills. You learn what to take to a posh dinner party (dining robe, your own napkin, and indoor shoes) and where to find the best markets, public baths, and brothels.

A series of walks covers all the sights of the eternal city, from the opulence of an imperial palace on the Palatine Hill through the bustle of the Forum to the grandeur of temples such as the Pantheon. The largest and most populous city in the ancient world has more than one hundred spectacles to offer, including chariot races and events at the Colosseum where gladiators battle to the death.

Witty and accessible, this book will appeal to history buffs, travelers, and anyone who has ever wondered what it would have been like to visit the greatest city of ancient times.

Among the praise for the book:

"[A] delightful travel guide for time-travelers to the Ancient Rome of about 200 A.D. The author starts from scratch, by laying out in detail how a sea journey is to be planned, with plenty of warnings and a distance chart, and he recommends the port of Puteoli as first destination point and carriage or foot travel from there to Rome. He concludes the guide book with a map and a few “useful phrases,” such as, noli me necare, cape omnias pecunias meas, Don’t kill me, here’s all my money. In between, there is all you wanted to know and more...."
--Irene B. Hahn

''Ancient Rome on Five Denarii a Day. It's a great idea: what would a traveler to Rome in 200 AD find and how would he or she spend his days? The book has chapters on Dining Out and What to Buy, as in a modern guidebook.... It's full of surprising information and is written in an engaging style...."
--Richard Zimler

--[R]equired reading for time travelers headed to Italy.... Beyond time warp humor, the guidebook format offers Matyszak the chance to provide pithy lessons on currency, gastronomy, systems of measuring weight and time, and all the day-to-day details of life in a long-ago civilization. The sightseeing sections provide a flavor of the Circus Maximus, Colosseum, and other major landmarks, not as today’s ruins, but as the vibrant centers of public life they once were. You’ll learn about the rules of gladiator combat, the best way to tie your toga, and what to expect on a visit to the baths. This is a terrific gift for history buffs, fans of the HBO series Rome, and anyone up for a little old school dolce vita."
--Passport Magazine

"Travel in Rome, circa 200 AD, may hold many dangers for unwary travelers, especially for those who have watched too many toga epics on television. Wearing a toga, for example, may earn you a flogging if you are a man (unless you are a Roman citizen); while if you are a woman, it will signify that you are a prostitute. Clearly this is not a trip you should undertake without a trustworthy guide. Fortunately, we now have one. This handy volume discusses what to watch out for when dealing with money changers, proper decorum when speaking to slaves, and where to find the best seats at the Circus Maximus. It also contains the basic information you would expect from any guidebook, such as where to stay, where to eat, and what to see. In short, it tells you everything you need to know for your vacation in ancient Rome..."
--Get Lost Books

Read an excerpt from Ancient Rome on Five Denarii a Day, and learn more about Ancient Rome on Five Denarii a Day at the publisher's website.

Philip Matyszak teaches ancient history in Cambridge. His books include Chronicle of the Roman Republic, The Enemies of Rome, and The Sons of Caesar.

The Page 99 Test: Ancient Rome on Five Denarii a Day.

--Marshal Zeringue

Interview: Matthew Brzezinski

In the latest of the blog's original interviews, the political scientist Ray Taras, whose scholarship includes many publications on Russian and East European politics, interviewed Matthew Brzezinski about his new book, Red Moon Rising: Sputnik and the Hidden Rivalries that Ignited the Space Age.

Brzezinski also responded to my own (lazy but, I hope, worthwhile) question:

What question do you wish someone would ask you about your book(s) but no one has asked? And what's the answer?

I suppose if I had to wish a question upon myself it would be “Why Russia? Why revisit a nation I so thoroughly trashed in my first book?” The irony is that the Soviet Union comes across in a far more positive light in Red Moon Rising than Yelstin's post-communist Russia did in Casino Moscow. Perhaps it is a proverbial case of proximity breeding contempt; I did not have to live in Moscow circa 1957 in order to write Red Moon Rising. But I'd like to think that it is also a good example of authorial impartiality, being able to set aside one's personal feelings to judge an event -- in this case the early space and missile race -- without prejudice, or the patriotic blinders that color so many Cold War books. The Russians won this battle fair and square, and the US blundered pretty badly at first. And I think it's important to learn from defeats as well as victories -- even if it means casting the Soviets as unlikely heroes.

Read the complete Taras-Brzezinski interview.

Matthew Brzezinski is a former Moscow correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and has reported extensively on homeland-security issues for the New York Times Magazine and other publications. He is the author of Casino Moscow: A Tale of Greed and Adventure on Capitalism’s Wildest Frontier and Fortress America: On the Front Lines of Homeland Security.

Learn more about Red Moon Rising at the publisher's website.

Author Interviews: Matthew Brzezinski.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Andrew Tilghman reading?

Andrew Tilghman was an Iraq correspondent for the Stars and Stripes newspaper in 2005 and 2006. His article "The Myth of AQI" is the cover story of the October issue of The Washington Monthly. In it, he argues:

Five years ago, the American public was asked to support the invasion of Iraq based on the false claim that Saddam Hussein was somehow linked to al-Qaeda. Today, the erroneous belief that al-Qaeda's franchise in Iraq is a driving force behind the chaos in that country may be setting us up for a similar mistake. [read the article]

Learn what the author has been reading: Writers Read: Andrew Tilghman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10: kids' books with kickass heroines

Joanne Harris is the author of Chocolat (made into a major film starring Juliette Binoche), Blackberry Wine, Five Quarters of the Orange, Coastliners, Holy Fools, Jigs & Reels, Sleep Pale Sister, Gentlemen & Players and, with Fran Warde, The French Kitchen: A Cookbook and The French Market: More Recipes from a French Kitchen. Her first children's novel Runemarks features Maddy, a kickass heroine with magical rune powers.

Harris named a top 10 list of "kids' books with kickass heroines" for the Guardian.

Number Two on her list:

The Black Tattoo by Sam Enthoven

After his visit to Chinatown, Jack will never be the same again. Demons, martial arts and vomiting bats feature in this strange and fabulous world - not to mention the Black Tattoo itself, and Esme, a young girl with the most spectacular fighting skills kids' fiction has ever see.

Read about Number One on Harris' list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Suzanne Kingsmill's "Forever Dead"

Today's feature at the Page 69 Test: Suzanne Kingsmill's Forever Dead.

About the book, from the author's website:

Hitch a ride with zoology professor Cordi O’ Callaghan as she unwittingly gets pulled into some action-packed scenarios when she discovers a body while on a white water canoe trip in the wild woods of west Quebec, Canada. Shortly after this gruesome discovery her life is threatened, her research disks are stolen and her lab at the university is fumigated. And there’s the little problem of a rogue bear and some killer rapids. She has to get her disks back or lose her job (and possibly her life) - it’s publish or perish. She’s not about to perish, at least not that way. So she sets out to get her disks back.

This is Cordi’s first murder case and she is not your average hard-boiled sleuth who shoots from the hip. Cordi doesn’t shoot at all. In fact she doesn’t even own a gun, unless a flare gun counts. She has fears and misgivings, like most people, and they come into play as she struggles to solve a murder and salvage her career as a university zoology professor.

Fortunately she doesn’t have to struggle alone. Martha Bathgate, Cordi’s technician and sounding board, with a flair for the ridiculous, keeps Cordi out of the dumps. Her brother, Ryan O’Callaghan, a photographer and farmer and Duncan McPherson, a crusty old coroner add to the convoluted mix of mystery and suspense. And then there’s Patrick, because where would Cordi’s life be without romance? But their relationship is off to a rocky start when Cordi puts him on the list of possible suspects.

Among the praise for Forever Dead:

Forever Dead “is a promising debut from Kingsmill” with “a slickly put together plot” and “no novel with a smart three-legged cat can fail to find its audience, and Forever Dead has that and the promise of more to come.”
--Margaret Cannon, Globe & Mail

Listen to the Prologue from Forever Dead and learn more about the book at Suzanne Kingsmill's website.

Suzanne Kingsmill is the author of four non-fiction books and has written for such magazines as Equinox, Canadian Geographic, Macleans, Science, New Scientist, International Wildlife, Discover, Canadian Living, Islands, Nature Canada, Seasons, Birder’s World and many more.

The Page 69 Test: Forever Dead.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Lisa See's "Peony in Love"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Lisa See's Peony in Love.

About the book, from the author's website:

I finally understand what the poets have written. In spring, moved to passion; in autumn only regret.

For young Peony, betrothed to a suitor she has never met, the lyrics from The Peony Pavilion mirror her own longings. In the garden of the Chen Family Villa, amidst the scents of ginger, green tea, and jasmine, a small theatrical troupe is performing choice scenes from this epic opera, a live spectacle few girls, even women, have ever seen. Like the heroine in the drama, Peony too is cloistered and from a wealthy family, trapped like a good-luck cricket in a bamboo-and-lacquer cage. Though raised to be obedient, Peony has dreams of her own.

Peony's mother is against the production: “Unmarried girls should not be seen in public.” But Peony's father prevails, assuring his wife that proprieties will be maintained. Women will watch the opera from behind a screen to hide them from view. Yet through its cracks, Peony catches sight of an elegant, handsome man with hair as black as a cave -- and is immediately overcome with too many emotions.

So begins Peony's unforgettable journey of love and destiny, desire and sorrow -- as Lisa See's haunting new novel takes readers back to 17th century China, after the Manchus seize power and the Ming dynasty is crushed. Steeped in traditions and ritual, this story brings to life another time and place -- even the intricate realm of the afterworld, with its protocols, pathways, and stages of existence ... a vividly imagined place where one’s soul is divided into three, ancestors are worshiped, misdeeds are punished, and hungry ghosts wander the earth.

Based on a true story, Peony in Love uses the richness and magic of the Chinese afterlife to transcend death and explore the many manifestations of love. Ultimately, it’s about universal themes: the bonds of female friendship, the power of words, the desire all women have to be heard, and finally those emotions that are so strong that they transcend time, place, and perhaps even death.

Among the early praise for Peony in Love:

“Engrossing…[a] thought-provoking meditation on what it means to be human.”
--People (Critic’s Choice)

“There are grand and stately themes here — the transcendence of love, the silenced voices of women, the subversive power of art… Peony in Love is a transporting read, to lost worlds earthly and otherwise.”
--Chicago Tribune

“A quietly beautiful tale that sneaks into the reader’s heart… Not since Susie Salmon of Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones has a ghostly narrator been as believable and empathetic.”
--San Antonio Express-News

“See is gifted with a lucid, graceful style and a solid command of her many motifs.”
--New York Times Book Review

“Shakespearean in its themes and emotional depths.”
--St. Paul Pioneer Press

“See is a master storyteller, calling on her knowledge of history, myth, and current international events to craft intricate narratives that are at once edifying and evocative. In Peony in Love, she leads us on a literary adventure into the past that will have relevance to today’s readers who value drama, accuracy, and the lure of the written word.”
--Boston Globe

“Electrifying… A fascinating and often surprising story of women helping women, women hurting women, and women misunderstanding each other.”
--Miami Herald

“See transports the reader to a distant time and culture steeped in rituals and superstitions… A haunting book… The female writers who gasp for air are inspiring, as is the depth of a love that refuses to die, either on stage or in a young girl’s heart.”
--USA Today

“This novel belongs in your poolside bag. It is an ideal vacation book — suspenseful, romantic — that will keep you in your lounge chair for hours. At the same time, Peony in Love is far more than a delicious but ultimately lightweight beach read…See paints here a sweeping, authentically rendered portrait of family and society. She captures the spiritual, near-magical rituals of a culture, while showing the conflicts that such traditions are bound to foster.”
--Houston Chronicle

Read an excerpt from Peony in Love and learn more about the book and its author at Lisa See's website.

Lisa See is the New York Times bestselling author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Flower Net (an Edgar Award nominee), The Interior, and Dragon Bones, as well as the critically acclaimed memoir On Gold Mountain.

The Page 99 Test: Peony in Love.

--Marshal Zeringue

Mary Gordon's five most important books

Mary Gordon, author of the novels Spending, The Company of Women, The Rest of Life, Final Payments, and a new memoir Circling My Mother, recently told Newsweek about her five most important books.

She also addressed two other book-related issues:

A book that, upon rereading, was disappointing:

The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. As a teenager, I thought it was the most profound text imaginable. As an adult, it seemed easy and slick.

A book you care most about sharing with your children:

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. So that they can understand a witty woman is the most desirable, and so that we could have conversations about the Bennets in the way we might about the people down the block.

Read about Gordon's most important books.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Andrew Jackson and the Politics of Martial Law," the movie

The latest feature at My Book, The Movie: Andrew Jackson and the Politics of Martial Law by Matthew Warshauer.

The difficulty in adapting his book for the screen, Warshauer argues, is that it "addresses the duality of Jackson’s image; both his heroism and despotism. One of the big issues related to Jacksonian scholarship is Jackson’s character. Some historians think he was unhinged. I agree that Jackson could be brutal and quite willing to resort to violence, but I do not agree that he was a nutcase."

Read on for a brief account of others who have portrayed Jackson on the screen and to see who Warshauer would like to see in the role if his book gets adapted.

Matthew Warshauer is Associate Professor of History at Central Connecticut State University. He is also the author of the forthcoming Andrew Jackson: First Men, America’s Presidents, and his articles have appeared in Tennessee Historical Quarterly, Connecticut History, Louisiana History, and New York History.

The Page 69 Test: Andrew Jackson and the Politics of Martial Law.

My Book, The Movie: Andrew Jackson and the Politics of Martial Law.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: "A Consumer’s Guide to the Apocalypse"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Eduardo A. Velásquez's A Consumer’s Guide to the Apocalypse: Why There is No Cultural War in America and Why We Will Perish Nonetheless.

About the book, from the official website:

What accounts for the apocalyptic angst that is now so clearly present among Americans who do not subscribe to any religious orthodoxy? Why do so many popular television shows, films, and music nourish themselves on this very angst? And why do so many artists — from Coldplay to Tori Amos to Tom Wolfe — feel compelled to give it expression?

It is tempting to say that America’s fears and anxieties are understandable in the light of 9/11, the ongoing War on Terror, nuclear proliferation, and the seemingly limitless capacity of science to continually challenge our conceptions of the universe and ourselves. Perhaps, too, American culture remains so permeated by Protestant Christianity that even avowed skeptics cannot pry themselves from its grip.

In A Consumer’s Guide to the Apocalypse, Eduardo Velásquez argues that these answers are too pat. Velásquez’s astonishing thesis is that when we peer into contemporary artists’ creative depiction of our sensibilities we discover that the antagonisms that fuel the current cultural wars stem from the same source. Enthusiastic religions and dogmatic science, the flourishing of scientific reason and the fascination with mystical darkness, cultural triumphalists and multicultural ideologues are all sustained by the same thing: a willful commitment to the basic tenets of the Enlightenment.

Velásquez makes his point with insightful readings of the music of Coldplay, Tori Amos, and Dave Matthews and the fiction of Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen, Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club, and Tom Wolfe’s I Am Charlotte Simmons. Written with grace and humor, and directed toward the lay reader, A Consumer’s Guide to the Apocalypse is a tour de force of cultural analysis.

Among the advance praise for the book:

"Eduardo Velásquez has written an unusual and stimulating book in the philosophy of culture. His range of topics is broad; his insights about particular cultural products as well as about what he takes to be the pervasive theme of “the apocalypse” are intriguing; and his conclusions about what American cultural and “popular” artistic productions say about who we are will surprise and provoke many readers. This controversial book is well worth reading."
—Charles Griswold, Professor of Philosophy, Boston University

Read an excerpt from A Consumer’s Guide to the Apocalypse and learn more about the book at the official website.

Check out -- and perhaps contribute to -- the on-going discussion at the book's blog. The latest entry: "Richard Dawkins on Christopher Hitchens (w/ a note from Tocqueville)."

Eduardo Velásquez teaches political philosophy, science and the arts, literature, and popular culture at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. He has taught or held residence at Lake Forest College, the University of Chicago, Haverford College, the University of Edinburgh, University College, Oxford, and at Denmark’s International Study Program, affiliated with The University of Copenhagen. He received his BA from the University of California at Santa Barbara and his MA and PhD from the University of Chicago, all in political science. He is the editor of Love and Friendship: Rethinking Politics and Affection in Modern Time and Nature, Woman, and the Art of Politics.

The Page 69 Test: A Consumer’s Guide to the Apocalypse.

--Marshal Zeringue

Interview: Anne-Marie Slaughter

Anne-Marie Slaughter is Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Bert G. Kerstetter '66 University Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. Her most recent book is The Idea That Is America: Keeping Faith with Our Values in a Dangerous World.

She answered some questions about the new book that were put to her by the political scientist Andrew Grant-Thomas. See their exchange at Author Interviews.

Slaughter also responded to a question of my own:

What's a question that you haven't been asked about the book that you wish someone would ask? And what's the answer?

The question I would like to be asked is "what should readers do who agree with the message of this book and want to act on it." And the answer is, "spread the message." Suggest the book to your book club, or to your email list, or your church group, or, if you are a member of the military, to groups on the base, or your family members, or to high school teachers you know. Join a movement for civic literacy, to teach our fellow citizens and above all our kids about our values as a nation -- not in terms of "these are the great characteristics of our nation and aren't we wonderful" but in terms of "these are our aspirations as a nation, the aspirations of our founders and of great Americans through our history, the aspirations we must try to live up to." And if you have friends abroad, tell them as well -- to give many people in other countries, who love what we are supposed to stand for but are deeply disappointed in us, a different idea of America than what they have seen over the past decade. Above all, in this election season, ask our candidates -- for Congress, for the presidency, for state legislatures and governors -- how they plan to live up to the values they preach in their speeches. Remember, we are all values voters, and it is our task to think through what we value and to choose leaders who will give us a government that makes and implements policies that actually reflect what we value. You may disagree with the values I have listed, and how I have defined them, but then join a great national conversation.

Check out the complete interview.

Read an excerpt and learn more about The Idea That Is America at the publisher's website.

Watch Anne-Marie Slaughter on the Colbert Report.

Author Interviews: Anne-Marie Slaughter.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: "Silence of the Songbirds"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Bridget J. M. Stutchbury's Silence of the Songbirds: How We Are Losing the World's Songbirds and What We Can Do to Save Them.

About the book, from the official website:

Wood Thrush, Kentucky Warbler, Eastern Kingbird — migratory songbirds are disappearing at a frightening rate. By some estimates, we may already have lost almost half the songbirds that filled the skies only 40 years ago. Bridget Stutchbury, in a narrative as colourful as the creatures she studies, demonstrates why this decline should concern us all. The expert ornithologist and naturalist convincingly argues that songbirds truly are the canaries in the coal mine — except the coal mine looks a lot like Earth and we are the hapless excavators.

Following the birds on their 10,000-kilometre migratory journey, Stutchbury looks at the most threatening factors: pesticides, still a major concern decades after Rachel Carson first raised the alarm; the destruction of vital habitat, from the boreal forests of Canada to the tropical jungles of Brazil to the vast grasslands of Argentina; coffee plantations, which push birds out of their forest refuges so we can have our morning fix; the bright lights and structures in our cities, which prove a minefield for migrating birds; the notorious cowbirds that force songbirds to act as surrogate mothers to their own voracious young; and global warming. We may well wake up in the near future and hear no songbirds singing. We won’t only be missing their cheery calls, we’ll be missing a vital part of our ecosystem. Without songbirds, our forests face insect infestations, and our trees, flowers and gardens lose a crucial element in their reproductive cycle. What does this very real threat mean for our ecosystem, and ultimately, us?

Among the praise for Silence of the Songbirds:

"Silence of the Songbirds is wonderfully informative of beautiful little things. This book is a must-read for anyone whose heart has thrilled to the song of a bird."
--Tim Flannery, author of The Weather Makers and We Are the Weather Makers

"In Silence of the Songbirds, Dr. Bridget Stutchbury argues that when birds begin disappearing, we may be next. This is an important book both for its exploration of a very troubling reality as well as for the solutions that it offers to counteract the current state of affairs. It is also beautifully written. Dr. Stutchbury's obvious brilliance as a scientist is matched by her poet's heart."
--Béa Gonzalez, author of The Mapmaker’s Opera and The Bitter Taste of Time

"Few scientists know migratory birds as intimately as Bridget Stutchbury, who has followed them with wonder and passion from the jungles of Costa Rica and Belize to the hardwood forests of North America. In Silence of the Songbirds she lays out how these miraculous creatures live, why they are disappearing, and how each of us — by making choices as simple as what coffee we drink, what toilet paper we buy, or when we turn off the lights in our offices — can make the world safer for the birds that add such life and vitality to it."
--Scott Weidensaul, author of Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere with Migratory Birds and Return to Wild America: A Yearlong Search for the Continent’s Natural Soul

"Bridget Stutchbury is a leading authority on the science of migratory songbirds, but she understands the magic, too, and knows how to express it in clear, rich prose. Silence of the Songbirds has heart as well as brains, telling us not only what we risk losing but also why we should care."
--Kenn Kaufman, author of the Kaufman Field Guide to Birds of North America

"Nearly half a century ago, Rachel Carson warned us of the grim plight of songbirds, sparking an uproar that led ultimately to the banning of DDT. In Silence of the Songbirds, Bridget Stutchbury makes clear that the dangers migratory songbirds face are greater than ever. Her book is an eloquent plea on behalf of songbirds, and also gives practical suggestions on things we can all do to help — for the good of the birds as well as the human race."
--Tim Gallagher, author of The Grail Bird

"Bridget Stutchbury takes us from the tropical forests of Panama to her farm in Pennsylvania, sharing her personal stories about birds as well as the latest scientific information explaining the disappearance of songbirds. The solutions would be a win-win-win for birds, people, and the environment. If you care about birds, you owe it to yourself — and to the birds — to read this eye-opening book."
--Miyoko Chu, author of Songbird Journeys

"An alarming, first-hand journey through the world of disappearing songbirds by a premier scientist. A must-read for anyone who cares about our planet and our place in it."
--Donald Kroodsma, author of The Singing Life of Birds

"Bridget Stutchbury's writing draws us deeply into the personal lives of the birds, where little-known calls are pregnant with meaning. How joyful it is to learn such intimate and steamy details about the secret language of the birds."
--Lang Elliott, author of The Songs of Wild Birds

"A gripping revelation—both of the deeply fascinating biology of songbirds and the daunting challenges they face in a human-dominated world. Bridget Stutchbury makes it impossible to look at a songbird the same old way ever again. A joy for bird-watchers and non bird-watchers alike."
--Thomas E. Lovejoy, president of the J. John Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment

"Highly accessible and engaging, Silence of the Songbirds provides a unique glimpse into the biology and natural history of songbirds. Bridget Stutchbury argues forcefully for the beauty of these birds, the important ecosystem services these species provide, and the everyday things that citizens can do to help conserve them."
--Steven R. Beissinger, Professor of Conservation Biology at the University of California, Berkeley

Read an excerpt from Silence of the Songbirds and learn more about the book and its author -- and listen to bird songs -- at the official website.

Bridget J. M. Stutchbury is professor of biology at York University.

The Page 69 Test: Silence of the Songbirds.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Jonah Keri reading?

The latest contributor to Writers Read: Jonah Keri, a regular contributor to ESPN.com's "Page 2" and the editor and co-author of Baseball Between the Numbers: Why Everything You Know about the Game Is Wrong.

About Baseball Between the Numbers, from the publisher:

In the numbers-obsessed sport of baseball, statistics don't merely record what players, managers, and owners have done. Properly understood, they can tell us how the teams we root for could employ better strategies, put more effective players on the field, and win more games. The revolution in baseball statistics that began in the 1970s is a controversial subject that professionals and fans alike argue over without end. Despite this fundamental change in the way we watch and understand the sport, no one has written the book that reveals, across every area of strategy and management, how the best practitioners of statistical analysis in baseball-people like Bill James, Billy Beane, and Theo Epstein-think about numbers and the game. Baseball Between the Numbers is that book. In separate chapters covering every aspect of the game, from hitting, pitching, and fielding to roster construction and the scouting and drafting of players, the experts at Baseball Prospectus examine the subtle, hidden aspects of the game, bring them out into the open, and show us how our favorite teams could win more games. This is a book that every fan, every follower of sports radio, every fantasy player, every coach, and every player, at every level, can learn from and enjoy.

See what Keri has been reading.

Visit Jonah Keri's website for links to his work at ESPN.com, Salon.com, and other publications.

Writers Read: Jonah Keri.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Renee Rosen's "Every Crooked Pot"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Renee Rosen's Every Crooked Pot.

About the book, from the author's website:

Nina Goldman is the youngest of three growing up in Akron, Ohio in the 70s. She and her siblings must cope with their larger-than-life father, Artie, a colorblind carpet salesman and frustrated musician. Forever the dreamer and schemer, Artie engages in outrageous antics that both mesmerize and mortify his family.

Growing up as Artie's daughter would be difficult enough, but Nina has another issue to face. Born with a strawberry birthmark (known as a hemangioma) over her eye, Nina strives to look normal, and fit in with the others, showing us just how far one girl will go to be loved.

Among the praise for Every Crooked Pot:

"In a debut novel that could easily have been published as an adult memoir, Rosen looks back at the life of Nina Goldman, whose growing up is tied to two pillars: a port-wine stain around her eye and her inimitable father, Artie. The birthmark, she hates; her father, she loves. Both shape her in ways that merit Rosen’s minute investigation, which begins with an incident both funny and shocking. Stopped for speeding, her father tells the officer he is rushing young Nina to the hospital and shows him her eye, which looks as though it’s hemorrhaging. When the cop leaves, father and daughter take off for the beach. The story highlights how Nina’s eye is both liability and excuse, and it reveals the high-wire act that is her father—an emotional man who shapes reality and the people around him. As Nina grows older, readers feel the pain she endures by being physically marked (boys bark at “the dog”). Difficult in different ways is having a father whose love feels like sunshine; withheld, all is dark. There’s real power in the writing as well as a subtle message when a grown Nina finds a cache of notes, showing how she clung to her disability, even after treatment. Rosen writes honestly about sex, and there are some raw words, but this story offers hope for teenagers who, as ever, are trying to separate from their perceived flaws, and from their parents."
--Ilene Cooper, Booklist (starred review)

"Every Crooked Pot is a beautifully nuanced tale about an extraordinary family and even more extraordinary young woman. Not since Myla Goldberg's Bee Season has a first novel so deftly captured the complexities, joys, and frustrations of daughters and their families. It's hard to believe this is a debut -- Rosen's voice is already as good as it gets. Keep an eye out for this rising star."
--Sara Gruen, New York Times bestselling author of Water for Elephants

"Every Crooked Pot is a work of courage, with a dose of sassy audacity thrown in for good measure. Humiliation, sorrow, tears, humor and candor, this is a novel so full of heart and emotion, it’s impossible to detach yourself from it. Renee Rosen is a rare find in today’s jungle of women’s fiction!"
--Carrie Kabak, author of Cover the Butter

"It's so tempting to compare Renee Rosen's debut to similar auspicious literary starts - Anna Quindlen's Object Lessons comes to mind - but that would be doing the book a disservice since Every Crooked Pot stands in a class by itself. Populated with vivid characters, at the center of which is resilient heroine Nina Goldman, this bittersweet novel will lift hearts while at the same time making readers wonder, Where has Renee Rosen been hiding all these years?"
--Lauren Baratz-Logsted, author of Vertigo

"Realistic, sharp and funny, Renee Rosen perfectly captures what it's like to be stuck on the outside longing to get in. A beautiful, poignant, and impressive debut -- I didn't want it to end.
--Alyson Noel, author of Laguna Cove

"Told with wit, wisdom, and characters so realistically drawn that they breathe, this poignant story of angst and redemption will touch the heart of anyone who ever longed to be 'normal' enough to be loved.
--Sandra Kring, author of Carry Me Home and The Book of Bright Ideas

"Every Crooked Pot is a funny, heartfelt and beautifully perceptive novel. In her insightful character study, Renee Rosen takes the reader deep inside the heart and mind of a delightfully real young protagonist. In her spirited portrayal of an ordinary -- yet improbable -- American family, Rosen illuminates great unspoken truths about young women, about daughters, and about all families.
--Adrienne Miller, former literary editor of Esquire & author of The Coast of Akron

Read an excerpt from Every Crooked Pot and learn more about the novel at Rosen's website and her blog.

The Page 99 Test: Every Crooked Pot.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Charles Griswold's "Forgiveness"

Today's feature at the Page 69 Test: Forgiveness: A Philosophical Exploration by Charles Griswold.

About the book, from the publisher:

Nearly everyone has wronged another. Who among us has not longed to be forgiven? Nearly everyone has suffered the bitter injustice of wrongdoing. Who has not struggled to forgive? Charles Griswold has written the first comprehensive philosophical book on forgiveness in both its interpersonal and political contexts, as well as its relation to reconciliation. Having examined the place of forgiveness in ancient philosophy and in modern thought, he discusses what forgiveness is, what conditions the parties to it must meet, its relation to revenge and hatred, when it is permissible and whether it is obligatory, and why it is a virtue.

Among the early praise for the book:

"Rarely has a philosopher offered his fervent students and readers such depth, knowledge and sensitivity as Charles Griswold has done in this volume that deals with one of the most urgent topics facing humankind today."
--Elie Wiesel

"Charles Griswold’s Forgiveness is a truly wonderful book, which not only wisely and eloquently treats a significant feature of the moral life and moral psychology, but also sheds unexpected light on moral theory and the history of ethics. The book also includes a fascinating discussion of the role of apology, forgiveness, and reconciliation in political life during the last fifty years."
--Stephen Darwall, University of Michigan

"One of the lessons of modernity is that there is no consolation in the human condition, unless perhaps it consists in somehow reconciling ourselves to evils so sublimely absurd that at each new moment they test our capacities for acceptance. In such a world, an understanding of forgiveness – the concept of it, the varieties, its human sources and limits – is more central to life than ever before. Charles Griswold’s clearheaded and perceptive new book explores forgiveness both analytically and realistically, helping us toward all these forms of understanding."
--Allen Wood, Stanford University

"Forgiveness by Charles Griswold is a philosopher’s attempt to hone the complexity of interpersonal and political forgiveness to make them accessible. The book honors sources both historical and current, and while it is not primarily religious nor psychological it includes both as it integrates an enormous range of material with deep intelligence and insight. The book is well referenced, quite readable and taught me things about forgiveness I did not know."
--Frederic Luskin, Director Stanford Forgiveness Projects, author of Forgive for Good

Read an excerpt from Forgiveness and learn more about the book at the Cambridge University Press website.

Charles Griswold is Professor of Philosophy at Boston University.

The Page 69 Test: Forgiveness.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best books with political trials

Bruce Watson, author of the recently published Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, the Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind, selected a five best list of books with "riveting" political trials for Opinion Journal.

One title on the list:

Entertaining Satan by John Demos (Oxford, 1982)

Dozens of books have been written about the 1692 Salem Witch Trials, but in "Entertaining Satan" historian John Demos turned his lifelong fascination into the definitive study. As much psychology as history, Demos's book puts Puritans on the couch, analyzing the attitudes of accusers and victims and the collective conscious of Salem and other New England villages where witches were tried. The accused witches of Salem, he finds, were social misfits--maverick midwives, brazen women, men who dared to sue their neighbors. At a time when settlers lived on the murky border of an uncertain wilderness, the trials drew a bright line between black and white. Meticulously documented yet highly readable, "Entertaining Satan" brings alive the mother of all "witch hunts."

Read more about Watson's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ann Packer's list

Ann Packer is the award-winning author of the 2002 best-seller The Dive From Clausen’s Pier. Her new novel, Songs Without Words, has just been published by Knopf.

She contributed "The List" to The Week magazine this week.

One title on Packer's list:

Genealogy by Maud Casey

A radiant novel about a teenage girl’s mental illness and the way it drives her family apart and then forces them back together. Each character is meticulously imagined, each of the relationships is sharply drawn, and by the end you are struck by Casey’s generosity and compassion.

Read more about Packer's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Karna Small Bodman's "Checkmate"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Karna Small Bodman's Checkmate and Gambit.

About Checkmate, from the publisher:

Dr. Cameron Talbot has invented a breakthrough technology to defend against cruise missiles. But she needs support from skeptical company officers, funding from a reluctant Congress, and help from the White House to develop her life-saving project. Lt. Col. Hunt Daniels, detailed from the Pentagon to the White House National Security Council to investigate Dr. Talbot’s work, sees the potential of the invention. The fact that he’s attracted to the brilliant scientist adds one more dimension to his interest in her work.

But disaster is brewing overseas as militants in the disputed Kashmir region of India steal a series of missiles from sympathizers in the Pakistani military and launch one against India. At the same time, they send one of their agents to Washington, D.C., to steal Dr. Talbot’s technology so they can protect themselves when their enemies retaliate.

The scientist and the NSC staffer find themselves enmeshed in terrorist plots and political wrangling at the highest levels. With scenes in the Oval Office, the Situation Room, Capitol Hill, Georgetown restaurants, and Washington dinner parties, as well as action in Kashmir, New Delhi, and at the Taj Mahal, the tension and intrigue escalate until two nuclear-armed countries stand at the brink of war.

Among the praise for the novel:

“Checkmate is a fantastic first novel by a woman who knows the intricacies of Washington. Well worth the read ... it will get your heart pumping.”
—Vince Flynn, New York Times bestselling author of Consent to Kill

“Gripping and authentic.”
—Lee Child, New York Times bestselling author of One Shot

“Karna Small Bodman’s Checkmate hits all the notes. Her years of firsthand White House experience shine through on every page of this fine debut international thriller — authentic, up-to-the-minute, and gripping.”
—John Lescroart, New York Times bestselling author of The Hunt Club

“A fantastic story of how close our world is to the brink of ruin and how one courageous and determined woman fights to save us all. Karna Small Bodman writes with the eye of an insider, revealing all the secrets we wish we knew in a brilliant, heart-stopping tale.”
—Tim Green, New York Times bestselling author of Exact Revenge

“Bodman takes on Washington like only a true insider can, weaving a frightening tale that feels both unerringly authentic and frighteningly real.”
—Kyle Mills, New York Times bestselling author of The Second Horseman

“Karna Small Bodman draws on her unique background as a White House insider to inject high tension and authenticity into this high-stakes thriller. She writes with the smooth confidence of someone who truly knows the political landscape — and isn’t afraid to reveal all.”
—Tess Gerritsen, New York Times bestselling author of Vanish

“Checkmate is a chilling and penetrating insider’s look at our national missile defenses, with an astonishing countdown that seems to be happening at this very moment.”
—Katherine Neville, New York Times bestselling author of The Eight

“An inside story from an insider. A ripping tale of intrigue about an explosive region, but really about power and Washington. Bodman knows her stuff and lets us see and think about what really happens when the pressure is on and flawed people make decisions that affect us all.”
—James W. Huston, New York Times bestselling author of Secret Justice

“Bodman brings us behind the scenes of military meetings, boardrooms, and parlors of the Washington power elite as her heroes race against time and terrorists in her thrilling debut novel, Checkmate. Suspense, romance, life and death scenarios ... Checkmate has it all.”
—Mary Alice Monroe, New York Times bestselling author of Sweetgrass

Read an excerpt from Checkmate and learn more about both books at the publisher's website and at the author's official site.

Gambit is scheduled for publication in early 2008.

Karna Small Bodman served in the White House for six years, first as deputy press secretary and later as senior director of the National Security Council. At the time of her departure, she was the highest-ranking woman on the White House staff. She was also on the air for fifteen years as a reporter, television news anchor, and political commentator in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and New York City.

In August 2007 Bodman contributed to an entry at The Rap Sheet about her background and her novels.

The Page 99 Test: Checkmate and Gambit.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Emily Bazelon reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Emily Bazelon, a Slate senior editor.

The report on her recent reading opens:

I just finished Warm Springs, by Susan Richards Shreve. It’s a memoir about the two years she spent at a recuperation facility for children with polio established in Georgia by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1920s. The waters at this Georgia spot were supposed to have healing qualities, and Shreve (a Washington, DC, writer whom I know) uses the history of FDR’s haven, as she calls it, to vividly evoke the days of polio fear and the president’s relationship to his illness and paralysis. [read on]

In addition to her work in Slate, Emily Bazelon's writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, The New Republic, Legal Affairs, and other publications. She has worked as a freelance journalist in Israel and as a reporter in California's Bay Area. She graduated from Yale Law School and worked as a law clerk for Judge Kermit Lipez of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

Writers Read: Emily Bazelon.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Michelle Gagnon's "The Tunnels"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Michelle Gagnon's The Tunnels.

About the book, from the author's website:

An old, abandoned tunnel system beneath a prestigious New England college becomes the gruesome stalking ground of a serial killer…. The crime scenes are grim and otherworldly. The bodies of two female students are found mutilated and oddly positioned in the dark labyrinth beneath the school-haunting symbols painted on the walls above them. In her decade tracking serial killers, FBI special agent Kelly Jones has seen some of the worst humanity can inflict. Yet the tragedy unfolding at her alma mater chills her to the bone. Evidence suggests there is a connection between the victims-daughters of powerful men. And elements of the killings point to a dark, ancient ritual. As the body count rises, so do the stakes. The killer is taunting Kelly, daring her to follow him down a dangerous path from which only one can emerge.

Among the praise for the novel:

“From its harrowing prologue to its haunting last paragraph, Michelle Gagnon masterfully crafts a stellar work of mounting suspense and terror. Ritual murder, ancient magic, and buried secrets … all blend seamlessly in this debut mystery by a major new talent. Not to be missed!”
--James Rollins, New York Times bestselling author of Black Order

“Michelle Gagnon’s stellar debut is an edge-of-your seat story of suspense and intrigue. FBI agent Kelly Jones is in a race against time to stop a series of gruesome murders on a pristine eastern college campus. With a deftly-crafted plot and a winning protagonist, Gagnon spins a fast-moving yarn that is certain to keep you up late. We will hear more from this talented newcomer. Highly recommended.”
--Sheldon Siegel, New York Times bestselling author of The Confession

“The Tunnels starts out scary and only gets worse — or, if you like frightening thrillers — better. Michelle Gagnon is a fresh and confident new voice in crime fiction, and The Tunnels marks an auspicious debut.”
--John Lescroart, New York Times bestselling author of The Suspect and The Hunt Club

“A tantalizing premise, brilliantly executed, The Tunnels is a powerful Gothic-tinged thriller that hits the ground running and doesn’t let up until the final page. A riveting blend of Norse mythology, ritualized Ivy League murders, a sympathetic female FBI profiler and a ticking clock. So slick and polished it’s hard to believe this is Michelle Gagnon’s first book.”
--Denise Hamilton, Edgar, Anthony, Macavity and Creasey Dagger finalist and author of Prisoner of Memory

“A great read. Scarily good. The Tunnels takes you into some very dark places, as a bright new talent takes on old-world horrors and scares the living daylights out of you. It’s The Wicker Man meets Silence of the Lambs.”
--Tony Broadbent, author of The Smoke and Spectres in the Smoke, named by Booklist as one of the “Best Spy Novels of 2006″

“Michelle Gagnon has written a tremendously fine debut novel that’s as dark, twisty, and thrilling as the tunnels she so hauntingly describes therein. Expect to sleep with the lights on for at least a week after you’ve relished the final page.”
--Cornelia Read, Edgar award nominee for best debut novel A Field of Darkness

Read an excerpt from The Tunnels, and learn more about the book and author at Michelle Gagnon's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Tunnels.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Nicholas Griffin's "Dizzy City"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Nicholas Griffin's Dizzy City.

About the book, from the author's website:

The year is 1916, Europe is at war and American industrialists are getting rich. Englishman Ben Cramb deserts the trenches of northern France and stows away on an outbound transatlantic ship. When the vessel docks in New York City, a place untouched and largely unaware of the horrors of war, he realizes this is the place to reinvent himself. In the process, he soon falls under the sway of the urbane and mysterious Julius McAteer, who sees in Ben his chance to finely hone the tools of someone who can master the art of the con. They concoct a ruse, pick their mark – a blustering Midwestern cattleman named Henry Jergens – and the game is afoot. But the further Ben follows the money in New York, the closer he moves back to the war in Europe and his shattering experiences there. This page-turner is rich in historical detail and filled with romance and adventure. It’s a fascinating journey inside the art of the con, and a moving novel about what happens when we try to find happiness at others’ expense.

Among the early praise for the novel:

"Nicholas Griffin has made historical fiction his literary playground ... [and] 1916 Manhattan proves especially fertile ground.... Griffin writes with authority on his chosen subjects, and even though he employs enough point-of-view shifts to give an unintended meaning to his book’s title, the effect works, raising the question: Who is conning, and who is being conned?"
—Sarah Weinman, Time Out New York

"The intricate crime drama plays out like a blindfolded chess match; Ben's postwar paranoia and a romance with a secretive actress only add to the delicious confusion. Griffin deftly shifts among three different narrators, parceling out unexpected revelations with the confident wink of an experienced hustler."
—Entertainment Weekly

"Griffin demonstrates a flare for the historical novel. This clever, agile novel is thoroughly enjoyable."
—Library Journal

"Ben Cramb, the strange and fascinating leading character in Nicholas Griffin's new novel Dizzy City, is a severely wounded World War I soldier who deserts the British army rather than return to the trenches of France, becomes a stowaway on a wartime ship bound for the United States, which has not yet entered the war. In New York, he becomes a con man of major proportions, all the while haunted by the war he has run from. Griffin's story is wonderfully written with masterful style. I was riveted by Ben Cramb."
—Dominick Dunne

"A great read... richly researched, complex and utterly compelling."
—Mark Mills, author of The Savage Garden

"Griffin hits his stride in his fourth novel, a stylish and ambitious story of cons conning cons.... [He's] in fine form, and the novel's historical detail and multifaceted plot should keep readers riveted."
—Publishers Weekly

Ben Cramb, "a petty criminal, flees the carnage of teh Great War and lands among con men in the Big Apple, where war of a different sort is being waged. . . . When various stings come to a climax, they involve the war Ben thought he had escaped. Smart entertainment."
—Kirkus Reviews

"Dizzy City is ingenious, a caper inside a historical novel full of unexpected twists and turns. Delightful!"
—Kevin Baker

"Ranging from the trenches of the Great War to Tin Pan Alley and the Great White Way, Dizzy City is rich and absorbing. Nicholas Griffin is a surehanded talespinner, his prose vivid yet never showy. This is the best sort of historical drama, lovingly detailed yet concerned more, ultimately, with the tricky, conflicted hearts of its actors."
—Stewart O'Nan

"Pat Barker meets Raymond Chandler. Dizzy City is a rich, tactile twister of a book."
—Peter Behrens

Read an excerpt from Dizzy City and learn more about the book and author at Nicholas Griffin's website.

The Page 99 Test: Dizzy City.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Bryant Simon reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Bryant Simon, a history professor and the director of American Studies at Temple University.

About Simon's scholarship:

Bryant Simon is professor of history and director of the American Studies program at Temple University in Philadelphia. Over the last year and half, he has visited over 300 Starbucks in eight countries and is currently working on a book to be published by Bloomsbury. This is not, however, just a study of Starbucks, but an exploration of American life both in the states and abroad in the 21st Century. His research explores the very desires of daily life as they are revealed on the comfy coaches and in the drive-thru of Starbucks. As he looks at what it means to consume Starbucks, he also investigates what Starbucks consumes of us - our labor, our landscapes, and our politics.

He is the author of A Fabric of Defeat: The Politics of South Carolina Textile Workers, 1910-1948 (1998) and Boardwalk of Dreams: Atlantic City and the Fate of Urban America (2004) as well as the Jumpin' Jim Crow': Southern Politics from Civil War to Civil Rights (2000). His research on Atlantic City has earned awards from the Organization of American Historians, Urban History Association, and the New Jersey Historical Commission.

Last year Ben McGrath reported in the The New Yorker on the Starbucks research project, about which one can learn more in this video.

Writers Read: Bryant Simon.

--Marshal Zeringue

Rick Mofina's "A Perfect Grave," the movie

Rick Mofina is the author of Every Fear, The Dying Hour, Be Mine, If Angels Fall, Cold Fear, No Way Back, and Blood of Others, which won an Ellis award for Best Novel. He won a second Ellis award for his short story “Lightning Rider” in the anthology Murder in Vegas, and The Dying Hour was a finalist for ITW’s inaugural International Thriller Award.

Mofina's new novel A Perfect Grave, the third book in the acclaimed Jason Wade series, releases today.

Visit My Book, The Movie: A Perfect Grave, and see who the author imagines in the lead roles in a film adaptation of the novel.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Sins Of The Past

The face in the mirror belongs to a man Sister Anne McGrath knew years ago. The cold blade against her throat guarantees his bone-chilling threat: “Scream and you’ll die. You know why I’m here.” Silence is the only answer to her prayers.

Shall Not Be Forgiven

The shocking murder of a much-loved community saint draws the attention of Seattle Mirror reporter Jason Wade. But it’s his father’s demons that tell Jason more than the police investigation — even if Detective Grace Garner wants to reveal everything…

Only Buried

Meanwhile a child is kidnapped by a vengeful killer bent on recovering what he feels is rightfully his. But he may have murdered the one person who knew where the stolen money had been hidden. Question is: Was she a saint or a sinner?

Visit Rick Mofina's website.

My Book, The Movie: A Perfect Grave.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Dave White's "When One Man Dies"

The latest feature at the Page 69 Test: Dave White's When One Man Dies.

About the novel, from the author's website:

When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but is translated into a better language.--John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions.

When Gerry Figuroa is killed in a hit and run, his pal, Jersey P.I. Jackson Donne, is hired to investigate. Donne soon discovers that Figuroa may not have been quite the innocent he seemed. A second case leads Donne to a dead body on the steps of Drew University.

Again, appearances are deceptive. As he digs deeper, Donne uncovers a drugs connection, and it quickly becomes clear that certain people would rather he dropped his investigation. Events take on a further twist when Donne's ex-cop partner shows up bent on shattering everything Donne holds dear. Donne’s past has been on hold, but now it’s hurtling towards him with a vengeance.

Among the early praise for the novel:

"When I read my first Dave White story, I knew that he was going to be huge someday-like, Robert Parker huge. When One Man Dies is the first bold step in fulfilling that promise. It's the great American private eye novel reborn for the 21st century, with a fast-moving, spare style that punches you in the gut at the same time it squeezes your heart."
--Duane Swierczynski, author of The Blonde

"Everybody wins when a classic form, such as the private-eye novel, meets up with a class act, such as Dave White. In his remarkable debut novel, When One Man Dies, White manages the neat trick of respecting the genre's traditions while daring to nudge it toward something new and unexpected. And Jackson Donne is a wonderful character, someone with whom readers will happily share many beers in the Olde Towne Tavern for years to come. Lots of promise here -- in Donne and White. I'm rooting for both of them."
--Laura Lippman, author of To The Power of Three

"Every new crew of crime writers has one standout. The class of 07's youngest member is Dave White. He made his bones in published short story form before most writers ever find their legs. When One Man Dies steps him up as a made man in the genre ... an awesome debut ... forgetaboutit."
--Charlie Stella, author of Shakedown: A Novel of Crime

"When One Man Dies heralds the introduction of two astonishing new figures in the crime fiction world: New Jersey PI Jackson Donne, whose emotional journey will break your heart, and author Dave White, whose voice has the confidence and assurance many more established writers would kill for."
--Sarah Weinman, Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind

"Every now and then you find a debut novel that carries the clear promise of big things to come. When One Man Dies is one of those. Fast and funny, with plenty of classic action but a setting and character that are entirely new, Dave White is creating a winner with Jackson Donne. Always good to get in on the ground floor."
--Michael Koryta, Edgar-nominated author of A Welcome Grave

"Jackson Donne takes his place alongside the grim and battered P.I.s of yore — your Archers, your Spades — uncovering painful truths and doling out what passes in this tarnished world for justice. Bracing stuff."
--Charles Ardai, founder of Hard Case Crime

"A terrific novel, a unique and artful blend of the PI and the Police Procedural in a plot as nicely tangled and sexually violent as a cat fight, a story as deceptively simple as your first love and as fatal as your last car wreck. It's a great read."
--James Crumley

Visit Dave White's website and his blog.

The Page 69 Test: When One Man Dies.

--Marshal Zeringue

Claire Messud's five most important books

Claire Messud, author of The Emperor's Children and other books, recently told Newsweek about her five most important books.

She also addressed two other book-related issues:

An important book that you haven't read:

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes.

It's slightly bizarre to make references without knowing what you're talking about. "Tilting at windmills"?

A classic that, upon rereading, disappointed:

Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles.

It breaks my heart. I wrote my college thesis on this book. I went back to re-read it, and it no longer spoke of hidden depth. It was mannered, and I couldn't find the significance anymore.

Read about Messud's most important books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Fall crime books

From the authoritative The Rap Sheet comes editor J. Kingston Pierce's list of the ten books he's most looking forward to reading this fall.

All ten will go on my To Read list, with this one at the top:

Blonde Faith, by Walter Mosley (Little, Brown USA). Boosted to widespread renown in the 1990s as one of President Bill Clinton’s favorite authors, Mosley has claimed a fecund fictional territory in post-World War II Los Angeles, where his reluctant sleuth, Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, struggles with racial animosities and endeavors to keep those he loves free from harm. That latter task presents the most difficult challenges in this 10th installment of the Rawlins series. Not only is Easy losing the love of his life, Bonnie Shay, to another man, but his most casually homicidal crony, Raymond “Mouse” Alexander, is missing and wanted for killing the father of 12. Meanwhile, an ex-marine compadre has dumped his daughter on Easy’s doorstep -- a sure sign that her father is already dead, or soon will be. Raymond Chandler created the bones of L.A. detective fiction; Mosley gives it flesh and blood, and surprising hope. An October release.

Read Pierce's post.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: "Providence and the Invention of the United States"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Nicholas Guyatt's Providence and the Invention of the United States, 1607-1865.

About the book, from the publisher:

Nicholas Guyatt offers a completely new understanding of a central question in American history: how did Americans come to think that God favored the United States above other nations? Making sense of previously diffuse debates on manifest destiny, millenarianism, and American mission, Providence and the Invention of the United States explains the origins and development of the idea that God has a special plan for America. The benefits and costs of this idea deserve careful consideration.

Among the early praise for Providence and the Invention of the United States:

"In a work of admirable scope and learning, Nicolas Guyatt explores the transatlantic roots and multiple expressions of Americans’ understanding of God’s role in national life. He convincingly shows that providential ideas not only validated political goals but helped shape them, closing off some paths of development just as they opened others. Providence and the Invention of the United States is a superb contribution to our understanding of how American contested their national destiny from before the Revolution to the era of the Civil War."
--Richard Carwardine, St. Catherine’s College, University of Oxford

"Historians have long noticed that providential thinking played an important role in forging an American identity. Nicholas Guyatt does not dispute this notion but he complicates it. He shows that the idea of national providence, rooted in England but appropriated by American colonials after passage of the Stamp Act, became both a national consensus and a metaphor that served different political and sectional interests. Guyatt’s book is intellectual history at its best."
--R. Laurence Moore, Cornell University

"Nicholas Guyatt's study of providential reasoning is both well researched and capably argued. It goes much further than other scholars, including myself, have done to show how important the idea of providence was for almost everyone in the English-speaking world during the early modern period. But it also demonstrates convincingly that providence meant different things to different people at different times. This is a very good book."
--Mark Noll, University of Notre Dame

"With learning and concision, Nicholas Guyatt has elegantly historicized the amorphous traditions of American providentialism, that regrettably powerful habit of cultural hyperbole, by which Americans have located themselves in God's order. He is especially cogent in showing with what passionate disagreement Americans have imagined that order, which turns out to have been rather disorderly."
--Michael O'Brien, University of Cambridge

Read an excerpt from Providence and the Invention of the United States and learn more about the book at the Cambridge University Press website.

Nicholas Guyatt is an Assistant Professor of History at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia. He has another new book coming out soon: Have a Nice Doomsday: Apocalyptic Christianity and American Politics.

The Page 99 Test: Providence and the Invention of the United States, 1607-1865.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best: literary depictions of religion and politics

Harvard law professor Mary Ann Glendon selected a five best "literary works [which] excel in their depiction of religion and politics" list for Opinion Journal.

One title on her list:

Sugar Street by Naguib Mahfouz

Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006) draws one so deeply into the sights, sounds, smells and turmoil of a city in the throes of modernization that one is almost disoriented on emerging from its pages. "Sugar Street" is the last and most political novel in the 1988 Nobel Prize winner's "Cairo Trilogy," a saga that follows the members of a large Muslim family from the Egyptian struggle against British occupation to the political upheavals that led to the overthrow of King Farouk in 1952. Each of the patriarch's five children reacts differently to the crumbling of traditional society: One brother plunges more deeply into Islam, another withdraws into secular philosophy, while another embraces militant Marxism. The two daughters cannot imagine living the cloistered existence that their mother endured, but in the late 1940s they find no clear alternatives. In this portrayal of a postcolonial society where traditional religion is deteriorating and nationalism is on the rise, one glimpses the tangled roots of tragedies that were to come.

Read more about Glendon's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Jordan Ellenberg reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Jordan Ellenberg, math professor and novelist.

Among the books he mentions:

• One Jump Ahead, by Jonathan Schaeffer, a sort of biography of Schaeffer's computer program Chinook, the checkers champion of the world. A great read if you've ever tried to write a complicated computer program (but maybe not so much, if you haven't.)
• Murmur, a short book about R.E.M.'s first album, by J. Niimi.
• Big Trouble, by J. Anthony Lukas, a giant book which starts out with an ex-governor of Idaho being blown to pieces by a bomb at his own front door, and which spirals out into a history of the vicious battles between labor and capital at the turn of the 20th century, and maybe more -- I don't know, not having finished it.

There is much more of interest at Ellenberg's entry, so please read on.

Jordan Ellenberg is a math professor at the University of Wisconsin and the author of The Grasshopper King, a novel.

He also writes an occasional column called "Do the Math" for the on-line magazine Slate, and has written for The Believer, the Washington Post, and SEED.

His recent columns in Slate explained how "The New York Times slip[ped] up on sexual math" and why "Roger Clemens might be worth every penny" the Yankees are paying him.

Writers Read: Jordan Ellenberg.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Stephen Mihm's "A Nation of Counterfeiters"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Stephen Mihm's A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of the United States.

About the book, from the publisher:

Few of us question the slips of green paper that come and go in our purses, pockets, and wallets. Yet confidence in the money supply is a recent phenomenon: prior to the Civil War, the United States did not have a single, national currency. Instead, countless banks issued paper money in a bewildering variety of denominations and designs -- more than ten thousand different kinds by 1860. Counterfeiters flourished amid this anarchy, putting vast quantities of bogus bills into circulation.

Their success, Stephen Mihm reveals, is more than an entertaining tale of criminal enterprise: it is the story of the rise of a country defined by a freewheeling brand of capitalism over which the federal government exercised little control. It was an era when responsibility for the country's currency remained in the hands of capitalists for whom "making money" was as much a literal as a figurative undertaking.

Mihm's witty tale brims with colorful characters: shady bankers, corrupt cops, charismatic criminals, and brilliant engravers. Based on prodigious research, it ranges far and wide, from New York City's criminal underworld to the gold fields of California and the battlefields of the Civil War. We learn how the federal government issued greenbacks for the first time and began dismantling the older monetary system and the counterfeit economy it sustained.

A Nation of Counterfeiters is a trailblazing work of history, one that casts the country's capitalist roots in a startling new light. Readers will recognize the same get-rich-quick spirit that lives on in the speculative bubbles and confidence games of the twenty-first century.

Among the early praise for A Nation of Counterfeiters:

"Mihm vividly and entertainingly describes the muddled and often fraudulent economy of pre-greenback America: those freewheeling, pre–Civil War days when the federal government not only did not print paper money but likewise did not bother to regulate those regional banks that did."
--Publishers Weekly

"Mihm brings to teeming life a world most Americans never knew existed, a world in which every single purchase was inflected with an additional layer of anxiety about the very currency in which the purchase was to be transacted. Written with exceptional intelligence and bracing wit, A Nation of Counterfeiters is fresh, fascinating and altogether original."
--Michael Zuckerman, University of Pennsylvania

"A meticulous and imaginative reconstruction of an entire counterfeit economy that intersected and overlapped with the 'legitimate' economy. A Nation of Counterfeiters is marvelous and unusual history. There really is nothing like it in the literature."
--Bruce H. Mann, Harvard Law School

"Stephen Mihm's elegant study demonstrates that 'making money' once had a more literal meaning, when thousands of banks printed their own currency notes and numerous counterfeiters profitably imitated them. Mihm offers an absorbing and enlightening history of the complex relations between money, national stability, and the forging of American character."
--Richard Sylla, New York University

"With imaginative research and crystalline prose, Stephen Mihm casts unprecedented light on the confidence games at the heart of early American capitalism. He also introduces us to an irresistible cast of characters, whose brazen exploits provide a new frame for understanding nineteenth century economic debate. A Nation of Counterfeiters is a brilliant synthesis of business and cultural history. This is a book to take seriously."
--Jackson Lears, author of Something for Nothing: Luck in America

Read an excerpt from A Nation of Counterfeiters and learn more about the book at the Harvard University Press website.

Stephen Mihm is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Georgia. He is also the co-editor of Artificial Parts, Practical Lives: Modern Histories of Prosthetics (2002).

Listen to a recent interview with Mihm on NPR's Talk of the Nation.

The Page 69 Test: A Nation of Counterfeiters.

--Marshal Zeringue

Interview: Sanford Levinson

New at Author Interviews: Sanford Levinson, editor of Torture: A Collection and author of many books and articles, generously responded to a few of questions about his subject and his book.

Cary Federman, author of The Body and the State: Habeas Corpus and American Jurisprudence and a professor in the Department of Justice Studies at Montclair State University, researched and developed the questions.

One exchange from the interview:

Federman: The philosopher Michael Walzer says that government officials always operate with dirty hands. What is your position on rendition, that is, the policy of sending suspected terrorists to countries that will use torture, so that the United States keeps its hands clean?

Levinson: I think that rendition is a fundamentally dishonest and corrupting policy precisely inasmuch as it allows US officials to lie to the public and pretend that we're really not implicated in the reality of torture. And, of course, there is little doubt that the US has violated both national and international law in its use of "renditions," which has contributed to the contempt directed at the US around the world. [read on]

Read more about Torture: A Collection at the Oxford University Press website.

Sanford Levinson holds the W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood, Jr. Centennial Chair in Law at the University of Texas Law School.

Earlier this year he applied the "Page 69 Test" to his most recent book, Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (and How We the People Can Correct It).

Author Interviews: Sanford Levinson

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Philip J. Cook's "Paying the Tab"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Philip J. Cook's Paying the Tab: The Costs and Benefits of Alcohol Control.

About the book, from the publisher:

What drug provides Americans with the greatest pleasure and the greatest pain? The answer, hands down, is alcohol. The pain comes not only from drunk driving and lost lives but also addiction, family strife, crime, violence, poor health, and squandered human potential. Young and old, drinkers and abstainers alike, all are affected. Every American is paying for alcohol abuse.

Paying the Tab, the first comprehensive analysis of this complex policy issue, calls for broadening our approach to curbing destructive drinking. Over the last few decades, efforts to reduce the societal costs -- curbing youth drinking and cracking down on drunk driving -- have been somewhat effective, but woefully incomplete. In fact, American policymakers have ignored the influence of the supply side of the equation. Beer and liquor are far cheaper and more readily available today than in the 1950s and 1960s.

Philip Cook's well-researched and engaging account chronicles the history of our attempts to "legislate morality," the overlooked lessons from Prohibition, and the rise of Alcoholics Anonymous. He provides a thorough account of the scientific evidence that has accumulated over the last twenty-five years of economic and public-health research, which demonstrates that higher alcohol excise taxes and other supply restrictions are effective and underutilized policy tools that can cut abuse while preserving the pleasures of moderate consumption. Paying the Tab makes a powerful case for a policy course correction. Alcohol is too cheap, and it's costing all of us.

Among the praise for Paying the Tab:

"There is a vast literature on the illicit drugs, a large literature on nicotine, and nothing up-to-date and authoritative on the second most deadly, and arguably the most damaging, alcohol. Phil Cook, with a modesty and understatement that inspire trust, explores the options for reducing the harms, allowing the benefits, and respecting personal liberty. This is a masterly combination of analysis and evidence. It is also beautifully written."
--Thomas C. Schelling, Nobel Prize-winning economist

"The war on tobacco was won: the harms were recognized and measures taken to reduce them. In this compelling book, Philip Cook shows that the war on alcohol, too, can be won if policymakers act on the overwhelming and converging evidence that simple measures can reduce the short-term and long-term harms caused by drinking. He brings order to a highly complicated set of causal issues by telling us what may be true, what is probably true, and what is indisputably true; and he shows how large gains can be made simply by taking account of the last set of facts."
--Jon Elster, Columbia University

"This book contains the most thorough and penetrating analysis of alcohol-control policy to date. It is certain to become a landmark in the fields of health, economic, and public policy. It is a tour de force of virtually every aspect required to formulate sound policy in this crucial area. Bravo!"
--Michael Grossman, City University of New York Graduate Center

Read Chapter One from Paying the Tab and learn more about the book at the Princeton University Press website.

Philip J. Cook is professor of public policy and economics at Duke University and former director of the university's Sanford Institute of Public Policy. His books include Gun Violence, The Winner-Take-All Society, and Selling Hope.

The Page 99 Test: Paying the Tab.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The 100 Greatest Adventure Books"

January Magazine editor Linda L. Richards has posted an entry about National Geographic's 2001 list of “The 100 Greatest Adventure Books of All Time.”

The list is worth perusing if travel writing (or lists) is your thing, but I think I would begin my actual reading list with Richards' selection of worthy books that didn't make National Geographic's top 100:

While the list makes fascinating reading, and while it's difficult to disagree with many of these choices, there are a few notable absences. I was surprised, for instance, that something by Paul Theroux didn’t make the cut, especially his very important The Great Railway Bazaar from 1975. Another few surprising no shows: Colin Thurbron’s Behind the Wall from 1987, Bill Bryson’s Notes From A Small Island (1995) and, even though it’s very, very recent and, arguably, more about food than travel (though when is food not an important part of that thought?) Anthony Bourdain’s A Cook’s Tour from 2001. [read on]

--Marshal Zeringue