What is Eric Roston reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Eric Roston, author of The Carbon Age: How Life's Core Element Has Become Civilization's Greatest Threat.

His entry begins:

Writers Read asked for book picks during the 30-hour span in which I absorbed John M. Barry's 500-page The Great Influenza, an epic synthesis of seven years of research. The writing is spare: He steps out of the way and lets the material tell the grisly tale of how 50 million to 100 million people succumbed to the inaptly named Spanish Flu in 1918-1919. I reported on the threat of a pandemic flu a couple of years ago, and the world's lack of preparedness on this front causes grave concern.[read on]

Visit Eric Roston's website and blog.

The Carbon Age, "based on three years of research, traces the dynamic, fundamental science that unifies seemingly disparate parts of our experience: Climate, energy, health, industry--the fastest way to learn the most about the world is through the carbon atom."

The Boston Globe included The Carbon Age in its list of the most-anticipated books of 2008, and the book has received endorsements from several prominent thinkers.

Watch Eric Roston on The Colbert Report.

Writers Read: Eric Roston.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Frank Prochaska's "The Eagle and the Crown"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: The Eagle and the Crown: Americans and the British Monarchy by Frank Prochaska.

About the book, from the publisher:

This book tells the intriguing and paradoxical story of a nation that overthrew British rule only to become fascinated by the glamor of its royal family. Examining American attitudes toward British royalty from the Revolutionary period to the death of Princess Diana, The Eagle and the Crown penetrates the royal legacy in American politics, culture, and national self-image.

Frank Prochaska argues that the United States is not only beguiled by the British monarchy but has itself considered the idea of a presidency assuming many of the characteristics of a monarchy. He shows that America’s Founding Fathers created what Teddy Roosevelt later called an “elective king” in the office of the president, conferring quasi-regal status on the occupant of the Oval Office. Prochaska also contends that members of the British royal family who visit the United States have been key players in the emergence of America’s obsession with celebrity. America’s complex relationship with the British monarchy has for more than two hundred years been part of the nation’s conversation about itself, a conversation that Prochaska explores with wit and panache.

Read an excerpt from The Eagle and the Crown and learn more about the book at the Yale University Press website.

Frank Prochaska is lecturer and senior research scholar in the Department of History, Yale University. His books include Royal Bounty: The Making of a Welfare Monarchy and Christianity and Social Service in Modern Britain: The Disinherited Spirit.

The Page 99 Test: The Eagle and the Crown.

--Marshal Zeringue

January Magazine: best crime fiction, 2008, part II

One title from January Magazine's list of the best crime fiction of 2008, part II:

The Snake Stone by Jason Goodwin (Picador) 320 pages

The sequel to Goodwin’s Edgar Award-winning The Janissary Tree (2006), The Snake Stone is the second of his Istanbul novels to feature Yashim Togalu. Formerly a eunuch at the sultan’s court, Yashim has earned a reputation as a lala, or guardian, a man of discretion to whom people can turn in their time of need. When a French archaeologist throws himself on Yashim’s hospitality, and is then discovered horribly murdered, suspicion falls on Yashim himself -- but things are rarely what they seem in 19th-century Turkey. The plot is as pleasingly labyrinthine as its host city, employing history, archaeology and politics to flesh out a vibrant and meticulously detailed vision of the former Constantinople. Situated at the geographical crossing point between East and West, that city is a cultural melting pot that accommodates a bewildering variety of nationalities alongside its staple populations of Turks and Greeks. Goodwin, a historian, employs a rich and lyrical style perfectly suited to the stately pace, and The Snake Stone (originally released last year, but new in paperback for 2008) is very much a compelling page-turner, a literary thriller. The most gratifying aspect of it all is that the plot is not simply grafted onto a historical setting; the city is as much a character as anyone else in the novel, and the uncovering of its layers is integral to the investigation of the murder at hand. Beautifully written and exquisitely crafted, this is an exotic jewel with a keen respect for the tradition of the genre’s classic private-eye narratives. -- Declan Burke

Read about another title to make the list.

The Page 69 Test: The Snake Stone.

My Book, The Movie: The Snake Stone.

--Marshal Zeringue

Leighton Gage's "Buried Strangers," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Buried Strangers by Leighton Gage.

The entry begins:

The producers of Buried Strangers have finished packaging the film. Gage took the opportunity to interview one of his characters about the casting.

LG: Claudia Andrade, you’re going to be played by a relative unknown. How do you feel about that?

CA: I’m pissed off. Let me ask you a question. Did you have anything to do with it?

LG: The casting? No, I wasn’t consulted. I only wrote the book, and in Hollywood—

CA: I asked you a simple question. I didn’t ask for one of your long-winded explanations. Stop hogging my air time. Whose interview is this anyway?

LG: Yours. Sorry. Why are you pissed off?

CA: I’m pissed off because they went out and got Tommy Lee Jones for Silva, Leonardo DiCaprio for Hector, Ben Kingsley for Horst Bittler and then chose that (expletive deleted) Fernanda Torres to play me. What’s wrong with this picture?

LG: Ha! Well, to start with, Buried Stangers, the movie, is a picture about--[read on]

Leighton Gage has been a copywriter, an advertising creative director, a magazine editor, and a writer/producer/director of documentary films and industrial videos. Read an excerpt from Buried Strangers and learn more about the author and his work at Leighton Gage's website and his Crimespace page.

The Page 69 Test: Blood of the Wicked.

My Book, The Movie: Buried Strangers.

--Marshal Zeringue

January Magazine: best crime fiction, 2008, part I

One title from January Magazine's list of the best crime fiction of 2008, part I:

The Fourth Watcher by Timothy Hallinan (Morrow) 320 pages

I thought that John Burdett’s terrific books (Bangkok 8, Bangkok Tattoo, Bangkok Haunts) about Royal Thai police detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep, the only practicing Buddhist on the Bangkok police force, contained all I needed to know about the darker, sadder side of that popular tourist stop. But then I began to read Timothy Hallinan’s novels about American travel writer Poke Rafferty, starting with A Nail Through the Heart (2007), a moving thriller full of violence, depravity and love. Hallinan’s latest, The Fourth Watcher, is even better: the kind of book that makes you wonder, What more can he possibly do? This time, he mixes into the tale Poke’s long-missing father, Frank, and a half-sister he never knew he had; a Secret Service agent who could be the worst nightmare anyone ever had; a few honest and many more crooked Thai cops; and Colonel Chu, the head of a Chinese triad, who grabs Rafferty’s beautiful love interest, Rose, and their street-smart 9-year-old adopted daughter. Chu says he’ll kill them both unless he gets back what Frank Rafferty stole from him: a whole lot of rubies and the papers to launch a new life for himself in America. Poke believes him, and so will you. -- Dick Adler

Read about another title to make the list.

The Page 69 Test: The Fourth Watcher.

My Book, The Movie: The Fourth Watcher.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: John Llewellyn Probert's "Coffin Nails"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Coffin Nails by John Llewellyn Probert.

About the book, from the publisher:

THE FILM-MAKERS who unleash a curse from an ancient abbey . . . The teenager who murders the sister he never had ... The care-home whose attic harbours a monstrous secret ... A schoolbook of poetry that means death for its readers ... The witch's familiar unleashed by church organ music ...

Welcome to the sinister, scary, and sometimes outrageous world of John Llewellyn Probert. A place filled with troubled schoolchildren, overbearing theatre producers, brilliant surgeons, and nervous billionaires. Where a walk in the country can lead to a mansion filled with beautiful women, or a trap from which you can never escape. Where a picture on the wall of a primary school classroom can come to life with appalling consequences, and a rugby match can be the scene for a burned witch's revenge. Meet the parents who think they know what is best for their son--until he returns from the grave to show them otherwise. Learn about the girl who found solace in a burial chamber near Prague; and discover the real reason why West-End musicals succeed or fail.

Ash-Tree Press is proud to present award-winning author John Llewellyn Probert's Coffin Nails--eighteen tales designed to make you gasp with horror and shudder with delight: a volume so gripping that, as you read it, you may well fail to notice the twisted, taloned creature that escaped when you opened the book creeping up behind you to do its dreadful work. Once you've satisfied yourself that there is nothing there, please feel free to read the rest of the book. But remember--we never said that it was visible.

Read more about Coffin Nails at the publisher's website and John Llewellyn Probert's website.

John Llewellyn Probert has had over forty short stories published in both anthologies and periodicals including SciFantastic Nocturne, Fusing Horizons, Horror Express, Here & Now, Supernatural Tales, Dark Horizons and Thriller UK. His books include The Faculty of Terror, Coffin Nails, and Against the Darkness.

View the video introduction to Coffin Nails.

The Page 69 Test: Coffin Nails.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six books on American dramatists

Dominic Maxwell, stage editor and chief comedy critic for the Times (London), named a critic's chart on American dramatists.

One title on the list:

Three Uses of the Knife David Mamet

This passionate treatise on true and bogus drama is a must-read.

Read about another book on Maxwell's chart.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Tony Spinosa’s "The Fourth Victim"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: The Fourth Victim by Tony Spinosa.

About the book, from the publisher:

A year after ex-NYPD detectives and former enemies Joe Serpe and Bob Healy teamed up to solve the murder of a retarded young man who worked at Joe’s company and prevented the Russian Mafia from infiltrating the home heating oil business on Long Island, they are faced with an even more heinous series of crimes. Five oil truck drivers have been robbed and shot to death, their lifeless bodies left to bleed out on the cold and loveless suburban streets. The killer should have chosen his victims more wisely, because the fourth victim, Rusty Monaco, was another retired NYPD detective, one who had saved Joe Serpe’s life while they were both still on the job.

The Fourth Victim is published by Bleak House Books and is available in three editions: Collectors Numbered, Cloth and Trade paper.

Learn more about the book and author at Reed Farrel Coleman's website.

Reed Farrel Coleman, Brooklyn born and raised, is the former Executive Vice President of Mystery Writers of America. He has written ten novels in three series including two under his pen name Tony Spinosa. His eleventh novel, Tower, co-authored with Ken Bruen, will premier in Fall 2009. Coleman has been twice nominated for the Edgar Award, mystery fiction’s most prestigious honor. He has won the Shamus Award twice along with the Barry and Anthony Awards. He was the editor of the short story anthology Hardboiled Brooklyn. His short fiction and essays have appeared in Wall Street Noir, Damn Near Dead, Brooklyn Noir 3, and several other publications. Coleman is an adjunct lecturer in creative writing at Hofstra University and lives with his family on Long Island.

The Page 69 Test: Reed Farrel Coleman's Redemption Street.

The Page 69 Test: Reed Farrel Coleman's Empty Ever After.

My Book, the Movie: Reed Farrel Coleman's Moe Prager Mystery Series.

The Page 99 Test: The Fourth Victim.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Carrie Jones reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Carrie Jones, author of Girl, Hero, Love (and Other Uses for Duct Tape), Tips on Having a Gay (Ex) Boyfriend, and the newly released Need.

Her entry begins:

I am reading Daphne and Chloe. It’s the version by Prestel with pictures by Chagall.

The good part about reading Daphne and Chloe is that it makes love seems so innocent and quirky in this touching way. It’s hard to be jaded when you read about the two of them falling in love, and the obstacles they face are so wild. It puts modern romance to shame. Plus, the sentences are so fantastic.[read on]

Carrie Jones graduated from Vermont College’s MFA program for writing. She has edited newspapers and poetry journals and has won awards from the Maine Press Association and also been awarded the Martin Dibner Fellowship as well as a Maine Literary Award.

The story of Need:

Zara collects phobias the way other high school girls collect lipsticks. Little wonder, since life’s been pretty rough so far. Her father left, her stepfather just died, and her mother’s pretty much checked out. Now Zara’s living with her grandmother in sleepy, cold Maine so that she stays “safe.” Zara doesn’t think she’s in danger; she thinks her mother can’t deal.

Wrong. Turns out that guy she sees everywhere, the one leaving trails of gold glitter, isn’t a figment of her imagination. He’s a pixie—and not the cute, lovable kind with wings. He’s the kind who has dreadful, uncontrollable needs. And he’s trailing Zara.

Visit Carrie Jones' website.

Writers Read: Carrie Jones.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Tom Harper's "The Lost Temple"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: The Lost Temple by Tom Harper.

About the book, from the publisher:

For three thousand years, the world’s most dangerous treasure has been lost. Now the code that reveals its hiding place is about to be broken ...

Greece, 1947. Europe is just beginning to heal after World War II, but the fighting in Greece continues as a civil war is waged. Sam Grant, a disgraced ex–Special Operations Executive soldier and an adventurer by trade, is lured back to the Mediterranean by a secret from his past: six years ago, a dying archaeologist entrusted him with his life’s work—a leather notebook full of unintelligible notes written in Ancient Greek. When the KGB show up looking for the notebook, Grant sets out to protect the discoveries that the archaeologist lost his life for—and to find out what could be so valuable that the CIA and the British Secret Intelligence Service want it as well.

With help from a brilliant Oxford professor and a beautiful Greek archaeologist with her own secrets to hide, Grant follows the notebook to a hidden cave on Crete, where a tablet of mysterious writing has lain hidden for thousands of years. Deciphered, it could lead to one of the greatest prizes in history. But the treasure is as dangerous as it is valuable.

Seeking the places where history and myth collide, following the trail left by Homer in his epic poems of heroic warriors, vengeful gods, and treasure beyond anything known to man, Grant is plunged into a labyrinth of ancient cults, forgotten mysteries, and lost civilizations. But time is running out.

The secrets of the distant past may hold the key to the newest threats of the modern world....

Read an excerpt from The Lost Temple and view the trailer at Tom Harper's website.

Tom Harper was born in 1977 and grew up in West Germany, Belgium, and America before returning to England to study history at Lincoln College, Oxford. His conclusion to the short story “Death by the Invisible Hand” was published in The Economist in 1997, and his novels have been translated into twelve languages.

The Page 69 Test: The Lost Temple.

--Marshal Zeringue

January Magazine: best nonfiction, 2008

From January Magazine's compilation of the best nonfiction of 2008:

Full-Court Quest by Linda Peavy and Ursula Smith (University of Oklahoma Press) 479 pages

Full-Court Quest is a delightful surprise. The story of a woman’s basketball team that started in an Indian boarding school and rose to take their place as Montana’s first basketball champions, playing at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. Full-Court Quest has everything. A story you’re not likely to have heard before, authors Peavy and Smith did heavy detective work uncovering layer upon layer to reveal an important piece of women’s history; of native American history and even of the type of spirit for which the West became known. Peavy and Smith tell their chosen tale well, sprinkling us lightly across a narrative that, nonetheless, never loses any of its real life grit. And this was just the duo of authors to bring us this unforgettable story. Peavy and Smith have been collaborating on works of women’s history for three decades. They are the authors of ten books together, including Women in Waiting in the Westward Movement, Pioneer Women and Frontier House. A wonderful story splendidly told. It deserves the widest following imaginable.
--Sienna Powers

Read about another title to make the grade.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jacalyn Duffin's "Medical Miracles"

This weekend's feature at the Page 99 Test: Medical Miracles: Doctors, Saints, and Healing in the Modern World by Jacalyn Duffin.

About the book, from the publisher:

Modern culture tends to separate medicine and miracles, but their histories are closely intertwined. The Roman Catholic Church recognizes saints through canonization based on evidence that they worked miracles, as signs of their proximity to God. Physician-historian Jacalyn Duffin has examined Vatican sources on 1400 miracles from six continents and spanning four centuries. Overwhelmingly the miracles cited in canonizations between 1588 and 1999 are healings, and the majority entail medical care and physician testimony.

These remarkable records contain intimate stories of illness, prayer, and treatment, as told by people who rarely leave traces: peasants and illiterates, men and women, old and young. A woman's breast tumor melts away; a man's wounds knit; a lame girl suddenly walks; a dead baby revives. Suspicious of wishful thinking or naive enthusiasm, skeptical clergy shaped the inquiries to identify recoveries that remain unexplained by the best doctors of the era. The tales of healing are supplemented with substantial testimony from these physicians.

Some elements of the miracles change through time. Duffin shows that doctors increase in number; new technologies are embraced quickly; diagnoses shift with altered capabilities. But other aspects of the miracles are stable. The narratives follow a dramatic structure, shaped by the formal questions asked of each witness and by perennial reactions to illness and healing. In this history, medicine and religion emerge as parallel endeavors aimed at deriving meaningful signs from particular instances of human distress -- signs to explain, alleviate, and console in confrontation with suffering and mortality.

A lively, sweeping analysis of a fascinating set of records, this book also poses an exciting methodological challenge to historians: miracle stories are a vital source not only on the thoughts and feelings of ordinary people, but also on medical science and its practitioners.

Jacalyn Duffin, physician and historian, holds the Hannah Chair for the History of Medicine, Queen's University, Ontario.

Learn more about Medical Miracles at the Oxford University Press website.

Duffin's History of Medicine: A Scandalously Short Introduction made Sherwin B. Nuland's suggested list of five books about medicine or dissection.

The Page 99 Test: Medical Miracles.

--Marshal Zeringue

Secret agents featured in series: 5 best

Jeffrey T. Richelson, author of A Century of Spies and Defusing Armageddon: Inside NEST, America's Secret Nuclear Bomb Squad, named a five best list of books for the Wall Street Journal. His subject: secret agents featured in series.

One title on the list:

Moonraker
by Ian Fleming
Macmillan, 1955

A little-appreciated aspect of Ian Fleming's James Bond series is that many of the books are mysteries as well as adventures -- and "Moonraker" is a wonderful mystery as well as a standard Bond tale of good versus evil. As the story progresses, the reader knows who the villain is but not what evil he has in mind. The story begins when Bond is asked by "M," the head of the Secret Intelligence Service, to undertake a personal mission: to determine whether a member of M's club is cheating at cards. The suspected cheat is Hugo Drax, a mysterious millionaire, who is ostensibly financing an advanced ballistic missile for the defense of Britain, his adopted country. A card-cheating scandal might do more damage than simply ruining his reputation. Gradually we learn who Drax really is and where his loyalties really lie. His terrible plans for the residents of London are also revealed. But 007's courage and resourcefulness guarantee that those plans are never realized.

Read about Number One on Richelson's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Mac Montandon reading?

This weekend's featured contributor at Writers Read: Mac Montandon, author of the newly released Jetpack Dreams: One Man's Up and Down (But Mostly Down) Search for the Greatest Invention That Never Was.

His entry begins:

I've been reading Apples and Oranges, a memoir about her often difficult relationship with her brother by the journalist Marie Brenner. I saw the book on a couple of end-of-year Best Of lists and it looked interesting so I picked it up. It is quite good and well done -- the writing is sharp and the dynamics of the relationships are nuanced and familiar to anyone who has had strained familial experiences, which is everyone, really. I am additionally interested in Brenner's book as I'm thinking about...[read on]

Watch the Jetpack Dreams trailer and read an excerpt from the book at the official website.

Among the praise for Jetpack Dreams:

"Reading this book is as fun as zooming through the sky with a rocket on your back. And better yet, you won't break your collarbone doing it."
— A.J. Jacobs, Author of The Know-it-All and The Year of Living Biblically

"Jetpack Dreams is a delightful and engrossing story of the quest for one of humankind's greatest technological fantasies—to strap on a device and fly like a bird."
— Mark Frauenfelder, editor-in-chief of Make Magazine and founder of BoingBoing.net

Writers Read: Mac Montandon.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Kelley Armstrong's "Living with the Dead"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Living with the Dead by Kelley Armstrong.

About the book, from the publisher:

They’re smart, sexy, and supernatural. They’re the men and women of the Otherworld—a realm of witches, ghosts, and werewolves who live unseen among us. Only now a reckless killer has torn down the wall, trapping one very human woman in the supernatural cross fire.

Robyn Peltier moved to Los Angeles after her young husband’s sudden death, trying to put some distance between herself and her memories. Though she’s still grieving, the challenges of her new life as the PR consultant to Portia Kane—the world’s most famous celebutante wannabe—can sometimes be amusing, even distracting. But when her client is gunned down in the back room of a nightclub, Robyn is suddenly on the run as the prime suspect in the murder. And as more bodies pile up around her, it seems like only Hope Adams, Robyn’s best friend, and Hope’s somewhat spooky boyfriend Karl are on Robyn’s side. Hope Adams follows the kinds of stories whose headlines scream from supermarket checkout lines. But the difference is that Hope’s stories are even weirder—and they’re all true. Though determined to help Robyn, Hope knows it’s only a matter of time before her friend is caught. But it’s not the police Hope is worried about. For Robyn has gotten herself in the middle of a turf war between two powerful Otherworld cabals who’ll spill any amount of blood—human and inhuman—to protect what they consider theirs for all eternity. And the only way Hope can keep her friend alive is by letting her enter a world she’s safer knowing nothing about.

Read an excerpt from Living with the Dead, and learn more about the author and her work at Kelley Armstrong's website.

Kelley Armstrong is the author of the internationally bestselling The Otherworld series and other works.

The Page 69 Test: No Humans Involved.

The Page 69 Test: Living with the Dead.

--Marshal Zeringue

Lydia Millet's "How the Dead Dream," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Lydia Millet's How the Dead Dream.

The entry begins:

The book tells about a businessman, a young real estate developer named T, who runs over a coyote in his car, begins to lose people he loves, and then spins out and starts breaking into zoos to be near animals that are on the brink of extinction. From the pantheon of available faces and styles, I see T as Christian Bale. I like the blank and cold yet soulful handsomeness of Bale's face -- perfect for this character and for the mood of the piece.

There's a mother character, T's mother, fraying and graying at the edges and a little WASPY despite being Catholic, who's suddenly abandoned by her gay husband and begins to disintegrate.[read on]

Read an excerpt from How the Dead Dream. Learn more about the author and her writing at the How the Dead Dream publisher's website and Lydia Millet's website and Facebook page.

Lydia Millet is the author of Omnivores, George Bush, Dark Prince of Love, My Happy Life, a winner of the 2003 PEN-USA Award for Fiction, Everyone’s Pretty, and Oh Pure and Radiant Heart.

The Page 69 Test: How the Dead Dream.

My Book, The Movie: How the Dead Dream.

--Marshal Zeringue

Literary Top 10: David Peace

The British author David Peace is well known for his novels GB84 and The Damned Utd. His latest book is Tokyo Year Zero. In 2003 he was named as a Best of Young British Novelists by Granta.

From his Literary Top 10 at Pulp.Net:

Author I’d like to nominate for the Nobel Prize for literature:

There should be no prizes, least of all this one. But, if it has to go to someone, it should go to either John le Carré or Ian Rankin.

Deceased author I’d most like to resurrect:

Edgar Allan Poe – to find out how he bleeding died and to warn him what Lou Reed was doing to his work.

Learn more about Peace's Literary Top 10.

Read Ali Karim's interview with David Peace at The Rap Sheet.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Ariela J. Gross's "What Blood Won't Tell"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: What Blood Won't Tell: A History of Race on Trial in America by Ariela J. Gross.

About the book, from the publisher:

Is race something we know when we see it? In 1857, Alexina Morrison, a slave in Louisiana, ran away from her master and surrendered herself to the parish jail for protection. Blue-eyed and blond, Morrison successfully convinced white society that she was one of them. When she sued for her freedom, witnesses assured the jury that she was white, and that they would have known if she had a drop of African blood. Morrison’s court trial—and many others over the last 150 years—involved high stakes: freedom, property, and civil rights. And they all turned on the question of racial identity.

Over the past two centuries, individuals and groups (among them Mexican Americans, Indians, Asian immigrants, and Melungeons) have fought to establish their whiteness in order to lay claim to full citizenship in local courtrooms, administrative and legislative hearings, and the U.S. Supreme Court. Like Morrison’s case, these trials have often turned less on legal definitions of race as percentages of blood or ancestry than on the way people presented themselves to society and demonstrated their moral and civic character.

Unearthing the legal history of racial identity, Ariela Gross’s book examines the paradoxical and often circular relationship of race and the perceived capacity for citizenship in American society. This book reminds us that the imaginary connection between racial identity and fitness for citizenship remains potent today and continues to impede racial justice and equality.

Read an excerpt from What Blood Won't Tell, and learn more about the book and author at Ariela Gross's website.

Ariela J. Gross is John B. & Alice R. Sharp Professor of Law & History at the Gould School of Law, University of Southern California.

The Page 99 Test: What Blood Won't Tell.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Ken Kuhlken reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Ken Kuhlken, author of the Hickey Family Mysteries.

His entry begins:

The past couple months, my reading has been limited to research of one kind and another. The novel I’m working on takes the detective I write about back to his first investigation. In the mid-1920s, Tom Hickey’s a young man, when he learns that an old friend (and surrogate father) has been killed. The murder looks racially inspired and may be connected somehow to the Angelus Temple, whose founder, Aimee Semple McPherson, is currently on trial. She’s accused of fraudulently claiming she was kidnapped.

Sister Aimee’s autobiography, This Is That, is fascinating but tough to read unless one happens to be a follower of hers who wants to absorb her every word. It’s long and appears unedited. But it exposes the thoughts and obsessions of a remarkable character whose charisma, brilliance, creativity and personal power single-handedly launched a world-wide revival.[read on]

Visit Ken Kuhlken's website and blog.

Ken Kuhlken's stories have appeared in Esquire and dozens of other magazines, and anthologies, been honorably mentioned in Best American Short Stories, and earned a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.

His novels include Midheaven, chosen as finalist for the Ernest Hemingway Award for best first novel, The Loud Adios (Private Eye Writers of America/St. Martin’s Press Best First PI Novel, 1989), The Venus Deal and The Angel Gang, all Tom Hickey mysteries, The Do-Re-Mi, a Tom and Clifford Hickey mystery honored as January Magazine best book of 2006 and as a finalist for the 2006 Shamus Award, and The Vagabond Virgins featuring Alvaro Hickey.

The Page 99 Test: The Do-Re-Mi.

Writers Read: Ken Kuhlken.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top art books, 2008

Jed Perl, art critic for The New Republic, looked back on the year in essay collections and art books and named his favorites.

One title he liked:

Kirsten Hoving's Joseph Cornell and Astronomy: A Case for the Stars offers a remarkable new perspective on an essential American master, revealing the scientific seriousness that supported Cornell's poetic fancies.

Read more about Perl's favorite art books of 2008.

Learn more about Joseph Cornell and Astronomy at the Princeton University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Joseph Cornell and Astronomy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: L.E. Modesitt, Jr.'s "The Lord-Protector's Daughter"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: The Lord-Protector's Daughter by L.E. Modesitt, Jr.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Lord-Protector’s Daughter is a standalone fantasy novel that takes place in Tempre, the capital city of Lanachrona on Corus, the world of Modesitt’s Corean Chronicles.

Mykella, the eldest daughter of the Lord-Protector of Lanachrona, discovers that someone is diverting significant sums of money from her father’s treasury. One of the ancient soarers appears to Mykella, telling her that she must go to the antique stone Table in the cellars of the Palace and find her Talent in order to save her land and her world.

From there, matters become more perilous. There are attempts to remove Mykella and her sisters from Tempre by marrying them off to lords in neighboring lands, and fatal and near fatal accidents occur to members of her family and trusted retainers. While Mykella develops a solid idea of who stands behind it all, every attempted solution is used to discredit her. How can she save their father and land?

Learn more about the author and his work at L. E. Modesitt, Jr.'s website and his blog.

L.E. Modesitt, Jr. is the bestselling author of over forty novels encompassing two science fiction series and three fantasy series, as well as several other novels in the science fiction genre.

My Book, The Movie: L. E. Modesitt, Jr.'s Flash.

The Page 69 Test: The Lord-Protector's Daughter.

--Marshal Zeringue

Time Out Chicago: top 10 books of 2008

A few books that appeared here on the blog made Time Out Chicago's top ten books of 2008 list, including:

Captives, by Todd Hasak-Lowy. Spiegel & Grau, $24.95.

No novel we read this year quite caught the zeitgeist of liberal thinking in the mid-2000s like Hasak-Lowy’s debut. And few made us laugh as hard.

All About Lulu, by Jonathan Evison. Soft Skull, $14.95.

A strange and beautiful coming-of-age novel, with a pitch-perfect ear for the comic mundanity of everyday speech, All About Lulu earned its moments of painful, pure tenderness. And, it earned its way onto our list.

Read an excerpt from Captives and learn more about the book at the publisher's website. Visit Todd Hasak-Lowy's faculty webpage.

The Page 69 Test: Captives.

Read an excerpt from All About Lulu, and learn more about the book and author at Jonathan Evison's website.

The Page 99 Test: All About Lulu.

Read about another book on Time Out Chicago's top ten books of 2008 list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: W. Wallach & C. Allen's "Moral Machines"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong by Wendell Wallach and Colin Allen.

About the book, from the publisher:

Computers are already approving financial transactions, controlling electrical supplies, and driving trains. Soon, service robots will be taking care of the elderly in their homes, and military robots will have their own targeting and firing protocols. Colin Allen and Wendell Wallach argue that as robots take on more and more responsibility, they must be programmed with moral decision-making abilities, for our own safety. Taking a fast paced tour through the latest thinking about philosophical ethics and artificial intelligence, the authors argue that even if full moral agency for machines is a long way off, it is already necessary to start building a kind of functional morality, in which artificial moral agents have some basic ethical sensitivity. But the standard ethical theories don't seem adequate, and more socially engaged and engaging robots will be needed. As the authors show, the quest to build machines that are capable of telling right from wrong has begun. Moral Machines is the first book to examine the challenge of building artificial moral agents, probing deeply into the nature of human decision making and ethics.

Read "6 Ways to Build Robots that Will Not Harm Humans" and other book-related posts at the Moral Machines blog.

Learn more about Moral Machines at the Oxford University Press website.

Colin Allen is a Professor of History & Philosophy of Science and of Cognitive Science at Indiana University. Wendell Wallach is a consultant and writer and is affiliated with Yale University's Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics.

The Page 99 Test: Moral Machines.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Malena Lott reading?

Today's featured contributor at Writers Read: Malena Lott, author of The Stork Reality and Dating da Vinci.

Her entry begins:

The Mighty Queen of Freeville: a Mother, A Daughter, and the People Who Raised Them, a memoir by Amy Dickinson, author of the syndicated advice column "Ask Amy" (who replaced the coveted Ann Landers spot) and NPR contributor.

I haven't read many memoirs, because I'm usually so busy reading non-fiction books on psychology, business or sociology and, of course, tons of great fiction. But I was pleased to be sent Dickinson's book for review, and within the first chapter it's apparent why she was selected to be the "next Ann Landers." Her story...[read on]

Read an excerpt from Dating da Vinci, and learn more about the author and her work at Malena Lott's website and blog.

Among the praise for Dating da Vinci:

"Malena Lott's charming, heartfelt novel about how grieving widow Ramona Elise gets her groove back will have you cheering bravissimo as she experiences her own Renaissance, courtesy of one very hot Leonardo da Vinci."
--Jenny Gardiner, award-winning author of Sleeping with Ward Cleaver

The Page 69 Test: Dating da Vinci.

My Book, The Movie: Dating da Vinci.

Writers Read: Malena Lott.

--Marshal Zeringue

Best books of 2008: fiction

The Week tabulated the "best book" end-of-year choices of critics for The Atlantic Monthly, The Boston Globe, The Christian Science Monitor, The Denver Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, New York, The New York Times, the Denver Rocky Mountain News, Salon.com, Time, The Village Voice, and The Washington Post.

One title on the list:

Lush Life
by Richard Price
(Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26)

Crime novelist Richard Price does the 19th-century-style “novelist-as-reporter thing” better than any American writer alive, said Sam Anderson in New York. His latest marries “the visceral pleasures of a whodunit” with “the more cerebral thrill of a sociology project” after a botched street robbery on Manhattan’s Lower East Side leaves one white hipster dead and another under suspicion of inventing a black suspect. The steady patter provided by “the best writer of dialogue since Plato” makes every cop and every mere bystander jump from the page. The precision of the storytelling exceeds even Price’s own past work, said David L. Ulin in the Los Angeles Times. Despite its admirable range and ambition, Lush Life is “a rocket of a book.” It starts with a bang and “never lets up.”
A caveat: Some of the dramatic tricks that Price has learned from screenwriting, said Ulin, undermine his bid for Zola-like authenticity.

Read about Number One on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Eric J. Sundquist's "King's Dream"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: King's Dream by Eric J. Sundquist.

About the book, from the publisher:

“I have a dream”—no words are more widely recognized, or more often repeated, than those called out from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial by Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1963. King’s speech, elegantly structured and commanding in tone, has become shorthand not only for his own life but for the entire civil rights movement. In this new exploration of the “I have a dream” speech, Eric J. Sundquist places it in the history of American debates about racial justice—debates as old as the nation itself—and demonstrates how the speech, an exultant blend of grand poetry and powerful elocution, perfectly expressed the story of African American freedom.

This book is the first to set King’s speech within the cultural and rhetorical traditions on which the civil rights leader drew in crafting his oratory, as well as its essential historical contexts, from the early days of the republic through present-day Supreme Court rulings. At a time when the meaning of the speech has been obscured by its appropriation for every conceivable cause, Sundquist clarifies the transformative power of King’s “Second Emancipation Proclamation” and its continuing relevance for contemporary arguments about equality.

Read an excerpt from King’s Dream, and learn more about the book at the Yale University Press website.

Eric J. Sundquist is UCLA Foundation Professor of Literature, UCLA. He is author or editor of eight books on American literature and culture, including the award-winning volumes To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature and Strangers in the Land: Blacks, Jews, Post-Holocaust America.

Learn more about Eric J. Sundquist's research and scholarship at his faculty webpage.

The Page 99 Test: King's Dream.

--Marshal Zeringue

Critic's Chart: top Christmas reading

Margaret Reynolds, a broadcaster and academic who reviews classics for the (London) Times, named her top Christmas reading for the paper.

One title on the chart:

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

A must-read for everyone at Christmas and at every season.

Read about Number One on Reynolds' list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Robert Greer's "Blackbird, Farewell"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Blackbird, Farewell by Robert Greer.

About the book, from the publisher:

Shandell “Blackbird” Bird has everything going for him, or so he thinks. Recently selected number two overall in the NBA draft, the 6'8", 250-pound superstar has a gleaming new ride and a salary and athletic shoe contract that make him an instant millionaire. What he doesn’t have is the ability to bury secrets from his past. When Shandell is found shot to death at mid-court, his best friend and college teammate Damion Madrid sets out to find the killer. Damion is well meaning but naïve; luckily his godfather is gumshoe CJ Floyd. Floyd and his partner, Flora Jean Benson, are there to watch his back as Damion stumbles down a shadowy trail that leads to Shandell’s purported peddling of steroids and big-game point shaving. When he discovers a “Blackbird” he never knew and is able to put a face on Shandell’s killer, Damion finds himself in over his head. Will CJ be there in time to prevent his godson from joining Shandell? Featuring the vivid characters and streetwise dialogue that have made the CJ Floyd series a critical and commercial success, Blackbird, Farewell is a punch-packing whodunit that exposes the dark side of the pro-athlete good life.

Read an excerpt from Blackbird, Farewell, and learn more about the book and author at Robert Greer's website.

Robert Greer is a practicing surgical pathologist and professor of pathology and medicine at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. His previous CJ Floyd mysteries include The Fourth Perspective and The Mongoose Deception.

My Book, The Movie: The Fourth Perspective.

The Page 69 Test: The Fourth Perspective.

The Page 69 Test: Blackbird, Farewell.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Lisa Schroeder reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Lisa Schroeder, author of the YA novels I Heart You, You Haunt Me and, releasing this week, Far from You.

Her entry begins:

I am currently reading Let it Snow: Three Holiday Stories, written by three incredible young adult authors – Maureen Johnson, John Green, and Lauren Myracle. It's a fun book that has made me laugh out loud several times, and is perfect for this time of year, since all stories take place over Christmas, during this huge snow storm. I've only just begun the second story, written by John Green, so I can't say exactly how the three stories intertwine, but my understanding is they do, and I'm excited to see how the authors pull it off.[read on]

About Far from You, from the publisher:

Lost and alone...down the rabbit hole.

Years have passed since Alice lost her mother to cancer, but time hasn't quite healed the wound. Alice copes the best she can by writing her music, losing herself in her love for her boyfriend, and distancing herself from her father and his new wife.

But when a deadly snowstorm traps Alice with her stepmother and newborn half sister, she'll face issues she's been avoiding for too long. As Alice looks to the heavens for guidance, she discovers something wonderful.

Perhaps she's not so alone after all....

Visit Lisa Schroeder's website, blog, and MySpace page.

Writers Read: Lisa Schroeder.

--Marshal Zeringue

Amazon's top 10 of 2008: mystery & thrillers

One title to make the Amazon top ten mystery & thrillers of 2008 list:

Chelsea Cain's Sweetheart

Read about another title to make the Amazon editors' list.

Read an excerpt from Sweetheart, and learn more about the author and her work at Chelsea Cain's website and MySpace page.

Chelsea Cain's first novel featuring Detective Archie Sheridan and killer Gretchen Lowell, Heartsick, was a New York Times bestseller. She is also the author of Confessions of a Teenage Sleuth, a parody based on the life of Nancy Drew, several nonfiction titles, and a weekly column in The Oregonian.

The Page 99 Test: Sweetheart.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Kirsten Hoving's "Joseph Cornell and Astronomy"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Joseph Cornell and Astronomy: A Case for the Stars by Kirsten Hoving.

About the book, from the publisher:

Joseph Cornell and Astronomy provides an in-depth look at one artist's intense fascination with the science of astronomy. Joseph Cornell (1903-72) has often been viewed as a recluse, isolated in his home on Utopia Parkway, lost in the fairy tales and charming objects of his collages and assemblage boxes. Less commonly known has been Cornell's vested and serious interest in the history of astronomy and the cutting-edge discoveries made during his own lifetime. An avid reader, he amassed a library of books and articles about science and astronomy, and his reflections about these subjects had a direct impact on his art.

This book explores why astronomy captivated Cornell, and considers hundreds of his works--found-footage films, three-dimensional space-object boxes, enigmatic collages, and cosmic ephemera--that contain references to astronomical phenomena. Kirsten Hoving considers Cornell's enormous collection of astronomy materials, ranging from eighteenth-century books to recent works; newspaper and magazine articles that Cornell clipped and sorted; and diary entries of his observations while stargazing in his backyard. She examines how Cornell explored many dimensions of astronomy through his identities as a Christian Scientist and surrealist artist.

Unfolding Cornell's work with depth and breadth, Joseph Cornell and Astronomy offers a convincing and original appreciation of this intriguing American artist.

Learn more about Joseph Cornell and Astronomy at the Princeton University Press website.

Kirsten Hoving is the Charles A. Dana Professor of the History of Art and Architecture at Middlebury College. She is the author of Fables in Frames: La Fontaine and Visual Culture in Nineteenth-Century France.

The Page 99 Test: Joseph Cornell and Astronomy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Reed Farrel Coleman's Moe Prager Mysteries, the movie

Now showing at My Book, the Movie: Reed Farrel Coleman's Moe Prager Mystery Series.

The entry, titled "Why I Won’t Play," begins:

I was one of those college students who paid careful attention in class because I took terrible notes. In retrospect, I probably would’ve been better served by improving my note taking skills. Much of what my professors had to say blended into a kind of buzzing. Certain lessons, however, have persisted even after thirty years. One lesson in particular, taught by Jim Merritt, my instructor for Romantic Poetry at Brooklyn College, has had a profound effect on my writing. Oddly enough, it wasn’t a writing class, yet I can still hear Prof. Merritt’s voice in my head. We were discussing the life and works of Percy Bysshe Shelley when the subject of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein came up. Merritt, a man with a wonderfully expressive face, frowned:

“Okay everyone,” Merritt said, “close your eyes and imagine Frankenstein’s monster.”

After fifteen seconds...[read on]

Reed Farrel Coleman, Brooklyn born and raised, is the former Executive Vice President of Mystery Writers of America. He has written ten novels in three series including two under his pen name Tony Spinosa. His eleventh novel, Tower, co-authored with Ken Bruen, will premier in Fall 2009. Reed has been twice nominated for the Edgar Award, mystery fiction’s most prestigious honor. He has won the Shamus Award twice along with the Barry and Anthony Awards. He was the editor of the short story anthology Hardboiled Brooklyn. His short fiction and essays have appeared in Wall Street Noir, Damn Near Dead, Brooklyn Noir 3, and several other publications. Reed is an adjunct lecturer in creative writing at Hofstra University and lives with his family on Long Island.

The Page 69 Test: Redemption Street.

The Page 69 Test: Empty Ever After.

My Book, the Movie: The Moe Prager Mystery Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

Books on Christmas traditions: 5 best

At the Wall Street Journal Penne L. Restad, author of Christmas in America: A History, named five books that "display a gift for exploring Christmas traditions."

One title on her list:

Unwrapping Christmas
Edited by Daniel Miller
Oxford, 1993

"Unwrapping Christmas" considers the "extraordinary success" of Christmas as a global event. Daniel Miller opens this set of 10 essays with "A Theory of Christmas." Taking an anthropological viewpoint, the collection emphasizes the holiday's relation to the family and to materialism. The reader won't want to miss the reprint of Claude Lévi-Strauss's "Father Christmas Executed" from 1952 explaining why a French town failed in its attempted Santacide. Another stand-out is James Carrier's explication of gift-giving, from shopping right down to discarded ribbon and paper. Add discussions of Inupiat, Japanese and Trinidadian celebrations and the result is an entertaining but also insightful study of just how innovative the holiday can be and yet still remain, at its core, Christmas.

Read about another title on Restad's five best list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Laura Benedict’s "Calling Mr. Lonely Hearts"

This weekend's feature at the Page 69 Test: Calling Mr. Lonely Hearts by Laura Benedict.

About the book, from the publisher:

Three childhood friends. A malicious lie. One hell of a consequence.

Growing up, Roxanne, Del, and Alice tested the limits of their friendship with cruel, and often dangerous, games–but they always knew they would be bound together forever. Now, Alice’s marriage is over, and her husband is having a child with another woman. Roxanne, an artist consumed by her work, is losing touch with her friends–and perhaps with reality. And Del is desperate to be a perfect wife and adoring stepmother, but her friends see that her careful façade is crumbling.

The instrument of their destruction is a single enigmatic man–Varick. He seems to be a lonely woman’s dream come true, but where has he come from? And what does he want? As he seduces the women in turn, their lives become unrecognizable to them. Varick’s secret lies buried in their shared past. One simple, childish act has brought them, all these years later, to a place where not only their lives but also their souls are at risk. For once upon a time, the three of them agreed to tell a lie–one that ruined the life of a young priest. Defrocked, destitute, and ruined, he hoped with the whole of his shattered heart that he would get revenge. And in that hope he shook hands with the one who promised it. The devil himself. Now they all must live with the consequences.

Dark and provocative, Calling Mr. Lonely Hearts will keep readers in its terrifying grip long after the final, chilling page is turned.

Read an excerpt from Calling Mr. Lonely Hearts.

Check out Laura Benedict's website and blog, and watch the Calling Mr. Lonely Hearts trailer.

Laura Benedict’s short fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and a number of anthologies. Her first novel, Isabella Moon, was praised by New York Times bestselling author Lisa Unger: “Like digging up an unmarked grave in the gloaming, Isabella Moon is a tense and creepy hunt for the truth about what lies beneath.”

The Page 69 Test: Calling Mr. Lonely Hearts.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Annie Barrows reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Annie Barrows, author of the children’s series Ivy and Bean, as well as The Magic Half, and co-author of the acclaimed The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

Her entry begins:

I've just started a reread of Our Mutual Friend. I read it years and years ago, and all I remember is great mountains of slime and trash and filth, but I know, given Dickens, that there's got to be more to it than that. I expect a virtuous but beleaguered girl to show up at any moment. In the meantime, I am riveted by the disgusting descriptions of the Thames. I have a deep personal interest in Victorian sanitation.[read on]

Visit Annie Barrows' website.

Among the praise for The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society:

"I can't remember the last time I discovered a novel as smart and delightful as this one, a world so vivid that I kept forgetting this was a work of fiction populated with characters so utterly wonderful that I kept forgetting they weren't my actual friends and neighbors. Treat yourself to this book, please — I can't recommend it highly enough."
--Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love

Writers Read: Annie Barrows.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Bob Smiley's "Follow the Roar"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Follow the Roar: Tailing Tiger for All 604 Holes of His Most Spectacular Season by Bob Smiley.

About the book, from the publisher:

With his career at a standstill and his golf game a shadow of its former mediocrity, TV writer and ESPN.com contributor Bob Smiley decided the time had come to turn to the one person who might be able to help: Tiger Woods. So, in January of 2008, Smiley set out to follow the game's greatest player from the gallery for every hole of an entire season and to absorb all that he could.

Smiley traveled from the seaside cliffs of San Diego to the deserts of Dubai, through the hallowed gates of Augusta National, and on to arguably the greatest U.S. Open of all time back at Torrey Pines, where, in a legendary duel with charismatic journeyman Rocco Mediate, Woods won his fourteenth major—on one leg.

Smiley chronicles every dramatic and often hysterical moment of his journey with Tiger, including his off-course run-ins with Arabian sandstorms, ex-con ticket scalpers, and the motley assortment of strangers who became friends along the way.

Told from the perspective of a true golf fan, Follow the Roar is a once-in-a-lifetime adventure through the most spectacular and inspiring season in Tiger Woods's celebrated career. In addition to the thrill of witnessing all 604 holes Woods played in '08, Smiley found in Tiger both inspiration and the gutsy embodiment of what it really means to be an athlete—and a man.

Browse inside Follow the Roar or read an excerpt at ESPN.com.

Bob Smiley is a TV writer and golf columnist for ESPN.com.

Visit Bob Smiley's Fore Right blog.

The Page 99 Test: Follow the Roar.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten Texas books of 2008

Glenn Dromgoole of the Abilene Reporter-News named his top ten Texas books of 2008.

One title to make the list:

Texas Aesop's Fables by David R. Davis (illustrated by Sue Marshall Ward).

The witty Fort Worth writer takes some familiar tales and puts a Texas twist on them. Each fable ends with a concise moral common sense conclusion. The fables are fun to read, and they provide easy-to-understand lessons for young Texans.

Read about another title on Dromgoole's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Salon's top ten books of 2008

One book from Salon's top 10 of 2008 list:

Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood by Mark Harris

Film critic Harris takes the five nominees for the best picture Oscar of 1967, and uses them as lenses to examine the tectonic changes that were taking place in the movie industry and American society as a whole. "Doctor Dolittle" represented the irrelevant bloat of the doomed studio system; "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" stood for right-thinking, middle-of-the-road liberalism; "In the Heat of the Night" showed how much (and how little) an African-American actor like Sidney Poitier could expect in the way of opportunity; "Bonnie and Clyde" embodied the birth of a hip new internationalism; and "The Graduate" spoke for youth culture and its romantic discontents. Harris retraces the very different stories behind the making of all five films, beginning around 1963, when two staffers at Esquire with no experience of Hollywood wrote a screenplay about a couple of Depression-era bank robbers for their idol, François Truffaut, and unwittingly ushered in a new approach to movie production. It seems astonishing that no one hit upon this premise earlier, but as Harris' execution abundantly illustrates, no one could have done it better.

Read about a book from the fiction side of Salon's list.

Writers Read: Mark Harris.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Brendan Short's "Dream City"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Dream City by Brendan Short.

About the book, from the publisher:

Set in Depression-era Chicago, an exhilarating debut about a young boy’s obsession with comic book heroes, and his lifelong attempt to both recapture and escape his childhood.

Six-year-old Michael Halligan longs to be a hero. Submerging himself in the world of Big Little Books, he imagines himself as “Mike Steele,” righter of wrongs, friend to Dick Tracy, Buck Rogers, and The Lone Ranger. But reality pops him on the jaw when his mother dies unexpectedly in the winter of 1934. Michael is left in the custody of his gangster father, Paddy, where he tragically loses his faith in the power of good over evil.

So begins Michael’s obsessive quest through the city and suburbs of Chicago to recapture the purity and comfort that defined his boyhood. As he attempts to track down a copy of every Big Little Book in existence, Michael begins—perhaps unintentionally—to also search out unconditional love, security, and stability in an arbitrary and unkind world.

A dazzling tale featuring a colorful cast of heroes, villains, and damsels in distress—both real and make-believe—Dream City poses the most dangerous of questions: What happens when we finally discover what we’ve spent our entire lives searching for?

Learn more about the book and author at Brendan Short's website.

Brendan Short holds an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas. His fiction has appeared in several literary journals, including The Literary Review and River Styx, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. From 2000 to 2001 he was Writer-in-Residence at St. Albans School in Washington, D.C.

The Page 69 Test: Dream City.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Vincent Rougeau's "Christians in the American Empire"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Christians in the American Empire: Faith and Citizenship in the New World Order by Vincent D. Rougeau.

About the book, from the publisher:

What does it mean to be a Christian citizen of the United States today? This book challenges the argument that the United States is a Christian nation, and that the American founding and the American Constitution can be linked to a Christian understanding of the state and society. Vincent Rougeau argues that the United States has become an economic empire of consumer citizens, led by elites who seek to secure American political and economic dominance around the world. Freedom and democracy for the oppressed are the public themes put forward to justify this dominance, but the driving force behind American hegemony is the need to sustain economic growth and maintain social peace in the United States.

This state of affairs raises important questions for Christians. In recent times, religious voices in American politics have taken on a moralistic stridency. Individual issues like abortion and same-sex marriage have been used to "guilt" many Christians into voting Republican or to discourage them from voting at all. Using Catholic social teaching as a point of departure, Rougeau argues that conservative American politics is driven by views of the individual and the state that are inconsistent with mainstream Catholic social thought. Without thinking more broadly about their religious traditions and how those traditions should inform their engagement with the modern world, it is unwise for Christians to think that pressing single issues is an appropriate way to actualize their faith commitments in the public realm.

Rougeau offers concerned Christians new tools for a critical assessment of legal, political and social questions. He proceeds from the fundamental Christian premise of the God-given dignity of the human person, a dignity that can only be realized fully in community with others. This means that the Christian cannot simply focus on individual empowerment as 'freedom' but must also seek to nurture community participation and solidarity for all citizens. Rougeau demonstrates what happens when these ideas are applied to a variety of specific contemporary issues involving the family, economics, and race. He concludes by offering a new model of public engagement for Christians in the American Empire.

Read more about Christians in the American Empire at the Oxford University Press website.

Learn more about Vincent Rougeau's research, teaching, and publications at his Notre Dame faculty webpage.

Vincent Rougeau is associate professor of law at the University of Notre Dame. He teaches a law and religion seminar on Catholic social thought, as well as courses in contract law and real estate transactions. He currently directs the Center for Law and Government at Notre Dame Law School, and previously served as associate dean from 1999-2002.

The Page 99 Test: Christians in the American Empire.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Steven Wingate reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Steven Wingate, author of Wifeshopping (Houghton Mifflin, 2008) which won the 2007 Bakeless Prize in fiction from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. He spends his analog time in Colorado and his digital time at www.stevenwingate.com.

Wingate's July 2008 write-up at Writers Read included accounts of Creation Myths by Mathias Svalina, Intercourse by Robert Olen Butler, and Allah Is Not Obliged by Ahmadou Kourouma.

In his new contribution he reviews The Half-Known World: On Writing Fiction by Robert Boswell. It opens:

The litmus test for books in the writing-about-writing subspecies is usefulness. Can it push writers, whether self-taught or enrolled in organized programs, deeper into their work? Can teachers teach with it? In The Half-Known World, novelist Robert Boswell makes a strong (and useful) first foray into the genre by blending rumination, examples, and quite a bit of personal history. This last element pulls the book together into something much more than a handbook by describing Boswell’s wrestling matches with his chosen craft at various stages of his authorial life. Through these we see the challenges of writing—and the distinct challenges of being a writer—elucidated in their unglamorous, dirty-to-the elbows detail.[read on]

Amy Hempel on Wingate's Wifeshopping:

"What makes these studies in discovery and disillusionment so startling and affecting is the energy of Steven Wingate's language, and the agency of his characters.... The stories in Wifeshopping expand with subsequent readings; they do not end on the page, but continue in a reader's mind."

Read more about Steven Wingate and his work at his website, his blog, his Facebook page, and his MySpace page.

Writers Read: Steven Wingate (July 2008).

Writers Read: Steven Wingate (December 2008).

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jeffrey Wasserstrom's "Global Shanghai"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Global Shanghai, 1850–2010: A History in Fragments by Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom.

About the book, from the publisher:

This book explores the play of international forces and international ideas about Shanghai, looking backward as far as its transformation into a subdivided treaty port in the 1840s, and looking forward to its upcoming hosting of China’s first World’s Fair, the 2010 Expo. As such, Global Shanghai is a lively and informative read for students and scholars of Chinese studies and urban studies and anyone interested in the history of Shanghai.

Read a brief history of Shanghai's future, part of an essay based on the themes of Global Shanghai.

Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom is a Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine. His other publications include China's Brave New World and Student Protests in Twentieth-Century China: The View from Shanghai. He is a regular contributor to academic journals and has also written for a variety of general interest periodicals, including Newsweek, The Nation, the TLS, New Left Review, the Far Eastern Economic Review, the Los Angeles Times and the Christian Science Monitor. He also writes at The China Beat.

The Page 69 Test: China's Brave New World.

The Page 99 Test: Global Shanghai, 1850–2010.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Maria Semple's "This One Is Mine"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: This One Is Mine by Maria Semple.

About the book, from the publisher:

Violet Parry is living the quintessential life of luxury in the Hollywood Hills with David, her rock-and-roll manager husband, and her darling toddler, Dot. She has the perfect life--except that she's deeply unhappy. David expects the world of Violet but gives little of himself in return. When she meets Teddy, a roguish small-time bass player, Violet comes alive, and soon she's risking everything for the chance to find herself again. Also in the picture are David's hilariously high-strung sister, Sally, on the prowl for a successful husband, and Jeremy, the ESPN sportscaster savant who falls into her trap. For all their recklessness, Violet and Sally will discover that David and Jeremy have a few surprises of their own. This One Is Mine is a compassionate and wickedly funny satire about our need for more--and the often disastrous choices we make in the name of happiness.

Read an excerpt from This One Is Mine.

Learn more about the book and author at Maria Semple's website.

Maria Semple has written for television shows including Arrested Development, Mad About You, and Ellen.

The Page 69 Test: This One Is Mine.

--Marshal Zeringue

Christian Science Monitor: best nonfiction of 2008

From the Christian Science Monitor's list of the best nonfiction of 2008:

A Summer of Hummingbirds
By Christopher Benfey

Christopher Benfey offers a lively account of love, art, and scandal among America’s 19th-century artistic elite.

Read about another title to make the Monitor's list.

Read an excerpt from A Summer of Hummingbirds, and listen to Christopher Benfey read Emily Dickenson's poem, "A Route of Evanescence."

The Page 99 Test: A Summer of Hummingbirds.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Geoff Nicholson's "The Lost Art of Walking"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: The Lost Art of Walking: The History, Science, Philosophy, and Literature of Pedestrianism by Geoff Nicholson.

About the book, from the publisher:

A fascinating, definitive, and very personal rumination on the history, science, philosophy, art, and literature of walking, by a skilled cultural commentator.

Geoff Nicholson, author of Bleeding London and Sex Collectors, turns his eye to the intellectual and cultural history of that most common of activities—walking. This simple, omnipresent activity has inspired numerous subcultures, literary and artistic legacies, sporting events, personal memories, epic journeys, mystical revelations, and scandals.

It’s a rich tradition that embraces such novelists as Charles Dickens and Paul Auster, musicians like Robert Johnson and Bob Dylan, and moviemakers from Buster Keaton to Werner Herzog. But it’s also a tradition that includes obsessives and eccentrics, such as the artist Mudman, who coats his body in mud and then walks the city streets; competitive pedestrians such as Captain Barclay, who walked one mile an hour for a thousand successive hours; and gang members who use the hidden language of the “Crip Walk” to spell out messages in the dirt with their scuffing. How we walk, where we walk, why we walk announces who and what we are.

Geoff Nicholson is a master chronicler of the hidden subversive twists on a seemingly normal activity. He analyzes the hows, wheres, and whys of walking through the ages. He finds people who walk only at night, or naked, or for thousands of miles at a time, in costume, for causes, or for no reason whatsoever. Here, he brings curiosity and genuine insight to a subject that often walks right past us.

Read more about The Lost Art of Walking, and learn more about the author and his work at Geoff Nicholson's website.

Geoff Nicholson is the author of many books, including Sex Collectors, Hunters and Gatherers, The Food Chain, and Bleeding London, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize.

The Page 99 Test: The Lost Art of Walking.

--Marshal Zeringue

Review: Per Petterson's "To Siberia"

In 2007 Ray Taras, who covers contemporary world literature for the blog, reviewed Per Petterson, Out Stealing Horses.

Here Taras reviews Petterson's To Siberia:

If you've sailed the Baltic you know that this northern sea, especially in winter, can be as violent as the Nordic nations surrounding them appear to be placid. The personal tragedy that Per Petterson suffered and narrated in his novel In the Wake (published in Norway in 2000) is a testimonial to the treachery of the Baltic, and its grim harvest makes reading any of his other seafaring stories unavoidably suspenseful. Suspense is not a word you might associate with this emerging major literary voice. The characters peopling Petterson's novels meet the tumultuous events in their otherwise unremarkable lives with extraordinary stoicism.

Published in Norway in 1996 and only this year in the U.S., To Siberia is a novel about Scandinavia. It follows the fjord hopping of a girl who grew up in the sparse windswept lands of northernmost Jutland, in a tiny town on the coast somewhere not far from Skagen. Dreaming of escape from the boredom of a small Danish harbor town to the expansiveness of Siberia, she only gets as far as the other side of the Baltic--the Oslo fjords, Gothenburg, and for a brief time even across to Stockholm, on the far coast of Sweden.

Wherever she travels the young girl is immediately recognized as Danish. "You're not even Norwegian," a librarian snarls at her (p. 174). In Petterson's northern cosmology, the subtle markings of identity that differentiate Nordic communities are as solid and towering as the Norway spruce. Even Christian, king of Denmark, who makes a cameo appearance insisting on being connected to his wife, assails the protagonist, temping as a switchboard operator, for her identity: "I can hear you are from North Jutland. I have had a lot of unpleasant experiences of North Jutlanders, I can tell you" (p. 184).

As in Petterson's acclaimed Out Stealing Horses (published in Norwegian in 2003, seven years after this novel but reaching the American reader a couple of years ahead of To Siberia), the presence of a spirited horse, named Lucifer no less, overshadows the phlegmatic rural residents of the vicinity, while an attentive border collie once again proves to be a lonely man's most giving companion. As in that novel, too, the topic of resistance to German occupation in World War II is a catalyst in the narrative of To Siberia. Unlike the Norwegians, the Danes did not do themselves proud in marshaling resistance to the German invasion. To be sure, their chilly but nonconfrontational approach to Nazi forces stationed in their country helped give them the opportunity to become "a light in the darkness," saving nearly all of their Jewish population, generally by transporting them across the Baltic to neutral Sweden from innumerable ports on Denmark's many islands.

In August 1943 the Danish government's limited cooperation with the occupiers broke down and Germany was forced to declare martial law in the country. This novel introduces the reader to a handful of tenacious resistance fighters in north Jutland among whom is Jesper, the older brother of the protagonist who she has grown up adoring. Still in their teens, they are forced into an impromptu parting and a last embrace on a dark Danish beach—the Germans are closing in on Jesper and his only hope of escape is under cover of night on a boat to the west coast of Sweden. In his haste he forgets to take with him a photograph of "Sistermine"--his affectionate nickname for his younger sister. Their subsequent odysseys taking them further and further apart have nothing romantic about them, making the siblings' separation especially poignant.

Petterson generally welcomes comparisons to an earlier Norwegian writer who won the 1920 Nobel Prize in literature, Knut Hamsun. Hamsun had for a time sympathized with the Nazis, and it is as if Petterson wishes to atone for this disgrace by writing like Hamsun but from a Nordic patriotic perspective. In any case the comparisons between the two seem forced. For one thing, one finds much more emotional drama in Petterson's works, as understated as it may be. His world also appears more "cosmopolitan" than Hamsun's, encompassing much of Scandinavia rather than just the farmlands and woodlands of Norway. Of course, Petterson has yet to write a magisterial work like Growth of the Soil or Hunger. What both authors share is a writing style that is austere and minimalist, with plot lines centered on interior experience rather than externally-driven events.

Petterson's stories are magical for being so surprisingly straightforward. They are deeply satisfying. We can therefore look forward with much anticipation to English translations of two other of his most recent novels which have appeared in Norway.

--Ray Taras

Learn more about the novel at the Graywolf Press website.

Ray Taras, professor of political science at Tulane University and director of its World Literature program, is the author of the recently released Europe Old and New: Transnationalism, Belonging, Xenophobia.

He has reviewed the following fiction for the blog:
Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger
Per Petterson's Out Stealing Horses
M.G. Vassanji's The Assassin's Song
3 Works by Dorota Masłowska
Andreï Makine's L’amour humain
Michel Houellebecq's The Possibility of an Island
Emmanuel Dongala's Johnny Mad Dog
Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide

--Marshal Zeringue

Malena Lott's "Dating da Vinci," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Dating da Vinci by Malena Lott.

The entry opens:

I love movies almost, but not quite, as much as I love books. In writing classes, you often get the tip to find models or actors in magazines to cut out and storyboard for the physical character development of your novel. I tend to choose actors because I may like certain mannerisms or their charisma on screen, just as much as having the "look" I'm going for. I did this with Dating da Vinci, a tale of love, longing and la dolce vita. Bookopolis said that Dating da Vinci, "has all the making of a great romantic comedy." So, with that in mind, here's my cast....

I imagined my protagonist, Ramona Elise, a linguist and widowed mother, as a curvier Kate Winslet, one of my favorite actors, period. She has the acting chops to handle her struggle with grief and joy, with just one look.

For Leonardo da Vinci, my twenty-five year old handsome Italian immigrant...[read on]

Read an excerpt from Dating da Vinci, and learn more about the author and her work at Malena Lott's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: Dating da Vinci.

My Book, The Movie: Dating da Vinci.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: T.A. Pratt's "Dead Reign"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Dead Reign by T.A. Pratt.

About the book, from the publisher:

Death has come calling, and one woman has what he wants most of all...

As chief sorcerer of Felport, Marla Mason thought she’d faced every kind of evil the magical world had to offer. But she’s never faced a killer like this. He’s dark, glib, handsome as the devil—and exactly who he says he is. Death—in the flesh. He’s arrived in Felport with a posse composed of a half-insane necromancer and the reanimated corpse of John Wilkes Booth, and he isn’t leaving until he gets what he came for. Only Marla is crazy enough to tell Death to go back to Hell.

With the Founders’ Ball just around the bend, drawing together the brightest, meanest, and most dangerous of Felport’s magical elite, the last thing Marla needs is all-out war with the King of the Underworld, but that’s exactly what she’s got. As the battle lines are drawn, she can count on her hedonistic, body-hopping partner Rondeau…but how many of her old allies will stand by her side when facing the ultimate adversary? To save her city, Marla will have to find a way to cheat Death…literally.

Read an excerpt from Dead Reign, and learn more about the book and author at T.A. Pratt's website and blog.

T.A. Pratt writes the urban fantasy series featuring the heroine Marla Mason: Blood Engines (October 2007), Poison Sleep (April 2008), Dead Reign (November 2008), and Spell Games (April 2009).

The Page 69 Test: Dead Reign.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Ian Christe reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Ian Christe, author of Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal and Everybody Wants Some: The Van Halen Saga.

Part of his entry:

Bill Landis' Sleazoid Express is a perennial favorite, so is Otto Bettman's The Good Old Days--They Were Terrible! Sleazoid is a guide to exploitation films that brilliantly places them in the milieu of early-80s Times Square. Bettman founded probably the world's largest historical photo archive, but this book is a cold jolt of water to nostalgia dreamers; it's exactly what the title says it is, and it's hilarious! I haven't read current #1 bestseller Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World yet, but it was co-written by the editor of Sound of the Beast, so anything's possible.[read on]

Learn more about Ian Christe and his work at his MySpace page, blog, the official The Sound of the Beast website, and the Bazillion Points website.

Iain Ellis called Christe's The Sound of the Beast "an incredibly comprehensive historical survey (and analysis) of heavy metal from Black Sabbath to the present."

Listen to his "Bloody Roots" radio show on Sirius Satellite Radio.

Writers Read: Ian Christe.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Robert Saunders' "The Many Faces of Sacha Baron Cohen"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: The Many Faces of Sacha Baron Cohen: Politics, Parody, and the Battle over Borat by Robert A. Saunders.

About the book, from the publisher:

In his various guises, the British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen has threatened Uzbekistan with catapults, driven a UN Secretary-General to profanity, and ruined New York's Fashion Week. Evincing shades of Jonathan Swift, Monty Python, and Andy Kaufman, Baron Cohen has consistently demonstrated a singular talent for crafting outrageous personae, a ruthless dedication to staying in character, and an uncanny ability to parlay controversy into professional success. Now, in his lively and often humorous study The Many Faces of Sacha Baron Cohen: Politics, Parody, and the Battle over Borat, Robert A. Saunders explores the striking cultural resonance and far-reaching political ramifications of Baron Cohen's portrayals of Borat, Ali G, and Bruno. In Ali G, a wannabe gangsta rapper from the leafy English suburb of Staines, the Cambridge-educated humorist tackled the prickly questions of race, ethnicity, and identity in "Cool Britannia." As Bruno, a campy Austrian fashionista with a Nazi fetish, he tapped into a wellspring of homophobia simmering beneath the sheen of political correctness. Most dramatically, as the roving Kazakhstani reporter Borat, Baron Cohen offended the world's ninth largest nation, provoked the ire of the Anti-Defamation League, triggered dozens of lawsuits, and became the subject of presidential summits.

Part biography and part political analysis, Saunders traces Baron Cohen's rise from a small-time comedian-one who might have easily been forgotten in the pre-Internet era-to a cultural lightning rod who set tongues wagging from Vancouver to Vladivostok. Through a probing discussion of the identity politics that mold this jester's unique brand of humor, the author navigates the eclectic socio-political climate that gave rise to the cable television hit Da Ali G Show and the international blockbuster Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. The end result is a sublime synthesis of cultural history and contemporary politics that affirms the undeniable power of imagery in the global village.

Read more about The Many Faces of Sacha Baron Cohen, and learn more about the author and his work at Robert A. Saunders' faculty webpage.

Robert A. Saunders is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History, Economics & Politics at Farmingdale State College-SUNY.

The Page 99 Test: The Many Faces of Sacha Baron Cohen.

--Marshal Zeringue

Best books of 2008: The Economist

From The Economist's best books of 2008 list:

The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran.
By Hooman Majd.

A Western-educated son of an ayatollah portrays the intricacies of Iranian society in this illuminating, critical and affectionate memoir of his homeland.

Read about another book to make The Economist's list.

Read an excerpt from The Ayatollah Begs to Differ, and learn more about the book and author at Hooman Majd's website.

View the video trailer for the book, and watch Jon Stewart's interview with Hooman Majd on The Daily Show.

The Page 69 Test: The Ayatollah Begs to Differ.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Malena Lott's "Dating da Vinci"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Dating da Vinci by Malena Lott.

About the book, from the author's website:

I wrote the story of Ramona Elise Griffen (Mona Lisa) because so many women can relate to a time in your life when you need a renaissance - an awakening. For Ramona, 36, a widowed mother of two, she’s been living life as a Griever for two years, since the unexpected death of her husband to a heart attack two years prior. She’s put her life on hold, but is ready, slowly, to find who she is now and what she should do next. As an English teacher to immigrants, she meets Leonardo da Vinci, a striking twenty-five year old Italian who shares a lot of characteristics with the real da Vinci. She gives him a place to stay in her husband’s garage studio, while he shows her so much more. The story is one of soul mates and second chances and finding joy after tragedy. I hope you’ll enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Read an excerpt from Dating da Vinci, and learn more about the author and her work at Malena Lott's website and blog.

Read Lott's Author Snapshot at January Magazine.

The Page 69 Test: Dating da Vinci.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twenty biggest science fiction movers-and-shakers

Charlie Jane Anders, news editor for io9, compiled a list of the 20 biggest science fiction movers-and-shakers of 2008.

Most of the individuals who made the list don't write books but Number 8 on the list does:

Neal Stephenson, author of Anathem. We knew Stephenson's next book would be a hit, thanks to his huge following. But Anathem, with its story of a world where science and technology are separated and pure scientists live in "Maths," captured the imagination of mainstream critics. Suddenly, novels of ideas are cool again.
Up next: Nobody knows. Unless you do?

Read about another book-writer to make io9's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Colleen Shogan reading?

This weekend's featured contributor to Writers Read: Colleen Shogan, author of The Moral Rhetoric of American Presidents and a Section Research Manager in the Government and Finance Division of the Congressional Research Service (CRS). Formerly a political science professor at George Mason University, Shogan has lectured and written on a wide range of topics, from presidential rhetoric to women in Congress. Prior to joining CRS, Colleen worked as a Legislative Assistant for Senator Joe Lieberman.

Elvin Lim included Shogan's The Moral Rhetoric of American Presidents on his list of the five best books on presidential rhetoric.

One paragraph from her Writers Read entry:

Even though I mostly read fiction, I did spend several evenings perusing Stephen Hess's new book, What Do We Do Now? Hess, a scholar at the Brookings Institution, is a veteran of several White House transitions, and his book is a workbook for the new President-elect. In very concrete and practical terms, it describes what a new president must do before January 20 to make the White House function efficiently.[read on]

Visit Colleen Shogan's website.

Writers Read: Colleen Shogan.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Mary Beard's "The Fires of Vesuvius"

This weekend's feature at the Page 99 Test: The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found by Mary Beard.

About the book, from the publisher:

Pompeii is the most famous archaeological site in the world, visited by more than two million people each year. Yet it is also one of the most puzzling, with an intriguing and sometimes violent history, from the sixth century BCE to the present day.

Destroyed by Vesuvius in 79 CE, the ruins of Pompeii offer the best evidence we have of life in the Roman Empire. But the eruptions are only part of the story. In The Fires of Vesuvius, acclaimed historian Mary Beard makes sense of the remains. She explores what kind of town it was—more like Calcutta or the Costa del Sol?—and what it can tell us about “ordinary” life there. From sex to politics, food to religion, slavery to literacy, Beard offers us the big picture even as she takes us close enough to the past to smell the bad breath and see the intestinal tapeworms of the inhabitants of the lost city. She resurrects the Temple of Isis as a testament to ancient multiculturalism. At the Suburban Baths we go from communal bathing to hygiene to erotica.

Recently, Pompeii has been a focus of pleasure and loss: from Pink Floyd’s memorable rock concert to Primo Levi’s elegy on the victims. But Pompeii still does not give up its secrets quite as easily as it may seem. This book shows us how much more and less there is to Pompeii than a city frozen in time as it went about its business on 24 August 79.

Read an excerpt from The Fires of Vesuvius, and learn more about the book at the Harvard University Press website.

Visit Mary Beard's University of Cambridge faculty webpage and read her blog, “A Don's Life.”

The Page 99 Test: The Roman Triumph.

The Page 99 Test: The Fires of Vesuvius.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Book You Have to Read"

Earlier this year Patti Abbott launched a series about "books we love but might have forgotten over the years. I have asked several people to help me [she wrote] by also remembering a favorite book.... I'm worried great books of the recent past are sliding out of print and out of our consciousness. Not the first-tier classics we all can name, but the books that come next."

The initiative has been a remarkable success, with Abbott and her associates at several blogs posting (on Friday's) the recommendation by people who know books.

For example, today The Rap Sheet posted its 34th installment of its posts in the series:

The Book You Have to Read: “The Scarf,” by Robert Bloch

Bill Crider's pick:

DRIVE EAST ON 66 -- Richard Wormser

And at Abbott's site, Debby Atkinson recommends:

Gun, With Occasional Music, Jonathan Lethem

Looking for a forgotten book that you have to read? Suggestions pop up every Friday at these and other sites.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Karen E. Olson's "Shot Girl"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Shot Girl by Karen E. Olson.

About the book, from the publisher:

New Haven police reporter Annie Seymour has a talent for running into trouble. So it should come as no surprise when her co-worker's bachelorette party at a local club quickly turns into a crime scene. What is surprising is that the dead club manager in the parking lot happens to be Annie's ex-husband—and the bullet shells around his body match the gun she has in her car...

Read an excerpt from Shot Girl, and learn more about the author and her work at Karen E. Olson's website and blog.

Annie Seymour, a crime reporter in New Haven, Connecticut, is the protagonist of three previous novels by Olson: Sacred Cows, Secondhand Smoke, and Dead of the Day.

My Book, The Movie: The "Annie Seymour" mysteries.

The Page 69 Test: Dead of the Day.

The Page 69 Test: Shot Girl.

--Marshal Zeringue

NPR: Top five crime & mystery novels of 2008

For National Public Radio, Maureen Corrigan named a list of the "Top Five Crime And Mystery Novels Of 2008."

One title to make the grade:

Small Crimes, by Dave Zeltserman

With the world in financial freefall, there's only one type of mystery that captures the anxiety of the times, and that's crime noir: the jittery genre born during the Great Depression about saps, grifters and sad sacks who ain't got a barrel of money. James M. Cain is king of this genre, but there's a new name to add to the pantheon of the sons and daughters of Cain: Dave Zeltserman. His new novel, Small Crimes, is ingeniously twisted and imbued with a glossy coating of black humor.

This tale is told by one of fortune's fools: Joe Denton is a crooked ex-cop in Vermont who's just been released from jail after serving seven years for stabbing the local district attorney in the face. Since what's past is never truly past in crime noir, no sooner does Joe step out of the slammer than cosmic IOU's begin to rain down on his head. First, the disfigured DA cheerfully greets Joe outside the prison and announces that a local crime kingpin (and Joe's secret boss) is dying of cancer and has found religion. The kingpin's expected confession should send Joe straight back behind bars. Then, the local sheriff (also crooked) orders Joe to murder the DA before the crime kingpin can confess. The plot of Small Crimes ricochets out from this claustrophobic opening, and it's a thing of sordid beauty.

Read about another title on Corrigan's list.

Read an excerpt from Small Crimes, and learn more about the book from the publisher.

Visit Dave Zeltserman's website and his blog.

My Book, The Movie: Small Crimes.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Fairlie & Robb's "Race and Entrepreneurial Success"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Race and Entrepreneurial Success: Black-, Asian-, and White-Owned Businesses in the United States by Robert W. Fairlie and Alicia M. Robb.

About the book, from the publisher:

Thirteen million people in the United States—roughly one in ten workers—own a business. And yet rates of business ownership among African Americans are much lower and have been so during the last 100 years. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, businesses owned by African Americans tend to have lower sales, fewer employees and smaller payrolls, lower profits, and higher closure rates. In contrast, Asian American-owned businesses tend to be more successful. In Race and Entrepreneurial Success, minority entrepreneurship authorities Robert Fairlie and Alicia Robb examine racial disparities in business performance. Drawing on the rarely used, restricted-access Characteristics of Business Owners (CBO) data set compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau, Fairlie and Robb examine in particular why Asian-owned firms perform well in comparison to white-owned businesses and black-owned firms typically do not. They also explore the broader question of why some entrepreneurs are successful and others are not.

After providing new comprehensive estimates of recent trends in minority business ownership and performance, the authors examine the importance of human capital, financial capital, and family business background in successful business ownership. They find that a high level of startup capital is the most important factor contributing to the success of Asian-owned businesses, and that the lack of startup money for black businesses (attributable to the fact that nearly half of all black families have less than $6,000 in total wealth) contributes to their relative lack of success. In addition, higher education levels among Asian business owners explain much of their success relative to both white- and black-owned businesses. Finally, Fairlie and Robb find that black entrepreneurs have fewer opportunities than white entrepreneurs to acquire valuable prebusiness work experience through working in family businesses.

Read the Preface and Introduction to Race and Entrepreneurial Success, and learn more about the book at the publisher's website.

Robert W. Fairlie is Professor of Economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an adjunct researcher at the RAND Corporation. Alicia M. Robb is a Research Associate in Economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a senior economist with Beacon Economics.

The Page 99 Test: Race and Entrepreneurial Success.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Jeffrey Frank reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Jeffrey Frank, author of The Columnist, Bad Publicity, and Trudy Hopedale and other works.

His entry begins:

I’ve just finished a galley of Nina Killham’s Believe Me (it’s out next month from Plume). I’ll confess that I tend to pick up lots of galleys and then to abandon them quickly; the publishing industry is a scary business because it produces so many galleys for so few impatient readers. But I was engaged from the start by this one, and by the voice of Killham’s narrator-a precocious thirteen-year-old named Nic (after Nicolas Copernicus).[read on]

In addition to his novels, Frank was a senior editor at The New Yorker for over a decade and collaborated with his Danish-born wife, Diana Crone Frank, on The Stories of Hans Christian Andersen: A New Translation From the Danish.

Among the praise for The Columnist:

"...a darkly funny fictional 'memoir' by a columnist and TV personality who flatters and blackmails his way to power and then crashes in a scandal so lurid it makes the Lewinsky affair seem tame..."
--The New York Times Book Review

"It is the only Washington novel that I would dare call Swiftian. Brutally funny."
--Stephen Hess

Visit Jeffrey Frank's website.

Writers Read: Jeffrey Frank.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10 angel books

Karl O. Knausgaard, author of A Time for Everything, named "his 10 favourite depictions of these not always divine creatures" for the Guardian.

One title on his list:

Pig Earth by John Berger

Hardly anyone writes better about animals than Berger, or about rural life in general. This beautiful book of stories is set in the French Alps, and has nothing to do with angels at all. The soil, the hay, the sheeps, the trees, the barn, the village and its inhabitants, yes – Berger's subject is as solidly material as prose gets. But then a priest suddenly makes a remark about angels. Although the angels that Jacob saw, had wings, he says, they didn´t fly, but climbed the ladder step by step. That´s all there is about angels in this book, but like those occasions when everything is quiet, and you suddenly hear a noise, and then it´s quiet again – the meaning of the sentence echoes through whatever follows. Berger's world of concrete detail and worldly toil is strangely reminiscent of the Old Testament's world of very earthly toil. It's as if he´s saying - it´s still all here, enough in itself, inside our reach. No need for wings.

Read about Number One on Knausgaard's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: PD Martin's "The Murderers' Club"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: The Murderers' Club by PD Martin.

About the book, from the author's website:

Sophie Anderson takes a week off to visit colleague and friend, Detective Darren Carter, in Tucson Arizona. But she’s not in Arizona for ten minutes before murder interrupts their well-laid plans – and her visions suddenly return for the first time in six months.

Sophie and Darren investigate the murder, and a week later the killer strikes again – there’s a serial killer in Tucson. The pair follows leads to Chicago and Las Vegas, trying to find out what the victims had in common and why the killer targeted them.

Meanwhile, Sophie’s visions of a woman’s horrific death haunt her and she pushes herself harder in an attempt to save the woman she suspects may be the next victim.

With time running out, a startling discovery is made … one that changes everything and redefines cybercrime.

Learn more about the book and author at PD Martin's website.

PD Martin lives in Melbourne, Australia. She is the author of three crime novels: Body Count, The Murderers’ Club, and Fan Mail (now available in Australia and New Zealand and due to be released in North America and the UK in May 2009).

The Page 69 Test: The Murderers' Club.

--Marshal Zeringue

The Christian Science Monitor's best novels of 2008

From the Christian Science Monitor's list of the best novels of 2008:

The Black Tower
By Louis Bayard

In this thriller, which reads like Alexandre Dumas with a little Conan Doyle mixed in, Louis Bayard borrows from Edgar Allen Poe, appropriating the real-life inspiration for Poe’s very first detective story, protagonist Eugène François Vidocq, a criminal who became one of the first private detectives and the first director of France’s Sûreté Nationale.

Read about another novel from the Monitor's fiction list.

Read an excerpt from The Black Tower, and learn more about the book and author at Louis Bayard's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Black Tower.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Stuart Banner's "Who Owns the Sky?"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Who Owns the Sky?: The Struggle to Control Airspace from the Wright Brothers On by Stuart Banner.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the summer of 1900, a zeppelin stayed aloft for a full eighteen minutes above Lake Constance and mankind found itself at the edge of a new world. Where many saw hope and the dawn of another era, one man saw a legal conundrum. Charles C. Moore, an obscure New York lawyer, began an inquiry that Stuart Banner returns to over a century later: in the age of airplanes, who can lay claim to the heavens?

The debate that ensued in the early twentieth century among lawyers, aviators, and the general public acknowledged the crucial challenge new technologies posed to traditional concepts of property. It hinged on the resolution of a host of broader legal issues being vigorously debated that pertained to the fine line between private and public property. To what extent did the Constitution allow the property rights of the nation’s landowners to be abridged? Where did the common law of property originate and how applicable was it to new technologies? Where in the skies could the boundaries between the power of the federal government and the authority of the states be traced?

Who Owns the Sky? is the first book to tell this forgotten story of elusive property. A collection of curious tales questioning the ownership of airspace and a reconstruction of a truly novel moment in the history of American law, Banner’s book reminds us of the powerful and reciprocal relationship between technological innovation and the law—in the past as well as in the ­present.

Read an excerpt from Who Owns the Sky?, and learn more about the book at the Harvard University Press website.

Stuart Banner is Professor of Law at the University of California, Los Angeles. His publications include The Death Penalty: An American History, How the Indians Lost Their Land: Law and Power on the Frontier, and Possessing the Pacific: Land, Settlers, and Indigenous People from Australia to Alaska.

The Page 99 Test: Who Owns the Sky?.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Johann N. Neem reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Johann N. Neem, author of Creating a Nation of Joiners: Democracy and Civil Society in Early National Massachusetts.

His entry starts:

I'm currently reading two books. The first is Albert Camus' The Plague. I read it because I am, like so many, on a quest to find how humans create meaning in the world. The existentialists, while challenging, confront the possibility of meaninglessness. I believe that this confrontation need not lead to nihilism but might instead help us understand how we, as humans together in community, can forge a better society for ourselves.[read on]

Johann N. Neem is Associate Professor of History at Western Washington University.

Read an excerpt from Neem's Creating a Nation of Joiners and learn more about the book at the Harvard University Press website.

Among the praise for Creating a Nation of Joiners:

Beautifully conceived and clearly written, Creating a Nation of Joiners is a major contribution to our understanding of the early Republic. Not only does it nicely show how bitterly contested was the struggle over the creation of a civil society, but it contains the best account of the changing nature of the corporation since Oscar and Mary Handlin's Commonwealth. A superb study.
--Gordon S. Wood, Brown University

Writers Read: Johann N. Neem.

--Marshal Zeringue

Los Angeles Times: 2008 crime fiction favorites

Sarah Weinman compiled the "best of 2008" list of crime fiction and mysteries for the Los Angeles Times.

One paragraph from the column:

In recent years, the mystery has become truly international. Zoë Ferraris' "Finding Nouf" (Houghton Mifflin) conveys how Saudi Arabia perceives the United States, revealing this cloistered country's heart and mind. Tom Rob Smith's "Child 44" (Grand Central) sets a grisly serial killer saga against the last days of Stalin's regime. It lives up to all of its considerable hype, as does Stieg Larsson's "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" (Alfred A. Knopf).

Read the full article.

Read an excerpt from Finding Nouf, and learn more about the book and author at Zoë Ferraris' website.

The Page 69 Test: Finding Nouf.

Read an excerpt from Child 44, and learn more about the book at the publisher's website.

The Page 69 Test: Child 44.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Jane Lindskold's "Thirteen Orphans"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Thirteen Orphans by Jane Lindskold.

About the book, from the publisher:

As evocative and moving as Charles de Lint’s Newford books, with the youthful protagonists and exciting action of Mercedes Lackey’s fantasies, Thirteen Orphans makes our world today as excitingly strange and unfamiliar as any fantasy realm ... and grants readers a glimpse of a fantasy world founded by ancient Chinese lore and magic.

As far as college freshman Brenda Morris knows, there is only one Earth and magic exists only in fairy tales.

Brenda is wrong.

A father-daughter weekend turns into a nightmare when Brenda’s father is magically attacked before her eyes. Brenda soon learns that her ancestors once lived in world of smoke and shadows, of magic and secrets.

When that world’s Emperor was overthrown, the Thirteen Orphans fled to our earth and hid their magic system in the game of mah-jong. Each Orphan represents an animal from the Chinese Zodiac. Brenda’s father is the Rat. And her polished, former child-star aunt, Pearl—that eminent lady is the Tiger.

Only a handful of Orphans remain to stand against their enemies. The Tiger, the Rooster, the Dog, the Rabbit ... and Brenda Morris. Not quite the Rat, but not quite human either.

Learn more about the book and author at Jane Lindskold's website.

Jane Lindskold is the bestselling author of the Wolf series, which began with Through Wolf’s Eyes and concluded with Wolf’s Blood, as well as many other fantasy novels.

The Page 69 Test: Thirteen Orphans.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten best books of 2008: Washington Post

The editors and reviewers at the Washington Post named their ten best list of books for 2008.

One title on the list:

Cost by Roxana Robinson

In this startlingly perceptive novel, a divorced woman struggles to save her heroin-addicted son while trying to care for her aged parents.--Ron Charles

Read an excerpt from Cost, and learn more about the book and author at Roxana Robinson’s website.

The Page 69 Test: Roxana Robinson's Cost.

Read about a non-fiction title on the Washington Post's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Rachael King's "The Sound of Butterflies," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: The Sound of Butterflies by Rachael King.

The entry begins:

I'm sure that all writers day-dream about who might play their characters in a film; certainly I have been asked enough by my friends, and it's always a fun game to play. I have no interest in the A-list, such as Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie; I'm much more interested in British actors (well, the characters are mostly British) who aren't afraid to get their hair dirty. When I first started writing The Sound of Butterflies, I had recently seen a New Zealand mini-series called Greenstone, and I had a young Matthew Rhys before-he-was-famous in mind for Thomas, but a skinnier, blonder version. The truth is that the exact Thomas I had in my head was a perpetually worried-looking waiter I'd seen at a cricket match. I drew a caricature of him that day in my notebook and will always think of him as my Thomas. Rhys doesn't seem right to me anymore, (too old perhaps), but someone like James McAvoy would be perfect: an atypical leading man who could do intense and awkward well. He's not my waiter, but he will do nicely.

Since Kate Winslet is too old now, I would definitely pick...[read on]

Read an excerpt from The Sound of Butterflies, and learn more about the novel and its author at Rachael King's website and her blog.

The Page 69 Test: The Sound of Butterflies.

My Book, The Movie: The Sound of Butterflies.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: David Hempton's "Evangelical Disenchantment"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Evangelical Disenchantment: Nine Portraits of Faith and Doubt by David Hempton.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this engaging and at times heartbreaking book, David Hempton looks at evangelicalism through the lens of well-known individuals who once embraced the evangelical tradition, but later repudiated it. The author recounts the faith journeys of nine creative artists, social reformers, and public intellectuals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including such diverse figures as George Eliot, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Vincent van Gogh, and James Baldwin. Within their highly individual stories, Hempton finds not only clues to the development of these particular creative men and women but also myriad insights into the strengths and weaknesses of one of the fastest growing religious traditions in the modern world.

Allowing his subjects to express themselves in their own voices—through letters, essays, speeches, novels, apologias, paintings—Hempton seeks to understand the factors at work in the shaping of their religious beliefs, and how their negotiations of faith informed their public and private lives. The nine were great public communicators, but in private often felt deep uncertainties. Hempton’s moving portraits highlight common themes among the experiences of these disillusioned evangelicals while also revealing fresh insights into the evangelical movement and its relations to the wider culture.

Featuring portraits of:

· George Eliot
· Frances W. Newman
· Theodore Dwight Weld
· Sarah Grimké
· Elizabeth Cady Stanton
· Frances Willard
· Vincent van Gogh
· Edmund Gosse
· James Baldwin

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

David Hempton is Alonzo L. McDonald Family Professor of Evangelical Theological Studies, Harvard University. His book Methodism: Empire of the Spirit, published by Yale University Press, was awarded the Jesse Lee Prize.

Visit David Hempton's Harvard Divinity School faculty webpage.

The Page 99 Test: Evangelical Disenchantment.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Jan Brogan's "Teaser"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Teaser by Jan Brogan.

About the book, from the publisher:

Hallie Ahern, a Providence, Rhode Island, reporter and recovering gambling addict, is trawling online chat rooms in search of a story for her newspaper’s Web site when an anonymous source sends her a short video clip, a teaser. Featuring two girls striking provocative poses, the clip promises more to come. As Hallie follows up on the lead, staking out tech shops and high school hangouts in search of the girls in the clip, she discovers that men are buying the girls webcams and lavishing them with gifts to make sure they use them. But those gifts are only a taste of the perils to come.

The paper’s new owners love the idea of an exposé that warns parents of the dangers of the Internet, but when girls start dying, and when Hallie’s boyfriend—a prosecutor with the Attorney General’s office—ends up on another side of the story altogether, the situation goes from dark to lethal.

As Hallie is caught between her responsibilities as a reporter and as a concerned citizen, her investigation leads her deep into a far-reaching conspiracy in Teaser, Jan Brogan’s latest gripping mystery.

Read an excerpt from Teaser, and learn more about the author and her work at Jan Brogan's website and blog.

Brogan is a former correspondent for The Boston Globe and a freelance magazine writer. Her novels include Final Copy, A Confidential Source, and Yesterday's Fatal.

The Page 69 Test: Teaser.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Thomas Sugrue reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Thomas Sugrue, author of the recently released Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North.

His entry opens:

A little over a month ago, the greatest American journalist of my lifetime, Studs Terkel, passed on. It was an untimely death, not because of his advanced age (he was 96), but because his life's work was unfinished. The week after he died, I pulled out my beaten up copies of his books and began re-reading. No one was a truer democrat. Terkel found wisdom, irony, and tragedy in ordinary folks talking about their lives. Terkel was a romantic in his hope that if we only listened to the people, we could learn from them. But he did not condescend to his subjects or whitewash their imperfections. His book, Race, punctured the conventional pieties of "we have overcome" America. Terkel's interviews in Working captured the....[read on]

Read an excerpt from Sweet Land of Liberty, and learn more about the book at the publisher's website.

Thomas J. Sugrue is a historian at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is currently Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Professor of History and Sociology. Sugrue’s first book, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, won the prestigious Bancroft Prize in American History, the President’s Book Award of the Social Science History Association, the Philip Taft Prize in Labor History, and the Urban History Association Prize for Best Book in North American Urban History.

Writers Read: Thomas Sugrue.

--Marshal Zeringue

Books that emphatically debunk pseudohistory: 5 best

Damian Thompson, author of the recently released Counterknowledge: How We Surrendered to Conspiracy Theories, Quack Medicine, Bogus Science and Fake History, named a five best list of books for the Wall Street Journal. His subject: books that "emphatically debunk pseudohistory and spurious 'knowledge.'"

One title from the list:

Tower of Babel
by Robert T. Pennock
MIT Press, 1999

No form of counter-factual "knowledge" is more insidious than modern creationism, which exploits public ignorance of science to present religious myth as heavily footnoted research. In "Tower of Babel," Robert T. Pennock provides a magisterial guide to the different schools of creationism, from the nutty to the plausible. He is particularly effective at exposing the sleight of hand employed by the "intelligent design" school, which uses the twisted methodology of all pseudoscientists: Start with what you want to prove -- in this case, that nature could not have evolved without divine intervention -- and then work backward.

Read about another title on Thompson's list.

Damian Thompson is the editor in chief of The Catholic Herald. He also writes for The Daily Telegraph.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Andrew R. Murphy's "Prodigal Nation"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Prodigal Nation: Moral Decline and Divine Punishment from New England to 9/11 by Andrew R. Murphy.

About the book, from the publisher:

America's supposed moral decline from an imagined golden age, and the threat of divine punishment for the sin of straying from the path of righteousness, have been consistent themes in its political and religious rhetoric. But why is this myth so compelling to Americans? In Prodigal Nation, Andrew Murphy investigates the jeremiad's historical roots and probes the ways in which it continues to illuminate larger themes and tensions in American social and political life. He examines its role in colonial New England, shows how it was employed during the Civil War, and demonstrates its continued power in today's political climate. Far from being simply a force for conservatism-the yearning for a return to "a simpler time"-the jeremiad has often been employed in favor of progressive causes. Americans of all political stripes-not just Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, but Abraham Lincoln and Robert Kennedy-have used the language of moral decline for political purposes. Murphy shows how Americans' powerful attachment to an idealized past, and the hope of a return to John Winthrop's imagined "City on a Hill," continue to shape public life.

Read more about Prodigal Nation at the Oxford University Press website, and learn more about Andrew R. Murphy's research and publications at his faculty webpage.

Murphy is Associate Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University, New Bruswick. He is the author of Conscience and Community: Revisiting Toleration and Religious Dissent in Early Modern England and America, the co-editor of Religion, Politics, and the American Identity: New Directions, New Controversies, and the editor of The Political Writings of William Penn.

The Page 99 Test: Prodigal Nation.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: John Morgan Wilson's "Spider Season"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Spider Season by John Morgan Wilson.

About the book, from the publisher:

Benjamin Justice was once one of the most prominent and respected journalists in Los Angeles, even the country. But when it was discovered that he'd invented the sources for his Pulitzer Prize winning series of articles, he lost everything - his job, his reputation, his friends. Now, many years later, Justice has finally published a memoir revealing the truth behind the events that cost him so much and made him permanently radioactive in the journalism community. And this book may be his last chance to turn things around, to make a living writing as he'd always wanted.

But his memoir brings out more than the truth - it brings out long-forgotten , long hidden ghosts from his past. And Justice finds himself, and everyone/everything he holds dear under attack.

Learn more about the author at www.johnmorganwilson.com, where you can read the first chapter of Spider Season in its entirety.

John Morgan Wilson is a veteran journalist and fiction writer. His Benjamin Justice mysteries have won the Edgar Allan Poe Award (AKA "the Edgar") for best first novel and three Lambda Literary Awards for best gay men's mystery. The latest is Spider Season (St. Martin's Minotaur), the eighth in the series, which began with the Edgar-winning Simple Justice in 1996, recently reissued by Bold Strokes Books.

The Page 69 Test: Spider Season.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Chris Ewan reading?

This weekend's featured contributor to Writers Read: Chris Ewan, author of The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam and The Good Thief's Guide to Paris.

One paragraph from his entry:

On the fiction side of things, I’m just finishing Dave White’s terrific debut novel When One Man Dies. It’s a modern private-eye novel, set in New Jersey, and told in a stark, muscular voice. Full of pace and attitude, it reminds me of George Pelecanos’s Nick’s Trip, and I’m eager to read White’s second Jackson Donne novel, The Evil That Men Do.[read on]

Learn more about Chris Ewan and his work at his website and blog.

Ewan’s debut novel, The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam, won the Long Barn Books First Novel Competition and was shortlisted for the CrimeFest Last Laugh Award for the best humorous crime novel published in the British Isles in 2007.

His latest novel is the recently released The Good Thief's Guide to Paris.

The Page 69 Test: The Good Thief's Guide to Paris.

Read Chris Ewan's article "My Amsterdam," in National Geographic Traveler.

Writers Read: Chris Ewan.

--Marshal Zeringue

David Wroblewski: five most important books

David Wroblewski is the author the acclaimed debut novel, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.

He named his five most important books for Newsweek. And addressed a couple of related issues:

A classic book that, upon revisiting, disappointed:

"The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I suppose because I grew up poor and can't get past a surface story about the aimless rich wasting their lives.

A book you hope parents will read to their kids:

"The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins. He is one of the intellectual heroes of our age.

Read about the books on Wroblewski's five most important list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Richard Price's "Making Empire"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Making Empire: Colonial Encounters and the Creation of Imperial Rule in Nineteenth-Century Africa by Richard N. Price.

About the book, from the publisher:

This is the dramatic story of the colonial encounter and the construction of empire in Southern Africa in the nineteenth century. What did the British make of the Xhosa and how did they make sense of their politics and culture? How did the British establish and then explain their dominion, especially when it ran counter to the cultural values they believed themselves to represent? Richard Price answers these questions by looking at the ways in which individual missionaries, officials and politicians interacted with the Xhosa. He describes how those encounters changed and shaped the culture of imperial rule in Southern Africa. He charts how an imperial regime developed both in the minds of the colonizers and in the everyday practice of power and how the British imperial presence was entangled in and shaped by the encounter with the Xhosa from the very moment of their first meeting.

Visit Richard Price's faculty webpage, and learn more about Making Empire at the Cambridge University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Making Empire.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Iain Ellis reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Iain Ellis, author of Rebels Wit Attitude.

His entry begins:

Recent reading for me has revolved around research for the book that I hope will be the British equivalent/sequel to Rebels Wit Attitude, tentatively titled Britwits. Andy Medhurst's book A National Joke has been a terrific discovery for me, as it offers a cultural studies perspective to the rich tradition of English comedy, which is not dissimilar to what I want to do with the history of British subversive rock humorists. It also centralizes social class identity in its various analyses, which is also key to my own arguments. Lastly, Medhurst does some fantastic analysis of some of my fave brit humor, particularly Mike Leigh's films and the extraordinary 90s sit-com The Royal Family. [read on]

Iain Ellis teaches in the English Department at the University of Kansas and writes regular columns on “Alternative Rock Cultures” and “Subversive Rock Humor” for PopMatters.

About Ellis, from his PopMatters profile:

Born in Manchester and raised east of London, Iain Ellis spent his formative years playing, performing, and consuming a heavy (if not healthy) diet of punk rock music and football. Little has changed since. In 1986, the young man went west to find his dreams in Bowling Green, Ohio. Instead, he picked up a PhD in American Culture Studies, writing his dissertation on 1980s American Punk Culture. In 2000, he traveled further west, settling in Lawrence, Kansas, where he currently teaches English and Youth Culture Studies at the University of Kansas. An avowed arrested adolescent, Iain continues to follow music and sports with a passion, performing and recording periodically with his Ohio-based Britpop band, piss artists, and playing weekly with his Lawrence football team, The Sweepers.

Read more about his new book, Rebels Wit Attitude.

Writers Read: Iain Ellis.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Kirsten Menger-Anderson's "Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain by Kirsten Menger-Anderson.

About the book, from the publisher:

In 1664 Dr. Olaf van Schuler flees the Old World and arrives in New Amsterdam with his lunatic mother, two bags of medical implements, and a carefully guarded book of his own medicines. He is the first in what will become a long line of peculiar physicians. Plagued by madness and guided by an intense desire to cure human affliction, each generation of this unusual family is driven by the science of its day: spontaneous combustion, phrenology, animal magnetism, electrical shock treatment, psychosurgery, genetic research. As they make their way in the world, New York City, too, evolves—from the dark and rough days of the seventeenth century to the towering, frenetic metropolis of today.

Like Patrick Süskind's classic novel Perfume, Kirsten Menger-Anderson's debut is a literary cabinet of curiosities—fascinating and unsettling, rich and utterly singular.

Read an excerpt from Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain, and learn more about the author and her work at Kirsten Menger-Anderson's website and the "Regarding Dr. Olaf" blog.

Kirsten Menger-Anderson's short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in the Southwest Review, Ploughshares, Maryland Review, Post Road, and Wascana Review, Pindeldyboz, among other publications. Her work has been short listed for the Richard Yates Award, the Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers, the Iowa Review Story Contest, and the Andre Dubus Award.

The Page 69 Test: Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tony Richards' "Dark Rain," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Tony Richards' Dark Rain.

The entry begins:

The characters in Dark Rain are many, varied, and in some cases extremely weird. And in a few instances, an actor springs immediately to mind. Ideally, Dr. Lehman Willets, the only African-American in Raine’s Landing -- the town has been cut off from the outside world by a curse for the past three hundred years -- would be played by Morgan Freeman, although I understand that he’s been hurt recently. The short but dignified Judge Samuel Levin? Ron Rifkin would be perfect.

Others are a little harder to pin down. The guy who plays the big bald grouchy cop on...[read on]

Browse inside Dark Rain, and learn more about the book and author at Tony Richards' website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: Dark Rain.

My Book, The Movie: Dark Rain.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best: books on presidential rhetoric

Elvin T. Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency: The Decline of Presidential Rhetoric from George Washington to George W. Bush.

He named a five best list of books on presidential rhetoric for the Wall Street Journal.

One title on his list:

The Moral Rhetoric of American Presidents
by Colleen J. Shogan
Texas A&M, 2006

Some may think that moral rhetoric is just decorative speechifying, but in these nine wonderfully textured case studies of presidential moralizing, Colleen J. Shogan explains that there is method even in how little or how much moralizing occurs. She offers some illuminating surprises along the way. Lincoln's first inaugural address can be read as an extended moral equivocation, because the divisions within the Republican Party and between the states did not encourage the use of uncompromising moral pronouncements. "One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended," Lincoln said, without emphatically showing where his sympathies lay. Conversely, Lyndon Johnson was able to use moral rhetoric stridently because, even though his legislative agenda was complicated, it lent itself to simple, moral terms, such as the "war on poverty" -- who could oppose that? Shogan reminds us that rhetoric, even moral rhetoric, is seldom "mere" rhetoric.

Read about Number One on Lim's list.

The Page 99 Test: Elvin T. Lim's The Anti-Intellectual Presidency: The Decline of Presidential Rhetoric from George Washington to George W. Bush.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: James Boyle's "The Public Domain"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind by James Boyle.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this enlightening book James Boyle describes what he calls the range wars of the information age—today’s heated battles over intellectual property. Boyle argues that just as every informed citizen needs to know at least something about the environment or civil rights, every citizen should also understand intellectual property law. Why? Because intellectual property rights mark out the ground rules of the information society, and today’s policies are unbalanced, unsupported by evidence, and often detrimental to cultural access, free speech, digital creativity, and scientific innovation.

Boyle identifies as a major problem the widespread failure to understand the importance of the public domain—the realm of material that everyone is free to use and share without permission or fee. The public domain is as vital to innovation and culture as the realm of material protected by intellectual property rights, he asserts, and he calls for a movement akin to the environmental movement to preserve it. With a clear analysis of issues ranging from Jefferson’s philosophy of innovation to musical sampling, synthetic biology and Internet file sharing, this timely book brings a positive new perspective to important cultural and legal debates. If we continue to enclose the “commons of the mind,” Boyle argues, we will all be the poorer.

Visit James Boyle's faculty webpage, and learn more about The Public Domain at the Yale University Press website.

James Boyle is William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law, Duke University School of Law, and co-founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain.

The Page 99 Test: The Public Domain.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Tony Richards reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Tony Richards, author of the newly released Dark Rain and other books and stories.

His entry begins:

I’ve been plugging some huge gaps in my reading lately. E.L. Doctorow is one of America’s finest contemporary novelists, and I’m certainly in awe of him. But Billy Bathgate has been sitting untouched on my shelf since my wife bought it for me several years back. I put that right on a recent vacation.

In case you don’t know the story, the eponymous hero is a fifteen year old boy from the Bronx who gets recruited into the Dutch Schultz gang, first as a kind of gopher and mascot, and finally as a close confidante to some of their biggest secrets. But things start to go wrong when he falls in love with Schultz’s latest squeeze -- a bored socialite called Drew -- putting them both in danger.[read on]

Tony Richards is the author of five novels—the first was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award—plus many short stories and articles. His work has appeared in numerous venues, including The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Cemetery Dance, Asimov's, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, and Weird Tales.

Learn more about Tony Richards and his work at his website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: Tony Richards' Dark Rain.

Writers Read: Tony Richards.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Sylvia Brownrigg's "The Delivery Room"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: The Delivery Room by Sylvia Brownrigg.

About the book, from the publisher:

In 1998, Serbian therapist Mira Braverman listens to her troubled patients in the safe haven of her London office. As the novel unfolds and she faces her own struggles, Mira discovers that she is not as distant from her patients’ pain as she might once have been. The Delivery Room is a compelling examination of the incomplete understandings between therapist and patient, and a meditation on the meaning of wars fought from a distance.

Read an excerpt from The Delivery Room, and learn more about the author and her work at Sylvia Brownrigg's website.

Sylvia Brownrigg is the author of several acclaimed works of fiction: four novels, Morality Tale, The Delivery Room, Pages for You, and The Metaphysical Touch, and a collection of stories, Ten Women Who Shook the World.

The Page 69 Test: The Delivery Room.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best books about doctors and patients

A couple of years ago Jerome Groopman named a five best list of books about doctors and patients for the Wall Street Journal.

One title on the list:

An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks (Knopf, 1995).

Neurology is (pun intended) a highly cerebral field. Detailed knowledge of the anatomy of the brain, spinal cord and peripheral nerves, and meticulous examination of the patient, lead the astute neurologist to a clinical diagnosis. While elegant cerebration may arrive at an answer, it does not necessarily bring a solution, since there is often little effective therapy for neurological disorders. Oliver Sacks is acutely attuned to this, and in these beautifully written case histories--including those of a painter who has lost the ability to see color and a man whose damaged memory leaves him living perpetually in 1968--he shows us how human beings, even in the absence of potent treatments, can find ways to surmount their debility and lead fulfilling lives.

Read about Number One on Groopman's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Daniel Everett's "Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle by Daniel Everett.

About the book, from the publisher:

A riveting account of the astonishing experiences and discoveries made by linguist Daniel Everett while he lived with the Pirahã, a small tribe of Amazonian Indians in central Brazil.

Everett, then a Christian missionary, arrived among the Pirahã in 1977–with his wife and three young children–intending to convert them. What he found was a language that defies all existing linguistic theories and reflects a way of life that evades contemporary understanding: The Pirahã have no counting system and no fixed terms for color. They have no concept of war or of personal property. They live entirely in the present. Everett became obsessed with their language and its cultural and linguistic implications, and with the remarkable contentment with which they live–so much so that he eventually lost his faith in the God he’d hoped to introduce to them.

Over three decades, Everett spent a total of seven years among the Pirahã, and his account of this lasting sojourn is an engrossing exploration of language that questions modern linguistic theory. It is also an anthropological investigation, an adventure story, and a riveting memoir of a life profoundly affected by exposure to a different culture. Written with extraordinary acuity, sensitivity, and openness, it is fascinating from first to last, rich with unparalleled insight into the nature of language, thought, and life itself.

Read more about Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes at the Knopf website.

Daniel L. Everett is the Chair of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Illinois State University.

The Page 99 Test: Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes.

--Marshal Zeringue