What is David Hochfelder reading?

This weekend's featured contributor at Writers Read: David Hochfelder, author of The Telegraph in America, 1832-1920.

His entry begins:

I read very broadly, though with definite preferences, if that makes sense. I cycle between non-fiction, usually dealing with economics and technology, and fiction, particularly science fiction. I am fortunate to have a wonderful public library and access to a good university library, so I rarely need to buy books for my leisure reading. I own a Kindle and iPad and love them both, but I really think it’s important to support public libraries.

I am a big fan of Iain M. Banks’s Culture novels. They take place in a far future in which humanity lives in a post-scarcity galaxy. The Culture is run by artificial intelligences and it’s unclear whether humans are equal partners or merely indulged pets. Perhaps both. I recently read his most recent Culture novels, Surface Detail and The Hydrogen Sonata. What I find most appealing about Banks is that he asks serious philosophical questions about what life would be like in a world where leisure, abundance, and immortality are assumed to be the normal state of existence. And what life would be like in a world...[read on]

About The Telegraph in America, 1832-1920, from the publisher:

Telegraphy in the nineteenth century approximated the internet in our own day. Historian and electrical engineer David Hochfelder offers readers a comprehensive history of this groundbreaking technology, which employs breaks in an electrical current to send code along miles of wire. The Telegraph in America, 1832–1920, examines the correlation between technological innovation and social change and shows how this transformative relationship helps us to understand and perhaps define modernity.

The telegraph revolutionized the spread of information—speeding personal messages, news of public events, and details of stock fluctuations. During the Civil War, telegraphed intelligence and high-level directives gave the Union war effort a critical advantage. Afterward, the telegraph helped build and break fortunes and, along with the railroad, altered the way Americans thought about time and space. Hochfelder thus supplies us with an introduction to the early stirrings of the information age.

Learn more about The Telegraph in America, 1832-1920 at the Johns Hopkins University Press website.

Writers Read: David Hochfelder.

--Marshal Zeringue

Philip Sington's "The Valley of Unknowing," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: The Valley of Unknowing by Philip Sington.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Valley of Unknowing, which is usually tagged as a ‘literary thriller’, is an intense, almost claustrophobic story, leavened by the humorous delivery of the narrator, the determinedly unserious Bruno Krug: writer, womaniser, People’s Champion of Art & Culture, and occasional freelance plumber. It has only two leading characters and three supporting characters, one of whom is dead and buried (well cremated, actually) by the end of the first act, and who lives on in the story mainly on account of a troubling legacy.

The tale unfolds in a region of East Germany out of reach of western television (popular nick-name: ‘The Valley of Unknowing’), where self-censorship has become second nature, and where people have turned inward – to their allotments, to their families, to their plumbing – rather than face the reality of how unfree they really are. In form it is essentially a love triangle, with one side of the triangle suffering an untimely death (see above).

Since this is a fantasy exercise, my ideal director would be Alexander...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Philip Sington's website.

Writers Read: Philip Sington.

The Page 69 Test: The Valley of Unknowing.

My Book, The Movie: The Valley of Unknowing.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Dora Apel's "War Culture and the Contest of Images"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: War Culture and the Contest of Images by Dora Apel.

About the book, from the publisher:

War Culture and the Contest of Images analyzes the relationships among contemporary war, documentary practices, and democratic ideals. Dora Apel examines a wide variety of images and cultural representations of war in the United States and the Middle East, including photography, performance art, video games, war reenactment, and social media images, while exploring the merging of photojournalism and artistic practices, the effects of visual framing, and the construction of both sanctioned and counter-hegemonic narratives in a global contest of images.

As a result of the global visual culture in which anyone may produce as well as consume public imagery, the wide variety of visual and documentary practices present realities that would otherwise be invisible or officially off-limits. In our digital era, the prohibition and control of images has become nearly impossible to maintain. Using carefully chosen case studies—such as Krzysztof Wodiczko's video projections and public works in response to 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the performance works of Coco Fusco and Regina Galindo, and the practices of Israeli and Palestinian artists—Apel posits that contemporary war images serve as mediating agents in social relations and as a source of protection or refuge for those robbed of formal or state-sanctioned citizenship.

While never suggesting that documentary practices are objective translations of reality, Apel shows that they are powerful polemical tools both for legitimizing war and for making its devastating effects visible. Today, more than ever, and after thirty years of academic analysis, the documentary image demonstrates renewed potential for galvanizing radical critique of the state in a time of global political upheaval. Ultimately, Apel asserts that in modern warfare and in the accompanying culture of war that capitalism produces as a permanent feature of modern society, the contest of images is as critical as the war on the ground.

Learn more about War Culture and the Contest of Images at the Rutgers University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: War Culture and the Contest of Images.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Louise McReynolds reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Louise McReynolds, author of Murder Most Russian: True Crime and Punishment in Late Imperial Russia.

Her entry begins:

What am I reading? The Tourist by Olen Steinhauer. A big fan of both murder and espionage, especially The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and George Smiley, the Times bestseller promised the best of both worlds. I'm about half through it...[read on]

About Murder Most Russian, from the publisher:

How a society defines crimes and prosecutes criminals illuminates its cultural values, social norms, and political expectations. In Murder Most Russian, Louise McReynolds uses a fascinating series of murders and subsequent trials that took place in the wake of the 1864 legal reforms enacted by Tsar Alexander II to understand the impact of these reforms on Russian society before the Revolution of 1917. For the first time in Russian history, the accused were placed in the hands of juries of common citizens in courtrooms that were open to the press. Drawing on a wide array of sources, McReynolds reconstructs murders that gripped Russian society, from the case of Andrei Gilevich, who advertised for a personal secretary and beheaded the respondent as a way of perpetrating insurance fraud, to the beating death of Marianna Time at the hands of two young aristocrats who hoped to steal her diamond earrings.

As McReynolds shows, newspapers covered such trials extensively, transforming the courtroom into the most public site in Russia for deliberation about legality and justice. To understand the cultural and social consequences of murder in late imperial Russia, she analyzes the discussions that arose among the emergent professional criminologists, defense attorneys, and expert forensic witnesses about what made a defendant's behavior "criminal." She also deftly connects real criminal trials to the burgeoning literary genre of crime fiction and fruitfully compares the Russian case to examples of crimes both from Western Europe and the United States in this period.

Murder Most Russian will appeal not only to readers interested in Russian culture and true crime but also to historians who study criminology, urbanization, the role of the social sciences in forging the modern state, evolving notions of the self and the psyche, the instability of gender norms, and sensationalism in the modern media.

Read more about Murder Most Russian at the Cornell University Press website.

Writers Read: Louise McReynolds.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five notable books on lists, charts, and compendia of facts

One title on the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five top books on lists, charts, and compendia of facts:

A History of the World in 100 Objects
by Neil MacGregor

The director of the British Museum offers a dazzling tour through the human past as he and his curators dive into the world-renowned institution's treasure trove of artifacts. From an Olduvai hand-axe to a chronometer from Darwin's ship The Beagle, MacGregor's inventory of these items is one readers can return to time and again, continually finding fresh insights about where we've been, and where we might be heading.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Howard Andrew Jones's "The Bones of the Old Ones"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: The Bones of the Old Ones by Howard Andrew Jones.

About the book, from the publisher:

As a snowfall blankets 8th century Mosul, a Persian noblewoman arrives at the home of the scholar Dabir and his friend the swordsman Captain Asim. Najya has escaped from a dangerous cabal that has ensorcelled her to track down ancient magical tools of tremendous power, the bones of the old ones.

To stop the cabal and save Najya, Dabir and Asim venture into the worst winter in human memory, hunted by a shape-changing assassin. The stalwart Asim is drawn irresistibly toward the beautiful Persian even as Dabir realizes she may be far more dangerous a threat than anyone who pursues them, for her enchantment worsens with the winter. As their opposition grows, Dabir and Asim have no choice but to ally with their deadliest enemy, the treacherous Greek necromancer, Lydia. But even if they can trust one another long enough to escape their foes, it may be too late for Najya, whose soul is bound up with a vengeful spirit intent on sheathing the world in ice for a thousand years...

Learn more about the book and author at Howard Andrew Jones's website.

Writers Read: Howard Andrew Jones.

The Page 69 Test: The Bones of the Old Ones.

--Marshal Zeringue

Maureen Corrigan's top ten books of 2012

For National Public Radio, Maureen Corrigan named her top ten books of 2012.

One title on the list:

Marmee & Louisa: The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Mother by Eve LaPlante

Louisa May Alcott's siblings didn't share her literary gifts, but her supportive mother, Abigail, was an evocative writer, as well as a campaigner for abolition and women's rights. Marmee & Louisa is the title of Eve LaPlante's marvelous new dual biography of the hard-working mother-daughter pair.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: David Skinner's "The Story of Ain’t"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: The Story of Ain't: America, Its Language, and the Most Controversial Dictionary Ever Published by David Skinner.

About the book, from the publisher:

Created by the most respected American publisher of dictionaries and supervised by the editor Philip Gove, Webster's Third broke with tradition, adding thousands of new words and eliminating "artificial notions of correctness," basing proper usage on how language was actually spoken. The dictionary's revolutionary style sparked what David Foster Wallace called "the Fort Sumter of the Usage Wars." Editors and scholars howled for Gove's blood, calling him an enemy of clear thinking, a great relativist who was trying to sweep the English language into chaos. Critics bayed at the dictionary's permissive handling of ain't. Literary intellectuals such as Dwight Macdonald believed the dictionary's scientific approach to language and its abandonment of the old standard of usage represented the unraveling of civilization.

Entertaining and erudite, The Story of Ain't describes a great societal metamorphosis, tracing the fallout of the world wars, the rise of an educated middle class, and the emergence of America as the undisputed leader of the free world, and illuminating how those forces shaped our language. Never before or since has a dictionary so embodied the cultural transformation of the United States.

Learn more about the book and author at David Skinner's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Story of Ain't.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Marc Myers reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Marc Myers, author of Why Jazz Happened.

His entry begins:

I just finished Sean Wilentz’s 360 Sound: The Columbia Records Story. Wilentz is a professor of history at Princeton University and author of Bob Dylan in America and other books on music and history. It’s a large, coffee table-sized book—which is fabulous, since music history is also about colorful record labels, dramatic album covers, eccentric artists and imposing personalities. You need to see what all of this looked like—from the portraits to the candids—to grasp the importance. But most of all, Wilentz is a first-rate social historian and storyteller who develops a superb narrative. I love music history books that approach their subject as a dramatic work, where the artists and executives are actors in an unfolding story with ups, downs and turning points. This book has it all—with the focus on...[read on]

About Why Jazz Happened, from the publisher:

Why Jazz Happened is the first comprehensive social history of jazz. It provides an intimate and compelling look at the many forces that shaped this most American of art forms and the many influences that gave rise to jazz’s post-war styles. Rich with the voices of musicians, producers, promoters, and others on the scene during the decades following World War II, this book views jazz’s evolution through the prism of technological advances, social transformations, changes in the law, economic trends, and much more.

In an absorbing narrative enlivened by the commentary of key personalities, Marc Myers describes the myriad of events and trends that affected the music's evolution, among them, the American Federation of Musicians strike in the early 1940s, changes in radio and concert-promotion, the introduction of the long-playing record, the suburbanization of Los Angeles, the Civil Rights movement, the “British invasion” and the rise of electronic instruments. This groundbreaking book deepens our appreciation of this music by identifying many of the developments outside of jazz itself that contributed most to its texture, complexity, and growth.

Read more about Why Jazz Happened at the book’s official site, and visit JazzWax.com.

Writers Read: Marc Myers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10 literary party hosts

Suzette Field is The Tribune of The Last Tuesday Society. One of her earliest memories is sitting on Michael Jackson's lap in his studio while he was recording Thriller. She is the author of A Curious Invitation: The 40 Greatest Parties in Literature, which is naturally on the subject of parties, as seen through the eyes of literary luminaries.

One of her top ten literary party hosts, as told to the Guardian:

Mrs Dalloway in Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

The wife of a Conservative MP, Clarissa Dalloway is the heroine of Virginia Woolf's life-in-a-day novel. The "perfect hostess" of 1920s London, she spends her day buying flowers, sewing her dress, having a rest on the sofa and writing a letter while her servants busy themselves arranging her party. Impeccably mannered, she greets each guest announced by the hired butler with a "how delightful to see you". She is able to entertain her guest of honour, the prime minister, with "the most perfect ease and air of a creature floating in its element".

Read about another entry on the list.

Mrs. Dalloway also appears on Jennie Rooney's top ten list of women travelers in fiction and John Mullan's list of ten of the best prime ministers in fiction, and among Michael Cunningham's 5 most important books, Dani Shapiro's 10 favorite books, and Kate Walbert's best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Louis Mendoza’s "A Journey Around Our America," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: A Journey Around Our America by Louis Mendoza.

The entry begins:

A Journey Around Our America is premised on a non-athlete, non-cyclist (me) spending 5 months and 19 days riding around the perimeter of the US through 34 states talking to people about immigration and the Latinoization of the country. Though it revolves centrally around one person’s experience, it’s really a story about the country as a whole through the lens of these two issues. If it were made into a movie, it would need a director who knows people in all their variety and quirkiness—because no one individual is the main character, rather the collectivity as a whole embodies the persona of what it is to be American in these times. Two possibilities would be John Sayles and Jim...[read on]

Learn more about A Journey Around Our America at the University of Texas Press website.

The Page 99 Test: A Journey Around Our America.

My Book, The Movie: A Journey Around Our America.

--Marshal Zeringue

The 25 best book covers of 2012

Cat, an Assistant Editor at The Book Case, organized a list of the 25 best book jackets of 2012.

One entry on the list:

Shout Her Lovely Name by Natalie Serber

Check out another beautiful cover on the list.

Learn more about the book and author at Natalie Serber's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: Shout Her Lovely Name.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jayne Elizabeth Lewis's "Air's Appearance"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Air's Appearance: Literary Atmosphere in British Fiction, 1660-1794 by Jayne Elizabeth Lewis.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Air’s Appearance, Jayne Elizabeth Lewis enlists her readers in pursuit of the elusive concept of atmosphere in literary works. She shows how diverse conceptions of air in the eighteenth century converged in British fiction, producing the modern literary sense of atmosphere and moving novelists to explore the threshold between material and immaterial worlds.

Air’s Appearance links the emergence of literary atmosphere to changing ideas about air and the earth’s atmosphere in natural philosophy, as well as to the era’s theories of the supernatural and fascination with social manners—or, as they are now known, “airs.” Lewis thus offers a striking new interpretation of several standard features of the Enlightenment—the scientific revolution, the decline of magic, character-based sociability, and the rise of the novel—that considers them in terms of the romance of air that permeates and connects them. As it explores key episodes in the history of natural philosophy and in major literary works like Paradise Lost, “The Rape of the Lock,” Robinson Crusoe, and The Mysteries of Udolpho, this book promises to change the atmosphere of eighteenth-century studies and the history of the novel.

Learn more about Air's Appearance at the University of Chicago Press website.

Jayne Elizabeth Lewis is professor of English at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of Mary Queen of Scots: Romance and Nation.

The Page 99 Test: Air's Appearance.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Melinda L. Pash reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Melinda L. Pash, author of In the Shadow of the Greatest Generation: The Americans Who Fought the Korean War.

Her entry begins:

Currently I am reading one book and rereading two others.

First, let me start with my rereads. I was born in 1969, only a few years before the end of the American Vietnam War. But, my earliest historical memory is of my dad sitting with me, watching the evacuation from Saigon in 1975 and saying, “This is history being made.” Consequently, despite growing up in a time when nobody wanted to talk about Vietnam, I had a healthy interest in the war. I picked up books like Stanley Karnow’s Vietnam: A History, but at 17 or 18, this sort of book just did not speak my language. Then, in college, I found Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. That book changed my life, drawing me vicariously into the world of war and forever interesting me in the experiences of men (and women) in the war zone. Ultimately...[read on]

About  In the Shadow of the Greatest Generation, from the publisher:

In the Shadow of the Greatest Generation traces the shared experiences of Korean War veterans from their childhoods in the Great Depression and World War II through military induction and training, the war, and efforts in more recent decades to organize and gain wider recognition of their service.

Largely overshadowed by World War II’s “greatest generation” and the more vocal veterans of the Vietnam era, Korean War veterans remain relatively invisible in the narratives of both war and its aftermath. Yet, just as the beaches of Normandy and the jungles of Vietnam worked profound changes on conflict participants, the Korean Peninsula chipped away at the beliefs, physical and mental well-being, and fortitude of Americans completing wartime tours of duty there. Upon returning home, Korean War veterans struggled with home front attitudes toward the war, faced employment and family dilemmas, and wrestled with readjustment. Not unlike other wars, Korea proved a formative and defining influence on the men and women stationed in theater, on their loved ones, and in some measure on American culture. In the Shadow of the Greatest Generation not only gives voice to those Americans who served in the “forgotten war” but chronicles the larger personal and collective consequences of waging war the American way.

View the trailer for In the Shadow of the Greatest Generation, and learn more about the book at the New York University Press website.

Melinda L. Pash received her Ph.D. in history from the University of Tennessee in 2005 and teaches at Fayetteville Technical Community College in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

Writers Read: Melinda L. Pash.

--Marshal Zeringue

CSM's 10 best books of 2012 – fiction

One of the Christian Science Monitor's ten best books of 2012 – fiction:

Bring Up the Bodies, by Hilary Mantel

In this Booker Prize-winning sequel to Hilary Mantel’s “Wolf Hall” (also a Booker Prize winner), Anne Boleyn sits triumphant on the throne she schemed so long to get – only to discover that her position is anything but secure.

Read about another book on the list.

Mantel's Wolf Hall made John Mullan's list of ten of the most memorable cardinals in literature, the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five books on dangerous minds and Lev Grossman's list of the top ten fiction books of 2009, and is one of Geraldine Brooks's favorite works of historical fiction; Matt Beynon Rees called it "[s]imply the best historical novel for many, many years."

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Eileen Cook's "The Almost Truth"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: The Almost Truth by Eileen Cook.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the author of Unraveling Isobel and The Education of Hailey Kendrick, a smart, romantic novel about a teenage con artist who might be in over her head.

Sadie can’t wait to get away from her backwards small town, her delusional mom, her jailbird dad, and the tiny trailer where she was raised…even though leaving those things behind also means leaving Brendan. Sadie wants a better life, and she has been working steadily toward it, one con at a time.

But when Sadie’s mother wipes out Sadie’s savings, her escape plan is suddenly gone. She needs to come up with a lot of cash—and fast—or she’ll be stuck in this town forever.

With Brendan’s help, she devises a plan—the ultimate con—to get the money. But the more lies Sadie spins, the more she starts falling for her own hoax…and perhaps for the wrong boy. Sadie wanted to change her life, but she wasn't prepared to have it flipped upside down by her own deception. With her future at stake and her heart on the line, suddenly it seems like she has a lot more than just money to lose....

Learn more about the author and her books at Eileen Cook’s website and blog.

My Book, The Movie: Getting Revenge on Lauren Wood.

My Book, The Movie: The Education of Hailey Kendrick.

Writers Read: Eileen Cook.

The Page 69 Test: The Almost Truth.

--Marshal Zeringue

Free book: "Dead Women Talking"

The Johns Hopkins University Press and the Campaign for the American Reader are giving away a copy of Dead Women Talking: Figures of Injustice in American Literature by Brian Norman.

HOW TO ENTER: Visit the Campaign for the American Reader Facebook page, scroll down, and "like" the post for Dead Women Talking. Contest closes on Monday, December 17th. Winner must have a US mailing address. Good luck!

Learn more about Dead Women Talking at the Johns Hopkins University Press website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Darlene J. Sadlier's "Americans All"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Americans All: Good Neighbor Cultural Diplomacy in World War II by Darlene J. Sadlier.

About the book, from the publisher:

Cultural diplomacy—“winning hearts and minds” through positive portrayals of the American way of life—is a key element in U.S. foreign policy, although it often takes a backseat to displays of military might. Americans All provides an in-depth, fine-grained study of a particularly successful instance of cultural diplomacy—the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (CIAA), a government agency established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940 and headed by Nelson A. Rockefeller that worked to promote hemispheric solidarity and combat Axis infiltration and domination by bolstering inter-American cultural ties.

Darlene J. Sadlier explores how the CIAA used film, radio, the press, and various educational and high-art activities to convince people in the United States of the importance of good neighbor relations with Latin America, while also persuading Latin Americans that the United States recognized and appreciated the importance of our southern neighbors. She examines the CIAA’s working relationship with Hollywood’s Motion Picture Society of the Americas; its network and radio productions in North and South America; its sponsoring of Walt Disney, Orson Welles, John Ford, Gregg Toland, and many others who traveled between the United States and Latin America; and its close ties to the newly created Museum of Modern Art, which organized traveling art and photographic exhibits and produced hundreds of 16mm educational films for inter-American audiences; and its influence on the work of scores of artists, libraries, book publishers, and newspapers, as well as public schools, universities, and private organizations.

Learn more about Americans All at the University of Texas Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Americans All.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Kimberley Brownlee reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Kimberley Brownlee, author of Conscience and Conviction: The Case for Civil Disobedience.

Her entry begins:

Lately, my partner has been reading to me the Flavia de Luce mysteries by Alan Bradley. My mother recommended them to us as heart-warming and funny - which are great traits in books to real aloud. Flavia is an irrepressible and irresistible eleven year-old with a talent for chemistry and crime investigation. The Flavia books are not whodunnits in the sense that the reader could figure out who the murderer is by paying close enough attention, which is a good thing since I occasionally...[read on]

About Conscience and Conviction, from the publisher:

Arguing for the moral and legal defensibility of conscientious disobedience, and particularly civil disobedience, this book first examines the morality of conscience and conscientiousness and then the legality of conscientious breach of law.

Part I focuses on the morality of conscience and conscientiousness. These are two comparatively neglected concepts in contemporary moral and legal theory, though they are central to practical debates about the ethics of war, healthcare, and political participation, among others. The book disambiguates the descriptive notion of conscientiousness as sincere conviction from the evaluative notion of conscience as genuine moral responsiveness. This gives rise to a communicative principle of conscientiousness (CPC), according to which sincere moral conviction requires not only that we act consistently with our beliefs and make universal moral judgements, but also that we not seek to evade the consequences of doing so and be willing to communicate our convictions to others.

The CPC informs the ensuing discussion of persons' rights and duties within a liberal democracy. In contrast with standard liberal theorizing, the book shows that people who engage in the communicative practice of suitably constrained civil disobedience have a better claim to a moral right to conscientious action than do people who engage in non-communicative, private, or evasive 'conscientious' objection.

Part II argues that civil disobedience is generally more defensible than personal disobedience. The book explores two putative legal defences - a demands-of-conviction defence and a necessity defence - and argues that each applies more readily to civil disobedience than to personal disobedience. The book responds to concerns about strategic-action, democracy, competition of values, and proportionality, all of which disregard the communicative nature of sincere conviction and underestimate the capacity of democratic law to recognise the legitimacy and importance of values other than literal compliance with the law.

The book concludes by highlighting a parallel between the communicative aims of civil disobedience and the communicative aims of lawful punishment. Only the former may claim to have dialogue ambitions, which raises difficulties for the justifiability of punishing civil disobedience.

Learn more about Conscience and Conviction at the Oxford University Press website.

Kimberley Brownlee is an Associate Professor in Legal and Moral Philosophy at the University of Warwick School of Law.

Writers Read: Kimberley Brownlee.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six best historical novels, 2012

Mary Sharratt lives in Lancashire, England. Her historical novels include Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard von Bingen.

She named six of the best historical novels of the year for NPR, including:

The Book Of Madness And Cures
by Regina O'Melveny

I was enthralled by this strikingly original and gorgeously written quest story. In Venice, anno 1590, we meet Gabriella Mondini, a physician trained by her father, who sponsored her entry in the otherwise all-male Physicians' Guild. As the novel opens, he's been missing for 10 years, having left on a journey and never returned. His letters home, meanwhile, reflect an increasingly troubled mind. Without his patronage, Gabriella can no longer remain in the guild or practice medicine. Following the clues in his letters, she embarks on an epic journey to find her lost father, an odyssey that takes her through the dark forests of Germany all the way to Edinburgh. Finally, she leaves Europe behind for the Atlas Mountains, in North Africa. The narrative is interspersed with Gabriella's entries into her magnum opus, The Book of Madness and Cures, detailing rare diseases such as the Plague of Black Tears. The book plunges the reader into the zeitgeist of an era when medical science rubbed shoulders with alchemy and astrology — and when any woman who claimed medical knowledge could be burned for witchcraft.

Read about another novel on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue