Pg. 99: Stephen V. Ash's "Firebrand of Liberty"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Stephen V. Ash's Firebrand of Liberty: The Story of Two Black Regiments That Changed the Course of the Civil War.

About the book, from the publisher:

A nearly forgotten Civil War episode is restored to history in this masterful account.

In March 1863, nine hundred black Union soldiers, led by white officers, invaded Florida and seized the town of Jacksonville. They were among the first African American troops in the Northern army, and their expedition into enemy territory was like no other in the Civil War. It was intended as an assault on slavery by which thousands would be freed.

At the center of the story is prominent abolitionist Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who led one of the regiments. After waging battle for three weeks, Higginson and his men were mysteriously ordered to withdraw, their mission a seeming failure. Yet their successes in resisting the Confederates and collaborating with white Union forces persuaded President Abraham Lincoln to begin full-scale recruitment of black troops, a momentous decision that helped turned the tide of the war.

Using long-neglected primary sources, historian Stephen V. Ash’s stirring narrative re-creates this event with insight, vivid characterizations, and a keen sense of drama.

Among the early praise for the book:

"Another inspiring history of black Civil War soldiers. Ash (History/Univ. of Tennessee; A Year in the South: Four Lives in 1865, 2002, etc.) reminds us that when the Civil War began no one wanted black soldiers except the abolitionists. But this minority made a great deal of noise, and they kept the subject in the public eye. After Union forces captured coastal areas of Georgia and the Carolinas, the commander of the Department of the South, General David Hunter, in April 1862 began supplementing his weak occupying forces by recruiting blacks in his jurisdiction. The War Department ordered him to disband the troops, but the groundwork had been laid. By autumn the Lincoln administration's opposition was softening, and Hunter's successor got approval for a request to enlist Negroes in the First Regiment of South Carolina Volunteers. The regiment's colonel was Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a prominent abolitionist and literary figure (discoverer of Emily Dickinson) who worked hard to prepare his men for battle and make their achievements known throughout the North. Superiors approved his plan to lead troops south in February 1863; together with the Second South Carolina Infantry, they captured Jacksonville, Fla., with little fighting. The goal was to hold the city, raid the surrounding countryside and recruit escaped slaves for additional black units. The regiments remained for three weeks, raiding and fighting off desultory Confederate attacks, until they were abruptly ordered home for reasons never adequately explained. Although other historians have paid little attention to the Jacksonville raid, Ash maintains that it was this watershed expedition, the first significant combat mission undertaken by black soldiers and as such widely reported in Northern newspapers, which persuaded the Lincoln administration to order full-scale black recruitment in March 1863. A well-constructed, readable account of a minor Civil War action that may or may not have had major consequences."
--Kirkus

Learn more about Firebrand of Liberty and its author at the W.W. Norton website and Stephen V. Ash's faculty webpage.

Stephen V. Ash is a professor of history at the University of Tennessee and the author of several books on the Civil War, including A Year in the South: Four Lives in 1865.

The Page 99 Test: Firebrand of Liberty.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jane Brocket: top 10 food scenes in children's literature

Jane Brocket is the author of The Gentle Art of Domesticity and Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer.

For the Guardian, she named her top 10 food scenes in children's literature.

Her prefatory remarks and one title from the list:

"I spent my childhood revelling and luxuriating in lovely descriptions of meals and picnics and treats, and found that it was the taste memories that lingered on long after the details of plots had faded from my mind. Children's literature contains a feast, a banquet, a menu gastronomique of treats and delicious foodstuff; this is my top 10 evocative, mouth-watering and memorable food moments from the past."

* * *
Marilla's raspberry cordial in Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery

I know I shouldn't laugh about under-age drinking, but the scene in which Anne unwittingly gets her new best friend (aged 11) drunk is hilarious. She and Diana observe all the rituals of a lady-like tea party acting out the parts of genteel, well-bred acquaintances, exchanging pleasantries and enjoying fruit cake and cherry preserve. After adjourning to play in orchard, Anne plies Diana with three glasses of Marilla's raspberry cordial, but doesn't drink any herself as she has eaten too many apples. A wise move, for it turns out the red drink is in fact Marilla's celebrated three-year-old currant wine, and poor Diana is soon the worse for wear. The locals are scandalised, but I'm with Marilla on this one and feel overcome by an "unholy tendency to laughter".

Read about Number One on Brocket's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Lisa Chamberlain's "Slackonomics"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Slackonomics: Generation X in the Age of Creative Destruction by Lisa Chamberlain.

About the book, from the publisher:

Generation X grew up in the 1980s, when Alex P. Keaton was going to be a millionaire by the time he was thirty, greed was good, and social activism was deader than disco. Then globalization and the technological revolution came along, changing everything for a generation faced with bridging the analog and digital worlds. Living in a time of “creative destruction” – when an old economic order is upended by a new one – has deeply affected everyday life for this generation; from how they work, where they live, how they play, when they marry and have children to their attitudes about love, humor, happiness, and personal fulfillment. Through a sharp and entertaining mix of pop and alt-culture, personal narrative, and economic analysis, author Lisa Chamberlain shows how Generation X has survived and even thrived in the era of creative destruction, but will now be faced with solving economic and environmental problems on a global scale.

Among the early acclaim for the book:

“Despite the fact that I was born during the Eisenhower Administration, I’ve always felt a more natural kinship with Generation X than with my own cohort. And now, just as Gen Xers are (ha!) entering middle age, Lisa Chamberlain’s smart, enterprising and entertaining book has helped me understand some of the reasons why — as well as why I tend to be 51% hopeful about America, notwithstanding our current collective confusion.”
--Kurt Andersen, author of Heyday and host of the radio show Studio 360

“I’m fascinated by Lisa Chamberlain’s funny, thoughtful and surprisingly thorough examination of the forces that shaped Gen Xers’ unique perspectives on the world. … Weaving together pop culture, statistics, observations and anecdotes, Slackonomics is the sort of resonant, witty, highly readable cultural commentary that we were way too self-involved to read (or write) 15 years ago.”
--Heather Havrilesky, Salon

“This book is incredibly easy to read, and full of interesting observations and theories. Reading it is like enjoying five courses at a great dinner party–a Gen X dinner party–with confused and brilliant friends, full of the insights and insecurities of the peculiar demographic of middle class kids who came of age in the 70s and 80s, and can’t stop coming of age. It reflects seriously on the economic challenges faced by a chaotic, and fundamentally romantic, group of Americans.”
--Zephyr Teachout, assistant professor of law at Duke University, and director of Internet organizing for Howard Dean’s presidential campaign in 2004

"Freelance writer Chamberlain’s exploration of the social and professional choices of Generation X is a knowledgeable and well-written addition to the growing library of books devoted to the “alternative” generation. The author focuses primarily on the way that the young men and women of the 1990s made their money, and does a nice job conveying the tough economic fortunes of the beginning of that decade and the creative and financial boom of the Internet’s early days, as well as the eventual fallout when it went bust. Chamberlain uses each chapter of the book to address a specific aspect of the generation in question, often using a combination of cultural touchstones and sociology books to illustrate her point; a chapter about Gen-X relationships ponders the Richard Linklater film Before Sunrise and quotes extensively from Stephanie Coontz’s Marriage, a History. Often, the text is taken over by monologues from Gen-Xers themselves, who narrate their winding paths through the job market, usually ending in creative and relatively fulfilling jobs as a result of their ingenuity. While the book is full of interesting mini-arguments, including an entertaining takedown of Ethan Watters’s Urban Tribes, it doesn’t present a cohesive vision. Rather, it serves to illuminate the many disparate pockets of a group that continues to resist easy categorization."
--Publishers Weekly

Read an excerpt from Slackonomics, and learn more about the book and author at the Slackonomics website.

Lisa Chamberlain is a regular contributor to the New York Times and the executive director of the Forum for Urban Design. Her writing has also appeared in Salon, New York magazine, and the New York Observer. Previously, she was the editor-in-chief of a Village Voice-owned weekly paper.

The Page 99 Test: Slackonomics.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jackie Collins' 5 best literary guilty pleasures

For the Wall Street Journal, Jackie Collins picked a five best list of literary guilty pleasures.

One title on her list:

The Love Machine
by Jacqueline Susann
Simon & Schuster, 1969

Jacqueline Susann was the first female author who got out there and wrote popular fiction that could compete with the million-selling big boys. Her novels featured plenty of sex, some hard-hitting women, the truth about recreational drugs -- and all of it wrapped up in a hell of a story. "The Love Machine" concerns an industrial-strength womanizer named Robin Stone who drinks straight vodka and runs a television network. Susann managed to capture the truth about Hollywood way before the tabloids did. The novel shows her at the top of her game, in my mind -- possibly because I know some of the people she based her characters on, and when the book came out they were furious!

Read about Number One on Collins' list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Kerry Cohen's "Loose Girl"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Kerry Cohen's Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity.

About the book, from the publisher:

For everyone who was that girl. For everyone who knew that girl. For everyone who wondered who that girl was.

Kerry Cohen is eleven years old when she recognizes the power of her body in the leer of a grown man. Her parents are recently divorced and it doesn’t take long before their lassitude and Kerry’s desire to stand out—to be memorable in some way—combine to lead her down a path she knows she shouldn’t take. Kerry wanted attention. She wanted love. But not really understanding what love was, not really knowing how to get it, she reached for sex instead.

Loose Girl is Kerry Cohen’s captivating memoir about her descent into promiscuity and how she gradually found her way toward real intimacy. The story of addiction—not just to sex, but to male attention—Loose Girl is also the story of a young girl who came to believe that boys and men could give her life meaning. It didn’t matter who he was. It was their movement that mattered, their being together. And for a while, that was enough.

From the early rush of exploration to the day she learned to quiet the desperation and allow herself to love and be loved, Kerry’s story is never less than riveting. In rich and immediate detail, Loose Girl re-creates what it feels like to be in that desperate moment, when a girl tries to control a boy by handing over her body, when the touch of that boy seems to offer proof of something, but ultimately delivers little more than emptiness.

Kerry Cohen’s journey from that hopeless place to her current confident and fulfilled existence is a cautionary tale and a revelation for girls young and old. The unforgettable memoir of one young woman who desperately wanted to matter, Loose Girl will speak to countless others with its compassion, understanding, and love.

Among the early praise for Loose Girl:

“Cohen’s clear-eyed, evocative, and engaging voice draws you into this harrowing story, into the heart of her addiction. Her honesty is brave, her clarity is remarkable, her candor is disarming. No matter who you are, you will find yourself, at key moments, identifying with Cohen. And in the end, you will cheer for her hard-won happiness.”
--Alison Smith, Name All the Animals

“Kerry Cohen’s powerful, transfixing story will be familiar to many women, most of whom won't want to admit it. In this heartfelt and authentic memoir, Cohen transcends the pain and shame of a promiscuous past, and leaves readers with a sense of hope and triumph.”
--Janice Erlbaum, author of Girlbomb: A Halfway Homeless Memoir

“Cohen’s brutal honesty about her relentless request for companionship is refreshingly relatable.”
--Entertainment Weekly

“Cohen recounts her harrowing litany of hookups through clear, poignant, spare-no-details prose.”
--Marie Claire

“Her candor may help under-21 readers steer clear of the whole mess, while those who survived similar ordeals will appreciate her tale of survival.”
--Booklist

“Gripping. . . . That it took much painful introspection for Cohen–a licensed psychotherapist…to determine what motivated the defining ‘loose girl’ behavior of her youth, and then about ten years to summon the courage to let it assume narrative form, speaks volumes about the need for her story.”
--Kirkus Reviews 3/1

“Cohen’s training as a psychotherapist is clearly evident. She reveals an impressive analytic prowess as she exposes the damaging self-effacement that underlies the seeming assertion involved in attracting men to her and then driving them away. . . . An important look at the dynamics of female sexual power and promiscuity in general.”
--Kirkus Reviews 3/15

Read an excerpt from Loose Girl, and learn more about the book and author at Kerry Cohen's website and her blog.

Kerry Cohen received an MFA in creative writing from the University of Oregon and an MA in counseling psychology from Pacific University. She is a practicing psychotherapist and the author of the young adult novel Easy.

Read Cohen's list of "Five Great Books about Teenage Girls and Sex."

The Page 69 Test: Loose Girl.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Robin Romm reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Robin Romm, author of the short story collection, The Mother Garden.

The opening paragraph from her entry:

I have been reading a lot of great books lately. My boyfriend and I just traveled around Romania and Hungary, so I took along a bundle of Eastern European literature. My favorite of the books that made my backpack so very heavy was probably Embers, by Sandor Marai. It's the story of an old man in a crumbling castle, contemplating a betrayal by a friend (over a girl, of course), long ago. I read this book in one sitting on the plane to Europe. And when I shut it, I let shivers run down my arms for a good minute. Not only does it call up images of castles and lush landscapes, it also asks questions about love and trust, mortality and friendship that resonated with me. A timeless book. [read on]

Among the praise for The Mother Garden:

"Whimsical and affecting...Most of [Romm’s] work leaves room for rational interpretation. No magic here, Romm seems to insist.But of course there is, and it's the oldest kind we know: the ordinary incantation of words and stories to help us navigate the darkness and finally—for all that this impressive collection protests otherwise—to hold the end at bay."
—Gregory Cowles, New York Times Sunday Book Review

Visit Romm's website and MySpace page.

Writers Read: Robin Romm.

--Marshal Zeringue

Niall Ferguson's most important books

Niall Ferguson is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and William Ziegler Professor at Harvard Business School.

He told Newsweek about his five most important books. And addressed two related issues:

A book you hope parents will read to their kids:

J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit." There is no greater work of fiction for young readers.

A classic that, upon revisiting, disappointed:

Jack Kerouac's "On the Road." I've lost that youthful exuberance that once made me tolerant of his monumental self-indulgence.

Read more about Niall Ferguson's five most important books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: M. Gazzaniga's "Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique by Michael S. Gazzaniga.

About the book, from the publisher:

One of the world's leading neuroscientists explores how best to understand the human condition by examining the biological, psychological, and highly social nature of our species within the social context of our lives.

What happened along the evolutionary trail that made humans so unique? In his widely accessible style, Michael Gazzaniga looks to a broad range of studies to pinpoint the change that made us thinking, sentient humans, different from our predecessors.

Neuroscience has been fixated on the life of the psychological self for the past fifty years, focusing on the brain systems underlying language, memory, emotion, and perception. What it has not done is consider the stark reality that most of the time we humans are thinking about social processes, comparing ourselves to and estimating the intentions of others. In Human, Gazzaniga explores a number of related issues, including what makes human brains unique, the importance of language and art in defining the human condition, the nature of human consciousness, and even artificial intelligence.

Among the early praise for the book:

"As wide-ranging as it is deep, and as entertaining as it is informative, the latest offering from UC-Santa Barbara neuroscientist Gazzaniga (The Ethical Brain) will please a diverse array of readers. He is adept at aiding even the scientifically unsophisticated to grasp his arguments about what separates humans from other animals. His main premise is that human brains are not only proportionately larger than those of other primates but have a number of distinct structures, which he explores along with evolutionary explanations for their existence. For instance, a direct outgrowth of the size and structure of the human brain, along with their origins in the complexity of human social groups, was the development of language, self-awareness and ethics. (Gazzaniga offers some surprising comments on the evolution of religion and its relation to morals.) Throughout, Gazzaniga addresses the nature of consciousness, and by comparing the intellectual capabilities of a host of animals (chimps, dogs, birds and rats, among others) with those of human babies, children and adults, he shows what we all share as well as what humans alone possess."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"One grand search engine for all the qualities that make Homo sapiens different from other species. Cognitive neuroscientist Gazzaniga (Psychology/Univ. of California, Santa Barbara; The Ethical Brain, 2005, etc.) knows his stuff-and a lot of other people's stuff too. The elegant popularizer trots out study after study in brain science, emphasizing evolutionary and developmental psychology as well as his own research on split-brain patients and others with neurological lesions. No surprise, then, to find him weighing human traits for their adaptive value in terms of safety, survival and reproduction, especially qualities that promote socializing and cooperation. Indeed, he sometimes argues too much for an adaptive value for well nigh every human feature he discusses. Gazzaniga describes how lesions reveal the brain's organization into myriad modules specialized for, say, recognizing faces (located in the right hemisphere). He argues for a left hemisphere "interpreter" who's in charge-making sense of all the inputs, but ready to make up stories if need be. This seems to put him in the camp of dualism, which supposes there is something else behind the physical substance of brain tissue that accounts for the mind; though the idea's been around since Descartes, it remains debatable. The author celebrates the unique richness of the human neocortex, more complex than in any other animal. By inference, the cortex and its extensive connectivity account for art, music, analytical thinking (and thus science), self-awareness, imagination and our ability to pretend and to evoke the past and future. Gazzaniga also declares that humans are unique in their ability to project the mental states of others:to understand that behind their behavior are minds like ours that have desires and beliefs. To his credit, he discusses controversies and conflicting studies in all these areas, as well as in the origin of language, consciousness, morality and religion. Credit him too with a wonderful final section on current research on robotics and gene manipulation. A savvy, witty guide to neuroscience today."
--Kirkus Reviews

Read an excerpt from Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique, and learn more about the book and author at the publisher's website and Michael Gazzaniga's faculty webpage.

Michael S. Gazzaniga is the director of the University of California–Santa Barbara's SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind, as well as its Summer Institute in Cognitive Neuroscience. He serves on the President's Council on Bioethics and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. His publications include The Ethical Brain: The Science of Our Moral Dilemmas.

The Page 99 Test: Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique.

--Marshal Zeringue

Perri O'Shaughnessy's "Keeper of the Keys," the movie

Now showing at My Book, the Movie: Perri O'Shaughnessy's Keeper of the Keys and the Nina Reilly novels.

The entry begins:

We have sold a few movie options over the years, although none of our books or short stories have ever made it the big screen. However, if we were ever to sell rights to a book that did, we would expect shocks to the concept and the characters. Maybe we would welcome them, since the artist/director/screenwriter should have an opportunity to re-conceive for a different medium.

So here we go with our own dream casting notions for our latest novel, Keeper of the Keys. Ray Jackson, the main character, a troubled architect would benefit from the dimples of Matthew McConaughey. Cute and accessible, we think this actor's got potential as a guy with dark secrets. His missing wife, Leigh, might take good advantage of the talents of...[read on].

Read an excerpt from Keeper of the Keys, and learn more about the authors and their work--and about Nina Reilly--at Perri O'Shaughnessy's website.

Perri O'Shaughnessy is the pen name for sisters Mary and Pamela O’Shaughnessy, authors of the bestselling Nina Reilly novels.

My Book, the Movie: Keeper of the Keys.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Dolores Gordon-Smith's "Mad About The Boy?"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Dolores Gordon-Smith's Mad About The Boy?.

About the book, from the publisher:

It’s the height of summer 1923. At a ball in Sussex, Jack Haldean, former Royal Flying Corps pilot, investigates an apparent suicide, but everything is thrown into chaos when a group of Russian revolutionaries become involved in the aff air. In a case involving deception, greed, jealousy, kidnapping, torture and murder, Jack will face an agonizing choice.

Among the early praise for the novel:

"Murder winnows the guests at a country-house party. World War I pilot-turned-mystery author Jack Haldean is attending his Aunt Alice and Uncle Philip's Silver Wedding ball at Hesperus, their country estate, when the murder of Jack's old friend Tim Preston disrupts the festivities. Down on his luck, Tim's been working as a secretary for Lord Lyvenden, an obnoxious munitions manufacturer who made a big enough bundle during the war to buy a peerage and a well-bred wife to go along with it. Tim's death looks like suicide, but Jack is suspicious, and when Lyvenden is discovered in a pool of blood he springs into sleuthing mode again (A Fete Worse Than Death, 2007). Jack's shell-shocked pal Arthur Stanton, who was found standing over the body, has decamped, but Jack wants to believe him innocent. Also staying at Hesperus is his beautiful cousin Isabelle, who despite her recent engagement to wealthy banker and sportsman Malcolm Smith-Fennimore is a little in love with Stanton and sure he's innocent; Smith-Fennimore himself, who takes a shot at the fleeing Stanton; Lyvenden's unconcerned widow Lady Harriet and her companion, Lyvenden's former mistress; Lady Alice's swaggering stepson; and sundry other guests and servants. Perhaps several mysterious and threatening Russians, some missing papers and tales of Czarist gold may hold a clue. A classic postwar country-house mystery with a Christie-like denouement."
--Kirkus

"In his play 'Forty Years On', the inimitable Alan Bennett refers to 'that school of Snobbery with Violence that runs like a thread of good-class tweed through twentieth century literature.' Well, Dolores Gordon-Smith's latest novel "Mad About The Boy?" certainly has the texture of good-class tweed, but the snobbery is only mild and the violence comfortably refined! In short, this is an eminently civilized and reassuring pastiche of the classic English detective genre: good style, fiendishly orchestrated plot, plucky protagonists, foreign assassins and suave villains. Furs, Abdullahs, balls, butlers and Bugattis (Spykers and Bentleys,actually),set the social scene and provide an authentic background to the bizarre events. Yet the sombre spectre of the Great War casts its long shadow, and thus the mixture of gaiety and threat, decency and cynicism produces an ethos of moral ambiguity - a fusion which gives the novel both its realism and its intrigue."
--Suzette A. Hill, author of A Load of Old Bones and Bones in The Belfry

Learn more about the book and author at Dolores Gordon-Smith's website and her blog.

Dolores Gordon-Smith is the author of A Fete Worse than Death, the first book in the Jack Haldean mystery series.

The Page 69 Test: Mad About The Boy?.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Thomas B. Cavanagh's "Prodigal Son"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Thomas B. Cavanagh's Prodigal Son.

About the book, from the publisher:

Three months after he’s undergone surgery to remove a brain tumor, retired police detective Mike Garrity’s cancer is in remission. It’s great news, but when you’ve been planning to only live for a few months, you don’t normally worry about savings. A return to health also means a return to the workforce, and whether he likes it or not, Mike’s going to have to adjust to the role of private investigator.

He's also bounced back into a romance with a member of his cancer support group, Debbie Watson. But while Mike may be celebrating his victory over cancer, Debbie’s just been handed a grim prognosis. Desperate, she asks him for help with what might be her last request: tracking down the son she put up for adoption twenty years ago.

Debbie’s son is not the only lost child Mike has been asked to trace. A high school friend of his daughter has died of an overdose. The boy’s father is convinced that the death was not a suicide and, though the case is officially closed, the officer in charge has his own doubts about its conclusion.

Back at work and stumbling headlong into a new relationship, Mike should have a lot to look forward to. But all is not as it seems, and he’s about to find out that cancer isn’t the only thing trying to kill him.

Among the praise for Thomas B. Cavanagh's work:

“Irresistible . . . Cavanagh is definitely a writer to keep your eyes on.”
--Florida Today

"Carl Hiaasen and Donald Westlake readers will enjoy Cavanagh’s debut.”
--Booklist

“Cavanagh infuses the classic private-eye novel with a bit of dark humor, realistic dialogue, and a clear vision of central Florida.”
--South Florida Sun Sentinel

“Fans of the classic PI novel will hope to see more of this wonderfully crotchety protagonist.”
--Publishers Weekly

“Mixing sardonic humor with fast-paced action, Cavanagh’s emotionally charged, entertaining tale is great fun, leaving the satisfied reader with the hope of a compelling sequel.”
--Lansing State Journal

“Cavanagh's ambitious debut has a terrific premise and many appealing touches, including an unbeatable cliffhanger.”
--Kirkus Reviews

Prodigal Son is the sequel to the award-winning Head Games and continues the story of curmudgeonly Orlando detective Mike Garrity.

Learn more about the author and his work at Thomas B. Cavanagh's website.

Cavanagh is author of the novel Murderland as well as the first Mike Garrity novel, Head Games, which won the Florida Book Awards 2007 Gold Medal for Popular Fiction and was named a 2007 “Killer Book” Selection by the Independent Mystery Bookseller’s Association.

The Page 99 Test: Prodigal Son.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Steve Hely reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Steve Hely, co-author, with Vali Chandrasekaran, of The Ridiculous Race.

His post begins:

As I was writing The Ridiculous Race I read Abroad by Paul Fussell, an interesting short study of a period in the 1920s and 1930s when everyone in England started writing travel books. [read on]

Visit The Ridiculous Race Facebook page and learn more about the book at the publisher's website.

Steve Hely writes for the Fox animated comedy American Dad! He was twice president of The Harvard Lampoon, and has been a writer and performer on Last Call with Carson Daly and a writer for The Late Show with David Letterman, the latter earning him an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Writing for a Variety or Comedy Show.

Among the praise for The Ridiculous Race:

"No one should set off for a plane ride, a day at the beach, or a lengthy visit to the bathroom without a copy of The Ridiculous Race. I laughed so much I almost died from a lack of oxygen reaching my brain."
—Seth MacFarlane, creator of Family Guy and American Dad!

"Riotous fun."
—People Magazine

"Hilarious."
—Entertainment Weekly

Writers Read: Steve Hely.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Victor Gischler's "Go-Go-Girls of the Apocalypse"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Victor Gischler's Go-Go-Girls of the Apocalypse.

About the book, from the publisher:

Mortimer Tate was a recently divorced insurance salesman when he holed up in a cave on top of a mountain in Tennessee and rode out the end of the world. Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse begins nine years later, when he emerges into a bizarre landscape filled with hollow reminders of an America that no longer exists. The highways are lined with abandoned automobiles; electricity is generated by indentured servants pedaling stationary bicycles. What little civilization remains revolves around Joey Armageddon's Sassy A-Go-Go strip clubs, where the beer is cold, the lap dancers are hot, and the bouncers are armed with M16s.

Accompanied by his cowboy sidekick Buffalo Bill, the gorgeous stripper Sheila, and the mountain man Ted, Mortimer journeys to the lost city of Atlanta -- and a showdown that might determine the fate of humanity.

Among the early praise for the novel:

"Nine years after Mortimer Tate retreated from the end of the world (he thought) to the Tennessee mountains, three men appear before his cabin. He emerges, desperate for conversation. Unfortunately, they mistake his intentions, and he is forced to shoot them. Despite this inauspicious incident, Mortimer is optimistic enough to venture down the mountain. What passes for civilization surprises him: a chain of strip joints called Joey Armageddon's Sassy-A-Go-Go has set itself as mankind's savior. But as with any fledgling world-saving operation, there is opposition—to wit, the terrorist-like Red Stripes, whom Mortimer is sent to defeat. His subsequent breakneck journey is full of cannibals, slave runners, bad booze, and other dangers, none more perilous than hope. Although this dark comedy makes one laugh, it isn't a romp in a postapocalyptic playground. It's violent and sleazy, laced with moments of quiet gravity, an intelligent satire of how American society works even after it has broken down (the label forpostapocalypse Jack Daniel's in chapter 23 is pure comic gold). Compulsively readable."
--Booklist (Krista Hutley)

"Guns, girls and alcohol occupy almost every inch of this raucous thrill ride, providing nonstop opportunities for both action and comedy…the humor of this armageddon western is woven deeply enough to keep Mortimer's adventures feeling like a party."
--Publishers Weekly

"[GO-GO GIRLS OF THE APOCALYPSE is] bound to be the best title of 2008.. .Gischler's going to be a writer you can't pin down. I think his readers will follow him (it would be a mistake not to), and everybody should be eager to see what he's going to do next."
--Bill Crider

"If Pynchon ever decided to write an insane action novel, this would be it. All out sustained brilliance, nobody is writng the unique lunacy that Victor Gischler is."
--Ken Bruen, author of The Guards and American Skin

"First, who wouldn't want to read a novel titled GO-GO GIRLS OF THE APOCALYPSE? Second, who could have guessed the book was even better than the title? Part Christopher Moore, part Quentin Tarantino, Victor Gishler is raving, bad-assed genius."
--James Rollins, New York Times bestselling author of Map of Bones and Black Order

"If it's all going to go to hell, you might as well have some Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse to go with it. Weird just doesn't say it for this one. Gischler gives weird a kick in the butt, sends it right over the edge of the abyss. Wild fun."
--Joe R. Lansdale

Read an excerpt from Go-Go-Girls of the Apocalypse, and learn more about the book and author at Victor Gischler's Blogpocalypse.

Victor Gischler is a former English professor and the author of Gun Monkeys, The Pistol Poets, Suicide Squeeze, and Shotgun Opera.

The Page 69 Test: Shotgun Opera.

My Book, The Movie: Shotgun Opera.

The Page 69 Test: Go-Go-Girls of the Apocalypse.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Ted Gup reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Ted Gup, the legendary investigative reporter whose books include Nation of Secrets: The Threat to Democracy and the American Way of Life.

His entry begins:

I tend to revisit my favorite authors and though I am associated with investigative reporting, my favorite reading is far from sleuthing. I return again and again to E. B. White, the poets Philip Larkin, W. H. Auden, John Donne ( which makes me a formalist) and numerous essayists -- Ruskin, J.S. Mill, Walter Lippmann, Thoreau, Emerson, Joyce Carol Oates, Bertrand Russell -- as well as...[read on].

Ted Gup is the Shirley Wormser Professor of Journalism at Case Western Reserve University. He has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist and has received the George Polk Award, the Worth Bingham Prize, the Gerald Loeb Award, the Book-of-the-Year Award from Investigative Reporters and Editors, and many other awards. He has been a Fulbright Scholar, a MacArthur Fellow and a Guggenheim Fellow.

Nation of Secrets won the 2008 Goldsmith Book Prize.

Visit Ted Gup's website.

Writers Read: Ted Gup.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jonathan Evison's "All About Lulu"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Jonathan Evison's All About Lulu.

About the book, from the publisher:

William Miller--confirmed mamma's boy and weak eyed vegetarian in a family of bodybuilders--learns at a tender age what amounts to the Cartesian dictum for bodybuilders everywhere: no pain, no gain. I hurt, therefore I am--words he learns to live by in the wake of his mother's death. When his father remarries a relentlessly kind grief counselor, Will falls in love with his troubled step-sister, Lulu. But as Lulu's behavior becomes increasingly erratic and inexplicably cruel, Will's sense of identity begins to founder. Faced with the knowledge that he can never hold the key to Lulu's heart, Will only clings harder to her, until his unwanted affection drives Lulu into a pattern of self-destruction which follows her into adolescence.

Lulu's departure to college, marks for Will the beginning of a personal odyssey which includes a crash course in western philosophy, a series of epic bad dates, and the enduring friendship of a poultry-obsessed former Soviet wrestler turned free-market capitalist, with whom he establishes Hot Dog Heaven on the Venice Beach Boardwalk.

Working nights as a producer at the college station, Will catches a break one night when the overnight host eats bad razor clams, forcing Will to take the mic without warning, where his performance catches the ear of the program director. In a world made of meat, a world where the corporeal is everything, and identity is measured in mounds of flesh and striated muscle, Will finally discovers his strength in the disembodied voice of his late-night radio persona.

But when Lulu self-destructs, William is drawn back into her life, and ultimately discovers that Lulu was never who he believed her to be.

Among the early praise for the novel:

"Evison's debut is a stunner! ... viciously funny and deeply felt ..."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"All about Lulu reads like Salinger for the Freaks and Geeks-meets-Wes Anderson crowd, a whip smart Gen X Lolita (sans pedophilia)... an auspicious debut for a writer with equal parts heart and reckless verve."
--Powell's

“Most novels in which a boy must oil up his bodybuilder father for competition would merit our attention, but that detail is just one of many amazements on offer in All About Lulu. Will the Thrill is a great literary charmer, and through his rich voice Jonathan Evison has concocted a funny and painfully honest piece of fiction.”
--Sam Lipsyte, author of Homeland

“At once exuberant and clear-eyed, scabrous and wise, Jonathan Evison's All About Lulu has something for every reader--love, betrayal, growth and, ultimately, redemption--all wrapped in the addictive voice of William Miller, Evison's fiercely likeable narrator.”
--Keith Dixon, author of The Art of Losing

"The star-crossed lovers at the center of All About Lulu forge a middle ground between Archie and Veronica and Kurt and Courtney. Evison has delivered a witty, understated, heartfelt, and, at times, almost unnervingly honest debut."
--Adam Langer, author of Crossing California

"Jonathan Evison is a killer talent, and All About Lulu is the kind of novel readers have been hungry for: Funny, smart, entertaining -- an all around delight. Literary fiction needs more books like this; maybe then people would stop talking about the Death of the Novel and just read and enjoy themselves."
--Darin Strauss, author of Chang and Eng

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

Jonathan Evison has worked a wide array of jobs from syndicated talk radio host to rotten tomato sorter--in the former role, his comedy show "Shaken Not Stirred" was nominated for two Peabody Awards. He has received two Silver Microphones, and two Communicators and was frequently nominated for the Soundie Award.He is the founder and moderator of the FICTION FILES, a forum for literary discussion.

The Page 99 Test: All About Lulu.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Jess Winfield's "My Name Is Will"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: My Name Is Will: A Novel of Sex, Drugs, and Shakespeare by Jess Winfield.

About the book, from the publisher:

A Tale of Two Shakespeares...

Struggling UC Santa Cruz grad student Willie Shakespeare Greenberg is trying to write his thesis about the Bard. Kind of...

Cut off by his father for laziness, and desperate for dough, Willie agrees to deliver a single, giant, psychedelic mushroom to a mysterious collector, making himself an unwitting target in Ronald Reagan's War on Drugs.

Meanwhile, would-be playwright (and oppressed Catholic) William Shakespeare is eighteen years old and stuck teaching Latin in the boondocks of Stratford-upon-Avon. The future Bard's life is turned upside down when a stranger entrusts him with a sacred relic from Rome . . . This, at a time when adherents of the "Old Faith" are being hanged, drawn, and quartered as traitors.

Seemingly separated in time and place, the lives of Willie and William begin to intersect in curious ways, from harrowing encounters with the law (and a few ex-girlfriends) to dubious experiments with mind-altering substances. Their misadventures could be dismissed as youthful folly. But wise or foolish, the bold choices they make will shape not only the 'Shakespeare' each is destined to become ... but the very course of history itself.

Among the early praise for the novel:

"Utterly delicious, original, witty, hilarious and brilliant. Shakespeare in Love on magic mushrooms. The Bard has never been this much fun."
—Christopher Buckley, author of Boomsday and Thank You For Smoking

"Bawdy puns, a clever construction, and a deliciously irreverent sense of humor make this debut novel irresistible."
—Booklist

"The two narratives in Winfield’s whimsical debut are unified by their shared irreverence, humor and literary gusto."
—Publishers Weekly

"Jess Winfield's My Name is Will cleverly twists two parallel plot lines — one set in California in the 1980s, the other in Stratford-upon-Avon in the 1580s — into a single bizarre adventure that'll have you questioning the Bard's religious history and rooting for a guy trying to deliver an enormous hunk of fungus to a mysterious buyer."
—Austin Statesman 2008 Summer Reading Guide

"A mischievous, affecting picaresque with Tom Stoppard smarts and the caustic, risky wit of a Sam Lipsyte."
—Publishers Weekly feature, 1/21/08

"MY NAME IS WILL fuses a witty campus novel, based on the narrator's hectic experience of the mythological University of California of the nineteen seventies and eighties, with a subversive historical one about the equally legendary Elizabethan era of the young Shakespeare, to create a provocative twin narrative, in which youths fight their way through a world of rampant sex and drugs to the beginnings of maturity. The narrative’s ingenious achievement is to suggest how, by saturation in the past, a youthful rebel in Elizabethan Stratford and one in modern Berserkeley can share comic misadventures, both paradoxically illuminating the historical Shakespeare family's inveterate Catholicism.”
—Hugh Richmond, Professor Emeritus of English, University of California, Berkeley

Read excerpts from My Name Is Will, and learn more about the book and author at Jess Winfield's website and blog.

Jess Winfield is a founding member of the Reduced Shakespeare Company. He co-created the full-length show The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged), which premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1987 and became an international sensation. After leaving the RSC, Winfield spent ten years writing and producing award-winning cartoons for the Walt Disney Company.

The Page 69 Test: My Name Is Will.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Matthew Guterl's "American Mediterranean"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Matthew Pratt Guterl's American Mediterranean: Southern Slaveholders in the Age of Emancipation.

About the book, from the publisher:

How did slave-owning Southern planters make sense of the transformation of their world in the Civil War era? Matthew Pratt Guterl shows that they looked beyond their borders for answers. He traces the links that bound them to the wider fraternity of slaveholders in Cuba, Brazil, and elsewhere, and charts their changing political place in the hemisphere.

Through such figures as the West Indian Confederate Judah Benjamin, Cuban expatriate Ambrosio Gonzales, and the exile Eliza McHatton, Guterl examines how the Southern elite connected—by travel, print culture, even the prospect of future conquest—with the communities of New World slaveholders as they redefined their world. He analyzes why they invested in a vision of the circum-Caribbean, and how their commitment to this broader slave-owning community fared. From Rebel exiles in Cuba to West Indian apprenticeship and the Black Codes to the “labor problem” of the postwar South, this beautifully written book recasts the nineteenth-century South as a complicated borderland in a pan-American vision.

Among the early praise for American Mediterranean:

"In an ambitious and compelling book, Matthew Pratt Guterl asks us to rethink accounts of race, slavery, and national identity within a framework of the Americas. In revealing the hemispheric underpinnings of the South's master class of slaveholders, he sheds important new light on American history. This is also a wonderful book to read. Guterl is a remarkably elegant, at times virtuosic, writer."
--Caroline Levander, author of Cradle of Liberty

"A model of transnational history that reconceives the era of emancipation from a truly exciting hemispheric perspective. Guterl decisively demonstrates that the post-emancipation South cannot be properly understood unless it is viewed in connection with those parts of the Caribbean and Central and South America that also confronted labor problems in the aftermath of abolition."
--Steven Mintz, author of Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood

"With this elegantly written study, Guterl powerfully resituates the U.S. South within the 'American Mediterranean,' and in the process he uncovers the story of a Southern, slave-holding master class that understood itself both as 'American' and as a part of the wider arena of slave-holding power in the New World. With its focus on the complex relation between labor and transnationalism, this is a timely and much needed book."
--Anna Brickhouse, University of Virginia

"This startlingly original, interdisciplinary study compels one to think afresh about the geographical status of the American South. Guterl marshals an impressive range of materials to demonstrate how Southern slaveholders participated in a pan-American class whose shared consciousness relocated them within a circum-Atlantic topography that included the United States, the Caribbean, and Latin America. In uncovering this heretofore ignored cartography, he has revealed a deeper history of New World slavery and freedom."
--Donald Pease, Dartmouth College

Read an excerpt from American Mediterranean, and learn more about the book at the Harvard University Press website.

Matthew Guterl is Associate Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies, and Director of the American Studies Program, at Indiana University.

The Page 99 Test: American Mediterranean.

--Marshal Zeringue

Matt Taibbi's five most important books

Rolling Stone political columnist Matt Taibbi's books include Spanking the Donkey: On the Campaign Trail with the Democrats, Smells Like Dead Elephants: Dispatches from a Rotting Empire, and The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire.

He told Newsweek about his five most important books. And addressed a related issue:

A book to which you always return:

I read "CANDIDE" about once every two years. It's great if you have a talent for forgetting jokes.

Read about Number One on Taibbi's list of most important books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Richard Ellis' "Tuna: A Love Story"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Tuna: A Love Story by Richard Ellis.

About the book, from the publisher:

The author of The Book of Sharks, Imagining Atlantis, and Encyclopedia of the Sea turns his gaze to the tuna—one of the biggest, fastest, and most highly evolved marine animals and the source of some of the world’s most popular delicacies—now hovering on the brink of extinction. In recent years, the tuna’s place on our palates has come under scrutiny, as we grow increasingly aware of our own health and the health of our planet. Here, Ellis explains how a fish that was once able to thrive has become a commodity, in a book that shows how the natural world and the global economy converge on our plates.

The longest migrator of any fish species, an Atlantic northern bluefin can travel from New England to the Mediterranean, then turn around and swim back; in the Pacific, the northern bluefin can make a round-trip journey from California to Japan. The fish can weigh in at 1,500 pounds and, in an instant, pick up speed to fifty-five miles per hour.

But today the fish is the target of the insatiable sushi market, particularly in Japan, where an individual piece can go for seventy-five dollars. Ellis introduces us to the high-stakes world of “tuna ranches,” where large schools of half-grown tuna are caught in floating corrals and held in pens before being fattened, killed, gutted, frozen, and shipped to the Asian market. Once on the brink of bankruptcy, the world’s tuna ranches—in Australia, Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, and North Africa—have become multimillion-dollar enterprises. Experts warn that the fish are dying out and environmentalists lobby for stricter controls, while entire coastal ecosystems are under threat. The extinction of the tuna would mean not only the end of several species but dangerous consequences for the earth as a whole.

In the tradition of Mark Kurlansky’s Cod, John Cole’s Striper, John Hersey’s Blues—and of course, Ellis’s own Great White Shark—this book will forever change the way we think about fish and fishing.

Among the acclaim for Tuna:

"An artful, detailed account of the tuna, and an entreaty that this not be its swan song."
--Kirkus

"Timely, balanced, and passionate."
--Library Journal

"With all the authority and grace for which his writings are renowned, Richard Ellis offers up an impassioned plea to protect and save one of the deep ocean's loveliest creatures. His scrupulously considered view--that our very modern craving for sushi and sashimi have caused us to love the endangered Atlantic bluefin tuna unwisely and much too well--needs to be firmly remembered."
--Simon Winchester, author of The Map that Changed the World

"If there is any hope for the endangered, majestic bluefin, it lies in Richard Ellis's extensively researched, carefully written, and beautifully illustrated call to action."
--John McCosker, Chair of Aquatic Biology, California Academy of Sciences

"Our foremost contemporary ocean chronicler, Richard Ellis, offers here an impassioned plea to consider the grandeur–and the tragic demise–of the swiftest, strongest fish that migrate across our water planet. While fully documenting the unique biology and fascinating history of the tuna species, Ellis casts clear light on the practice of 'tuna ranching' aimed at keeping humans sushi-supplied despite the disappearance of wild bluefin populations. This is nature writing at its best, from the heart."
–Dick Russell, author of Eye of the Whale and Striper Wars

"Richard Ellis is surely the most vivid, thoughtful and loving recorder of the splendors and travails of the ocean. This time he has cast his net wide and come up with a riveting story of the heartless destruction of the 'wildest, fastest, most powerful fish in the sea.' This glorious, angry book made me weep, but gave me a lot of insight and even a ray of hope."
--Joe MacInnis, author of Breathing Underwater: The Quest to Live in the Sea

Read an excerpt from Tuna: A Love Story, and learn more about the book and author at the publisher's website.

Richard Ellis is the author of more than a dozen books. He is also a celebrated marine artist whose paintings have been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world. He has written and illustrated articles for numerous magazines, including Audubon, National Geographic, Discover, Smithsonian, and Scientific American.

The Page 99 Test: Tuna: A Love Story.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Vali Chandrasekaran reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Vali Chandrasekaran, co-author of The Ridiculous Race.

One book he mentions:

Sin In the Second City, Karen Abbott's vivid history of an early 1900s high-class whorehouse. The book starts with the murder of rich department store heir and, within the first 70 pages, features characters named Bathhouse John, Hinky Dink Kenna, Big Jim, and Mushmouth Johnson. By page 100, readers relive the night Prince Henry of Prussia visited the brothel and watched harlots dance in fawnskin and devour a platter of raw sirloin. It's an interesting insight into what used to give rich-dudes erections. [read on]

Visit The Ridiculous Race Facebook page and learn more about the book at the publisher's website.

Kirkus Reviews on The Ridiculous Race:

"…will make readers laugh and cry, often simultaneously. Hely’s Victorian notions of world travel and the glory of bygone eras provide the perfect foil for Chandrasekaran’s glib embrace of the comforts of modern life. Their comically inoffensive braggadocio is akin to your older brother’s tales of his misspent youth; Chandrasekaran and Hely might be slightly obnoxious, but therein lies their charm. Hilarious travel writing for the chronically snarky."

Vali Chandrasekaran writes for television’s My Name Is Earl. In 2006, his script Jump for Joy was nominated for a Writer’s Guild Award. He has been an editor of The Harvard Lampoon and a management consultant for Boston Consulting Group, and he runs the Web site Vali’s Views. In a memorable turn on-screen, he played the role of “Vali” on the NBC hit comedy The Office.

Writers Read: Vali Chandrasekaran.

--Marshal Zeringue