Saturday, May 17, 2008

What is Jim Noles reading?

The latest contributor to Writers Read: Jim Noles, author most recently of A Pocketful of History: Four Hundred Years of America-- One State Quarter at a Time.

His entry begins:
I'm an attorney (environmental law) by vocation and so I just finished polishing off the court's opinion in Sierra Club v. Robert B. Flowers, a decision that just came out of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. But I suspect that is not what you (or your readers) had in mind when you asked the question. Nor would you (or they) be interested to know that, at my three-year-old's insistence, I'm still reading How the Grinch Stole Christmas almost every night. And yes -- it is mid-May. My boy John is giving the phrase "timeless classic" a new meaning, I'm afraid.

So what am I really "reading" these days? Currently, I'm whipping through Alex Kershaw's new book Escape From The Deep. He wrote The Bedford Boys, among other notable World War II histories, and his new book is another page-turner. It tells the story of the sinking of the submarine USS Tang in the Formosa Straits during World War II and the remarkable escape of a handful of its men from 180 feet below the surface. But when they found themselves prisoners of the Japanese, they realized that they had escaped from the proverbial frying pan and into the fire. [read on]
Noles' books include A Pocketful of History: Four Hundred Years of America- One State Quarter at a Time and Twenty-Three Minutes to Eternity: The Final Voyage of the Escort Carrier USS Liscome Bay. His writing has also appeared in newspapers, magazines, and journals, including the New York Times, Preservation, Urban Land, Alabama Heritage, The Journal of the Legal Profession, Smithsonian Air & Space, Thicket and Natural Resources & Environment.

Learn more about Jim Noles' work and A Pocketful of History.

Writers Read: Jim Noles.

--Marshal Zeringue