Pg. 69: Peter Abrahams's "Nerve Damage"

Today's feature at the Page 69 Test: Peter Abrahams's Nerve Damage.

About the book, from the publisher:

Sometimes the dead live on in your dreams ... at least that's true for Roy Valois. His wife, Delia, died fifteen years earlier while working for a private think tank and he has never forgotten her. Roy is a well-known sculptor in the art world. His newest piece, a magnificent creation he calls Delia, has just been finished, a sign that he's found a little closure at last.

Then Roy gets some news of the grimmest kind. It's the kind of news that forces thoughts in unexpected directions, such as the contents of one's obituary. Roy and his lawyer, a close friend, find themselves wondering whether Roy's obituary will mention a big goal he scored in college hockey. Roy's friend suggests that they could probably find out. With some help, they hack into the morgue files of the New York Times. There's no mention of the goal, but something else about his obituary bothers Roy. According to the New York Times, his wife was working for the United Nations when she died — not the think tank.

At first, Roy thinks it's a simple mistake, but when a conversation with the writer of his obituary fails to clear things up, he suspects something more. The deeper he digs, the more confusing his wife's past becomes. Delia's former colleagues deny ever knowing her, the building that housed the think tank has supposedly served as the offices for another organization for decades, and Roy can't find any records of its existence. Who was Delia? Who did she work for? How did she really die? Did she really die? With time running out, a desperate Roy won't stop until he knows the truth about the woman he can't stop loving.

Among the praise for Nerve Damage:

"From the reliably marvelous Peter Abrahams comes Nerve Damage, another top-drawer psychological thriller."
- Jennifer Reese, Entertainment Weekly

"I swear, if one more literary person says in that oh-so-condescendng tone, 'Oh, I don't read ... mysteries,' I'm going to take a novel by Peter Abrahams and smack him on his smug little head."
- Michele Ross, Cleveland Plain Dealer

"The care with which Abrahams brings his characters to life sets him apart from most thriller writers working today."
- The New Yorker

"gripping ... the action and suspense are first rate."
- Publishers Weekly

"...gripping, captivating, and so well written."
- Library Journal

Visit Peter Abrahams's website and browse inside Nerve Damage.

The Page 69 Test: Nerve Damage.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best: books about Germany & Germans

Steven Ozment is a professor of ancient and modern history at Harvard University. His most recent book is A Mighty Fortress: A New History of the German People.

He selected five books that "excel in their portraits of Germany and the German people" for Opinion Journal.

One title to make the list:

The Origins of Modern Germany by Geoffrey Barraclough (Blackwell, 1946).

In a robust history of the German Middle Ages, Geoffrey Barraclough traces Germany's geographic and political fragmentation over 12 centuries (800-1939). It turns out that the most difficult problem in German history was not the rise of National Socialism, whose existence (1920-45) was relatively brief, but the long struggle to arrive at political unity and, eventually, representative government. The failure of Germans to unify their medieval empire, according to Barraclough, is "a story of discontinuity, of development cut short, of incompleteness and retardation." It was only with German reunification in 1990 that the problem was solved, and by the formula that Barraclough prescribed: "a limited democratic Germany within historic boundaries."

Read about the book that topped Ozment's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Dana Stabenow reading?

Edgar Award–winning Dana Stabenow is the current featured author at Writers Read.

Her account opens:

I was at the winter meeting of the ALA in Seattle in January, where I had breakfast with Nancy Pearl and Talia Ross, my publisher’s (Holtzbrinck) library marketing manager. I was telling the two of them about a science fiction lit workshop I would be teaching at the Kenai Public Library in March, and how I was using classics (H. Beam Piper’s Little Fuzzy, the Heinlein juveniles, Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, Sheri Tepper’s The Gate to Women’s Country) in my syllabus and very few new books because I hadn’t read a lot of new sf or fantasy that I liked.

Well. That was a mistake.... [read on]

Dana Stabenow is the author of fifteen novels in her "Kate Shugak" series, three Liam Campbell mysteries, three science-fiction novels, and a stand-alone novel.

Visit Stabenow's official website and her Amazon blog.

The Page 69 Test: A Deeper Sleep.

Writers Read: Dana Stabenow.

--Marshal Zeringue

Matt Richtel's list

This week at The Week magazine, author/journalist/cartoonist Matt Richtel named "The List."

One of his picks:

The Magus by John Fowles

When I read this (at the age of 22), I wondered how Fowles could possibly understand all of my own personal insecurities and fears and capture them in protagonist Nicholas Urfe. I learned later that many readers wrote to Fowles saying he had captured their fears. The book is a great story and also a kind of Rorschach test that tells each of us something about ourselves.

Read about another title on Richtel's list which nearly caused him to injure himself laughing.

Matt Richtel is author of the new Silicon Valley thriller Hooked, his first novel.

He is currently writing a second, tentatively titled Idle's Mind. He makes most of his living as a New York Times reporter, covering technology and telecommunications from the San Francisco bureau.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Ron Carlson's "Five Skies"

Today's feature at the Page 69 Test: Ron Carlson's Five Skies.

About the book, from the publisher:

Award-winning short story writer Ron Carlson delivers a stirring novel about three men confronting their pasts and their purpose

Beloved story writer Ron Carlson’s first novel in thirty years, Five Skies is the story of three men gathered high in the Rocky Mountains for a construction project that is to last the summer. Having participated in a spectacular betrayal in Los Angeles, the giant, silent Arthur Key drifts into work as a carpenter in southern Idaho. Here he is hired, along with the shiftless and charming Ronnie Panelli, to build a stunt ramp beside a cavernous void. The two will be led by Darwin Gallegos, the foreman of the local ranch who is filled with a primeval rage at God, at man, at life. As they endeavor upon this simple, grand project, the three reveal themselves in cautiously resonant, profound ways. And in a voice of striking intimacy and grace, Carlson’s novel reveals itself as a story of biblical, almost spiritual force. A bellwether return from one of our greatest craftsmen, Five Skies is sure to be one of the most praised and cherished novels of the year.

Among the praise for Five Skies:

"Carlson writes with uncommon precision, and this return to long-form fiction after four well-received story collections is stunning."
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Carlson's focus is transporting, absorbing. It shakes you from stupor, strips you down. He understands that most of us live in a world of enervating crap, whether in the cliffs of Idaho or the canyons of the city. And Five Skies offers a longed-for blueprint of the antidote.... We agree when Carlson describes civilization as 'a hundred layers of ten thousand decisions, only a few of them even interesting.'"
—Allison Glock, Esquire

"Carlson's style -- low-key, deliberate, reminiscent of both early Hemingway and contemporary James Salter -- possesses the kind of serene assurance that disdains the show-offy. Carlson doesn't need it, since he can turn even a shopping list into a poem..."
—Michael Dirda, Washington Post

"Carlson, critically acclaimed for his short stories, has written a note-perfect novel that will challenge and reward all who care about literary fiction."
—Booklist, starred review

"A beautiful novel, as unique and insular as the quiet and powerful landscape it inhabits, and as braided with hope and despair, and hope again, as are the lives of the three men at its center."
—Rick Bass

"In Five Skies Ron Carlson has fashioned such a moving and elemental meditation on every man's struggle toward family, toward the embrace of his individual soul, that, by its end, I found my appreciation for both grief and redemption to be profoundly altered. Here is a fine and gracefully rendered novel."
—Mark Spragg, author of An Unfinished Life

"Ron Carlson knows there's a hole in the middle of our lives, a chasm we can hardly imagine looking into. So when he sends three men out west to see what they can do about it, the reader must pay close attention. Five Skies is not only a deeply moving contemporary western masterpiece -- it is also a philosophical query about what it means to be a grown man, a grown person. You must read this book because it's going to make a beautiful blockbuster film, and you're going to want to be able to claim that you read it first."
—Antonya Nelson, author of Female Trouble

Ron Carlson has received citations in Best American Short Stories twelve times since 1984. His work has appeared in Harper's, GQ, North American Review, Esquire, and Double Take. He is the author of two previous collections, Plan B for the Middle Class and The News of the World, and two novels, Betrayed by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Truants.

Learn more about Five Skies at the publisher's website and listen to an audio excerpt. Read or listen to an excerpt at the NPR website.

The Page 69 Test: Five Skies.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Shaena Lambert's "Radiance"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Shaena Lambert's Radiance.

About the book, from the publisher's website:

Later, when Daisy remembered that night, she could smell the scent of honeysuckle at the window and see the moon on the floorboards. But in her memories Keiko wasn’t bandaged: her face was broken down the middle, just like the moon. One half was pure and white, the other half mottled and porous. The unbroken side was as smooth as porcelain, terrifying in its brightness, but in every memory it was the pocked side that drew Daisy in. (From Radiance, p. 192)

It’s 1952. Eighteen-year-old Hiroshima survivor Keiko Kitigawa arrives in New York City for surgery to cut away the scar marring her lovely face. Sponsored by The Hiroshima Project, Keiko is expected to be a media darling, “The Hiroshima Maiden,” selected for her scarred beauty and for the talent she briefly revealed to Project doctors in Japan for putting words to the inexpressible horrors she has witnessed. But the Keiko who arrives in America does not perform as scripted, preferring to recall instead her grandfather’s dappled gardens and tales of trickster foxes. Frustrated by her recalcitrance, the Project presses Keiko’s suburban host mother, Daisy Lawrence, into duty, tasking her with drawing out the girl’s horrific story, the one they need for the media circuit. When Daisy reluctantly agrees, she must fight to enter Keiko’s sphere of intimacy, and is shocked by what she learns there.

Like Keiko, Daisy has a few surprises in store for the Project. Her gentle maternal character has been vouched for by her long-time friend Irene Day, the glamorous Manhattan women’s columnist who recruited her. But even Daisy is taken aback by what bubbles up from beneath her calm domestic existence in Riverside Meadows, drawn to the surface by Keiko’s presence. Life will never be the same.

Also deeply affected by Keiko’s stay is Daisy’s husband, Walter, a nearly extinguished literary light whose off-Broadway play once garnered critical acclaim. He has been fighting for years with a hopelessly unfinished manuscript, obsessing over the tragic story of a friend who fell victim to the turmoil of Stalinist Russia. But Walter is haunted by another event in his past, something that happened in the shadows of the McCarthy trials and that he has never divulged to his wife.

Keiko, bandaged after her surgery like the Invisible Man, becomes a conduit for secret grief. A barrage of letters and gifts from strangers arrive at their door. Riverside Meadows housewives, a photographer covering her story, and even a former Japanese-held POW heap their weightiest confidences upon her. Perhaps it is the force of her tragedy that pulls them in, or perhaps it is because her bandages make her seem like a blank receptacle for their own pain. Whatever the cause, Daisy finds it increasingly difficult to find the real Keiko beneath these burdens. But she will fight with all her strength to protect the girl, even at incalculable cost.

Set against the backdrops of the Atomic Age and McCarthyism, Radiance is a precise and nuanced rendition of an historic time, depicted through a highly intimate lens and driven by acts of great love, terrible betrayals and immense compassion.

Among the praise for Radiance:

"The emerging lawn-lined suburbs of 1950s America Shaena Lambert describes in her debut novel Radiance are familiar - rendered by contemporary chroniclers such as Richard Yates. Though Lambert was born a decade later in Canada, this is no watery pastiche. She skilfully threads her characters' emotions and relationships with a brilliantly rendered historical background of McCarthyism and idealistic internationalism. Radiance is an absorbing debut which exquisitely locates unsentimental emotional histories in an America buoyant with post-war consumerism and racked with paranoia."
- Financial Times of London

'Fascinating… skilful…artful.'
- Scotland on Sunday

"It's brilliant, really, the way this author deals with these characters. Without wasting time Lambert gives us so much."
- January Magazine

"It must be something in the water up there, but Canadian women writers are a remarkable breed - names like Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood and Carol Shields offer a guarantee of a good story well told. And now there's a new name to add the pantheon: Shaena Lambert, whose debut novel, Radiance, is as compelling, as thoughtful and as fundamentally readable as those of her better-known sisters. It is a mark of Lambert's skill as a writer that I wept. And it's entirely possible that you will too."
- Sunday Independent

"This beautifully written novel captures the essence of Fifties America without striving for effect. Lambert, who has published an acclaimed collection of short stories, adds to Canada's reputation for nurturing its literary writers."
- The Independent

'Lambert's writing, like Keiko herself, is detached, cool and compelling'
- Daily Mail

"Lambert's powerful debut novel is more subtle than its plot line suggests. Lambert paints with fresh colours the now familiar setting of manicured, 1950s US suburbia."
- Metro London

"A fascinating debut novel."
- Bella

Shaena Lambert is also the author of a book of short stories, The Falling Woman, which was chosen by The Globe and Mail as a top book of the year and was short-listed for the Danuta Gleed Award. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in many prominent journals and magazines, including Toronto Life, Image (Dublin), Marvels & Tales – The Journey of Fairytale Studies, Nimrod, Descant, The Malahat Review, The North American Review and Prism International, as well as being selected for The Journey Prize Anthology, a yearly publication of Canada’s best new short fiction.

Visit Lambert's website and read an excerpt from Radiance.

The Page 99 Test: Radiance.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Dead Fathers Club," the movie

The current feature at My Book, The Movie: Matt Haig's The Dead Fathers Club.

The Dead Fathers Club is based on Hamlet and is a "hilarious and touching novel narrated by an eleven-year old boy who is visited by his father’s ghost."

The novel has been optioned by the high-powered producer David Heyman, so there's a very good chance of the story making it to the big screen.

"But [Haig writes] I’m pretty sure every writer daydreams about how what once existed solely inside their own head could be projected onto the screen, and I’m no exception." So he came up with some ideas for screenwriter, director, and cast for the major roles. Check it out.

Visit Matt Haig's website and MySpace page.

The Page 69 Test: The Dead Fathers Club.

My Book, The Movie: The Dead Fathers Club.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Bryan Ferry reading?

Bryan Ferry, noted musician, talked to the Christian Science Monitor about what he's been watching and listening to.

And reading:

I just finished this Agatha Christie book. It's called The Mystery of the Blue Train. It was all about jewelry theft on an exotic train at high speeds. Fantastic! It's a new thing [for me]. Somebody gave it to me as a present, so I went out and bought all the rest of [her books]. They're about 20 of them. I find them quite relaxing. And I just picked up another one, Death on the Nile. I will start that tonight.

Read more about what Ferry is watching at the movies and listening to.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Ron Currie, Jr.'s "God Is Dead"

Today's feature at the Page 69 Test: Ron Currie, Jr.'s God Is Dead.

About the book, from the publisher:

From a mind-blowing new talent, an audacious novel that imagines the world after God takes human form and dies

When God descends to Earth as a Dinka woman from Sudan and subsequently dies in the Darfur desert, the result is a world both bizarrely new yet eerily familiar. In Ron Currie's provocative, wise, and emotionally resonant novel we meet God himself; the Dinka woman whose mortality He must suffer when He inhabits her body; people all over the world coping with the devastating news of God's demise; a group of young men who, fearing the end of the world, take fate into their own hands; mental patients who insist that a god still exists; armies taking up the eternal war between fate and free will; and parents who, in the absence of a deity and the "lack of anything to do on Sundays," worship their children. On the surface, this is a world utterly transformed — yet certain things remain unchanged: protective parents clash with willful, idealistic teenagers; idols are exalted; small-town rumor mills run unabated; and children often don't realize how to forgive their parents until it's too late.

In God Is Dead, Currie brings together a prescient satirical gift worthy of Jonathan Swift, the raw appeal of Chuck Palahniuk's blackest comedy, and the thought-provoking ethical questions of Kurt Vonnegut, all with a light touch, empathy, and wisdom that make for an exhilarating reading experience. Offbeat yet accessible, God Is Dead is an exciting debut from a fresh new voice in contemporary fiction.

Among the advance praise for God Is Dead:

"Bereft and deranged earthlings struggle to adapt to a world without divine guidance in this mordant dystopian fable, its Maine author's abrasively funny first novel.... Very clever indeed: Kurt Vonnegut laced with Louis-Ferdinand Celine."
--Kirkus, starred review

"Ron Currie Jr. has a voice to reckon with. God Is Dead is a stunning work of fiction."
--Marisha Pessl, author of Special Topics in Calamity Physics

"God Is Dead is funny, haunting, and unlike anything you've ever read. You'll think about Ron Currie's world long after you've turned the last page. Weirdly wonderful and wonderfully weird, God Is Dead is absolutely unforgettable."
--Sara Gran, author of Dope and Come Closer

"God Is Dead is a rare gem: a novel of ideas that is full of deep human empathy. It’s been a while since I’ve read a book so brave, so darkly funny, so eager to provoke in all the right ways. This is an exhilarating read."
--Matt Haig, author of The Dead Fathers Club

Ron Currie, Jr.’s prizewinning fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, The Sun, Other Voices, and Night Train. He has been shortlisted for the Fish International Short Story Award and Swink magazine’s Emerging Writer Award.

Visit Currie's website and his MySpace page to learn more about God Is Dead and his other writing and enthusiasms.

The Page 69 Test: God Is Dead.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Michael Boylan's "A Just Society"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Michael Boylan's A Just Society.

About the book, from the publisher's website:

A Just Society represents a complete account of Boylan's original worldview theory of ethics and social philosophy. The author sets out the foundation and application of the personal worldview imperative (for ethics) and the shared community worldview imperative (for social philosophy). These form the structure for a rights-based deontological theory that is holistic and underscored by an understanding of the good will that incorporates novel depictions of the sincere and authentic agent who displays sympathy, care, openness, and love. In the end, A Just Society strikes a balance between extreme liberalism (libertarianism) and those advocating the rule of the general will (utilitarianism). As such, the book makes an important contribution to ethical and political theory, as well as grounding an original approach to public philosophy.

Among the praise for A Just Society:

"Boylan develops an original, provocative, and interesting socio-political philosophy for a more just society. Boylan loads his philosophy with interesting examples, and his writing style results in very clear and enjoyable reading. Highly recommended."
—M.P. Maller, College of DuPage, CHOICE

"Michael Boylan's A Just Society, like Plato's Republic, canvasses the concept and problems of justice in the individual and society. The combination of big picture perspective, historical background, and contemporary ethical and social policy applications of Boylan's normative worldview approach to the nature of justice make his new book a highly recommended contribution to central issues in moral and political philosophy for students and professionals alike. "
—Dale Jacquette, The Pennsylvania State University

"This is not an ordinary book on what counts as a just person and just society. It is an extraordinary explanation of how a society can transform itself from an unjust society into a just one, and, more importantly, how a chaotic self can become an integrated self able and willing to create and sustain a community. Particularly impressive about Boylan's book is his chapter on public policy, be it at the local, national, or global level. Rarely is an author able to move between theory and practice as adroitly as Boylan. His book is a must to read."
—Rosemarie Tong, Distinguished Professor in Health Care Ethics and director of the Center for Professional and Applied Ethics and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Read more about A Just Society at the publisher's website.

Michael Boylan is Chair of Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies at Marymount University. His many other publications include The Extinction of Desire and Basic Ethics.

Boylan recently applied the Page 69 Test to his recent book, The Extinction of Desire: A Tale of Enlightenment, "a novel that seeks to portray a philosophical depiction of the author’s worldview theory."

The Page 99 Test: A Just Society.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Patricia Smiley's "Short Change"

Today's feature at the Page 69 Test: Patricia Smiley's Short Change.

About the book, from the author's website:

Savvy management consultant Tucker Sinclair is trying to get her own firm off the ground in Los Angeles. But when you're mixed up in a private investigator's business, trouble is always a prospect...

Tucker Sinclair is a free woman. She's finally escaped from the oppressively corporate Aames & Associates and now runs her own business consulting firm. But with freedom comes unpredictability. What was supposed to be a short stint helping private investigator Charley Tate get his practice established turns into a full-time job. Charley pushes her to go beyond the call of duty — to try to save not only his business, but possibly his life.

It all starts when Eve Lawson stumbles into the Tate Investigations office hoping to find out who is following her. But who would want to follow a bland writer working on a book about the post-World War II real estate boom in Los Angeles? With Eve's wardrobe hopelessly stuck in the eighties, Tucker can only imagine it's the fashion police. But work means much-needed income for Tucker and Charley. They soon learn that they've struck gold when this far-fetched case explodes into murder — and Eve Lawson, who's gone missing, is the prime suspect.

Now Tucker and Charley have to piece together the complex life of Eve Lawson, the troubled daughter of a real estate tycoon. She's been writing a memoir that may have rattled a few skeletons in the family closet. Tucker is on the case — and not even LA traffic can stop her...

Among the praise for Patricia Smiley's writing:

"A fun and feisty heroine."
--Janet Evanovich

"Patricia Smiley and her heroine, Tucker Sinclair, are two of the brightest stars to light up detective fiction in a long time."
--Elizabeth George

Smiley's other books include Los Angeles Times bestsellers Cover Your Assets and False Profits. She is a regular contributor to the crime fiction blog www.nakedauthors.com.

Visit Patricia Smiley's website to learn more about Short Change.

The Page 69 Test: Short Change.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Sarah Salway reading?

After Sarah Salway's "top ten list of books about unlikely friendships" caught my eye, I got in touch with her to find out what she has been reading.

She replied with an interesting report that included one poetry collection: Susan Wicks' latest book, De-Iced.

Read on to see what other books have recently captured Salway's attention.

Sarah Salway has published numerous short stories, as well as winning several writing competitions. Her first novel Something Beginning With, an extremely funny and sad story of love, self-discovery and the alphabet, was published in 2004 by Bloomsbury in the UK and Ballantine in the US (as The ABCs of Love), and has been translated into many languages. Her latest novel is Tell Me Everything.

Learn more about Salway's writing -- and read some of her poetry and journalism -- at her website and at her blog, Sarah's Writing Journal.

Writers Read: Sarah Salway.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: "Science, Religion and the Meaning of Life"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Mark Vernon's Science, Religion and the Meaning of Life.

About the book, from the author's website:

The Story

Mark Vernon was a priest in the Church of England. For two and a half years he preached, baptised, married and buried in a working-class parish in the North East of England. But then he left the priesthood, an atheist. He had become disillusioned with a church gripped by conflict and, moreover, had been swayed by the humanist philosophy that argued God was dead. But next, something else unexpected happened. Gradually, he came to the belief that the triumphalism of atheism entailed a poverty of spirit that was detrimental to people's humanity. Atheism tends to ignore or ridicule the 'big' questions of life - those questions that must be asked, if never finding conclusive answers. He became a passionate agnostic, convinced that religions carry a wisdom that human beings cannot do without, though equally convinced that the church is not necessarily the place to find it. The question, though, is how to be an agnostic? Can it be more than just a shrug of the shoulders? Is a spirituality based on the consumption of culture enough? Does it add up to a way of life?

The Philosophy

The key to wisdom, Socrates said, is understanding the limits of what one knows. The founder of Western philosophy came to realise that humans are ignorant but that they need not be pig ignorant. We are in between beasts and angels and grow by exploring that condition. His philosophy - his love of the wisdom he lacked - dominated his life. With reason, honesty, friends and questions he pursued the Delphic injunction to 'Know Thyself!'. Philosophy was only partly a matter of thinking clearly for more profoundly it was a matter of transforming oneself. Socrates was also, crucially, religious, finding in god-talk the perfect reflection of human uncertainty since matters divine are nothing if not ultimately unknown. Socrates' agnosticism provides the basis for a philosophy that puts reason's limits centre stage and even more importantly inspires an ethos - a way of seeing the world - that can add up to a way of life. It is fascinated by the big questions of how to live and where to find meaning in life.

The Relevancy

Today, we live in a culture with a lust for certainty. Scientific dogmatism would have us believe that it has all the answers and can feed us body and soul. Religion, too, is being hijacked by a conservatism that turns 'faith seeking understand' into statements of unquestioning belief. This matters because many of the things that are going wrong in the world appear to stem from the resulting hubris - be that the aggravation of conflicts because of religious fundamentalism or the danger of environmental disaster because of technological utopianism. The answer, though, is not an equal and opposite militant secularism or Luddite technophobia. Rather, it is a passionate agnosticism that sees science as inspired by wonder, nurturing a piety towards the world. And religion as the wellspring of humility and search since all theology is provisional and relative. It is not just those individuals disillusioned with dogmatic science and religion alike who seek how to be agnostic. Our future flourishing as human beings arguably demands it too.

Among the endorsements for the book:

"At last, a well-written and well-reasoned defense of agnosticism that one can sign on to regardless of prior religious or nonreligious commitments. Vernon's book is also a thoughtful critique of religion from the inside, respectful of his own and others' beliefs, while at the same time honest and honorable in laying bare the shortcomings of both religion and science. I recommend this work be read by skeptics and believers alike."
--Michael Shermer, Skeptic magazine and author of How We Believe

"Encouraging us to widen our imagination and to open our lives to a sense of wonder, Mark Vernon is convinced, in the tradition of Socrates, that we achieve this by avoiding the certainties of faith and the rigidities of atheism. Believers and non-believers will find this a richly rewarding read."
--John Gladwin, Bishop of Chelmsford

"For twenty years I have been waiting for a book that exposes the empty certainties of religious fundamentalism and its secular twin: scientific triumphalism. Mark Vernon has delivered that and much, much more. Mystery and doubt are elevated to where they should be: at the very heart of what it is to be human. Savour this as a wonderful gift."
--Mark Dowd, religious broadcaster and film-maker

"Fewer and fewer of us, at least in post-Christian Britain, are committed churchgoing believers; few of us on the other hand are militant atheists; which means that there is plenty of space between for people with a sense of wonder at scientific discoveries and an appreciation of art, music and philosophy: Mark Vernon's rich, moving and entertaining account of 'Christian agnosticism' is exactly what they have been waiting for."
--Fergus Kerr, Honorary Fellow in the School of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh

"Philosophically erudite, yet engagingly personal, Vernon's book presents a fluent account of his spiritual journey towards agnosticism."
--John Cottingham, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading, and author of On the Meaning of Life and The Spiritual Dimension

Mark Vernon is a writer, broadcaster and journalist. He began his professional life as a priest in the Church of England. His academic interests led him from physics to philosophy via theology. Michel Foucault introduced him to the ancient Greeks on friendship; he thinks that Plato has it just about right on that one at least. His other books include The Philosophy of Friendship and Business: the Key Concepts. He has a PhD from Warwick University in philosophy, degrees in theology from Oxford University and Durham University, and a physics degree from Durham University.

Visit Vernon's website, his blog, and read an excerpt from Science, Religion and the Meaning of Life.

The Page 99 Test: Science, Religion and the Meaning of Life.

--Marshal Zeringue

Summer crime reading

The few of the authorities at The Rap Sheet have already weighed in with a sample of their summer reading.

• J. Kingston Pierce’s Summer 2007 Picks
• Stephen Miller’s Summer 2007 Reading Picks
• Anthony Rainone’s Summer 2007 Reading Picks

Linda L. Richards joined in yesterday with her contribution. One title from her list (that I particularly enjoyed as well):

I began my summer reading with a book I’d squirreled away for a delicious treat. Since Kate Atkinson’s One Good Turn (Bond Street Books) was published in 2006, I knew no one would expect me to write about it. That seemed reason enough for it to be the book I brought out to the tree when the skies cleared enough to invite a few well-spent outdoor hours. I’d heard enough about One Good Turn that I figured I’d enjoy it, but I didn’t plan on being staggered, and I am. One Good Turn follows up Case Histories, the novel that introduced former detective Jackson Brodie, now a retired millionaire living a life of leisure in France. In One Good Turn he meets up with sometime girlfriend Julia, an actress, in Edinburgh, Scotland, and ends up on the side of the law he’s less familiar with. One Good Turn is brilliant. The writing here is sharp and vivid, often moving and occasionally even humorous in a way that provokes thought. One Good Turn is not the sort of book that wants a qualifier -- if you like this, then you’ll enjoy that. If you like to read any sort of mystery and enjoy a tightly written and tautly plotted book, you won’t go wrong with One Good Turn.

Read more about Richards' summery picks.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Joe Bageant's "Deer Hunting with Jesus"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Joe Bageant's Deer Hunting with Jesus.

About the book, from the publisher's website:

After thirty years spent scratching together a middle-class life out of a “dirt-poor” childhood, Joe Bageant moved back to his hometown of Winchester, Virginia, where he realized that his family and neighbors were the very people who carried George W. Bush to victory. That was ironic, because Winchester, like countless American small towns, is fast becoming the bedrock of a permanent underclass. Two in five of the people in his old neighborhood do not have high school diplomas. Nearly everyone over fifty has serious health problems, and many have no health care. Credit ratings are low or nonexistent, and alcohol, overeating, and Jesus are the preferred avenues of escape.

A raucous mix of storytelling and political commentary, Deer Hunting with Jesus is Bageant’s report on what he learned by coming home. He writes of his childhood friends who work at factory jobs that are constantly on the verge of being outsourced; the mortgage and credit card rackets that saddle the working poor with debt, i.e., “white trashonomics”; the ubiquitous gun culture — and why the left doesn’t get it; Scots Irish culture and how it played out in the young life of Lynddie England; and the blinkered “magical thinking” of the Christian right. (Bageant’s brother is a Baptist pastor who casts out demons.) What it adds up to, he asserts, is an unacknowledged class war. By turns brutal, tender, incendiary, and seriously funny, this book is a call to arms for fellow progressives with little real understanding of “the great beery, NASCAR-loving, church-going, gun-owning America that has never set foot in a Starbucks.”

Deer Hunting with Jesus is a potent antidote to what Bageant dubs “the American hologram” — the televised, corporatized virtual reality that distracts us from the insidious realities of American life.

Among the praise for Deer Hunting with Jesus:

“This recounting of lost lives — of white have-nots in one of our most have-not states — has the power of an old-time Scottish Border ballad. It is maddening and provocative that the true believers in 'American exceptionalism' and ersatz machismo side with those stepping all over them. Bagaent's writing is as lyrical as Nelson Algren's, and if there's a semblance of hope, it's that he catches on with new readers thanks to the alternative media.”
—Studs Terkel

"Joe Bageant is a brilliant writer. He evokes working class America like no one else. The account of his revisit to his Virginia roots is sobering, poignant, and instructive."
—Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States

"This book is righteous, self-righteous, exhilarating, and aggravating. By God, it's a raging, hilarious, and profane love song to the great American redneck. As a blue state man with a red state childhood, I have been waiting for this book for years. We ignore its message at our peril."
—Sherman Alexie, author of Reservation Blues

“This fine book sheds a devastating light on Bush & Co.'s notorious 'base,' i.e. America's white working class, whose members have been ravaged by the very party that purports to take their side. Meanwhile, the left has largely turned them out, or even laughed at their predicament. Of their degraded state — and, therefore, ours — Joe Bageant writes like an avenging angel.”
—Mark Crispin Miller, author of Fooled Again: The Real Case for Election Reform

"Deer Hunting with Jesus is one of those rare books that is colorful, depressing, hilarious, and biting all at the same time. Joe Bageant has given us a glimpse into the vicious class war that is too often ignored or hidden by those happily perpetrating this war."
—David Sirota, author of Hostile Takeover

“Dead serious and damn funny ... Bageant writes with the ghosts of Hunter S. Thompson, Will Rogers, and Frank Zappa kibitzing over his shoulder ... Takes Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter With Kansas, to the next level. “
—Mother Jones

Check out Joe Bageant's website and read more about Deer Hunting with Jesus.

The Page 69 Test: Deer Hunting with Jesus.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Steel Drivin' Man," the movie

Scott Reynolds Nelson is the latest contributor to My Book, The Movie.

About Nelson's Steel Drivin' Man: John Henry, the Untold Story of an American Legend, from the Oxford University Press website:

The ballad "John Henry" is the most recorded folk song in American history and John Henry--the mighty railroad man who could blast through rock faster than a steam drill -- is a towering figure in our culture. But for over a century, no one knew who the original John Henry was -- or even if there was a real John Henry.

In Steel Drivin' Man, Scott Reynolds Nelson recounts the true story of the man behind the iconic American hero, telling the poignant tale of a young Virginia convict who died working on one of the most dangerous enterprises of the time, the first rail route through the Appalachian Mountains. Using census data, penitentiary reports, and railroad company reports, Nelson reveals how John Henry, victimized by Virginia's notorious Black Codes, was shipped to the infamous Richmond Penitentiary to become prisoner number 497, and was forced to labor on the mile-long Lewis Tunnel for the C&O railroad. Nelson even confirms the legendary contest between John Henry and the steam drill (there was indeed a steam drill used to dig the Lewis Tunnel and the convicts in fact drilled faster).

Equally important, Nelson masterfully captures the life of the ballad of John Henry, tracing the song's evolution from the first printed score by blues legend W. C. Handy, to Carl Sandburg's use of the ballad to become the first "folk singer," to the upbeat version by Tennessee Ernie Ford. We see how the American Communist Party appropriated the image of John Henry as the idealized American worker, and even how John Henry became the precursor of such comic book super heroes as Superman or Captain America.

Attractively illustrated with numerous images, Steel Drivin' Man offers a marvelous portrait of a beloved folk song -- and a true American legend.

Read on to see which directors and actors make the author's dream-list for a film adaptation of his award-winning book.

The Page 69 Test: Steel Drivin' Man.

My Book, The Movie: Steel Drivin' Man.

--Marshal Zeringue

Most important books: Neil deGrasse Tyson

American Museum of Natural History astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson told Newsweek about his five most important books.

And about two other books in related categories:

A classic that, on rereading, disappointed:

George Orwell's 1984. Why I would believe it would be interesting beyond the date, I don't know. In the 1970s it was scary. By the 1990s it was quaint. You almost can't blame it.

A Certified Important Book you haven't read:

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. For not having read it, I feel I may be a little undereducated. I could be missing some insight into the human condition, because after all, what is life but the interplay between war and peace?

Read more about Neil deGrasse Tyson's most important books.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Lynne Tillman reading?

Lynne Tillman is the latest contributor to Writers Read.

One book she mentioned:

I'm reading Javier Marias' A Heart So White, whose style and intelligence I admire. I wish it compelled me more. I think it's the concern with marriage, its effect on the protagonist's supposed autonomy, but I'm not sure, I go in and out of it. Attracted and annoyed or repelled. But I will finish it, in part because of my ambivalence. [read on]

Tillman is Professor/Writer-in-Residence in the Department of English at the University at Albany. Her novels include American Genius, A Comedy (2006), No Lease on Life (1998), which was a New York Times Notable Book of 1998 and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Cast in Doubt (1992), Motion Sickness (1991), and Haunted Houses (1987). She also publishes short stories, essays, and other non-fiction.

The Page 69 Test: American Genius, A Comedy.

Lynne Tillman: Writers Read.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jonathan B. Tucker's "War of Nerves"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Jonathan B. Tucker's War of Nerves: Chemical Warfare from World War I to Al-Qaeda.

About the book, from the publisher's website:

Statesmen, generals, and diplomats have long debated the military utility and morality of chemical warfare. In 1925, the use of chemical weapons in war was prohibited by international treaty; in 1997 the ban on the use of chemical weapons was extended to cover their development, production, and stockpiling. Nevertheless, Iraq employed chemical weapons on a large scale as recently as the 1980s, first during its eight-year war with Iran and then against its rebellious Kurdish minority.

In War of Nerves, Jonathan Tucker, a leading expert on chemical and biological weapons, writes about chemical warfare from World War I to the present.

The author makes clear how, at the turn of the twentieth century, the large-scale use of toxic chemicals on the battlefield became feasible and cheap; how Germany first developed and employed toxic weapons during World War I, burying some 6,000 cylinders (containing 168 tons of chlorine) opposite the Allied trenches defending the town of Ypres, in Belgium. German troops simultaneously opened the chlorine cylinders, panicking two French divisions and tearing a gap four miles wide in the Ypres front.

Chemical warfare had begun: five months later, the Allies retaliated with their own use of chlorine gas. By the end of the war, chemical warfare had inflicted roughly one million casualties, 90,000 of them fatal.

Tucker writes about the synthesis of the first nerve agent — Tabun — in 1936 by a German industrial chemist developing new pesticides how its high toxicity made it unusable as a pesticide but viable as a weapon for the Nazi regime. A few years later, two even more toxic nerve agents — Sarin and Soman — were developed for military use. Hitler never employed this secret weapon; German intelligence concluded — incorrectly — that the Allies had developed a similar capability.

Following World War II, we see the rise of a Cold War chemical competition between the United States and the Soviet Union that paralleled the nuclear arms race, as each pursued the secrets of the German nerve agents; how the United States and Britain planned to mass-produce Sarin (only the United States did); how the superpowers developed and mass-produced V-agents, a new generation of nerve agents of extraordinary potency; and how nerve agents spread to the Third World, including their suspected use by Egypt during the Yemen Civil War (1963—1967), as well as Iraq’s use of nerve agents in its war against Iran and on its own people. Iraq’s use of nerve agents hastened the negotiation of an international treaty banning the use of chemical weapons, which went into effect in 1997. Although the treaty now has more than 175 member-states, al-Qaeda and related terrorist groups are seeking to acquire nerve agents.

In this important and revelatory book, Jonathan Tucker makes clear that we are at a crossroads that could lead either to the further spread of these weapons or to their ultimate abolition.

Among the praise for War of Nerves:

“Chilling ... a history of the race between the advance of this taboo technology and the political efforts to abolish it. Tucker ... has a gift for making military science readable”
—New York Times

“[Tucker] writes clearly and forcefully, making his case not through argument but through the patient accumulation of appalling detail.... An immensely useful book, presenting a vast trove of vital information in highly readable form.”
—The San Francisco Chronicle

“Compelling ... offers a comprehensive history of chemical weapons, the most widely used WMD in modern history.”
—Washington Post Book World

“Outstanding ... fascinating.... Everyone who believes weapons of mass destruction exist only in fantasy need but read this book. They are closer than you think.”
—The Decatur Daily

Jonathan B. Tucker is a Visiting Fellow, Security Policy Research Group, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (German Institute for International and Security Affairs) and a Senior Fellow in the Washington, D.C. office of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, where he specializes in chemical and biological weapons issues. He is the editor of Toxic Terror: Assessing Terrorist Use of Chemical and Biological Weapons (MIT Press, 2000) and the author of Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox (Grove/Atlantic, 2001).

Learn more about War of Nerves and read an excerpt at the publisher's website.

The Page 99 Test: War of Nerves.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Michael Boylan's "The Extinction of Desire"

Today's feature at the Page 69 Test: Michael Boylan's The Extinction of Desire: A Tale of Enlightenment.

About the book, from the publisher's website:

What would you do if you suddenly became rich?

Michael O’Meara had never asked himself this question. A high school history teacher in Maryland, Michael is content to not ask too many questions - until, after a freak accident, he unexpectedly finds himself the beneficiary of a million dollars. As friends, adversaries, and a greedy ex-wife emerge from the background to lay claim to the fortune, Michael finds himself caught up in a number of troubling situations that disrupt his life and leave him questioning everything he had and everything he thought he wanted.

Haplessly swept from the United States and Europe, among international jet setters, the IRA, the Mob, and everyday people, Michael slowly begins to uncover what is truly valuable in life through the teachings of Buddhist philosophy. The Extinction of Desire maps the course of his voyage, blending philosophy and fiction to discover fundamental truths.

Among the early endorsements for the book:

"Michael Boylan's The Extinction of Desire reads like a fast-paced philosophical fable. Call it Candide, where the best of all possible worlds turns out to be the least exciting. You will read this book in a gulp. It will make you laugh, catch you off guard, and most importantly make you think."
--Mark Noll, University of Notre Dame

"The elements of Buddhism in Extinction, no less than the pieces of Western philosophy and literature (e.g., Dante), set the stage for a deeper philosophical journey. Like Kierkegaard's 'knight of faith', Michael O'Meara comes to grasp what he ought to seek. In Extinction we find the subtle development of the philosophy of 'Worldview'."
--Robert Paul Churchill, George Washington University

Visit the publisher's website for more information about The Extinction of Desire.

Michael Boylan is Chair of Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies at Marymount University

The Page 69 Test: The Extinction of Desire.

--Marshal Zeringue