Pg. 99: Paul Hoffman's "King's Gambit"

The latest feature at the Page 99 Test: Paul Hoffman's King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game.

About the book, from the author's website:

As a child, Paul Hoffman lost himself in chess. The award-winning author of the international bestseller The Man Who Loved Only Numbers played to escape the dissolution of his parents' marriage, happily passing weekends with his brilliant bohemian father in New York's Greenwich Village, the epicenter of American chess. But he soon learned that such single-minded focus came at a steep price, as the pressure of competition drove him to the edge of madness.

As an adolescent, Hoffman loved the artistic purity of the game — and the euphoria he felt after a hard-fought victory — but he was disturbed by the ugly brutality and deceptive impulses that tournament chess invariably brought out in his opponents and in himself. Plagued by strange dreams in which attractive women moved like knights and sinister men like bishops, he finally gave up the game entirely in college, for the next twenty-five years.

In King's Gambit, Hoffman interweaves gripping tales from the history of the game and revealing portraits of contemporary chess geniuses into the emotionally charged story of his own recent attempt to get back into tournament chess as an adult — this time without losing his mind or his humanity. All the while, he grapples with the bizarre, confusing legacy of his own father, who haunts Hoffman's game and life.

In this insider's look at the obsessive subculture of championship chess, the critically acclaimed author applies the techniques that garnered his earlier work such lavish praise — the novelistic storytelling and the keen insights — to his own life and the eccentric, often mysterious lives of the chess pros he knew and has come to know. Intimate, surprising, and often humorous, it's both Hoffman's most personal work and his most compelling.

Among the early praise for King's Gambit:

"If you enjoy playing chess, this will be the most fascinating, best-written book that you have ever read. If you have no interest in chess, then get ready to enjoy a fascinating, fast-moving story with unforgettable characters many of whom just happen to be chess players."
—Jared Diamond

"Hoffman's masterful, exhaustive tale of chess, its soaring triumphs and crushing discontents is filled with enough international intrigue and warped, shady characters to pass for the latest James Bond sequel. Along with the stereotypical lunatic Russian grandmasters ('the normally even-keeled Russian asked that his chair be X-rayed and dismantled to make sure [Bobby] Fischer hadn't implanted a harmful radiation emitter inside it'), chess-crazed Bulgarians, Canadians, Libyans and the occasional American plow through the contemporary chess world in search of victory. In clear, thoughtful prose, Hoffman (The Man Who Loved Only Numbers ) describes the players ("[Short] doesn't glare at his adversary, slam down the rooks, twist the knights into the board, rock back and forth, tap his feet or pace the tournament hall snorting like a feral animal") and the game.... Hoffman has achieved something singular: a winning, book about the 'royal game' that will satisfy the general reader, kibitzer and grandmaster alike."
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Introduced to chess by his father when he was only five, Hoffman found a refuge in the game during an adolescence marked by family stress. Returning to the game decades later in a period of personal and professional crisis, he found himself fascinated not just by chess itself, but by the inner life of its players. Among the questions he seeks to answer are why chess is so addictive, how the champions handle victory and defeat and why the game is played primarily by men.... [A trip in 2004 to the World Chess Championship in Libya], which included nerve-shattering encounters with a police-state bureaucracy, reveals the author's expertise as a storyteller as well as his own high-amateur competence at the chessboard... Those who relished Stefan Fatsis's portrayal of Scrabble junkies (Word Freak, 2001) will find this another fascinating glimpse into a competitive game world filled with quirky and brilliant addicts."
—Kirkus

Read an excerpt from King's Gambit, and learn more about the book at Paul Hoffman's website and blog.

Paul Hoffman was president of Encyclopaedia Britannica and editor in chief of Discover magazine, and is the author of Wings of Madness and The Man Who Loved Only Numbers. King's Gambit is his eleventh book.

The Page 99 Test: King's Gambit.

--Marshal Zeringue

J. Crusie & B. Mayer's "Don't Look Down," the movie

Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer have collaborated on two novels: Don’t Look Down and Agnes and the Hitman.

In the latest entry at My Book, The Movie, Mayer explains how he and Crusie use characters from movies to help picture their characters as they're writing the novels.

About Agnes and the Hitman, from Mayer's website:

Agnes Crandall, a food columnist better known as Cranky Agnes, is getting ready for the big society wedding that’s going to be held in her back yard when a guy with a gun breaks into her kitchen and tries to kidnap her dog. Agnes accidentally kills him. Shortly after that, a guy with a gun (Shane, just Shane) breaks into her bedroom and tells her he’s there to protect her. Good thing, too, because then things go really badly and it’s pretty much Agnes and Shane against the world, at least the part of it that’s armed and coming for Agnes.

About Don’t Look Down, from Mayer's website:

Jenny Crusie writes Lucy Armstrong, a film director with family problems – why is her sister so depressed, her niece so unhappy, and her ex-husband so intent on getting her back – and career problems – why is the star so determined to do his own stunts, the ingenue so determined to seduce the stunt double, and that Green Beret stunt double so damn attractive? Bob Mayer writers J. T. Wilder, a Green Beret who has his own troubles including the goofball actor he’s doubling for, the stunt coordinator who’s gunning for him (literally), and the director who looks like Wonder Woman and keeps distracting him from his mission. And that’s before the CIA, the Russian mob, and the one-eyed alligator show up.

Visit My Book, The Movie: Jennifer Crusie & Bob Mayer's Agnes and the Hitman and Don't look Down to find out who the authors had in mind for their characters when they wrote these novels.

Read an excerpt from Agnes and the Hitman and an excerpt from Don’t Look Down, and learn more about the books at Jenny Crusie's website and Bob Mayer's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Craig McDonald's "Head Games"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Craig McDonald's Head Games.

About the book, from the author's website:

In a dusty cantina on the far side of the Rio Grande, larger-than-life and recently widowed crime writer Hector Lassiter and Bud Fiske, a callow young poet sent by True Magazine to profile Hector, are handed a carpet bag. Inside they find the stolen head of Mexican general Francisco "Pancho" Villa — a long missing relic that may point the way to a fortune in lost treasure or a blood-and-thunder death...

In the dank, hallowed halls of Yale University creep the members of the Skull & Bones, a secret society shrouded in whispers. They are a fraternity whose members include media barons, über executives and politicians, including three generations of men called Bush — and their sanctum sanctorum's trophy cabinet is purportedly packed with the stolen bones of long-dead luminaries...

In a '57 Bel Air, Hector, Bud, and the beautiful Alicia tear through the desert with a trunk full of human heads. Caught in a crazy crossfire, they lead all manner of headhunters on a breakneck chase across Lost America. U.S. intelligence services, murderous frat boys, the soldier of fortune who stole Pancho's head from its grave, and the specter of a dead Mexican legend all want Villa's head — though they might settle for Hector's...

Among the praise for Head Games:

"Head Games is terrific, a real discovery, informed by — but never weighed down by — Craig McDonald's intimate knowledge of pulp fiction, politics, history, literature, film noir and all manner of frontiers. A truly original debut that leaves one eager to see what this writer will do next."
—Laura Lippman, author of What the Dead Know

"Moves like a bullet, like a trajectory of magnificent artistry and line-on-line of almost casual, throwaway description. The beautiful, understated humor running like a sad song all through the whole novel ... I'm beyond impressed."
—Ken Bruen, author of American Skin

"Reading Craig McDonald's Head Games was like reliving those wonderful and exciting, tequila-fired weekend border-town tours of my youth in the '50's. A different character, vivid and lively, waiting around every new corner of the artfully twisted plot. The time and place are captured perfectly, and story never falters as it dashes to the surprising ending. It made me homesick for El Paso the way it was."
—James Crumley, author of The Last Good Kiss

"In McDonald's fun, deft debut, set mostly in 1957, Sen. Prescott Bush has sent out the call: bring me the head of Pancho Villa, the late Mexican revolutionary. Reminiscent of James Crumley's Milo Milodragovich PI novels ... this slick caper novel touches chords of myth, history, loss and redemption just enough so you can hear echoes faintly under the gunfire."
—Publishers Weekly

"A turbulent tale of murder, conspiracy and political intrigue. McDonald's Spillane-like fictional debut has its roots in a real historical question: Did the Bush family really help hide Pancho Villa's head in the inner sanctum of Skull and Bones? Not for the faint-hearted."
—Kirkus Reviews

"In his debut novel McDonald mixes history, legend, and fantastic characters to play the best kind of Head Games. Where has this guy been? The newest recipe for great fiction? One pulp novelist, one poet, two Hollywood legends, a secret society and a plot scored by Ennio Morricone. This is Head Games. Next book please, Mr. McDonald."
—Crimespree Magazine

Read an excerpt from Head Games and learn more about the novel and author at McDonald's website and his Crimespace page.

Craig McDonald is an award-winning journalist, editor and fiction writer. His short fiction has appeared in literary magazines, anthologies and several online crime fiction sites. His nonfiction books include Art in the Blood, a collection of interviews with 20 major crime authors which appeared in 2006, and Rogue Males: Conversations and Confrontations About the Writing Life, a second collection of interviews to be published by Bleak House Books.

The Page 69 Test: Head Games.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Michael Elliott's "Custerology"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Michael Elliott's Custerology: The Enduring Legacy of the Indian Wars and George Armstrong Custer.

About the book, from the publisher:

On a hot summer day in 1876, George Armstrong Custer led the Seventh Cavalry to the most famous defeat in U.S. military history. Badly outnumbered and exhausted from a day of forced marches, Custer’s forces were quickly overwhelmed by warriors from the Lakota Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes. The Seventh Cavalry lost more than half of the 400 men who rode into the Indian camp, and every soldier under Custer’s direct command was killed.

It’s easy to understand why this tremendous defeat shocked the American public at the time. But with Custerology, Michael A. Elliott tackles the far more complicated question of why the battle retains such power for Americans today. Weaving vivid historical accounts of Custer at Little Bighorn with contemporary commemorations that range from battle reenactments to the unfinished Crazy Horse memorial, Elliott reveals a Custer and a West whose legacies are still vigorously contested. He takes readers to each of the important places of Custer’s life, from his Civil War home in Michigan to the site of his famous demise, to show how more than a century later, the legacy of Custer still haunts the American imagination. Along the way, Elliott introduces us to Native American activists, Park Service rangers, and devoted history buffs; draws us into the arcana of Custerology and the back rooms of High Plains bars; and reveals how Custer and the Indian Wars continue to be both a powerful symbol of America’s bloody past and a crucial key to understanding the nation’s multicultural present.

By turns dramatic and meditative, Custerology moves seamlessly between past and present, delivering both a bracing narrative and a potent reminder of why we care so much about history in the first place.

Among the early praise for the book:

“Michael Elliott’s Custerology is vivid, trenchant, engrossing, and important. The American soldier George Armstrong Custer has been the subject of very nearly incessant debate for almost a century and a half, and the debate is multicultural, multinational, and multimedia. Mr. Elliott’s book provides by far the best overview, and no one interested in the long-haired soldier whom the Indians called Son of the Morning Star can afford to miss it.”
—Larry McMurtry

“That any writer could find a fresh approach to George Armstrong Custer and the Battle of the Little Bighorn is a phenomenon. Yet Michael Elliott presents a fresh approach by relating the public obsession that has flourished for 131 years to its continuing resonance in the present and, almost certainly, the future.”
—Robert Utley, author of Custer and Me: A Historian’s Memoir

Read an excerpt from Custerology and learn more about the book at the University of Chicago Press website.

Michael A. Elliott is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of English at Emory University. He specializes in the literature and culture of the United States from the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth century. He also teaches and writes about contemporary Native American literatures. His teaching interests include the nineteenth-century novel, race in American fiction, Native American literature, and cultural studies. A recipient of fellowships from the American Philosophical Society, the Charles Warren Center at Harvard University, and the Beneicke Library at Yale University, Elliott’s research frequently focuses on the way that narratives travel across genres: fiction, ethnography, history, the law. He is the author of The Culture Concept: Writing and Difference in the Age of Realism (Minnesota, 2002) and, with Claudia Stokes, the co-editor of American Literary Realism: A Methodological Reader (NYU, 2003).

The Page 99 Test: Custerology.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Austin Grossman reading?

The latest contributor to Writers Read: Austin Grossman, author of the acclaimed debut novel Soon I Will Be Invincible.

About the novel, from the publisher:

Doctor Impossible — evil genius, diabolical scientist, wannabe world dominator — languishes in a federal detention facility. He's lost his freedom, his girlfriend, and his hidden island fortress.

Over the years he's tried to take over the world in every way imaginable: doomsday devices of all varieties (nuclear, thermonuclear, nanotechnological) and mass mind control. He's traveled backwards in time to change history, forward in time to escape it. He's commanded robot armies, insect armies, and dinosaur armies. Fungus army. Army of fish. Of rodents. Alien invasions. All failures. But not this time. This time it’s going to be different...

Fatale is a rookie superhero on her first day with the Champions, the world's most famous superteam. She's a patchwork woman of skin and chrome, a gleaming technological marvel built to be the next generation of warfare. Filling the void left by a slain former member, we watch as Fatale joins a team struggling with a damaged past, having to come together in the face of unthinkable evil.

Soon I Will Be Invincible is a thrilling first novel; a fantastical adventure that gives new meaning to the notions of power, glory, responsibility, and (of course) good and evil.

Among the praise for the novel:

"Austin Grossman has a superpower himself — it's called writing. This book is a new, winning, smart and funny way of interpreting our world. It's terrific."
—Douglas Coupland, author of JPod and Generation X

"It’s a hugely enjoyable book."
—Andi Shechter, January Magazine

"The realm of comic book heroes and villains gets a dose of realism in this whimsical debut from game design consultant Grossman.... However fantastical, the characters (including a 'genetic metahuman' and 'an elite fairy guard') are thoughtfully portrayed.... Grossman dabbles in a host of themes — power, greed, fame, the pitfalls of ego — in this engrossing page-turner, broadening the appeal of an already inviting scenario."
—Publishers Weekly

"Distilling the motley spectrum of doomed super-villains from half a century of comics into one impressive anti-hero, Austin Grossman's raucously madcap debut novel, Soon I Will Be Invincible, races along like a roller coaster with its lug nuts loosened.... Light and adhesive as Spider-Man's web, Soon I Will Be Invincible is tailored for summer reading like a superhero's (or super-villain's) form-fitting costume."
—Thane Tierney, Bookpage

"Riding the current wave of enthusiasm for superpowered mutants in film and fiction, Grossman's first novel peeks intimately inside the psyches of both superheroes and supervillains.... With remarkable ingenuity, [he] assembles an entire menagerie of superheroes and criminal masterminds completely from scratch. Costumed crime-fighter mavens naturally attracted to this latest rendition of superheroic derring-do may wind up itching to see it on the silver screen."
—Booklist

"In a world where BlackBerry-carrying superheroes grace the cover of GQ, being a supervillain known as the "angriest dork in the world" isn't easy. A heartbreaking genius of staggering evil, Doctor Impossible avenges lost love, a lonely adolescence, and a plethora of foiled doomsday devices. (That fungus army seemed foolproof!) Every comic-book cliché in this witty, stunning debut is lovingly embraced, then turned inside out."
—Steven Leckart, Wired

For more reviews, an excerpt, and other links, visit Austin Grossman's website and the Soon I Will be Invincible website.

Writers Read: Austin Grossman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Parnell Hall's "Hitman"

The latest feature at the Page 69 Test: Parnell Hall's Hitman.

About the book, from the publisher:

"What Mr. Hall does to the private eye formula is very funny, but it is not frivolous. His puzzles, for all their manic nonsense, are fiendish constructions of sound logic."-The New York Times Book Review

Private Eye Stanley Hastings doesn't want for idiosyncrasies, as fans of this long-running "unconventional" and "very funny"(The New York Times) mystery series know. For instance, he doesn't carry a gun. So he seems a particularly improbable choice, among all of New York City's private investigators, for the cold-eyed Martin Kessler.

Not that Kessler requires firepower. He's got a gun of his own-an automatic with a long, ugly silencer - although he'd like to retire it. A contract killer who wants out of the game, Kessler hires Stanley mostly to watch his back in the event that someone of similar professional skills is shadowing him. Someone is, in fact, only Stanley fails to spot him and dead bodies are soon piling messily up.

There's an obligation a PI owes a client, so Stanley figures, and in the face of a situation that with more luck or diligence he might have averted, he determines to sort it out. The hapless PI thus begins an odyssey that will take him from a seedy topless bar to a plush corporate boardroom, and ultimately a Manhattan courtroom, in his attempt to uncover just what did go down, and why, during his client's last, decidedly dirty job.

Among the praise for the Stanley Hastings mystery series:

"What Mr. Hall does to the private eye formula is very funny, but it is not frivolous. His puzzles, for all their manic nonsense, are fiendish constructions of sound logic."
--New York Times

"Like Agatha Christie ... Hall knows how to plant clues and red herrings. Only he's a lot funnier."
--Denver Post & Rocky Mountain News

"First-class fun from start to finish."
--Booklist

Read an excerpt from Hitman and learn more about the book at the author's website.

The Page 69 Test: Hitman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: James R. Benn's "The First Wave"

Today's feature at the Page 99 Test: James R. Benn's The First Wave.

About the book, from the author's website:

The pursuit of truth in wartime is never as dangerous as when it forces a choice between the greater good and the life of a loved one. For Lt. Billy Boyle, that choice is as hard as the unforgiving rocky landscape of Algeria where the American Army receives its baptism of fire in the Second World War. A headquarters staff officer serving with General Eisenhower, Billy finds himself in the lead landing craft of the invasion of French Northwest Africa on a wet November morning in 1942. Having wished for a safe desk job, Billy finds that his police background and family connections have instead landed him in the role of Special Investigator charged with looking into low crimes in high places for his “Uncle Ike”. With one mission already under his belt, Billy finds himself in the vanguard of the first invasion of the war and rapidly entangled in French politics as Allied forces attempt to ready themselves for Rommel’s vaunted Afrika Korps. When corpses begin to appear before the Germans have even appeared, Billy is put on the case to find out if the cause is enemy action, or plain old-fashioned greed. Torn between solving this case and finding the missing Diana Seaton, a British spy held by renegade French fascists, Billy seeks a way to deal with both, hoping that “some Frenchie doesn’t put a bullet in my head before I give the Germans and Italians their chance at it.”

The First Wave is a novel about the ultimate choice that war can force on an individual, and how one man struggles to make that choice an honorable one. Billy Boyle tells his story in his unique voice, a reluctant hero slowly coming to grips the moral and physical minefields of the Second World War.

Among the early praise for The First Wave:

"'The First Wave' finds Boyle coming ashore in the 1942 Allied landing in French North Africa. He’s on a dangerous, if vague, mission to rally support from officers in the Vichy government forces in Algiers and to free a group of French resistance fighters, his English girlfriend among them. A better cop than secret agent, Boyle also gets wind of a smuggling ring that’s depriving soldiers of the new miracle drug, penicillin, and during the course of his investigation discovers that even in the middle of a war a combat hospital offers no refuge from noncombat crimes like drug trafficking, high-stakes gambling, rape and murder. In granting Boyle a measure of maturity, Benn takes care not to put a muzzle on him. The brash kid from Southie is still open, direct and fearless in his manner (and in his wonderfully loose-jointed use of the English language) and in no danger of losing his cover as a “happy-go-lucky Yank.” But even amid the excitement of the spirited wartime storytelling, Benn allows Boyle’s experiences to change him in ways both subtle and dramatic. Becoming sensitized to the status of female officers — paid half the salary of men, unable to issue an order to the lowliest private and denied the dignity of a salute — is one of those subtle ways. Seeing himself from the perspective of a people whose country his own has invaded is a more striking leap for Boyle, as is his new willingness to judge foreigners by their own standards. In one painful moment of introspection, he even questions his family’s rigid beliefs. Where he comes from, that’s real bravery."
--Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review

"Take a young Irish cop. Turn him into a lieutenant on Eisenhower's personal staff ... set him ashore on the coast of French North Africa along with the first wave of invading American troops. And watch the mayhem, mystery, and murder that are bound to follow...Benn follows up his first World War II mystery (Billy Boyle) with another danger-filled episode and delivers a cross-genre tale that is at once spy story, soldier story, and hard-Boyled detective. Bullets, babes, and bombs give Billy Boyle a bad time before he solves the case, but you'll have a good time reading about it. Highly recommended for all mystery collections."
--Library Journal (starred review)

"...combines conventional sleuthing and crackerjack adventure as the body count rises ... and the clock runs down ... Benn's wide-eyed hero retains his appealing earnestness and infectious spirit, and his escapade is refreshingly free of camp."
--Kirkus

"Billy Boyle returns in a rousing adventure.... This series brings alive WWII for me...a very believable, entertaining, and educational read.... I enjoyed the cover art as much as the book, and look forward to the further adventures of Billy."
--Deadly Pleasures Magazine

"A solid follow up to Benn's first novel, The First Wave makes me look forward to his next."
--Robert B. Parker, author of the Spenser, Sunny Randall, and Jesse Stone mystery novels.

"A triple dose of excitement with a murder mystery within a spy thriller within a World War Two adventure story. Benn skillfully transports us to North Africa at the time of the first Allied invasions with likable Boston Irish hero Billy Boyle. This is the kind of old fashioned story that one can describe as a 'rattling good read'."
--Rhys Bowen, Agatha and Anthony Award winning author of the Molly Murphy and Evan Evans mystery series.

"What a great read, full of action, humor and heart. James R. Benn is a remarkable writer and his hero, Billy Boyle, is equally remarkable and memorable. Lieutenant Boyle is a marvelous creation and we're keen to stick with him as he races to solve mysteries in the midst of war. Equal parts spy thriller, war story and murder mystery, with a dollop of romance that's never sweet, this is just a terrific book. More please!"
--Louise Penny, author of A Fatal Grace and winner of the Dilys, New Blood Dagger and Arthur Ellis awards.

"A captivating story that has all the essential elements: murder, espionage, and romance."
--Karen E. Olson, author of the Annie Seymour mystery series

Learn more about the Billy Boyle WWII Mystery Series at James R. Benn's website.

The Page 99 Test: The First Wave.

--Marshal Zeringue

Dalia Sofer's most important books

Dalia Sofer was born in Iran and fled at the age of ten to the United States with her family. She received her MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College in 2002 and has been a resident at Yaddo.

Her debut novel, The Septembers of Shiraz, was published this summer.

She recently told Newsweek about her five most important books.

And she addressed two other book-related issues:

A Certified Important Book you've never read:

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. We're all products of the time we live in and its political events, so I'd like to read it ... but it's just so long.

A book you'd like to share with your children:

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. It's a letter from an aging father to his young son. And it contains all these brilliant ruminations on life, love, religion, friendship and space. And the writing is absolutely crystalline and gorgeous.

Read about Sofer's most important books.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Ken Albala reading?

The latest contributor to Writers Read: Ken Albala, Professor of History at the University of the Pacific and author of a new book, Beans: A History.

About the book, from the publisher:

This is the story of the bean, the staple food cultivated by humans for over 10,000 years. From the lentil to the soybean, every civilization on the planet has cultivated its own species of bean.

The humble bean has always attracted attention - from Pythagoras' notion that the bean hosted a human soul to St. Jerome's indictment against bean-eating in convents (because they "tickle the genitals"), to current research into the deadly toxins contained in the most commonly eaten beans.

Over time, the bean has been both scorned as "poor man's meat" and praised as health-giving, even patriotic. Attitudes to this most basic of foodstuffs have always revealed a great deal about a society.

Beans: A History takes the reader on a fascinating journey across cuisines and cultures.

Among the praise for Beans:

"A vividly entertaining history of the humble bean takes the reader on a curious, surprising and exciting journey across epochs, continents and cultures."
--Raymond Blanc

"Who ever knew that beans were so complicated and interesting. Told in fascinating detail by Ken Albala, Beans: A History is an instructional book that reads like a novel."
--Charlie Palmer

"Here is the first biography of beans, presented by Ken Albala in vivid prose. Gut-buster or aphrodisiac, lowly legume or savior of civilization, the bean is more significant than we ever realized."
--Darra Goldstein, Editor-in-Chief of Gastronomica

"Lucky Beans, who have at last found their Homer. Who knew that the history of the Western world and parts of Asia, could be illumined through the evolution of the lowly bean in its multiple forms from fava to soy? No one is better equipped than this skilled historian to wrap history, science, legend, folklore and fakelore in an entertaining narrative that delights while it informs. This is the most digestible bean dish I've ever encountered and all I want is more."
--Betty Fussell, author of The Story of Corn and I Hear America Cooking: The Cooks and Recipes of American Regional Cuisine

"Beans is a lyrical book. It is a tale well told, filled with unusual twists and turns, with surprises popping up in almost every paragraph."
--Andrew F. Smith, editor of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America

"Fresh and engaging from the start ... A must have for any serious foodie."
--Telegraph

Ken Albala is Professor of History at the University of the Pacific. His other books include: Eating Right in the Renaissance, University of California Press, 2002; Food in Early Modern Europe, Greenwood Press, 2003; Opening Up North America, with Caroline Cox, Facts on File, 2005; The Banquet: A History of Fine Dining in Western Europe, 1520-1660, University of Illinois Press, 2006; and Cooking in the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Elizabethan England, Greenwood Press, 2006.

Visit his blog, Ken Albala's Food Rant.

Tracie McMillan interviewed Albala about Beans for Salon.

Writers Read: Ken Albala.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: "An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Brock Clarke's An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England.

About the book, from the official website:

“I, Sam Pulsifer, would like you to know that I take full responsibility for burning down the home of Emily Dickinson. However, I cannot take credit for the other literary blazes that were inspired by mine. At least, I don't think I can.”

As a teenager, it was never Sam Pulsifer’s intention to torch an American landmark. He certainly never planned to kill two people in the blaze. To this day, he still wonders why that young couple was upstairs in bed in the Emily Dickinson house after hours.

After serving ten years in prison for his crime, Sam is determined to put the past behind him. He finishes college, begins a career, falls in love, gets married, has two adorable kids, and buys a nice home. His low-profile life is chugging along quite nicely until the past comes crashing through his front door.

As the homes of Robert Frost, Edith Wharton, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and even a replica of Henry David Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond go up in smoke, Sam becomes the number one suspect. Finding the real culprit is the only way to clear his name — but sometimes there’s a terrible price to pay for the truth.

An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England is a literary tour de force — a brilliant skewering of every memoir every written and a novel that will have readers underlining their favorite passages and reading them aloud.

Among the early praise for the novel:

"Funny, profound . . . Larded with grabby aphorisms . . . memorable images and bittersweet epiphanies, Clarke's novel is an agile melding of faux-memoir and mystery. Spot-on timing gives it snap, and a rich sense of perversity ... lends texture. It's a seductive book with a payoff on every page."
—People Magazine ("Critic's Choice," four-stars)

"Clarke's novel sizzles. . . . This straight-faced, postmodern comedy scorches all things literary, from those moldy author museums to the excruciating question-and-answer sessions that follow public readings... They're all singed under Clarke's crisp wit.... [An Arsonist's Guide] is written in an innocent, deadpan voice, packed full of Sam [Pulsifer]'s bittersweet observations and fueled by Clarke's satire.... Literature, Clarke suggests in this witty lament, is somehow the pain and salve of our lives. We're drawn to stories like a moth to you know what."
—Washington Post Book World

"Wildly, unpredictably funny.... An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England is as cheerfully oddball as its title. Its cover art includes a tiny cartoon sketch of a green-frocked literary lioness garlanded in flames, and that captures the irreverence of the author, Brock Clarke's, enterprise. Although it is his fourth book, it feels like the bright debut of an ingeniously arch humorist, one whose hallmark is a calm approach to insanely improbable behavior.... The parodies here are priceless ... Sharp-edged and unpredictable, punctuated by moments of choice absurdist humor."
—Janet Maslin, New York Times

"This absurdly hilarious mystery about a bumbler's guilt-consumed life skewers the whole memoir thing and offers a fact/fiction-blurring meditation on the risky business of self-deception.... A searingly funny book. Grade: A-"
—Entertainment Weekly

Read an excerpt from An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England and learn more about the book at the official website.

Brock Clarke is the author of The Ordinary White Boy, What We Won’t Do, and Carrying the Torch. He has twice been a finalist for a National Magazine Award in Fiction. His work has appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, OneStory, the Believer, the Georgia Review, and the Southern Review; in the Pushcart Prize and New Stories from the South anthologies; and on NPR’s Selected Shorts. He teaches creative writing at the University of Cincinnati.

The Page 99 Test: An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Eric Stone's "Grave Imports"

Today's feature at the Page 69 Test: Eric Stone's Grave Imports.

About the book, from the author's website:

A routine investigation into a Chinese art supplies company unearths a smuggling ring. The trail leads through a warehouse filled with looted antiquities in the boomtown of Shenzhen, just north of Hong Kong; to the lair of a vicious ex-South Vietnamese general now living in Thailand; and finally to the murderous Khmer Rouge in the ancient temples and more recent killing fields of Cambodia. Based on the sordid facts of the illegal trade in stolen Cambodian art, Grave Imports is a hotpot of high adventure in exotic locales, fascinating characters, international commerce, terrible crime and one mixed-up, reluctant hero trying to shed light into some of the darkest corners of Asia.

Among the early praise for Grave Imports:

"Ray Sharp (The Living Room of the Dead) earns a living investigating Asian companies as possible investments for U.S. businesses. A routine probe into a Chinese art-supplies company has Ray following an antiquities smuggling ring from Hong Kong to mainland China to Cambodia. It is 1995, and art smuggling is a money maker for a Vietnamese ex-general, the Khmer Rouge, and every lowlife in Southeast Asia. What starts as a fast-paced thriller turns into a deeper social novel concerned with poverty, slavery, and the best and worst of the human condition. This will appeal to fans of John Burdett and Colin Cotterill, as well as patrons who enjoy exotic Asian settings and a mystery plot with some substance."
—Library Journal (starred review)

"A complacent reader will not get the full affect of books such as Grave Imports. It is a mystery/thriller but it is also a commentary on the modern world, its foibles and its fancies. The world seen through Ray Sharp's eyes is not a pretty world, it is not nice and heart, but it has heart and hope. The story starts with a statue of heads, it ends in a temple of a head — a fitting symbol of this thriller for the thinking man."
—Front Street Reviews

"The exotic and dangerous East comes to vibrant life in Grave Imports by Eric Stone. Bristling with fascinating details about culture, customs, and history, the story hurls the reader on a violent journey into the dark underworld of illicit art transportation and sales. Relax into your favorite easy chair. You're in for a wild and riveting ride."
—Gayle Lynds, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Spymaster

"Eric Stone knows Asia up, down, and sideways, all of which are positions his characters find themselves in. He takes you to places so riveting, through the eyes of people so appealing, it makes you wish you were in on the action, running with them through the streets of Hong Kong, Bangkok, and everywhere else they go."
—SJ Rozan, Edgar Award winning author of In This Rain

"A multi-course Asian feast of a novel, Grave Imports is an engaging odyssey into a world of exotic plunder, where heritage and humanity are sold down the river by zealous warlords and high-living thugs. Dig in, savor the spice, and come back for seconds."
—Dan Fesperman, author of The Prisoner of Guantanamo

"Grave Imports is a terrific read. Stone's keen eye for the Asian landscape always finds the compelling image, the startling fact. The story is harrowing and believable. And his hero, Sharp, is a refreshingly humble soldier in his fight against what is wrong and evil in the world."
—T. Jefferson Parker, author of L.A. Outlaws

"Gangster genocidal revolutionaries, greedy gangster generals, and an assortment of well-heeled graspers and ruthless anglers plague Stone's Ray Sharp in Grave Imports as the hustle is on in the underground market of rarified antiquities. Sharp, who slips between the gloss and the back alleys of Asia, may not have an inside line with the Buddha, but he knows it's the past that anchors us to our sins, and it's in how we try to make it right in the present that counts."
—Gary Phillips, author of Bangers and Citizen Kang

"In this intriguing tale of loss and redemption, Eric Stone takes the reader on a wild ride through the ruined temples, sordid back alleys, and the damaged soul of Cambodia. Grave Imports is a smart and compelling thriller."
—Dianne Emley, author of Cut to the Quick

Read an excerpt from Grave Imports and learn more about book and author at Eric Stone's website.

The Page 69 Test: Grave Imports.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Proust’s Lesbianism," the movie

The current feature at My Book, The Movie: Elisabeth Ladenson's Proust’s Lesbianism.

Ladenson's entry opens:

I have always been amazed that Hollywood had not until now recognized the tremendous cinematic potential of academic literary criticism.

She then explains how this (hypothetical, for now) film adaptation will happen and who will star in it. One of my favorite screenwriters gets the gig on this project, too. Read on.

Proust’s Lesbianism (Cornell University Press, 1999), has been described by one reviewer as “a breakthrough for gender studies, gay and lesbian studies, queer theory, and Proust studies," and has been published in French translation as Proust lesbian (Epel, 2004) with a preface by Antoine Compagnon.

About the book, from the publisher:

For decades, Elisabeth Ladenson says, critics have misread or ignored a crucial element in Marcel Proust’s fiction -- his representation of lesbians. Her challenging new book definitively establishes the centrality of lesbianism as sexual obsession and aesthetic model in Proust’s vast novel A la recherche du temps perdu.

Traditional readings of the Recherche have dismissed Proust’s “Gomorrah” — his term for women who love other women — as a veiled portrayal of the novelist’s own homosexuality. More recently, “queer-positive” rereadings have viewed the novel’s treatment of female sexuality as ancillary to its accounts of Sodom and its meditations on time and memory. Ladenson instead demonstrates the primacy of lesbianism to the novel, showing that Proust’s lesbians are the only characters to achieve a plenitude of reciprocated desire. The example of Sodom, by contrast, is characterized by frustrated longing and self-loathing. She locates the work’s paradigm of hermetic relations between women in the self-sufficient bond between the narrator’s mother and grandmother. Ladenson traces Proust’s depictions of male and female homosexuality from his early work onward, and contextualizes his account of lesbianism in late-nineteenth-century sexology and early twentieth-century thought.

A vital contribution to the fields of queer theory and of French literature and culture, Ladenson’s book marks a new stage in Proust studies and provides a fascinating chapter in the history of a literary masterpiece’s reception.

Among the praise for Proust’s Lesbianism:

"Carefully orchestrated.... Ladenson scours Proust's early work ... and converts the scattered evidence of lesbianism into a genuinely thought-provoking synthesis."
—TLS

"A remarkably close reading of Proust's remarkably long novel, Ladenson's persuasive book will change the way we interpret Á la recherche du temps perdu.... Ladenson's prose is also quite gratifying to read — a rare thing in the Academy that makes this erudite book both provocative and immensely entertaining."
—Virginia Quarterly Review

"Through a series of finely articulated, close re-readings of Proust's Recherche, this book . . . provides us with what amounts to be no less than a systematic reassessment of the novel's entire sexual economy, the cornerstone of which being precisely what has been so far mostly ignored or dismissed by critics: Proust's representation of female homosexuality. A brilliant contribution to both the field of queer studies and Proustian criticism."
—Eugene Nicole, Modern & Contemporary France

"Elisabeth Ladenson has written the sort of book we all dream of writing -- a book that figures something out no one has understood before but in a manner so utterly persuasive that afterward its point seems to go without saying. After reading Proust's Lesbianism, the reader says, 'but of course,' to what in all the decades of reading Proust no one had been able to see. On top of its completely convincing argument, the book is so gracefully written, so elegant and clear that it makes what Ladenson has achieved seem simple, deceptively simple. Ladenson has managed to produce a book of scholarship that is a pleasure to read, a major contribution to knowledge, and a complete tour de force. I'm green with envy."
—Jane Gallop, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Elisabeth Ladenson is Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.

Earlier this year she applied the Page 69 Test to her latest book, Dirt for Art's Sake: Books on Trial from Madame Bovary to Lolita.

The Page 69 Test: Dirt for Art's Sake.

My Book, The Movie: Proust’s Lesbianism.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Philip Gordon's "Winning the Right War"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Philip Gordon's Winning the Right War: The Path to Security for America and the World.

About the book, from the publisher:

A new strategy for American foreign policy that looks beyond Iraq and changes the way we think about the war on terror.

Six years into the “war on terror,” are the United States and its allies better off than we were before it started? Sadly, we are not, and the reason is that we have been fighting – and losing – the wrong war.

In this paradigm-shifting book, Philip H. Gordon presents a new way of thinking about the war on terror and a new strategy for winning it. He draws a provocative parallel between the world today and the world of the Cold War, showing how defense, development, diplomacy, and the determination to maintain our own values can again be deployed alongside military might to defeat a violent and insidious ideology. Drawing on the latest scholarly research, his own experience in the White House, and visits to more than forty countries, he provides fresh insights into the nature of the terrorist challenge and offers concrete and realistic proposals for confronting it.

Gordon also asks the question “What would victory look like?” – a topic sorely missing from the debate today. He offers a positive vision of the world after the war on terror, which will end not when we kill or capture all potential terrorists but when their hateful ideology collapses around them, when extremists become isolated in their own communities, and when Americans and their allies will again feel safe. His vision for promoting these goals is achievable and realistic, but only if the United States changes course before it is too late. As we look beyond the presidency of George W. Bush, we must seize the opportunity to chart a new course to security for America, the West, and the world at large. The stakes could not be higher.

Among the early praise for the book:

“A powerful critique of, and a sound strategic alternative to, the flawed assumptions and self-defeating prescriptions of George W. Bush’s misguided and mislabeled ‘war on terror.’”
—Zbigniew Brzezinski, former U.S. national security adviser and author of Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower

“Philip H. Gordon offers wise advice on how to think about the threats and challenges facing the United States in the wake of the Iraq disaster. He puts forward a clear vision of a less militarized foreign policy that actually stands a chance of reducing the numbers of enemies we face, rather than increasing them as we have done in the recent past.”
—Francis Fukuyama, author of America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy

“Philip H. Gordon has written an absolutely brilliant book, informed by a deep understanding of the successes and failures of U.S. foreign policy since World War II. Winning the Right War is the most clearly argued critique yet of the Bush administration’s flawed approach to defeating jihadist terrorism. It shows how the United States can contain – and ultimately defeat – the terrorists who would destroy us.”
—Peter Bergen, author of The Osama bin Laden I Know and Holy War, Inc.

“After four years of war in Iraq, the resurgence of Al Qaeda, and a steadily diminishing influence in the world, the United States needs a strategy for recovery. This book provides it. Philip H. Gordon’s prescription is prudent, deeply informed, and workable. The next administration would be wise to take this strategy as a starting point for the way forward.”
—Steven Simon, senior fellow, Council on Foreign Relations, and coauthor of The Age of Sacred Terror and The Next Attack

“‘Either you’re with us or you’re with the terrorists.’ This was President Bush’s challenge to the rest of the world in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Over the succeeding six years his administration’s conduct of the ‘global war on terror’ has managed to push hundreds of millions of Muslims onto the wrong side of that divide. Drawing upon America’s successful conduct of the Cold War, Philip H. Gordon suggests how this competition must be radically recast if the extremists are to be marginalized and the terrorists rejected by their own societies.”
—James Dobbins, director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at RAND, and former U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan

Read an excerpt from Winning the Right War and learn more about the book at the publisher's website.

Philip H. Gordon is the senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at The Brookings Institution, having previously served on the National Security Council staff as director for European affairs. He is the author or co-author of five books on international affairs and U.S. foreign policy, and his articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Foreign Affairs.

The Page 99 Test: Winning the Right War.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Nicholas Thompson reading?

The latest contributor to Writers Read: Nicholas Thompson, a senior editor at Wired Magazine who has also worked for Legal Affairs, the New America Foundation, and The Washington Monthly.

One book he tagged:

Richard Rhodes's Arsenals of Folly, the third part in his epic cycle about the Cold War. It covers a lot of the same ground that I'm covering in my book on Paul Nitze and George Kennan -- and it covers it quite well. The structure is a little jarring: he opens with a chapter on Chernobyl, takes one through the life of Gorbachev, and then begins a narrative about US policy from Truman through the end of the conflict. It's very good. If it's not as strong as The Making of the Atomic Bomb, that's setting a rather high standard. [read on]

Thompson's book on George Kennan, Paul Nitze, and the Cold War is scheduled to come out in 2009, published by Henry Holt. Among the articles he's written based on it: "Mirror Image: Could Iraq Be Vietnam in Reverse? What George F. Kennan's 1966 Senate Testimony Can Tell Us About Iraq in 2006."

Visit Nick Thompson's website.

Writers Read: Nicholas Thompson

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Matthew Pearl's "The Poe Shadow"

Today's feature at the Page 99 Test: Matthew Pearl's The Poe Shadow.

About the novel, from the publisher:

“I present to you ... the truth about this man’s death and my life.”

Baltimore, 1849. The body of Edgar Allan Poe has been buried in an unmarked grave. The public, the press, and even Poe’s own family and friends accept the conclusion that Poe was a second-rate writer who met a disgraceful end as a drunkard. Everyone, in fact, seems to believe this except a young Baltimore lawyer named Quentin Clark, an ardent admirer who puts his own career and reputation at risk in a passionate crusade to salvage Poe’s.

As Quentin explores the puzzling circumstances of Poe’s demise, he discovers that the writer’s last days are riddled with unanswered questions the police are possibly willfully ignoring. Just when Poe’s death seems destined to remain a mystery, and forever sealing his ignominy, inspiration strikes Quentin – in the form of Poe’s own stories. The young attorney realizes that he must find the one person who can solve the strange case of Poe’s death: the real-life model for Poe’s brilliant fictional detective character, C. Auguste Dupin, the hero of ingenious tales of crime and detection.

In short order, Quentin finds himself enmeshed in sinister machinations involving political agents, a female assassin, the corrupt Baltimore slave trade, and the lost secrets of Poe’s final hours. With his own future hanging in the balance, Quentin Clark must turn master investigator himself to unchain his now imperiled fate from that of Poe’s.

Following his phenomenal debut novel, The Dante Club, Matthew Pearl has once again crossed pitch-perfect literary history with innovative mystery to create a beautifully detailed, ingeniously plotted tale of suspense. Pearl’s groundbreaking research–featuring documented material never published before – opens a new window on the truth behind Poe’s demise, literary history’s most persistent enigma. The resulting novel is a publishing event that, through sublime craftsmanship, subtle wit, and devious twists, does honor to Poe himself.

Among the praise for The Poe Shadow:

"To his already prodigious command of mystery and intrigue, Matthew Pearl now adds a deeply genuine affection for and masterly insight into the life, work, and strange fate of Edgar Allan Poe; and the result is an even more compelling work than the extraordinary 'Dante Club,' one that confirms Pearl's position at the very forefront of contemporary novelists."
--Caleb Carr, bestselling author of The Alienist and The Italian Secretary

"Matthew Pearl has now created a two-book franchise on the cusp of mystery, literature and historical fiction. First he worked Longfellow and Oliver Wendell Holmes into 'The Dante Club.' Now, in 'The Poe Shadow,' he teases a globe-trotting 19th century mystery out of this summer's most surprising 'It' guy, Edgar Allan Poe."
--Janet Maslin, CBS Sunday Morning

"Pearl takes us back to those few lost days through the inquiries of Quentin Clark, a Poe-mad young Baltimorean who is dismayed not just by the writer's death but by the press's apathetic reponse to the news... A wonderfully knowing tone... 'The Poe Shadow' is thick with intrigue and thicker still with carefully researched details... He doesn't just disinter Poe's story; he disinters the language of Poe's time."
--New York Times Book Review

"The Poe Shadow belongs firmly in the Dupin/Sherlock mold of cerebral armchair investigations revolving around detailed study of newspapers and the welcome return of inverted clue logic -- not why something is , but why it isn't . This retro-ratiocination breathes refreshing life into the genre by returning to first principles. Beneath the cloak of this well-paced detective story and its understated wit, however, is a scholarly piece of work, a meticulously researched and detailed discussion of the events surrounding Poe's death. In fact, one wonders where reality ends and fiction begins, a question that Pearl dutifully discusses in the afterword. As a period piece the book is gloriously and sumptuously detailed, and if I ever get to Baltimore in the mid-19th century, I daresay I shall not be surprised by what I find."
--Jasper Fforde, Washington Post Book World

Read an excerpt from The Poe Shadow and learn more about the book at Pearl's website.

Check out the MySpace page for Quentin Clark, the protagonist of The Poe Shadow.

Matthew Pearl is the New York Times bestselling author of The Dante Club and The Poe Shadow and the editor of the Modern Library editions of Dante’s Inferno (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) and Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue: The Dupin Tales.

The Page 99 Test: The Poe Shadow.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Mark Billingham's "Buried"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Mark Billingham's Buried.

About the book, from the author's website:

The past is a shallow grave ...

Teenager Luke Mullen is missing. Last seen by schoolmates getting into a car with an older woman, it is unclear whether he has disappeared voluntarily or been abducted.

Police looking for the boy are pretty certain they are dealing with a kidnap. The son of a former police officer, Luke has no history of being out of touch, no track record of truancy or misbehaviour. And they know that the longer he is missing, the more likely he is to turn up dead.

Then the videotape arrives…

On special assignment to the Kidnap Unit, Detective Inspector Tom Thorne searches desperately for the boy, and for anyone who might have a grudge against him or his family. As someone who had put away a lot of tough villains in his time, Luke’s father is asked to come up with some names. A list is drawn up, but it is the omission which intrigues Thorne – a man who threatened ex-DCI Tony Mullen, served his time, and is now the main suspect in an unsolved murder. Has Mullen simply forgotten the man's name in the emotional trauma of his son’s disappearance? Or is he hiding something?

When the kidnapper demonstrates, shockingly, that he is not afraid to kill, Thorne knows he does not have the luxury of time. He must dig hard and deep into past cases and past lives. He learns that secrets are as easily hidden as bodies, and that even if Luke Mullen is still alive, making assumptions is the quickest way to get him dead and buried.

Among the praise for Buried:

"Billingham’s greatest achievement is the steady and relentless orchestration of tension. His thrillers are journeys into the most disturbing aspects of the human psyche."
--The Daily Express

"A masterpiece of plotting, police procedure and criminal insight."
--Daily Mirror

"Mark Billingham is master of a rough-and-tumble crime writing which has liberated itself from the iron hoops of sameness that confine so many police procedurals. What is so impressive is how real his characters are."
--Guardian

"Tom Thorne is the most interesting cop in British crime fiction at present."
--Times (London)

Download the first chapter of Buried.

Mark Billingham's first crime novel Sleepyhead was published in 2001. Featuring London-based detective Tom Thorne, it was an instant bestseller in the UK. The second novel, Scaredy Cat was published in July 2002 and was followed by Lazybones, The Burning Girl, Lifeless and Buried. The newest Tom Thorne novel Death Message was published in the UK in August 2007.

Read Billingham's June 2007 interview with Ali Karim at The Rap Sheet.

The Page 69 Test: Buried.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best: books about fashion

Woody Hochswender, a former features editor of Harper's Bazaar and style reporter for the New York Times, is the author of The Buddha in Your Rearview Mirror. He selected a five best list of books about fashion for Opinion Journal.

One title on his list:

Dressing the Man by Alan Flusser

Men are creatures (and sometimes victims) of fashion, too. While teaching how to select and wear clothes is Alan Flusser's mission in "Dressing the Man," this handsome book's subtitle reflects its subversive philosophy: "Mastering the Art of Permanent Fashion." We tend to think of fashion and permanence as mutually exclusive. But Flusser makes a strong case for certain enduring principles of dress, based on the correct proportions and colors for your frame and face. He offers some of the most detailed how-to's imaginable and illustrates his points by using various paragons of fashion (Cary Grant, Fred Astaire, the Duke of Windsor). This is the one indispensable book on men's fashion. Personal architecture -- that is the starting point of style.

Read more about Hochswender's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: James R. Gaines's "For Liberty And Glory"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: James R. Gaines's For Liberty and Glory: Washington, Lafayette, and Their Revolutions.

About the book, from the publisher:

They began as courtiers in a hierarchy of privilege, but history remembers them as patriot-citizens in a commonwealth of equals.

On April 18, 1775, a riot over the price of flour broke out in the French city of Dijon. That night, across the Atlantic, Paul Revere mounted the fastest horse he could find and kicked it into a gallop.

So began what have been called the “sister revolutions” of France and America. In a single, thrilling narrative, this book tells the story of those revolutions and shows just how deeply intertwined they actually were. Their leaders, George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette, were often seen as father and son, but their relationship, while close, was every bit as complex as the long, fraught history of the French-American alliance. Vain, tough, ambitious, they strove to shape their characters and records into the form they wanted history to remember. James R. Gaines provides fascinating insights into these personal transformations and is equally brilliant at showing the extraordinary effect of the two “freedom fighters” on subsequent history.

Among the advance praise for the book:

"This is history that's hard to put down. With the insight of a masterful historian, James R. Gaines has woven a fascinating portrait of two remarkable men into a vivid evocation of an era. He has created a book that makes you remember with nostalgia that America was once the symbol of freedom to the world."
—Robert A. Caro, author of Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson

"Though a stoic frontiersman from Virginia and a hot-blooded French teen aristocrat seem like improbable allies, George Washington and Marquis de Lafayette formed an unusually strong bond.... Gaines adroitly weaves their lives into the larger historical narrative, devoting equal time to military strategy and colorful characters like the chevalier d'Eon, a cross-dressing spy. A-"
—Michelle Kung, Entertainment Weekly

"Exciting, well-wrought narrative strikes a terrific balance between George Washington's stoic endeavors to galvanize a new American republic and the Marquis de Lafayette's efforts to foment ideas of liberty and equality in despotic France.... A marvelous reliving of history through the lives of two key players who were also devoted friends."
—Kirkus Reviews

"James Gaines' new book elegantly portrays the two great republican revolutions of the late 18th Century -- and reminds America the debt it owes to France in gaining its liberty.... His portrait of the relentlessly optimistic Lafayette, swept away by the excesses of the French Revolution and driven into prison and exile, is poignant."
—Evan Thomas, Newsweek

Read an excerpt from For Liberty and Glory and learn more about the book and author from Gaines's website and the publisher's website.

James R. Gaines is a longtime journalist, magazine editor, publishing executive, media consultant, and author. His books include Wit's End: Days and Nights of the Algonquin Round Table and Evening in the Palace of Reason.

The Page 69 Test: For Liberty and Glory.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Aurelie Sheehan's "History Lesson for Girls"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Aurelie Sheehan's History Lesson for Girls.

About the book, from the publisher:

A beautiful and resonant novel about a friendship that shaped a life during a decade of instability

Everyone remembers age thirteen. For Alison Glass, it was 1975, the year she moved to Weston, Connecticut, with her bohemian parents and her horse, Jazz. Life was about trying to navigate the hypocrisies of an unfamiliar affluent town and figuring out how she might blend in at school — despite her status as the new girl with a back brace for scoliosis. Kate Hamilton, the popular daughter of an egomaniacal New Age guru — the "sham shaman" — and his substance-loving wife, was an unlikely friend, the strong girl Alison regarded as her saving grace. Bonding over their love of horses, they rode away the afternoons, creating a private world for themselves as a way to survive the excesses of their surroundings and the adults who cast them adrift in such a tumultuous time. With the clarity of hindsight, Alison looks back on how the tumult inevitably broke through.

Set against the backdrop of the often hilariously tacky and disturbingly reckless 1970s, Aurelie Sheehan's luminous History Lesson for Girls is at once an emotional inquest and an elegy for a friendship that meant everything. As Alison traces the giddy highs and crushing lows that made her the person she was at thirteen, a picture emerges of a friendship that simply couldn't survive the weight of the shadows under which it was forged. Combining the poignancy and elegance of The Virgin Suicides with the sharp observational eye of The Ice Storm, History Lesson for Girls is an enchanting tribute to the lingering influence of friendship and significance of personal history.

Among the praise for the novel:

"[Sheehan's] language remains carefully off-kilter, gorgeously specific and shot through with unobtrusive wit."
--Kirkus Reviews

"A tender, unflinching, and distinctive view of how girls grow up."
--Booklist

Read an excerpt from History Lesson for Girls, and learn more about the book at the publisher's website.

Aurelie Sheehan is the author of a collection of short stories, Jack Kerouac Is Pregnant, and another novel, The Anxiety of Everyday Objects. She has received a Pushcart Prize, a Carmargo Fellowship, and the Jack Kerouac Literary Award.

The Page 99 Test: History Lesson for Girls.

--Marshal Zeringue