Coffee with a canine: Chris Knopf & Sam

Hard Stop, Chris Knopf's fourth and latest Hamptons Mystery novel, is now available from booksellers everywhere.

Kirkus called protagonist Sam Acquillo an "appealing hero" who is complemented by "a colorful entourage that includes endearing Eddie, the anti-Marley dog, mak[ing] for a lively and entertaining mix."

"Eddie, the anti-Marley dog" is more formally known as Eddie van Halen, and he shares certain character traits with Knopf's 9-year-old soft-coated Wheaten terrier, Sam, who is named after Samuel Beckett, another famous Irish existentialist.

Knopf and Sam are featured in the inaugural post of my new blog, Coffee with a Canine.

Learn more about Sam and Chris at Chris Knopf's website.

Read--Coffee with a canine: Chris Knopf & Sam.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Robert Dugoni's "Wrongful Death"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Wrongful Death by Robert Dugoni.

About the book, from the publisher:

Just minutes after winning a $1.6 million wrongful-death verdict, attorney David Sloane confronts the one case that threatens to blemish his unbeaten record in the courtroom. Beverly Ford wants Sloane to sue the United States government and military in the mysterious death of her husband, James, a national guardsman killed in Iraq. While a decades-old military doctrine might make Ford's case impossible to win, Sloane, a former soldier himself, is compelled to find justice for the widow and her four children in what is certain to become the biggest challenge of his career.

With little hard evidence to go on, Sloane calls on his friend, reclusive former CIA agent turned private investigator Charles Jenkins, to track down the other men serving with Ford the night he died. Alarmingly, two of the four who returned home alive didn't stay that way for long, and though the mission's wheelchairbound commander now works for a civilian contractor, he refuses to talk. The final -- and youngest -- soldier is also the most elusive, but he's their only shot at discovering the truth -- if Sloane and Jenkins can keep him alive long enough to tell it.

Meanwhile, Sloane isn't the only one on a manhunt. As he propels his case into a federal courtroom, those seeking to hide the truth threaten Sloane's family, forcing his new wife Tina and stepson Jake into hiding, where they become the targets of a relentless killer. Now Sloane must race to uncover what really happened on that fatal mission, not only to bring justice to a family wronged but to keep himself and the people closest to him from becoming the next casualties...

Read an excerpt from Wrongful Death, and learn more about the book and author at Robert Dugoni's website and blog.

Robert Dugoni is the New York Times bestselling author of The Jury Master and Damage Control.

The Page 69 Test: Wrongful Death.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best books about criminals

Elliott Gorn, who teaches history and American Civilization at Brown ­University, is the author of Dillinger’s Wild Ride: The Year That Made America’s Public Enemy ­Number One. For the Wall Street Journal, he named a five best list of books about criminals.

One book on the list:

Pickpocket’s Tale
by Timothy Gilfoyle
Norton, 2006

Years ago, historian Timothy Gilfoyle found in the archives the crudely written, 99-page memoir of a minor New York crime figure, George Appo. With “A Pickpocket’s Tale,” Gilfoyle builds a story of the urban demimonde around Appo’s own words. Half Irish and half Chinese, his mother dead and his father in prison, Appo grew up in the notorious Five Points section of Lower Manhattan, where he learned the art of the scam and went on to become a “con artist, a trickster extraordinaire.” Appo’s story is an amazing one, set in brothels and opium dens, night courts and prisons. Gilfoyle skillfully depicts this underworld of poverty and brutality, pluck and luck, against the backdrop of opulent Gilded Age New York.

Read about another book on the list.

See Theodore Dalrymple's list of favorite books on the criminal mind.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Josh Weil reading?

This weekend's featured contributor at Writers Read: Josh Weil, author of The New Valley, three linked novellas.

According to Maureen Howard, in The New Valley Weil's "rendering of place is strong as Flannery O'Connor's; his engagement with the moral landscape of a sorry corner of the country is sure as Cormac McCarthy's. In their contemplation of the past, Weil's characters--earthy, scrappy, often comic--seek restoration, figuratively and literally. These three fine novellas remind us with wit and energy, that we are all in for repair."

Weil's entry begins:

I've noticed this can happen with short story collections, even the best ones: you pick it up, read a few stories, love them, and then something else gets in a way and you never finish the collection. Unless it's really, really good -- and then you pick it back up, maybe a year later, and dive back into it and think: how did I ever set this down? That's where I'm at right now with Don Waters' collection, Desert Gothic. It's set in America's dry, hot, sun-backed places: mostly around Reno, Nevada. And it pulls off darkness and light, heat and chill, as naturally and as cleanly and as inseparably as the desert landscape does. These are stories about grief and loss and the places in us that are hollowed out by both, but Waters manages to dig around those places with a gentleness that makes me want to exist there a little longer with each story, even if it's difficult, even if it's sad. He has lots of talents, but the main three that are striking me as I dive back into this are these: 1. He sees details most of us would miss, and when he points them out they're the kind of thing that feel so vital we'd have missed the whole point without them. 2. In much the same way, the rhythm of his language feels both fresh and natural to the stories. 3. Finally, and most importantly, he hits on that surprising yet absolutely right feeling near the end of each story: he finds ways to bring the stories together with events that are utterly pleasing. What I mean by that is that they are the perfect events to end the story without ever feeling like the easy way out. It's good stuff.

In the year between reading the beginning of Desert Gothic and going back to it, I read three books that blew me away:...[read on]

Josh Weil received his MFA as a Jersey Fellow at Columbia University. His fiction has appeared in numerous literary journals including Granta, Story Quarterly, and New England Review. The New Valley is his first book.

Visit Josh Weil's website.

Writers Read: Josh Weil.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Kyria Abrahams' "I’m Perfect, You’re Doomed"

This weekend's feature at the Page 99 Test: I'm Perfect, You're Doomed: Tales from a Jehovah's Witness Upbringing by Kyria Abrahams.

About the book, from the publisher:

I'm Perfect, You're Doomed is the story of Kyria Abrahams's coming-of-age as a Jehovah's Witness -- a doorbell-ringing "Pioneer of the Lord." Her childhood was haunted by the knowledge that her neighbors and schoolmates were doomed to die in an imminent fiery apocalypse; that Smurfs were evil; that just about anything you could buy at a yard sale was infested by demons; and that Ouija boards -- even if they were manufactured by Parker Brothers -- were portals to hell. Never mind how popular you are when you hand out the Watchtower instead of candy at Halloween.

When Abrahams turned eighteen, things got even stranger. That's when she found herself married to a man she didn't love, with adultery her only way out. "Disfellowshipped" and exiled from the only world she'd ever known, Abrahams realized that the only people who could save her were the very sinners she had prayed would be smitten by God's wrath.

Raucously funny, deeply unsettling, and written with scorching wit and deep compassion, I'm Perfect, You're Doomed explores the ironic absurdity of growing up believing that nothing matters because everything's about to be destroyed.

Read an excerpt from I’m Perfect, You’re Doomed, and learn more about the book and author at Kyria Abrahams' website and blog.

The Page 99 Test: I'm Perfect, You're Doomed.

--Marshal Zeringue

Poetry books: ten best

For the (London) Independent, director of The Poetry Society Judith Palmer named her ten best poetry books.

One title on the list:

Michael Donaghy: Collected Poems

"And when you lick the sweat along my thigh/Dearest, we renew the gift of tongues". A posthumous gathering-together of intimate and witty poems, told by the charming Chicago-Irishman in a conspiratorial whisper: "Ever been tattooed? It takes a whim of iron".

Read about another book on Palmer's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Tom Gabbay's "The Tehran Conviction"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: The Tehran Conviction by Tom Gabbay.

About the book, from the publisher:

Tom Gabbay plots his most riveting tale yet: Agent Jack Teller had to make an ugly choice in his youth ... and now, decades later, he and the United States must deal with the blowback.

Tehran 1953. Jack Teller, a new recruit to the recently established Central Intelligence Agency, finds himself in Iran posing as a high-level American oil executive as part of Operation Ajax, the agency's first attempt to overthrow the government of a sovereign nation. Torn between loyalty to his country's policies and sympathy for the hopes of a fledgling democracy, Jack must ultimately pick which side he will betray. It is a decision that will affect the future of the Middle East and, eventually, the world.

Twenty-six years later, in 1979, Jack returns to a very different Iran. The country is in the grip of a religious revolution, and the streets of the capital city are filled with daily rantings against The Great Satan. Jack's attempt to save one man from Islamic justice—a man whom he had, at one time, called a friend—leads him into the heart of an emerging struggle between the West and a new and dangerous ideology.

Divided by conflicting loyalties, a young Jack Teller made a fateful choice that would reverberate for decades. In The Tehran Conviction, Tom Gabbay masterfully interweaves politics and suspense in a searing tale of espionage and betrayal that reveals the unexpected costs our decisions hold for us—and for history.

Browse inside The Tehran Conviction, and learn more about the author and his Jack Telller novels at Tom Gabbay's website.

Gabbay is the author of The Berlin Conspiracy and The Lisbon Crossing.

The Page 69 Test: The Lisbon Crossing.

The Page 69 Test: The Tehran Conviction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten best apocalypse novels of pre-golden age SF

Joshua Glenn, at io9, named the years 1904-33 SF's Pre-Golden Age (not to be confused with its Pulp Era--i.e., the mid-1920s through the mid-1950s). Then he came up with the era's "ten great novels of the apocalypse."

One book on the list:

Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future (1930). In his awe-inspiring, tragicomic first novel, Stapledon, a British philosopher and progressivist, ventriloquizes the future history of humankind as related to him telepathically by one of the Last Men - alien descendants of ours who will inhabit Neptune, where they'll face extinction as the sun burns out, some two billion years hence. So what does fate hold in store for us, the First Men? Well, the post-WWI "passionate will for peace and a united world" won't last long, Stapledon's narrator informs readers. Within a century aerial bombs and poison gas will have laid waste to Europe (including Russia), leaving the Chinese and Americans to compete for global military and economic domination. Eventually, a World State will be founded, and peace and prosperity will reign... until Earth's natural energy sources get used up! At that point, civilization will collapse and the First Men will devolve into superstitious savages living in the shadow of their ancestors' skyscrapers - "though for the most part they were of course by now little more than pyramids of debris overgrown with grass and brushwood" - until, after nearly 100,000 years, they'll re-civilize themselves and discover atomic energy. Which they'll use, "after a bout of insane monkeying with the machinery," to inadvertantly annihilate all but 35 men and women, whose mutated descendants will be the Second Men. This sort of thing goes on, and on, and on, entertainingly and soberingly, for 18 generations of humankind. Multiple apocalypses, and all for the price of one novel! Read more about Last and First Men in the Homo Superior installment of this series.

Read about another book on Glenn's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Simon Van Booy reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Simon Van Booy, author of The Secret Lives of People in Love and the newly released Love Begins in Winter.

His entry begins:

Lately I have been reading about everything from fashion to Proust, metaphysical investigation to new children's tales. For me, one of the pleasures of reading is pulling from a variety of sources to amalgamate an image of the world and our consciousness of it. Books are ingredients in a recipe that ultimately helps to make up our minds over the course of years of reading. For instance, I have been reading Walt Whitman, whose expansive elegies constitute vast feasts of American life to me. And Guy de Maupaussant, whose delectable stories taste of....[read on]

Visit Simon Van Booy's website.

Writers Read: Simon Van Booy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Wednesday Martin's "Stepmonster"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Stepmonster: The Surprising Truth About Why Real Stepmothers Think, Feel, and Act the Way We Do by Wednesday Martin.

About the book, from the publisher:

A groundbreaking and truly stepmother-centered way of understanding the tensions that seem to define relations between women and their stepchildren

Half of all women in the United States will live with or marry a man with children. And what woman with stepchildren has not—in order to defuse the often overwhelming challenges of the role—referred to herself as a "stepmonster"?

As Hope Edelman does in her book for motherless daughters, Wednesday Martin’s empowering and original Stepmonster unlocks the emotional mysteries of why stepmothers think and feel and act the way they do. Martin draws upon her own experience as a stepmother, interviews with other stepmothers and stepchildren, and fascinating insights from literature, anthropology, psychology, and evolutionary biology to reveal the little-understood realities of this most demanding role.

Stepmonster illuminates the harrowing process of becoming a stepmother, considers the myths and realities of being married to a man with children, counteracts the cultural notion that stepmothers are solely responsible for the challenges they encounter, identifies the "Five Step-Dilemmas That Create Conflict," and considers the emotional and social challenges men with children face when they remarry.

Finally, in an unexpected twist, Martin shows why the myth of the Wicked Stepmother is our single best tool for understanding who real stepmothers are and how they feel.

Read an excerpt from Stepmonster, and learn more about the book and author at Wednesday Martin's website and blog.

The Page 99 Test: Stepmonster.

--Marshal Zeringue

R. A. Riekki's "U.P.," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: U.P. by Ron Riekki.

The entry begins:

Tonight I walked my first red carpet. I was supposed to go with a gangsta rapper whose sister won Last Comic Standing, but he cancelled last minute, so I found myself alone at an awards show at Universal being introduced by a handler as “author Ron Riekki. He’s awesome.” I laughed each time a photo was taken. There was some guy with a cane who was supposedly heir to a billion dollar oil fortune and Dean Cain, a.k.a. Superman, talking humbly about his son and then me.

I moved to L.A. because I do have dreams of U.P. being a film. Two reasons why I’ve been confident it could happen are that the book has been Ghost Road Press’s fiction bestseller for fourteen weeks and because a friend whose opinion I respect—Rafael Alvarez (writer for HBO’s The Wire)—put the idea in my head of it being a film. Well, being here helps take things a step closer. Now it’s destiny. I figure Barfly would never have been made if Bukowski lived his life in Opelika, Alabama, so here I am ... afterwards eating free gourmet macaroni and cheese, nursing a recommended Merlot, and chatting with a producer who wanted to hear about the novel. I pitched it was full of strong roles for young actors, where they’d get to play the type of roles they tend to desire, the sort of vibrant character roles you find in Snatch or Pulp Fiction. He took my card. We’ll see.

On the drive home, I thought about this article, the recent red carpet memories showing that things can happen if you make yourself available for them to happen.

The novel’s written in four distinctive voices, four high schoolers trying to survive a brutal Michigan winter and a violent act by a local bully. For Cräig, a metalhead who insists everyone put an umlaut in his name, I imagine...[read on]

Visit Ron Riekki's website.

Writers Read: Ron Riekki.

My Book, The Movie: U.P..

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten environmental disaster stories

Liz Jensen's latest novel, The Rapture, is an ecological thriller about a psychotic teenage girl who warns of an earth-changing cataclysm. Available now in the U.K., The Rapture arrives in America in August.

Among the early praise for The Rapture:

“In this modern world of religious warfare and global warming, The Rapture is as topical as it is thrilling. Beautifully written, haunting, and thoroughly entertaining. The gripping tension of Lost mixed with the poetic poignancy of The Bell Jar. I simply could not stop turning pages.”
—Matthew Quick, author of the Silver Linings Playbook

"Liz Jensen's exciting thriller often feels as frightening and prophetic as the sixteen-year-old girl at its center. The Rapture is a terrific novel, expertly written, thought-provoking, and deeply unsettling."
—Kevin Guilfoile, author of Cast of Shadows

Jensen named her top 10 environmental disaster stories for the Guardian.

One novel on the list:

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Post-apocalyptic fiction doesn't come much bleaker, or more finely written, than this. A father and his son must cross a landscape devastated by an unnamed cataclysm, and learn the full horror of what some will do to stay alive. A stern, painful, haunting fable of a world beyond the brink, from one of America's greatest living writers.

Read about another novel on Jensen's list.

Other fans of The Road include Paulette Jiles, Joshua Clark, David Dobbs, Andrew Pyper, Dan Rather, Jim Lehrer, Michael J. Fox, Mark McGurl, and this guy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Anthony Neil Smith's "Hogdoggin’"

Today's feature at the Page 69 Test: Hogdoggin’ by Anthony Neil Smith.

About the book, from the publisher:

Former Deputy Billy Lafitte is a no-good, crap-for-brains, despicable and dangerous traitor — Special Agent Franklin Rome is sure of it. So sure, in fact, that he’s willing to investigate outside departmental bounds. Willing to blackmail and bribe his fellow lawmen into helping him. Willing to ferret Lafitte out of whatever snake-hole he’s hidden himself in, and do what the too-lax government wouldn’t let him do back in Yellow Medicine county, just months ago…

And Rome’s plan is working. Squeeze a man’s ex-wife, especially an ex-wife as unstable as Ginny Lafitte, and watch her overprotective man appear from thin air to stand by his family. No matter that Rome’s had to bend a few rules in order to make it happen; Billy’s end will justify Rome’s means.

Of course, Rome didn’t count on Billy riding in to save the day on a turquoise motorcycle — with a beard, fifty extra pounds of muscle, and the weight of a man named Steel God at his back. Nor did he think Billy would go and get himself caught up with paint-huffing, knife-wielding rednecks. And Rome certainly never predicted that a broken-hearted, vengeful woman named Colleen would be just as hot for Lafitte’s blood as he is …

Visit Anthony Neil Smith's website and MySpace page.

Anthony Neil Smith is also the editor of Plots With Guns and the author of Pyschosomatic, The Drummer, and Yellow Medicine.

"My Book, The Movie" -- Pyschosomatic.

The Page 69 Test: Yellow Medicine.

The Page 69 Test: Hogdoggin’.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Donna Jo Napoli reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Donna Jo Napoli, the award-winning author of many distinguished books for young readers, including The King of Mulberry Street, Daughter of Venice, and the newly released Alligator Bayou. She is also a professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College.

Her recent reading includes a book which prompted this revelation:

I'm writing a book set in India in the 1500s -- and modern books, you might think, would not help me in the least. But I think this book does help because of exactly that -- the steeping in a culture that holds onto ancient ways beside the modern. Also, quite incidentally, the book is riddled with misery -- and I love misery.[read on]

Visit Donna Jo Napoli's website.

Writers Read: Donna Jo Napoli.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Michèle Lamont's "How Professors Think"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment by Michèle Lamont.

About the book, from the publisher:

Excellence. Originality. Intelligence. Everyone in academia stresses quality. But what exactly is it, and how do professors identify it?

In the academic evaluation system known as “peer review,” highly respected professors pass judgment, usually confidentially, on the work of others. But only those present in the deliberative chambers know exactly what is said. Michèle Lamont observed deliberations for fellowships and research grants, and interviewed panel members at length. In How Professors Think, she reveals what she discovered about this secretive, powerful, peculiar world.

Anthropologists, political scientists, literary scholars, economists, historians, and philosophers don’t share the same standards. Economists prefer mathematical models, historians favor different kinds of evidence, and philosophers don’t care much if only other philosophers understand them. But when they come together for peer assessment, academics are expected to explain their criteria, respect each other’s expertise, and guard against admiring only work that resembles their own. They must decide: Is the research original and important? Brave, or glib? Timely, or merely trendy? Pro-diversity or interdisciplinary enough?

Judging quality isn’t robotically rational; it’s emotional, cognitive, and social, too. Yet most academics’ self-respect is rooted in their ability to analyze complexity and recognize quality, in order to come to the fairest decisions about that elusive god, “excellence.” In How Professors Think, Lamont aims to illuminate the confidential process of evaluation and to push the gatekeepers to both better understand and perform their role.

Read an excerpt from How Professors Think, and learn more about the book at the Harvard University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: How Professors Think.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top five faked memoirs

Benjamin Radford is a writer, investigator, and managing editor for Skeptical Inquirer science magazine. His Bad Science column appears regularly on LiveScience.

For LiveScience, he named his top five faked memoirs.

One book on the list:

"A Million Little Pieces," by James Frey

The most high-profile Oprah-endorsed fiction parading as memoir, James Frey's best-seller "A Million Little Pieces" told the moving story of a young alcoholic drug abuser who struggles to get clean and sober in a treatment center. The 2003 book was praised by many and heavily promoted in Oprah's book club before being revealed as largely faked. Frey's publishers at first defended the book, but as evidence mounted that much of it had been fabricated, they offered refunds for fiction sold as fact and added disclaimers to later editions.

Read about another title on Radford's list.

Also see Iain Finlayson's critic's chart of the best faked memoirs.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Kristina Riggle's "Real Life & Liars"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Real Life & Liars by Kristina Riggle.

About the book, from the publisher:

Sometimes you find happiness where, and when, you least expect it.

For Mirabelle Zielinski's children, happiness always seems to be just out of reach. Her polished oldest daughter, Katya, clings to a stale marriage with a workaholic husband and three spoiled children. Her son, Ivan, so creative, is a down-in-the-dumps songwriter with the worst taste in women. And the "baby," impulsive Irina, who lives life on a whim, is now reluctantly pregnant and hitched to a man who is twice her age. On the weekend of their parents' anniversary party, lies will be revealed, hearts will be broken...but love will also be found. And the biggest shock may come from Mirabelle herself, because she has a secret that will change everything.

Browse inside Real Life & Liars, and learn more about the book and author at Kristina Riggle's website.

Writers Read: Kristina Riggle.

The Page 69 Test: Real Life & Liars.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Pat Shipman reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Pat Shipman, author of Femme Fatale: Love, Lies, and the Unknown Life of Mata Hari.

Her entry begins:

I am re-reading Pat Barker's trilogy about World War I: Regeneration, The Eye in the Door, and Ghost Road. Not only is the writing beautiful and effective, but Barker's insights into the meaning of war for the soldier, the officer, and the ones left at home is brilliant. Besides, I can think of no two more fascinating people in history than W.H. Rivers, the psychologist and anthropologist, and his patient Siegfried Sassoon, the WWI poet, officer, and war protester. Their interaction in the first book as Rivers treats Sassoon (and others) for "mental illness," which in Sassoon's case is justifiable anguish over the horrors of an ill-defined war, is superb.

For those who...[read on]

Pat Shipman's books include To the Heart of the Nile, The Man Who Found the Missing Link, and Taking Wing, which won the Phi Beta Kappa Prize for science and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award and named a New York Times Notable Book for 1998.

Browse inside Femme Fatale, and learn more about the book at the publisher's website.

The Page 99 Test: Femme Fatale.

Writers Read: Pat Shipman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Lawrence S. Wittner's "Confronting the Bomb"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement by Lawrence S. Wittner.

About the book, from the publisher:

Confronting the Bomb tells the dramatic, inspiring story of how citizen activism helped curb the nuclear arms race and prevent nuclear war. This abbreviated version of Lawrence Wittner's award-winning trilogy, The Struggle Against the Bomb, shows how a worldwide, grassroots campaign—the largest social movement of modern times—challenged the nuclear priorities of the great powers and, ultimately, thwarted their nuclear ambitions. Based on massive research in the files of peace and disarmament organizations and in formerly top secret government records, extensive interviews with antinuclear activists and government officials, and memoirs and other published materials, Confronting the Bomb opens a unique window on one of the most important issues of the modern era: survival in the nuclear age. It covers the entire period of significant opposition to the bomb, from the final stages of the Second World War up to the present. Along the way, it provides fascinating glimpses of the interaction of key nuclear disarmament activists and policymakers, including Albert Einstein, Harry Truman, Albert Schweitzer, Norman Cousins, Nikita Khrushchev, Bertrand Russell, Andrei Sakharov, Linus Pauling, Dwight Eisenhower, Harold Macmillan, John F. Kennedy, Randy Forsberg, Mikhail Gorbachev, Helen Caldicott, E.P. Thompson, and Ronald Reagan. Overall, however, it is a story of popular mobilization and its effectiveness.

Read the preface to Confronting the Bomb, and learn more about the book at the Stanford University Press website.

Learn more about Lawrence S. Wittner's scholarship and political activity at his faculty webpage and Wikipedia page.

The Page 99 Test: Confronting the Bomb.

--Marshal Zeringue

Monica Ali's best books

Monica Ali’s new novel, In the Kitchen, is set in a five-star London hotel. At The Week, the author of Brick Lane and Alentejo Blue named six favorite earlier works that made the most of similar settings.

One title on her list:

The Shining by Stephen King (Pocket, $15).

A hotel is about as characterful as a building can get, and the Overlook Hotel is an exceptionally strong character. When the place comes, literally, to life, it seems terrifyingly natural that it should.

Read about another title on Ali's list.

--Marshal Zeringue