Pg. 69: Christopher Fowler 's "The Victoria Vanishes"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Christopher Fowler's The Victoria Vanishes.

About the book, from the publisher:

It’s a case tailor-made for the Peculiar Crimes Unit. A lonely hearts killer is targeting middle-aged women at some of England’s most well-known pubs—including one torn down eighty years ago. What’s more, Arthur Bryant happened to see one of the victims only moments before her death at the pub that doesn’t exist. Indeed, this case is littered with clues that defy everything the veteran detectives know about the habits of serial killers, the methodology of crime, and the odds of making an arrest. Now, with the public on the verge of panic and their superiors determined to shut the PCU down for good, Detectives Bryant and May must rise to the occasion in defense of two great English traditions—the pub and the Peculiar Crimes Unit.

That’s easier said than done. A lost funeral urn, the eighteenth-century mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, the Knights Templars, the secret history of pubs, and the discovery of an astounding religious relic may be enough to convince one of the pair to take back his resignation letter. But with Bryant consulting a memory specialist and May encountering a brush with mortality, do the Peculiar Crimes Unit’s two living legends have enough life left to stop a murderous conspiracy…and a deadly cupid targeting one of their own.

Read an excerpt from the novel, and learn more about the book and author at Christopher Fowler's website and blog.

Christopher Fowler is the acclaimed author of many novels, including the award-winning Full Dark House, and the Peculiar Crimes Unit mysteries, White Corridor, The Water Room, Seventy-Seven Clocks, and Ten Second Staircase.

The Page 69 Test: The Victoria Vanishes.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best: books about leaders paired by history

At the Wall Street Journal, Nicholas Wapshott named a five best list of books about "leaders paired by history."

One title on the list:

Lincoln and Douglas
by Allen C. Guelzo
Simon & Schuster, 2008

As the recently concluded campaign confirmed, presidential debates are wholly unsatisfying, yet their wellspring is the epic series of seven debates held in 1858 between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas, both candidates for the Senate from Illinois. These debates shaped the arguments, in particular over slavery, that would be settled in the political and military battles to come. Allen C. Guelzo provides an engaging account of the men's eloquent punching and counterpunching, but he also tells how the debates themselves captivated America and were reported and misreported by both sides. While Kennedy and Nixon, in 1960, captured some of the spirit of this verbal swordplay, the demands of television and the rise of show business in politics have made unlikely such an intelligent contest of competing ideas.

Read about another book on Wapshott's list.

Nicholas Wapshott is the author of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher: A Political Marriage.

The Page 99 Test: Allen C. Guelzo's Lincoln and Douglas.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: William Sharpe's "New York Nocturne"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: New York Nocturne: The City After Dark in Literature, Painting, and Photography, 1850-1950 by William Chapman Sharpe.

About the book, from the publisher:

As early as the 1850s, gaslight tempted New Yorkers out into a burgeoning nightlife filled with shopping, dining, and dancing. Electricity later turned the city at night into an even more stunning spectacle of brilliantly lit streets and glittering skyscrapers. The advent of artificial lighting revolutionized the urban night, creating not only new forms of life and leisure, but also new ways of perceiving the nocturnal experience. New York Nocturne is the first book to examine how the art of the gaslit and electrified city evolved, and how representations of nighttime New York expanded the boundaries of modern painting, literature, and photography. Exploring the myriad images of Manhattan after dark, New York Nocturne shows how writers and artists took on the city's nocturnal blaze and transformed the scintillating landscape into an icon of modernity.

The book traces key metaphors of the nighttime city: a seductive Babylon in the mid-1850s, a misty fairyland colonized by an empire of light in the early twentieth century, and a skyscraper-studded land of desire that became a stage for the voyeurism and violence of the 1940s and 1950s. The epilogue suggests how these themes have continued to shape our vision of nighttime New York ever since. Abundantly illustrated, New York Nocturne includes original readings of works by Whitman, Poe, Whistler, Riis, Stieglitz, Abbott, O'Keeffe, Stella, Hopper, Weegee, Ellison, Jacquette, and many others. Collectively, they tell a fascinating story about the relationship between night, art, and modern urban life.

Read the introduction to New York Nocturne, and learn more about the book at the Princeton University Press website.

William Chapman Sharpe is professor of English at Barnard College, Columbia University. He is the author of Unreal Cities and the coeditor of Visions of the Modern City.

The Page 99 Test: New York Nocturne.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Laurel Corona's "The Four Seasons"

This weekend's feature at the Page 69 Test: Laurel Corona's The Four Seasons.

About The Four Seasons, from the publisher:

In glittering 18th-century Venice, music and love are prized above all else—and for two sisters coming of age, the city’s passions blend in intoxicating ways.

Chiaretta and Maddalena are as different as night and day. The two sisters were abandoned as babies on the steps of the Ospedale della Pietá, Venice’s world-famous foundling hospital and musical academy. High-spirited and rebellious, Chiaretta marries into a great aristocratic Venetian family and eventually becomes one of the most powerful women in Venice. Maddalena becomes a violin virtuoso and Antonio Vivaldi’s muse. The Four Seasons is a rich, literary imagination of the world of 18th-century Venice and the lives and loves of two extraordinary women.

Read an excerpt from The Four Seasons, and learn more about the book and author at Laurel Corona's website and blog.

Laurel Corona is the author of more than a dozen middle school books and is a professor of English and Humanities at San Diego City College.

Writers Read: Laurel Corona.

The Page 69 Test: The Four Seasons.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Gina Athena Ulysse reading?

This weekend's featured contributor to Writers Read: Gina Athena Ulysse, author of Downtown Ladies: Informal Commercial Importers, a Haitian Anthropologist and Self-Making in Jamaica.

Part of her entry:

During the semester, my reading is almost always determined by my courses. This term, I am teaching a first year seminar "Haiti: Myths and Realities." So the last couple of weeks, I have been simultaneously re-reading The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat and Massacre River by René Philoctète-- two fictionalized accounts of the 1937 Trujillo ordered massacre of thousands of Haitians in the Dominican Republic. I am kicking myself for not having assigned either this time, choosing instead to use a significant social science text, Race and Politics in the Dominican Republic by Ernesto Sagas. That book offers a much more in-depth look at the historical development of what Sagas aptly calls Anti-Haitianism in the DR. My regret is that the visceral in the novels add a dimension to the tragedy that most structural analyses often miss. Next time, I will assign selections from all three. [read on]

Gina Athena Ulysse was born in Petion-Ville, Haiti. She is a professor of Anthropology and African American Studies at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut.

Ulysse is also a poet/performer and multi-media artist.

Learn more about Downtown Ladies.

Read her recent essay, "Michelle Obama: An Exceptional Model."

Visit Gina Athena Ulysse's website to learn more about her poetry and other projects.

Writers Read: Gina Athena Ulysse.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books: works of art in form as well as in content

Powells.com invited Gregory Maguire to "[r]ecommend five or more books on a single subject of personal interest or expertise." He came up with:

Five Books That Remind You That Individual Books Can Be Works of Art in Form as Well as in Content

Two books on the list:

The Once and Future King by T. H. White

I always mention this book as it, too, helped me conceive of Wicked. The fact that White was erudite and comical, moral and sensual, and that he poured all of himself into his retelling of a famous legend as if it had never been told before — well, that inspired me to try the same.

We Are All in the Dumps with Jack and Guy by Maurice Sendak

The picture book has never been stronger than in this stirring and compassionate tale of two street urchins who rescue and raise a third. Check out the double spread of the older boys taking the little black kid down off the moon: it is Christian iconography come home to roost, a sermon as well as a jeremiad.

Read about more titles on Maguire's list.

Gregory Maguire is the bestselling author of Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Lost, Mirror Mirror, and the Wicked Years series, which includes Wicked, Son of a Witch, and A Lion among Men.

Wicked, now a beloved classic, is the basis for the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical of the same name.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: William Conescu's "Being Written"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: William Conescu's Being Written.

About the book, from the publisher:

Daniel Fischer has a secret. He knows he's a character in a book that's being written. He's the only one who knows, the only one who's aware of the author's presence—but what good does it do Daniel? He's just a minor character. The author seems much more interested in other people's lives. Now Daniel is determined to win a bigger part, and he'll do whatever it takes to get the author's attention and make this story his own.

Suspenseful, subversive, and hilarious, Being Written is an audaciously inventive literary turn that gleefully calls into question who we trust, what we believe, and how the stories of our lives are created.

Browse inside Being Written, and learn more about the book and author at William Conescu's website.

William Conescu was born in New York and raised in New Orleans. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and earned an MFA in Creative Writing at North Carolina State University. His short stories have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, New Letters, Green Mountains Review, and other publications. Being Written is his first novel.

The Page 99 Test: Being Written.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is John Dunning reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: John Dunning, author and bookseller.

See what he has been reading.

John Dunning has revealed some of book collecting's most shocking secrets in his bestselling series of crime novels featuring Cliff Janeway: Booked to Die, which won the prestigious Nero Wolfe award; The Bookman's Wake, a New York Times Notable Book of 1995; and the New York Times and Book Sense bestsellers The Bookman's Promise, The Sign of the Book, and The Bookwoman's Last Fling. He is also the author of the Edgar Award-nominated Deadline, The Holland Suggestions, and Two O'Clock, Eastern Wartime. An expert on rare and collectible books, he owned the Old Algonquin Bookstore in Denver for many years.

He is also an expert on American radio history and author of On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, which made Anthony Rudel's five best list of books about the "Golden Age of Radio."

Visit John Dunning's website.

Writers Read: John Dunning.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Nellie Hermann's "The Cure for Grief"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Nellie Hermann's The Cure for Grief.

About the book, from the publisher:

Ruby is the youngest child in the tightly knit Bronstein family, a sensitive, observant girl who looks up to her older brothers and is in awe of her stern but gentle father, a Holocaust survivor whose past and deep sense of morality inform the family's life. But when Ruby is ten, her eldest brother enters the hospital and emerges as someone she barely recognizes. It is only the first in a startling series of tragedies that befall the Bronsteins and leave Ruby reeling from sorrow and disbelief.

This disarmingly intimate and candid novel follows Ruby through a coming-of-age marked by excruciating loss, one in which the thrills, confusion, and longing of adolescence are heightened by the devastating events that accompany them. As Ruby's family fractures, she finds solace in friendships and the beginnings of romance, in the normalcy of summer camp and the prom. But her anger and heartache shadow these experiences, separating her from those she loves, until she chooses to reconcile what she has lost with whom she has become.

Nellie Hermann's insightful debut is a heartbreakingly authentic story of the enduring potential for resilience and the love that binds a family.

Read an excerpt from The Cure for Grief, and learn more about the author and her work at Nellie Hermann's website.

Nellie Hermann attended Brown University, earning her B.A. in May of 2000. She received her M.F.A. from Columbia University.

The Page 69 Test: The Cure for Grief.

--Marshal Zeringue

Michael Chabon's favorite adventure fiction

Del Ray, paperback publisher of Michael Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road, got the author to name his "12 favorite works of adventure fiction."

The list includes:

The Brigadier Gerard stories, Arthur Conan Doyle

THE CHINESE BANDIT, Stephen Becker

THE ICE SCHOONER, Michael Moorcock

Read more about Chabon's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Noah Charney's "The Art Thief," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Noah Charney's The Art Thief.

The entry begins:

Readers often tell me that my novel, The Art Thief, would make a great film. The question of who would play which role is delicious fun for authors, during slow rainy days and hot sunny ones, as we'd be lying if we authors didn't say that we think of our own characters in terms of real-life equivalents. Our characters, whether we state it explicitly or not, are hybrid quilts sewn together from parts and characteristics of people we know or have read about--Frankenstein's monsters whose components could be traced back to their people of origin, if only an author took the time to wind back his mental ball of yarn. Especially for more commercial fiction which, these days, is often written in order to be made into a film (this is how an author can strike it rich), not only are characters considered in terms of the actors who might play them, but written scenes are conceived of from the viewpoint of a camera--what angle does the reader "see" the scene. Writing with this in mind, in all honesty, helps producers reading your book to transpose the concept into a potential film, and therefore helps it sell.[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Noah Charney's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Art Thief.

My Book, The Movie: The Art Thief.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Charlie Huston's "Every Last Drop"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Charlie Huston's Every Last Drop.

About the book, from the publisher:

It’s like this: a series of bullet-riddled bad breaks has seen rogue Vampyre and terminal tough guy Joe Pitt go from PI for hire to Clan-connected enforcer to dead man walking in a New York minute. And after burning all his bridges, the only one left to cross leads to the Bronx, where Joe’s brass knuckles and straight razor can’t keep him from running afoul of a sadistic old bloodsucker with a bad bark and a worse bite. Even if every Clan in Manhattan is hollering for Joe’s head on a stick, it’s got to be better than trying to survive in the outer-borough wilderness.

So it’s a no-brainer when Clan boss Dexter Predo comes looking to make a deal. All Joe has to do to win back breathing privileges on his old turf is infiltrate an upstart Clan whose plan to cure the Vyrus could expose the secret Vampyre world to mortal eyes and set off a panic-driven massacre. Not cool. But Joe’s all over it. To save the Undead future, he just has to wade neck-deep through all the archenemies, former friends, and assorted heavy hitters he’s crossed in the past. No sweat? Maybe not, but definitely more blood than he’s ever seen or hungered for. And maybe even some tears–over the horror and heartbreaking truth about the evil men do no matter who or what they are.

Read an excerpt from Every Last Drop, and learn more about the book and author at Charlie Huston's website.

Charlie Huston is the author of the Henry Thompson Trilogy (Caught Stealing, Six Bad Things, and A Dangerous Man) and a standalone, The Shotgun Rule. His first three Joe Pitt novels are Already Dead, No Dominion, and Half the Blood in Brooklyn.

The Page 69 Test: No Dominion.

The Page 99 Test: Every Last Drop.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Marcello Simonetta reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Marcello Simonetta, author of The Montefeltro Conspiracy: A Renaissance Mystery Decoded.

See what Simonetta has been reading.

Read an excerpt from The Montefeltro Conspiracy, and learn more about the book at the publisher's website.

Simonetta's recent article for Forbes.com, "The Medici Meltdown," opens:

In these times of financial woe, some journalists have been timidly exploring the past for precedents, pushing the horizon as far as the 1929 Great Depression. Very few have looked beyond that traumatic event, assuming that capitalism in its current form has no earlier historical roots. But this is hardly true--earlier history might indeed teach us valuable lessons.[read on]

Writers Read: Marcello Simonetta.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten ghost stories

For the Guardian, Peter Washington named a top 10 list of ghost stories.

One entry on the list:

RL Stevenson The Body-Snatcher

As beautifully written and atmospheric as you would expect from Stevenson, this tale set in mid-19th century Scotland is about the grave robbers who provided the gruesome materials for medical schools. A ferocious study in greed and ambition, it has the most chilling denouement of any ghost story.

Read about another entry on Washington's list.

Related: Brad Leithauser's five best ghost tales and James Hynes' 10 Halloween stories.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Ellen Prager's "Chasing Science at Sea"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Chasing Science at Sea: Racing Hurricanes, Stalking Sharks, and Living Undersea with Ocean Experts by Ellen Prager.

About the book, from the publisher:

To the average office-dweller, marine scientists seem to have the good life: cruising at sea for weeks at a time, swimming in warm coastal waters, living in tropical paradises. But ocean scientists who go to sea will tell you that it is no vacation. Creature comforts are few and the obstacles seemingly insurmountable, yet an abundance of wonder and discovery still awaits those who take to the ocean. Chasing Science at Sea immerses readers in the world of those who regularly go to sea—aquanauts living underwater, marine biologists seeking unseen life in the deep ocean, and the tall-ship captains at the helm, among others—and tells the fascinating tale of what life—and science—is like at the mercy of Mother Nature.

With passion and wit, well-known marine scientist Ellen Prager shares her stories as well as those of her colleagues, revealing that in the field ingenuity and a good sense of humor are as essential as water, sunblock, and GPS. Serendipity is invaluable, and while collecting data is the goal, sometimes just getting back to shore means success. But despite the physical hardship and emotional duress that come with the work, optimism and adventure prompt a particularly hardy species of scientist to return again and again to the sea.

Filled with firsthand accounts of the challenges and triumphs of dealing with the extreme forces of nature and the unpredictable world of the ocean, Chasing Science at Sea is a unique glimpse below the water line at what it is like and why it is important to study, explore, and spend time in one of our planet’s most fascinating and foreign environments.

Read an excerpt from Chasing Science at Sea, and learn more about the book and author at Ellen Prager's website.

Ellen J. Prager is currently the chief scientist at the world’s only undersea research station, Aquarius Reef Base, in the Florida Keys and a freelance writer. Among her publications are The Oceans and Furious Earth: The Science and Nature of Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and Tsunamis; a series of children’s books including Sand, Volcano, and Earthquakes with the National Geographic Society; and a children’s novel, Adventure on Dolphin Island.

The Page 99 Test: Chasing Science at Sea.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg.69: Deborah Sharp's "Mama Does Time"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Deborah Sharp's Mama Does Time.

About the book, from the publisher:

Meet Mama: a true Southern woman with impeccable manners, sherbet-colored pantsuits, and four prior husbands, able to serve sweet tea and sidestep alligator attacks with equal aplomb. Mama's antics — especially her penchant for finding trouble — drive her daughters Mace, Maddie, and Marty to distraction.

One night, while settling in to look for ex-beaus on COPS, Mace gets a frantic call from her mother. This time, the trouble is real: Mama found a body in the trunk of her turquoise convertible and the police think she's the killer. It doesn't help that the handsome detective assigned to the case seems determined to prove Mama's guilt or that the cowboy who broke Mace's heart shows up at the local Booze ‘n' Breeze in the midst of the investigation. Before their mama lands in prison — just like an embarrassing lyric from a country-western song — Mace and her sisters must find the real culprit.

Listen to an excerpt from Mama Does Time, and learn more about the book and author at Deborah Sharp's website.

Like the main character in her "Mace Bauer Mysteries," Deborah Sharp's family roots were set in Florida long before Walt Disney and Miami Vice came to define the state. She is a former, longtime reporter for USA Today.

The Page 69 Test: Deborah Sharp's Mama Does Time.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Laurel Corona reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Laurel Corona, author of the new novel, The Four Seasons.

One paragraph from her entry:

The book I finished most recently is The Only Son by Stephane Audeguy, about an older brother Jean-Jacques Rousseau mentions only once in his Confessions. The book gives a fascinating look at Paris in the period of the French Revolution and Reign of Terror. I also picked up Tess Gerritsen’s tense historical murder mystery The Bone Garden in an airport recently, and didn’t put it down until I had finished. This summer, my pool reads were Lauren Willig’s fun and lighthearted The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, and Lauren Groff’s quirky The Monsters of Templeton. I highly recommend this one to lovers of early American literature and/or baseball, since it is set in a fictionalized version of Cooperstown NY, and weaves in real characters from the eras of both Abner Doubleday and James Fenimore Cooper.[read on]

About The Four Seasons, from the publisher:

In glittering 18th-century Venice, music and love are prized above all else—and for two sisters coming of age, the city’s passions blend in intoxicating ways.

Chiaretta and Maddalena are as different as night and day. The two sisters were abandoned as babies on the steps of the Ospedale della Pietá, Venice’s world-famous foundling hospital and musical academy. High-spirited and rebellious, Chiaretta marries into a great aristocratic Venetian family and eventually becomes one of the most powerful women in Venice. Maddalena becomes a violin virtuoso and Antonio Vivaldi’s muse. The Four Seasons is a rich, literary imagination of the world of 18th-century Venice and the lives and loves of two extraordinary women.

Visit Laurel Corona's website and blog.

Writers Read: Laurel Corona.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Christopher Fettweis' "Losing Hurts Twice as Bad"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Losing Hurts Twice as Bad: The Four Stages to Moving Beyond Iraq by Christopher J. Fettweis.

About the book, from the publisher:

Amid all the gloom surrounding the debacle in Iraq, finally here is a highly instructive four-stage plan that will help us move forward.

Now longer than the Civil War, America's conflict in Iraq seems to have no end in sight. A malaise, perhaps greater than that engendered by Vietnam, threatens to undo our national moorings. Christopher J. Fettweis, a military strategy expert, burst onto the national scene with an editorial and NPR interviews that provided an illuminating historical perspective on the ramifications of any great power's defeat. Fettweis contends that Iraq has thrown America into an unprecedented downward spiral, yet he provides a context for America's loss that few political pundits have recognized. With abundant historical comparisons drawn from the American Revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, among others, Fettweis charts a natural course of defeat (denial, shock, anger, depression, and acceptance). He offers a prescriptive "grand strategy" that will help us forge a new approach to American foreign policy. This is a book no lover of history can ignore, for there may be a silver lining few have yet realized.

Read more about Losing Hurts Twice as Bad at the publisher's website.

Christopher J. Fettweis is an Assistant Professor in the Political Science Department at Tulane University. For the last three years, he taught strategy at the US Naval War College in Newport, RI.

The Page 99 Test: Losing Hurts Twice as Bad.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: James Reese's "The Dracula Dossier"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: The Dracula Dossier by James Reese.

About the book, from the publisher:

Stalled in his writing career and feeling overwhelmed by his charismatic, successful boss Sir Henry Irving, Bram Stoker returns to London in the summer of 1888 determined to turn his life around.

Late one night Stoker decides to take a stroll through the streets of Whitechapel, an impoverished district of London known for its many prostitutes as well as the citizenry crowding its shadowy alleys. Amid the shadows, he spies a seemingly familiar figure, a man resembling a quack American "doctor" of his acquaintance. But before Stoker can be certain, the man disappears.

Little does he know that just a few steps away, the crime spree of the century has begun: a vicious killer has claimed his first victim, a local prostitute. And Stoker somehow becomes the prime suspect. To clear his name, he enlists some of his illustrious friends, including Walt Whitman, Lady Jane Wilde (mother of Oscar), and the million-copy-selling Victorian novelist Sir Thomas Henry Hall Caine. When they discover that the murder weapon is a Gurkha knife owned by Stoker and recently stolen from his home, there can be no doubt that the elusive American doctor—Francis Tumblety—is the very same man terrorizing and taunting London as Jack the Ripper.

Moving from Manhattan to London's West End and Whitechapel, from Dublin to a ritualistic denouement in Edinburgh, this sweeping, magnificent novel is a suspenseful trip into the heart of literature and history, as Stoker sets out on the "true" adventure that will later inspire him to write Dracula. James Reese has been praised for his "sweeping narrative" (Clarion-Ledger, Jackson, MS), "vivid characters" (Washington Post Book World), and "imaginative wizardry" (Orlando Sentinel), and The Dracula Dossier is perhaps his most stunning achievement to date.

Browse inside the Dracula Dossier, and learn more about the author and his work at James Reese's website.

James Reese is the author of The Herculine Trilogy.

The Page 69 Test: The Dracula Dossier.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Lennard Davis reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Lennard Davis, author of the newly released Obsession: A History.

Two books mentioned in his entry:

Judith Butler's The Psychic Life of Power, and a book in French I just picked up in Paris from a show at the Rodin Museum about Freud and Rodin as collectors of antiquities.[read on]

Lennard J. Davis is Professor in the English Department in the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he had also served as Head. In addition, he is Professor of Disability and Human Development in the School of Applied Health Sciences of the University of Illinois at Chicago, as well as Professor of Medical Education in the College of Medicine. He is also director of Project Biocultures, a think-tank devoted to issues around the intersection of culture, medicine, disability, biotechnology, and the biosphere.

He is the author of The Disability Studies Reader, My Sense of Silence: Memoirs of a Childhood with Deafness, and Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body, among other books.

Visit Lennard Davis' website, and learn more about Obsession: A History at the University of Chicago Press website.

Writers Read: Lennard Davis.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best books about the golden age of radio

At the Wall Street Journal, Anthony Rudel named a five best list of books about the "Golden Age of Radio."

One title on his list:

On the Air
by John Dunning
Oxford, 1998

John Dunning's "encyclopedia of old-time radio" is an invaluable resource about the performers, shows, sponsors, history and influence of the medium. We start alphabetically with "The A&P Gypsies" ("exotic music with a nomadic motif; one of radio's earliest, most distinctive programs") and end in "Zorro" country, finding along the way engagingly written entries that reflect a savviness about the shows themselves and their significance to audiences at the time. And Dunning is thorough: The entries include vital information about when and where shows were broadcast, who starred in them, who led the orchestra and other details that any radio fanatic will relish. Essays spread throughout this dense volume provide a commanding overview of the complexities of an entire industry at the height of its influence.

Read about another book on Rudel's list.

Anthony Rudel is the author of the newly released Hello, Everybody! The Dawn of American Radio.

About Hello, Everybody! The Dawn of American Radio:

Long before the internet, another young technology was transformed--with help from a colorful collection of eccentrics and visionaries--into a mass medium with the power to connect millions of people.

When amateur enthusiasts began sending fuzzy signals from their garages and rooftops, radio broadcasting was born. Sensing the medium's potential, snake-oil salesmen and preachers took to the air, at once setting early standards for radio programming and making bedlam of the airwaves. Into the chaos stepped a young secretary of commerce, Herbert Hoover, whose passion for organization guided the technology's growth. When a charismatic bandleader named Rudy Vallee created the first on-air variety show and America elected its first true radio president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, radio had arrived.

With clarity, humor, and an eye for outsized characters forgotten by polite history, Anthony Rudel tells the story of the boisterous years when radio took its place in the nation's living room and forever changed American politics, journalism, and entertainment.

Visit Anthony Rudel's website and blog.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Michael J. Agovino's "The Bookmaker"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Michael J. Agovino's The Bookmaker: A Memoir of Money, Family, and Luck From the Utopian Outskirts of New York City.

About the book, from the publisher:

Marking the debut of a gifted new writer, The Bookmaker teems with humanity, empathy, humor, and insight.

At the heart of Michael J. Agovino's powerful, layered memoir is his family's struggle for success in 1970s, '80s, and '90s New York City—and his father's gambling, which brought them to exhilarating highs and crushing lows. He vividly brings to life the Bronx, a place of texture and nuance, of resignation but also of triumph.

The son of a buttoned-up union man who moonlighted as a gentleman bookmaker and gambler, Agovino grew up in the Bronx's Co-op City, the largest and most ambitious state-sponsored housing development in U.S. history. When it opened, it landed on the front page of The New York Times and in Time magazine, which described it as "relentlessly ugly."

Agovino's Italian American father was determined not to let his modest income and lack of a college education define him, and was dogged in his pursuit of the finer things in life. When the point spreads were on his side, he brought his family to places he only dreamed about in his favorite books and films: the Uffizi, the Tate, the Rijksmuseum; St. Peter's, Chartres, Teotihuacán. With bad luck came shouting matches, unpaid bills, and eviction notices.

The Bookmaker is both a bold, loving portrait of a family and their metropolis and an intimate look into some of the most turbulent decades of New York City. In elegant and soaring prose, it transcends the personal to illuminate the ways in which class distinctions shaped America in the last half of the twentieth century.

Read an excerpt from The Bookmaker and watch Matt Lauer's interview with Michael J. Agovino.

Learn more about The Bookmaker at the publisher's website.

Michael J. Agovino has written for a wide range of publications and online sites, including The New York Times, Esquire, GQ, Salon, Elle, and The New York Observer.

The Page 99 Test: The Bookmaker.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Jonathan Weiner reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Jonathan Weiner, author of The Beak of the Finch, winner of both the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science; Time, Love, Memory, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction, and finalist for the Aventis Science Prize; and His Brother's Keeper, finalist for Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He has written for the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, the New Republic, and many other newspapers and magazines. While working on His Brother's Keeper, he was writer-in-residence at Rockefeller University.

Now he teaches science writing at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

From his entry:

Auden's poems, Shakespeare's sonnets, Solomon's Proverbs. [read on]

Visit Jonathan Weiner's website.

Writers Read: Jonathan Weiner.

--Marshal Zeringue

Colin Cotterill's "Curse of the Pogo Stick," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Colin Cotterill's Curse of the Pogo Stick.

Cotterill's entry begins:

It’s my own silly fault. I know that now. How am I ever going to break into Hollywood without a western protagonist? My sin, you see, is that all my characters are Lao. There have been, so far in the series, only one direct and one peripheral role for honkies and one of those was a Soviet circus performer. How can I get my movie made without any A-list actors queued up to play the main role of Dr. Siri Paiboun?

We could use makeup I suppose. In fifteen movies, Charlie Chan was played by a Swede, Warner Oland, and nobody noticed he was a Norseman. (I hesitate to suggest there was any racism involved in the fact that audiences could so happily accept him as an émigré from mainland China.) When poor old Warner passed away, who took over the mantle of the most famous Chinese in the west? Sidney Toler, a Scot. When they were looking for an actor to play Kentaro Moto, in a popular series about a Japanese secret agent they needed to look no further than Peter Lorre, the world’s most famous Hungarian. And after Lorre had made a Japanese name for himself in eight feature films, when it came to a remake, The Return of Mr. Moto, even as late as 1965, who did they call? (Sidney Toler was busy), good old Henry Silva, a New York Sicilian. It looks like there just weren’t any real Asians around in them days.

So, assuming we go with the clothes pegs behind the ears method, who should I ring in?...[read on]

Visit Colin Cotterill's website and his Crimespace page, and learn more about Curse of the Pogo Stick at the publisher's website.

Colin Cotterill is the author of The Coroner’s Lunch, Thirty-Three Teeth, Disco for the Departed, and Anarchy and Old Dogs, featuring seventy-three year old Dr. Siri Paiboun, national coroner of Laos. He and his wife live in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where he teaches at the university.

The Page 69 Test: Anarchy and Old Dogs.

My Book, The Movie: Curse of the Pogo Stick.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10: books with secret signs

Justin Scroggie is the author of Tic-tac Teddy Bears and Teardrop Tattoos. For the Guardian, he named a top ten list of books with secret signs.

His introduction and one title from his list:

I'm an author (and television producer) with a passion for secret signs – all the ways that people in the know privately communicate with each other. I love books where something hinges on a sign or a symbol that the protagonist has to decipher. Authors are playful people, too, so I'm always on the lookout for any hidden messages they might have included, in a character's name, for example, or even on the cover.

* * *

The Name of the Rose

William of Baskerville arrives at a Benedictine abbey in medieval Italy to lay the groundwork for a theological meeting. Instead, there is a gruesome murder, and Baskerville (a pun on Sherlock Holmes), investigates. The plot revolves (and revolves!) around a secret book by Aristotle, hidden in a labyrinthine library. To penetrate the library and its secrets, Baskerville must decode manuscripts, solve riddles and much much more. Umberto Eco's 1980 classic is full of secret signs, from the abbey door to the abbot's ring – not surprising as Eco is a professor of semiotics, the study of signs and symbols as a form of language.

Read more about Scroggie's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Mike Walsh's "Bowling Across America"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Bowling Across America: 50 States in Rented Shoes by Mike Walsh.

About the book, from the publisher:

Inspired by his father’s unexpected passing, Mike Walsh, a 27 year-old Chicago advertising executive, quits his job to embark on a one-of-a-kind quest. The destination: bowling alleys in each of the 50 states. Though dubbed "career suicide" by colleagues, the endeavor soon touches a nerve among many people­—­from frustrated middle managers to radio talk show hosts to a woman who merely identifies herself as "Bowling Spice" in an innuendo-laden email.

Conversations and adventures with the people he finds in bowling alleys at all hours of the day and night—retired Maine lobstermen, saucy European nannies, recovering addicts, former bowling champions, college students, World War II vets and lingerie saleswomen, to name a few—combine to form a picture of what America looks like while standing in a pair of rented shoes.

Hilarious, insightful and at times moving, BOWLING ACROSS AMERICA is an epic journey that will enthrall readers everywhere.

Learn more about the book and author at the Bowling Across America website and blog.

Mike Walsh is one of the world’s leading authorities on the geographic nuances of rented footwear. A graduate of Miami University, he grew up in a family of six children in Upper Arlington, Ohio. He lives in Chicago within walking distance of four bowling alleys.

The Page 69 Test: Bowling Across America.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Ann Littlewood reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Ann Littlewood, author of the new zoo mystery, Night Kill.

From her Writers Read entry:

I try to balance my reading thus: two mysteries, one non-fiction, one literary fiction. This plan was meant to nourish the zoo mystery series I write, my long-standing fascination with environmentalism, botany and zoology, and a large, erratic list of occasional interests. Well, it was a good idea. My actual current reading includes ... Darkness & Light by John Harvey and Hannah's Dream by Diane Hammond. [read on]

Ann Littlewood was a zoo keeper in Portland, Oregon for twelve years. She raised lions and cougars, an orangutan; and native mammals, as well as parrots, penguins, and a multitude of owls. The financial realities of raising primates (two boys of her own) led Ann to exchange a hose and rubber boots for a briefcase and pantsuit in the healthcare industry. Ann has maintained her membership in the American Association of Zookeepers and has kept in touch with the zoo world by visiting zoos and through friendships with zoo staffers.

Visit Ann Littlewood's website and blog.

Writers Read: Ann Littlewood.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: David Archer's "The Long Thaw"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: David Archer's The Long Thaw: How Humans are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth’s Climate.

About the book, from the publisher:

If you think that global warming means slightly hotter weather and a modest rise in sea levels that will persist only so long as fossil fuels hold out (or until we decide to stop burning them), think again. In The Long Thaw, David Archer, one of the world's leading climatologists, predicts that if we continue to emit carbon dioxide we may eventually cancel the next ice age and raise the oceans by 50 meters. By comparing the global warming projection for the next century to natural climate changes of the distant past, and then looking into the future far beyond the usual scientific and political horizon of the year 2100, Archer reveals the hard truths of the long-term climate forecast.

Archer shows how just a few centuries of fossil-fuel use will cause not only a climate storm that will last a few hundred years, but dramatic climate changes that will last thousands. Carbon dioxide emitted today will be a problem for millennia. For the first time, humans have become major players in shaping the long-term climate. In fact, a planetwide thaw driven by humans has already begun. But despite the seriousness of the situation, Archer argues that it is still not too late to avert dangerous climate change--if humans can find a way to cooperate as never before.

Revealing why carbon dioxide may be an even worse gamble in the long run than in the short, this compelling and critically important book brings the best long-term climate science to a general audience for the first time.

Read an excerpt from The Long Thaw, and learn more about the book at the Princeton University Press website.

David Archer is professor of geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago, the author of Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast, and a frequent contributor to the weblog RealClimate.

Visit David Archer's webpage and read his blog posts at RealClimate.

The Page 99 Test: The Long Thaw.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Jeri Westerson's "Veil of Lies"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Jeri Westerson's Veil of Lies.

About the book, from the publisher:

Crispin Guest is a disgraced knight, stripped of his rank and his honor - but left with his life - for plotting against Richard II. Having lost his bethrothed, his friends, his patrons and his position in society. With no trade to support him and no family willing to acknowledge him, Crispin has turned to the one thing he still has - his wits - to scrape a living together on the mean streets of London. In 1383, Guest is called to the compound of a merchant - a reclusive mercer who suspects that his wife is being unfaithful and wants Guest to look into the matter. Not wishing to sully himself in such disgraceful, dishonorable business but in dire need of money, Guest agrees and discovers that the wife is indeed up to something, presumably nothing good. But when he comes to inform his client, he is found dead - murdered in a sealed room, locked from the inside. Now Guest has come to the unwanted attention of the Lord Sheriff of London and most recent client was murdered while he was working for him. And everything seems to turn on a religious relic - a veil reported to have wiped the brow of Christ - that is now missing.

Learn more about the book and author at Jeri Westerson's website, her "Getting Medieval" blog, and the Crispin Guest Medieval Noir blog.

Westerson wrote about Crispin Guest's place among fictional detectives for The Rap Sheet.

The Page 69 Test: Veil of Lies.

--Marshal Zeringue

Cornel West's most important books

Princeton professor Cornel West's latest book is Hope on a Tightrope.

For Newsweek, he named his five most important books.

And addressed a couple of related issues:

A classic that, upon revisiting, disappointed:

The poems of Philip Larkin. He's renowned for his comic sensibility, but I found mere wit and iciness.

A book you hope parents read to their children:

"The Fire Next Time" by James Baldwin. His letter to his nephew is wise advice to love and serve.

Read more about West's most important books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Stephen Gundle's "Glamour: A History"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Stephen Gundle's Glamour: A History.

About the book, from the publisher:

Glamor is one of the most tantalizing and bewitching aspects of contemporary culture--but also one of the most elusive. The aura of celebrity, the style of the fashion world, the vanity of the rich and beautiful, and the publicity-driven rites of café society are all imbued with irresistible magnetism. But what exactly is glamor? Where does it come from? How old is it? And can anyone quite capture its magic?

Stephen Gundle answers all these questions and more in this first ever history of glamor. From Paris in the tumultuous final decades of the eighteenth century through to Hollywood, New York, and Monte Carlo in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, from the glamorous fictional characters of Walter Scott to iconic figures such as Marlene Dietrich and Marilyn Monroe to modern idols such as Paris Hilton, this marvelous book maps the origins of glamor and investigates the forms that it takes in modern times. Gundle entertainingly discusses the role of writers, journalists, artists, photographers, film-makers and fashion designers, occupations like the model and the air stewardess, cities and resorts such as Paris, New York and Monte Carlo, and products including luxury cars and jets--all of which have been associated in the public mind with the magical aura of glamor. And he shows how glamor feeds on the middle class yearning for a thrilling and colorful life, a yearning reinforced by the cinema and the press, which serve as a stage for acting out scenes of a desirable life, while also creating trends, promoting fashions, and furnishing celebrities.

Here then is all the excitement and sex appeal of glamor, a fabulous tour of the beautiful, the rich, the sleazy, the false, and the tragic.

Learn more about Glamour: A History at the Oxford University Press website.

Stephen Gundle is Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Warwick. His books include Between Hollywood and Moscow: The Italian Communists and the Challenge of Mass Culture, 1943-91 and Bellissima: Feminine Beauty and the Idea of Italy.

The Page 99 Test: Glamour: A History.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Claire Berlinski reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Claire Berlinski, author of a new book, There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters, just out from Basic Books.

She has been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New York Sun, the Oxford International Review, Asia Times, the Weekly Standard, the National Review, Policy Review, Azure, Traveler's Tales, and numerous anthologies.

Lion Eyes, the sequel to her novel Loose Lips, was published in Spring 2007. Her first non-fiction book, Menace in Europe, was published in February, 2006.

Part of her entry:

I read Bernard Henri-Levy's new book Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism, because I was asked to review it. I don't know if I would have read it otherwise, but I'm very glad I did. I thought it was very effective. The second half of the book, in particular, is outstanding. Then I was thinking about Margaret Thatcher's speech at Bruges (this is the 20-year anniversary of that speech), so I went back to my shelf and had a look at the first and second volumes of her autobiography, as well as her book Statecraft (which I recommend enthusiastically to anyone looking for an introduction to her thoughts about foreign policy). I also re-read parts of John Campbell's gold-standard biography of Thatcher (the second volume), as well as an excellent book, which very few people know about, called The Future of Europe, by the economists Alberto Alesina and Francesco Giavazzi. They make a very compelling argument that Europe is on a state-subsidized train to economic and political irrelevance.[read on]

Visit Claire Berlinski's website.

Writers Read: Claire Berlinski.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Joe Barone's "The Body in the Record Room"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Joe Barone's The Body in the Record Room.

About the book, from the publisher:

It’s 1954. When a mental patient who calls himself Roy Rogers finds a body in the hospital record room, his investigation leads him to the murder of Marcia Weinhart. Twenty years earlier, authorities found her mutilated corpse lying on the altar of St. Adrian's Catholic Church in Sunrise, Missouri.

Roy, his friend Harry, and Harry’s beloved dog, Bullet, move through the buildings and grounds of the Sunrise Mental Hospital, a thousand-acre facility with more than two thousand patients and eight hundred employees. They go from the record room to the hospital’s Catholic chapel, from the blacksmith shop to the hospital cemetery, looking for victims of the terrible abuse behind the Weinhart murder.

In the process, Roy comes to better understand the strength and moral stature of his hero, the real Roy Rogers. He is able to overcome the terror of his past, choosing to forgo violence and work within the law.

Joe Barone’s debut makes for an intriguing mystery while also elevating old-time heroes and their values.

Learn more about the book and author at Joe Barone's website and blog.

Joe Barone was raised on the grounds of a state mental hospital in the 1950's. He is a retired ordained minister who lives in Missouri.

The Page 69 Test: The Body in the Record Room.

--Marshal Zeringue