What is Andrew Nagorski reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Andrew Nagorski, a senior editor at Newsweek International and author of several books, including The Greatest Battle: Stalin, Hitler, and the Desperate Struggle for Moscow That Changed the Course of World War II.

One book mentioned in his entry:

Lenin’s Brain and Other Tales From the Secret Soviet Archives by Paul Gregory, based on the Hoover Institution’s extensive collection of documents from Soviet state and party archives. My Newsweek review is available online. What I particularly liked about Gregory’s compact book is that it provides a rich array of chilling stories about the inner workings of a monstrous system. [read on]

Nagorski's The Greatest Battle was named one of the Best Books of 2007 by the Washington Post.

Among the praise for The Greatest Battle:

"...a new and beautifully researched account of what had been been a poorly understood part of the war."
--Anne Applebaum, New York Review of Books

“Nagorski is definitely a devotee, and his new book is a landmark in studies of Russia precisely because it skillfully unwraps myths, martyrs and demons.”
--Constantine Pleshakov, Washington Post Book World

“Enthralling history.”
--Ned Crabb, Wall Street Journal

Read an excerpt from The Greatest Battle, and learn more about the writer and his work at Andrew Nagorski's website.

Writers Read: Andrew Nagorski.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Matt Beynon Rees' "A Grave in Gaza"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Matt Beynon Rees' A Grave in Gaza.

About the book, from David Keymer's Library Journal review:

In Rees's exceptionally fine follow-up to his highly praised debut, The Collaborator of Bethlehem, the Palestinian government in Gaza is a fiction: warring gangs collaborate only to loot. Omar Yussef, the principal of a girls' school in Bethlehem, arrives on an inspection tour of schools and is soon drawn into efforts to secure the release of a university lecturer arrested on a trumped-up charge of spying. One of his colleagues is kidnapped, a UN van is blown up, and a UN observer killed. At 56, Yussef is neither supersleuth nor superhero, just an honorable man striving to find justice for the disenfranchised in a thoroughly corrupt society, where violence is the preferred, indeed, the only tool of governing. A virtue of this outstanding novel is its prose: evocative and sensual in describing setting and character, forceful in moving along the action. A compelling mystery story and a sympathetic portrait of a wounded society, this novel is truly excellent popular fiction. Strongly recommended for mystery and general collections.

Among the early praise for A Grave in Gaza:

“Matt Beynon Rees has taken a complex world of culture clash and suspicion and placed upon it humanity.”
—David Baldacci, The Collectors

"Rees’ The Collaborator of Bethlehem (2007) may have been last year’s best mystery debut. This followup, again starring Omar Yussef, the mild-mannered Palestinian history teacher determined to defy all the ideologues who exploit his homeland, is every bit as good as its predecessor.... Like the late Batya Gur, Rees combines solid mystery plotting with a literary novelist’s emphasis on character and the small human dramas that happen within the broader sociopolitical landscape. And, unlike many crime writers, he writes with great power, style, and emotion: 'Gaza bellowed and struggled like an injured donkey, while its rulers played the role of the angry farmer, furiously beating the stricken beast, though they knew it couldn’t get up.'"
—Booklist, starred review

“Omar’s probe of a West Bank ruled by political intrigue, religious hatred, and militia thugs lets ex-Time Jerusalem bureau chief Rees make the Mideast conflict personal.”
—Entertainment Weekly

“Uncovers the gritty, often disturbing human realities of life in Palestinian society…. [Rees] gives his characters heart as he gives his readers a thrill.”
—Time.com

“An evocative, compassionate tale.”
—San Francisco Chronicle

"Yussef is a splendid creation."
—Colin Dexter, author of the Inspector Morse Mysteries

Learn more about A Grave in Gaza and its author at Matt Beynon Rees' website.

Matt Beynon Rees published a nonfiction account of Israeli and Palestinian society called Cain's Field: Faith, Fratricide, and Fear in the Middle East (2004). His first detective novel, The Collaborator of Bethlehem, was published in the U.S. in February 2007. It was nominated for a Quill Award and named one of the Top 10 Mysteries of the Year by Booklist.

The French magazine L'Express called Matt Beynon Rees "the Dashiell Hammett of Palestine."

The Page 69 Test: The Collaborator of Bethlehem.

My Book, The Movie: The Collaborator of Bethlehem.

The Page 69 Test: A Grave in Gaza.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Kathleen Ann Goonan's "In War Times"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Kathleen Ann Goonan's In War Times.

About the book, from the publisher:

Sam Dance is a young enlisted soldier in 1941 when his older brother Keenan is killed at Pearl Harbor. Afterwards, Sam promises that he will do anything he can to stop the war.

During his training, Sam begins to show that he has a knack for science and engineering, and he is plucked from the daily grunt work of twenty-mile marches by his superiors to study subjects like code breaking, electronics, and physics in particular, a science that is growing more important to the war effort. While studying, Sam is seduced by a mysterious female physicist that is teaching one of his courses, and given her plans for a device that will end the war, perhaps even end the human predilection for war forever. But the device does something less, and more, than that.

After his training, Sam is sent throughout Europe to solve both theoretical and practical problems for the Allies. He spends his free time playing jazz, and trying to construct the strange device. It's only much later that he discovers that it worked, but in a way that he could have never imagined.

Among the praise for In War Times:

"In War Times is a novel of great historical reach -- from the Battle of the Bulge to the Kennedy assassination and beyond -- and profound ambition, expressed with an unmistakable ease of execution and a master's sureness of touch. Kathleen Goonan has come through to the kind of control that makes every startling fresh development, and this novel bristles with astonishing moments of development, seem inevitable. Not only does Goonan know that Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie changed the world, she understands that every vision of the future conceals a deep yearning for one's own specific past. That's real wisdom."
--Peter Straub

"Thank you for sending me In War Times. I enjoyed it very much. The protean Hadntz device brought to mind Greg Benford's "Timescape" (still to my mind the best and only truly scientific time travel novel); but also Marge Piercy's "Woman On The Edge Of Time". Not to mention, for a highly contrasting view of the WWII experience, "Gravity's Rainbow", which fortuitously I'm also reading at the moment. Kathleen Ann Goonan goes against the grain of a lot of 21st century sf by using sci-fi tools to create serious novels of ideas, and she's done it again: this is a truly humanist, and feminist, take on what's important for our future."
--Gwyneth Jones

"Kathleen Ann Goonan has done it again -- infused her fiction with both a deep understanding of emerging technologies and the yearnings and perfidities of the human heart. In War Times is a labor of love, a fact made evident on every page by the immediacy of its characters. I feel like I know these people. It's a darn good story, too, that will keep you up well past bedtime."
--David Marusek

"A complex, low-key, thoughtful and often dazzling journey through worlds that might, and perhaps should, have been."
--Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"She [Goonan] can take all the credit for a narrative that has hardly a single flaw of pacing, setting, or characterization, and will be intelligible, not to say fascinating, to readers far beyond the ranks of World War II buffs. An authentic classic."
--Booklist, starred review

"Paralleling the evolution of modern jazz with the creative ferment of science, Goonan delivers a bravura performance."
--Publishers Weekly, starred review

Read an excerpt from In War Times, and learn more about the author and her work at Kathleen Ann Goonan's website and her blog.

In War Times was named the Best Science Fiction Novel of 2007 by the American Library Association.

Kathleen Ann Goonan first novel, Queen City Jazz (the start of her Nanotech Quartet), was a New York Times Notable book. The Bones of Time, her acclaimed second novel, was a finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2000. Crescent City Rhapsody (third in the Quartet) was a Nebula nominee, and Light Music, also a Nebula finalist, was described by Booklist as the "brilliant conclusion to a tetralogy as consequential in sf as Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy."

The Page 99 Test: In War Times.

--Marshal Zeringue

Mark Haskell Smith's "Salty," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Mark Haskell Smith's Salty.

His entry opens:

Turk Henry, the protagonist of Salty, is a dissolute, sex addicted, Heavy Metal superstar. It’s difficult for me to put on my casting director cap and think of someone who could play him. There’s a specific physicality to him, a kind of cocksure waddle, that’s hard to find in today’s personally trained actor. The character is spoiled, pathetic and yet has the seeds of heroism gurgling around in his beer-bloated belly. [read on]

Learn more about Salty at the author's website.

Mark Haskell Smith is the author of three novels: Moist, Delicious, and, most recently, Salty, which was a Book Sense Notable Book. He is also is a screenwriter whose feature film credits include Playing God and the award-winning Brazilian film A Partilha.

The Page 69 Test: Salty.

My Book, The Movie: Salty.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Kathleen Duey's "Skin Hunger"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Kathleen Duey's A Resurrection of Magic: Skin Hunger.

About the book, from the publisher:

Sadima lives in a world where magic has been banned, leaving poor villagers prey to fakes and charlatans. A "magician" stole her family's few valuables and left Sadima's mother to die on the day Sadima was born. But vestiges of magic are hidden in old rhymes and hearth tales and in people like Sadima, who conceals her silent communication with animals for fear of rejection and ridicule. When rumors of her gift reach Somiss, a young nobleman obsessed with restoring magic, he sends Franklin, his lifelong servant, to find her. Sadima's joy at sharing her secret becomes love for the man she shares it with. But Franklin's irrevocable bond to the brilliant and dangerous Somiss traps her, too, and she faces a heartbreaking decision.

Centuries later magic has been restored, but it is available only to the wealthy and is strictly controlled by wizards within a sequestered academy of magic. Hahp, the expendable second son of a rich merchant, is forced into the academy and finds himself paired with Gerrard, a peasant boy inexplicably admitted with nine sons of privilege and wealth. Only one of the ten students will graduate -- and the first academic requirement is survival.

Sadima's and Hahp's worlds are separated by generations, but their lives are connected in surprising and powerful ways in this brilliant first book of Kathleen Duey's dark, complex, and completely compelling trilogy.

Among the praise for Skin Hunger:

"Beautifully written, fierce, and unforgettable."
-- Holly Black, author of Tithe

"In this darkly atmospheric fantasy, the first in a planned trilogy called A Resurrection of Magic, Duey weaves together the stories of two teens who live in a world in which the working of magic has a turbulent history. When her bitter father dies, Sadima, a young woman who can communicate with animals, keeps house for two renegade magicians at a time when magic has been outlawed. Her experiences, which include learning to read and falling in love, alternate with those of Hahp, born generations after Sadima. Exiled by his wealthy, disapproving father, he attends a school of wizardry where, among other unpleasantness, students are starved to death if they can't conjure up food. The pacing in this page-turner accelerates as the stories progress and links between them emerge, moving toward a cliffhanger ending that will leave readers anxious for future installments."
--Booklist

"In our overtrilogied era, it's a delight to read a Book 1 and be so exquisitely left short of answers about its engaging characters at the end. We follow, in two apparently different time periods, a handful of people involved in the transmission of magical knowledge in a kingdom where magicians and kings struggle for dominance."
--Mary Harris Russel, Chicago Tribune

Read an excerpt from Skin Hunger, and learn more about the book and author at Kathleen Duey's website and her blog.

Skin Hunger is a National Book Award finalist.

Kathleen Duey has written numerous books for younger readers, including the chapter book series The Unicorn's Secret and the Hoofbeats series.

The Page 69 Test: Skin Hunger.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Sarah Pinborough reading?

The latest contributor to Writers Read: Sarah Pinborough, a writer of supernatural mystery, horror, thriller and crime fiction.

Pinborough's novels are The Taken (2007), Breeding Ground (2006), The Reckoning (2005), and The Hidden (2004).

Tower Hill is scheduled for release in July 2008.

The ALA (American Library Association) nominated The Taken as one of the top 8 horror books of 2007 on their reading list. Read an excerpt from The Taken.

Learn more about the author and her work at Sarah Pinborough's website.

Two books mentioned in her entry:

The Duma Key (Stephen King) and The Price (Alexandra Sokoloff).... I'm desperate to get reading The Price. I loved The Harrowing and having read the premise of The Price I think I'm going to like this one even more. [read on]

Writers Read: Sarah Pinborough.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Katie Estill's "Dahlia's Gone"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Katie Estill's Dahlia's Gone.

About the book, from the publisher:

“A promise can change a life. Even a small, casual promise extended without much thought or contemplation.” So learns Sand Williams, who has returned to her childhood home in the Ozarks for a much- needed rest after years of working abroad as a journalist. She and her husband, Frank, a hydrologist who loves caves, have moved into a cabin that Sand inherited from her father on the beautiful Seven Point River. A mile upstream from Sand lives Norah Everston, and the two women couldn’t be more different. The only thing they have in common is the boundary of their land, but when Norah asks Sand to look in on her children when she and her husband go traveling, Sand reluctantly agrees, because she grew up in the Ozarks believing that you helped your neighbor out.

The kids are Timothy and Dahlia, the children of Norah and Lyman by previous marriages. Lyman’s daughter, Dahlia, eighteen and a winsome blonde, is working to raise funds for college, while Norah’s son, Timothy, a big, handsome boy described as “"slow,”" goes to a special class in high school. The teenagers have never fully adjusted to their parents’ marriage, and the family is also divided by the subject of religion and the very strict church that Norah and Timothy faithfully attend. The teenagers have never been left alone before, and Norah, who doesn’t like Sand very much, has asked her to look after them for convenience sake.

Dahlia’s Gone is the story of three remarkable women whose lives are profoundly changed by the murder of Dahlia Everston: Sand, who makes the grisly discovery;, Norah, the victim’s grieving step-mother, who comes to blame Sand for the tragedy;, and Patty Callahan, who leads the investigation of Dahlia’s brutal murder. Patti, the only female deputy in Weleda County, is a woman of secrets, secrets that include her intimate and influential relationship with Sand’s deceased father, who was the owner and publisher of the local newspaper.

This mesmerizing narrative beautifully and suspensefully explores the aftermath of tragedy, and the process of facing the truth. In Dahlia’s Gone, Katie Estill has created brought to life three unforgettable characters whose lives intersect in both dramatic and mysterious ways. Dahlia’s Gone looks unflinchingly at what’s been lost, but in the end this is a story about redemption, the beauty of hope, and the soul-healing friendship that can be forged among women.

Among the praise for Dahlia's Gone:

“Good books do what nothing else in our lives can do-give full expression to the tender and tempestuous depths of our humanity-and Dahlia's Gone is a very good book indeed. There's an expansive sensibility within these pages, a fearless insistence on fusion, the author's extraordinary capacity to blend the global and provincial, the sacred and profane, the introspective and dramatic, that makes Katie Estill rare among American novelists.”
—Bob Shacochis, National Book Award-winning author of Easy in the Islands and The Immaculate Invasion

“In this astonishingly moving novel, Katie Estill takes the pieces of a family, the pieces of a backwater town, the pieces of women’s hard-bitten lives, and sews them together with a fine hand. What was broken is made whole. What cannot be made whole is redeemed. Of this we can be certain: Katie Estill is an inspired writer, this book a thing of passionate beauty.”
—Leigh Allison Wilson, Flannery O'Connor Award-Winning author of From the Bottom Up and Wind: Stories

"In this highly recommended book, a young, beautiful girl is brutally murdered--and the lives of three women are forever changed. . . More than an intriguing mystery, Katie Estill pulls us into the lives of these women who each must find her own way of coping with the tragedy ... Armchair Interview says: This is a story you won't soon forget."
—Peg Brantley

Read an excerpt from Dahlia's Gone, and learn more about the author and her work at Katie Estill's website.

Dahlia's Gone has been nominated for the Hammett Prize by the North American Branch of the International Association of Crime Writers.

Katie Estill is a graduate of Kenyon College and has an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her first novel, Evening Would Find Me, was published by Joyce Carol Oates's Ontario Review Press.

The Page 99 Test: Dahlia's Gone.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best: satires of academic life

Roger Rosenblatt's contributions to Time and PBS have won two George Polk Awards, a Peabody, and an Emmy. He is the author of five Off-Broadway plays and twelve books, including the national bestseller Rules for Aging and Children of War, which won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

His latest book, Beet, is an academic satire.

For the Wall Street Journal, he tagged five "satires of academic life [which] deserve to sit at the head of the class."

One title to make his list:

Straight Man
By Richard Russo
Random House, 1997

Another idiotic English department? At least this one's in America -- West Central Pennsylvania University, a nice joke in itself. Hank Devereux, the department chair pro tem, is a wiseacre but an optimist and therefore envied and despised. (An interesting element of academic novels is that, at one time or another, everyone is envied and despised.) Russo tends to easy marks -- Grace DuBois, the once lusty poet who has gone to fat; Campbell "Orshee" Wheener, the protofeminist who appends "or she" to every "he"; and Hank himself, who has done what most professors do once they have published to avoid perishing: He never writes again. But for all the nonsense he suffers (he is suspected of killing a goose), one feels something for Hank and for the world beyond his reach. Every laugh Russo elicits precedes a sigh.

Read about Number One on Rosenblatt's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Stephen Budiansky's "The Bloody Shirt"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Stephen Budiansky's The Bloody Shirt: Terror After Appomattox.

About the book, from the publisher:

An intimate and gripping look at terrorist violence during the Reconstruction era

Between 1867, when the defeated South was forced to establish new state governments that fully represented both black and white citizens, and 1877, when the last of these governments was overthrown, more than three thousand African Americans and their white allies were killed by terrorist violence. That violence was spread by roving vigilantes connected only by ideology, and by the hateful invective printed in widely read newspapers and pamphlets. Amid all the chaos, however, some men and women struggled to establish a “New South” in which former slaves would have new rights and a new prosperity would be shared by all. In his vivid, fast-paced narrative of the era now known as Reconstruction, Stephen Budiansky illuminates the lives of five remarkable men — two Union officers, a Confederate general, a Northern entrepreneur, and a former slave — whose idealism in the face of overwhelming hatred would not be matched for nearly a century. The Bloody Shirt is a story of violence, racism, division, and heroism that sheds new light on a crucial time in America’s history.

Among the early acclaim for The Bloody Shirt:

"[An] impassioned account of Southern resistance to Reconstruction.…If 'Profiles in Courage' had not already been taken, it would have made the perfect title for this linked set of portraits honoring five men who risked everything to fight for the principles that had cost so many lives.... Drawing heavily on the letters and dispatches of his main figures, as well as newspaper excerpts directly inserted into the text in a manner that recalls the documentaries of Ken Burns, [Budiansky] plunges the reader into the chaos of Reconstruction and the terrifying guerrilla war waged by embittered Southerners desperate to assert white supremacy."
--William Grimes, New York Times

"Journalist and military historian Budiansky (Her Majesty's Spymaster) pulls no punches in this hard-hitting examination of the most sordid aspects of Reconstruction in the South from 1865 to 1876. The “brutal war of terrorist violence” that he surveys certainly has not escaped the history books. But this worthy effort goes a long way toward highlighting the most venal aspects of how, in the 10 years after the Civil War, the white Southern power structure managed to erect the Jim Crow laws that for nearly a century legalized many aspects of racial discrimination. Budiansky also highlights “men and women of courage, idealism, rectitude, and vision” who confronted the establishment: Pennsylvania-born U.S. Army major Lewis Merrill, who fought the Ku Klux Klan in South Carolina; Prince Rivers, a former slave and Union army Colored Troop sergeant who became a state legislator and trial judge in South Carolina; and Maine-born Adelbert Ames, a Union general who served as Mississippi's provisional military governor. Budiansky brings the unpleasant details of the era alive in a smoothly written narrative."
--Publishers Weekly

"Writing in a crisp, engaging style, Budiansky presents his readers with a sequence of episodes from the careers of his protagonists, creating an impressionistic portrait of the life and death of the fledgling civilian governments. The result reads like a finely crafted novel.…The times have never been more propitious for a book that endeavors to explain…how it was that the United States 'could win such a terrible war and lose the ensuing peace.'"
--Joseph Pierro, Civil War Times

Learn more about The Bloody Shirt and its author at Stephen Budiansky's website.

Budiansky has written about military and intelligence history, science, and the natural world. His twelve books include include Her Majesty’s Spymaster, Battle of Wits, Air Power, The Nature of Horses, and The Truth About Dogs.

Read about Budiansky's list of the five best books about the post-Civil War period.

The Page 69 Test: The Bloody Shirt: Terror After Appomattox.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Janet Hope reading?

The latest contributor to Writers Read: Janet Hope, author of Biobazaar: The Open Source Revolution and Biotechnology.

She named a few work-related books, and:

To take on holidays and provide some escapism in the evenings when I'm writing:

Anything Discworld by Terry Pratchett, especially the books featuring Granny Weatherwax (witches books), Sam Vimes (guards books), Moist von Lipwig (Going Postal and Making Money) or Tiffany Aching and the Wee Free Men. [read on]

Janet Hope has published in the fields of constitutional, criminal, administrative, environmental, human rights, intellectual property law, and biotechnology regulation. She is a member of the Australian National University’s Center for Governance of Knowledge and Development.

Visit Janet Hope's researcher profile at her Australia National University webpage.

About Biobazaar: The Open Source Revolution and Biotechnology, from the Harvard University Press website:

Fighting disease, combating hunger, preserving the balance of life on Earth: the future of biotechnological innovation may well be the future of our planet itself. And yet the vexed state of intellectual property law -- a proliferation of ever more complex rights governing research and development -- is complicating this future. At a similar point in the development of information technology, "open source" software revolutionized the field, simultaneously encouraging innovation and transforming markets. The question that Janet Hope explores in Biobazaar is: can the open source approach do for biotechnology what it has done for information technology? Her book is the first sustained and systematic inquiry into the application of open source principles to the life sciences.

The appeal of the open source approach -- famously likened to a "bazaar," in contrast to the more traditional "cathedral" style of technology development -- lies in its safeguarding of community access to proprietary tools without discouraging valuable commercial participation. Traversing disciplinary boundaries, Hope presents a careful analysis of intellectual property-related challenges confronting the biotechnology industry and then paints a detailed picture of "open source biotechnology" as a possible solution. With insights drawn from interviews with Nobel Prize-winning scientists and leaders of the free and open source software movement -- as well as company executives, international policymakers, licensing experts, and industry analysts -- her book suggests that open source biotechnology is both desirable and broadly feasible -- and, in many ways, merely awaiting its moment.

Writers Read: Janet Hope.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10: romantic fiction

Freya North's latest novel, Pillow Talk, won Britain's Romantic Novel of the Year award earlier this month.

She named a top 10 list of romantic fiction for the Guardian. One title on her list:

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Another classic - but where Moll Flanders is deliciously bawdy, Jane Eyre is devastatingly romantic. The passion comes from the love between Jane and Rochester, so pure yet so constantly thwarted - they literally go through fire for it. I read somewhere that you won't understand true love until you've read this book.

Read about Number One on North's list.

The Page 99 Test: Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.

Jane Eyre also made the Guardian's top 10 list of "outsider books."

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Roberta Bivins' "Alternative Medicine? A History"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Roberta Bivins' Alternative Medicine? A History.

About the book, from the publisher:

Walk into your local health food shop or pick up the local paper, and you'll see ads for meditation, acupuncture, herbal supplements, Tai Chi classes, homeopaths, faith healers, and Chinese herbalists. But what exactly is alternative medicine? Is the astonishing popularity of alternative and multicultural medicine really such a recent development?

Comparing the medical systems of China, India, and the west (both mainstream and alternative), this volume ranges across four centuries and many continents, mapping the transmission of medical expertise from one culture to another and laying bare the roots of today's distinctions between alternative, complementary, and orthodox medicine. Historian Roberta Bivens uses a wealth of illuminating and entertaining historical examples -- from horse-racing English earls to desperate missionaries in 17th-century Indonesia, and from hypnotism in the British Raj to homeopathy in the American Wild West -- to underscore the vital point that the cross-cultural transmission of medical knowledge and expertise, even alternative medical knowledge and expertise, is not a uniquely contemporary phenomenon, but has a long and fascinating pedigree. Through comparisons of different medical innovations and importations across different cultures, the book illuminates the twin processes of medical and historical change as seen through the eyes of the medical professionals and consumers of the day. It traces for example the responses in nineteenth-century India to two western alternative medicines (homeopathy and mesmerism) and one staple of mainstream western medicine (germ theory).

Given the success of modern biomedical science, why are alternative and traditional treatments now so fashionable? This fascinating volume sheds light on this trend as it offers a sweeping comparative account of alternative medicine over four hundred years.

Among the praise for Alternative Medicine? A History:

"Cross-cultural history at its best--lively, acute, richly informative, and wonderfully revealing."
--Roger Cooter, Wellcome Trust Center for the History of Medicine, University College London

"Bivins' history is a provocative, far-sighted take on a long-debated subject."
--Publishers Weekly

"Extremely engaging... an imaginative, elegantly written and well constructed account, combining accessibility with good scholarship in the best possible way."
--Carsten Timmermann, University of Manchester

"Ground breaking... Roberta Bivins demonstrates the complex routes that medical knowledge and practice travelled, east to west, north to south, and back again... and disrupts our contemporary notions of "alternative" medicine."
--Allan M. Brandt, author of The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product that Defined America

"I recommend this book to anyone with more than a passing interest in 'alternative' medicine."
--Edzard Ernst, author of The Desktop Guide to Complementary and Alternative Medicine

"Roberta Bivins does a much-needed service to history and medicine by demonstrating that 'alternative medicine' is nothing new, but is as old as the first globalizing exchanges between Europe and Asia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Medicine has seldom been so powerfully presented in its diverse cultural and changing historical contexts. A fascinating and richly illuminating book."
--David Arnold, University of Warwick

"[an] elegant and engaging book...Bivins takes us on a fascinating journey from east to west and back again."
--Financial Times

"This compact, densely written history effectively demonstrates how alternative medicine has survived and prospered in the 21st century."
--The Independent

"A fascinating read... illuminating book."
--Nayanah Siva, New Scientist

Learn more about Alternative Medicine? A History at the Oxford University Press website, and visit Roberta Bivins' faculty webpage to read about her research and other publications.

Bivins is Wellcome Lecturer in the History of Medicine at Cardiff University.

The Page 99 Test: Alternative Medicine? A History.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Junot Díaz reading?

Junot Díaz's fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The Best American Short Stories. His debut story collection Drown was a national bestseller and won numerous awards.

Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times called Díaz's recently-published first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, “a book that decisively establishes him as one of contemporary fiction's most distinctive and irresistible new voices.”

He talked to the Christian Science Monitor about his recent movie and television viewing, and what he's been listening to.

And what he's been reading:

I'm kind of an obsessive reader. The way other writers write, I read. I read about a book a day. I just finished The Lazarus Project [by Aleksandar Hemon], which comes out in a couple months. Ridiculously awesome. I read Strangers, by Yamada Taichi, and I'm working through Duma Key by Stephen King. With earlier King books you got more fantastic for your dollar. With this one, I'm on Page 300, and the fantastic is slow to appear. My girl will tell me that you do not get between me and Entertainment Weekly.

Read more about Díaz's recent viewing and listening pleasures.

The Page 99 Test: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Joshua Henkin's "Matrimony"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Joshua Henkin's Matrimony.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the moment he was born, Julian Wainwright has lived a life of Waspy privilege. The son of a Yale-educated investment banker, he grew up in a huge apartment on Sutton Place, high above the East River, and attended a tony Manhattan private school. Yet, more than anything, he wants to get out–out from under his parents’ influence, off to Graymont College, in western Massachusetts, where he hopes to become a writer.

When he arrives, in the fall of 1986, Julian meets Carter Heinz, a scholarship student from California with whom he develops a strong but ambivalent friendship. Carter’s mother, desperate to save money for his college education, used to buy him reversible clothing, figuring she was getting two items for the price of one. Now, spending time with Julian, Carter seethes with resentment. He swears he will grow up to be wealthy – wealthier, even, than Julian himself.

Then, one day, flipping through the college facebook, Julian and Carter see a photo of Mia Mendelsohn. Mia from Montreal, they call her. Beautiful, Jewish, the daughter of a physics professor at McGill, Mia is – Julian and Carter agree – dreamy, urbane, stylish, refined.

But Julian gets to Mia first, meeting her by chance in the college laundry room. Soon they begin a love affair that – spurred on by family tragedy – will carry them to graduation and beyond, taking them through several college towns, over the next ten years. Then Carter reappears, working for an Internet company in California, and he throws everyone’s life into turmoil: Julian’s, Mia’s, his own.

Starting at the height of the Reagan era and ending in the new millennium, Matrimony is about love and friendship, about money and ambition, desire and tensions of faith. It asks what happens to a marriage when it is confronted by betrayal and the specter of mortality. What happens when people marry younger than they’d expected? Can love endure the passing of time?

In its emotional honesty, its luminous prose, its generosity and wry wit, Matrimony is a beautifully detailed portrait of what it means to share a life with someone – to do it when you’re young, and to try to do it afresh on the brink of middle age.

Among the praise for Matrimony:

"In the tradition of John Cheever and Richard Yates ... a novel about love, hope, delusion, and the intricate ways in which time's passage raises us up even as it grinds us down. It's a beautiful book. Here's to its brilliant future."
--Michael Cunningham, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of The Hours.

"Truly an up-all-night read."
--Adriana Leshko, Washington Post

"Mr. Henkin writes with a winningly anachronistic absence of showiness.... This is just a lifelike, likable book populated by three-dimensional characters who make themselves very much at home on the page."
--Janet Maslin, New York Times

"[A] charming novel ... Henkin keeps you reading with original characters, witty dialogue and a view that marriage, for all its flaws, is worth the trouble."
--Tom Fields-Meyer, People

"Beguiling.... [Henkin write] effortless scenes that float between past and present. [He creates] an almost personal nostalgia for these characters."
--Jennifer Egan, New York Times Book Review

"Radiates the kind of offbeat shoulder-shrugging charm that made Michael Chabon's The Mysteries of Pittsburgh so memorable.... [Matrimony] gets to you and stays with you."
--Kirkus

Read an excerpt from Matrimony, and learn more about the novel and its author at Joshua Henkin's website and his blog.

Joshua Henkin is also the author of the novel Swimming Across the Hudson, which was named a Los Angeles Times notable book of the year. His short stories have been published in Glimmer Train, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, The Yale Review, Triquarterly, DoubleTake, The North American Review, The New England Review, Boulevard, and elsewhere.

The Page 69 Test: Matrimony.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: David Anderegg's "Nerds"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: David Anderegg's Nerds: Who They Are and Why We Need More of Them.

About the book, from the publisher:

A lively, thought-provoking book that zeros in on the timely issue of how anti-intellectualism is bad for our children and even worse for America.

Why are our children so terrified to be called "nerds"? And what is the cost of this rising tide of anti-intellectualism to both our children and our nation? In Nerds, family psychotherapist and psychology professor David Anderegg examines why science and engineering have become socially poisonous disciplines, why adults wink at the derision of "nerdy" kids, and what we can do to prepare our children to succeed in an increasingly high-tech world.

Nerds takes a measured look at how we think about and why we should rethink "nerds," examining such topics as: - our anxiety about intense interest in things mechanical or technological;
- the pathologizing of "nerdy" behavior with diagnoses such as Asperger syndrome;
- the cycle of anti-nerd prejudice that took place after the Columbine incident;
- why nerds are almost exclusively an American phenomenon;
- the archetypal struggles of nerds and jocks in American popular culture and history;
- the conformity of adolescents and why adolescent stereotypes linger into adulthood long after we should know better; and nerd cultural markers, particularly science fiction.

Using education research, psychological theory, and interviews with nerdy and non-nerdy kids alike, Anderegg argues that we stand in dire need of turning around the big dumb ship of American society to prepare rising generations to compete in the global marketplace.

Among the praise for Nerds:

"In this intriguing treatise, child therapist and psychology professor Anderegg takes a wry and well-rounded look at the legacy of everyone’s (least) favorite schoolyard epithet, getting deep into the history of an idea as well as the nuts and bolts of childhood 'stereotype acquisition.'... Knowledgeable, charming and self-deprecating throughout, Anderegg is at his best when discussing the specific cases of children he’s worked with, but readers should be happy to tag along as he occasionally wanders off point."
--Publishers Weekly

"[T]he stereotype of the nerd persists -- dangerously so, argues David Anderegg in "Nerds." Indeed, nerds are just about the last group of people it's safe to mock in polite company, which infuriates Anderegg, a professor of psychology at Bennington College in Vermont and a practicing psychotherapist: "We act like it's all in good fun to communicate to our kids that people who are smart and do well in school and like science fiction and computers are also people who smell bad and look ugly and are so repulsive that they are not allowed to have girlfriends. And then we wonder why it's so hard to motivate kids to do well in school." In his breezy book, Anderegg deconstructs the stereotype, traces its history and makes the case that it undermines individual kids and the country as whole…."
--Rachel Hartigan Shea, Washington Post

"[A] thoughtful and warmly sympathetic book."
--The Economist

"Once in a blue moon a book comes along that makes us want to shout from the housetops, 'You’ve got to read this book!'... The book is 'Nerds: Who They Are and Why We Need More of Them,' by David Anderegg, a Lenox psychotherapist who teaches psychology at Bennington College in Vermont. A more moving defense of “nerds” (and “geeks”) would be hard to find."
--Boston Herald

Read an excerpt and watch a QuickTime trailer for Nerds.

Take "The Last Nerd Self-Test You’ll Ever Need!" and learn more about Nerds and its author at David Anderegg's website.

Anderegg is a professor of psychology at Bennington College in Vermont, and has worked extensively with children and teens while practicing as a psychotherapist. He is also the author of Worried All the Time: Rediscovering the Joy of Parenthood in an Age of Anxiety.

The Page 99 Test: Nerds.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Justin D’Ath reading?

The latest contributor to Writers Read: Justin D’Ath, New Zealand-born author of over 20 books for children and young adults.

One book mentioned in his entry:

Paradise, by Scottish writer A.L. Kennedy. “Hannah Luckraft knows the taste of paradise. It’s hidden in the peace of open country, it’s sweet on her lover’s skin, it flavours every drink she’s ever taken, but it never seems to stay…” So runs the blurb of this extraordinary novel which takes you inside the mind, heart and skin of an alcoholic. I’m finding it an uncomfortable read because, despite her many flaws, Hannah is a sympathetic character, but she’s on a downward self-destructive spiral that can only end badly. The scene where Hannah visits her elderly mother and neither woman can express what she’s feeling because a third party is present is perhaps one of the most poignant pieces of writing I’ve ever encountered. [read on]

Visit Justin D’Ath's website.

Read Sue Bursztynski's Janaury Magazine review of Pool, D'Ath's latest novel.

Writers Read: Justin D’Ath.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Paula McLain's "A Ticket to Ride"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Paula McLain's A Ticket to Ride.

About the book, from the publisher:

Remember that girl? The one who was impossibly cool, who taught you how to blow smoke rings, cut school, sneak out of the house? Remember how you turned yourself inside out trying to be just like her — and then she broke your heart?

Set in the long, hot summer of 1973, Paula McLain’s lyrical debut novel explores what happens when an insecure, motherless teenager falls under the dangerous spell of "that girl" — her older cousin Fawn. Fawn’s worldly ways are mesmerizing to Jamie, who submits to a makeover — both inside and out — to win Fawn’s approval. But over the course of a summer wrecked with tragedy and loss, Jamie learns that Fawn will use anything and anyone to further her own motives. When a local girl goes missing, Jamie realizes how dangerous Fawn truly is, and recognizes, too late, her own complicity in the disaster that unfolds around them.

Paula McLain’s poignant debut is a compelling family portrait that explores the darker sides of love and loyalty.

Among the early acclaim for A Ticket to Ride:

"Assured and ambitious... the complicated bonds of a makeshift family... lyrical precision. A deft and haunting book."
--Katharine Noel, author of Halfway House

"Absorbing, tantalizing, and super-heated as an endless summer day."
--Michelle Wildgen, author of You're Not You

"Paula McLain has put a poet's ear to the urgency of adolescence and come back with a strong throb of a first novel.... A Ticket to Ride, has a gorgeous female specificity to it.... A Ticket to Ride is a trip well spent."
--Sharon Long, Cleveland Plain Dealer

"Paula McLain's debut novel is a love letter to the 70's and the lost summers of teenage years.... McLain's writing is lyrical ... and the characters are achingly real. This is truly the sort of novel that, once started, is difficult to put down."
--Elizabeth Quinn, Bust Magazine

"In truly stunning prose, author Paula McLain imbues her novel with such a beautiful sense of time and place, the late Sixties and early Seventies, even as she juxtaposes the lives of a mother, a daughter, and a brother who in the end tries with all his heart to help his sister.... [O]ne of the most affecting and emotionally moving books I've read in recent years."
--Michael Leonard, Curled Up With A Good Book

John Searles, of Cosmopolitan magazine included A Ticket to Ride as one of his 10 winter reads on The Today Show, Saturday, February 2nd. See the video.

Read an excerpt from A Ticket to Ride, and learn more about the author and her work at Paula McLain's website.

McLain teaches in the MFA Program in Poetry at New England College, and at John Carroll University. She is the author of two collections of poetry and a memoir.

The Page 69 Test: A Ticket to Ride.

--Marshal Zeringue

Simon Wood's "Accidents Waiting to Happen," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Simon Wood's Accidents Waiting to Happen.

Wood's entry opens:

The weird thing is that when I’m reading someone else’s book, I always imagine who I would like to see play the parts in the movie, but when it comes to my own books, I don’t really have a visual of who would appear in the movie. I think the reason for this is that I’m too close to the material. Also when I’m writing all these characters, I tend to be playing all these characters in my head. So if the book became a movie, I’m not sure the world is ready to see me do a one-man production.

That said, I do visualize certain people for several of the roles in Accidents Waiting to Happen. The main role of Josh Michaels requires an actor who comes over as a vulnerable everyman and not someone who is an indestructible superhero. For that I think Matthew Fox (Jack from Lost) would be perfect. I think the moviegoers would get behind him. They could forgive him for the mistakes Josh had made in the story and they would root for him to survive the onslaught coming his way.

Josh has a femme fatale in the form of Belinda “Bell” Wong in his life and there’s no contest to who I want for that role.... [read on]

Read an excerpt from Accidents Waiting to Happen.

Visit Simon Wood's website, his MySpace page, and his blog.

Simon Wood is the Anthony Award winning author of four books as well as over 150 published stories and articles.

The Page 69 Test: Accidents Waiting to Happen.

My Book, The Movie: Accidents Waiting to Happen.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Doris Marie Provine's "Unequal Under Law"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Unequal Under Law: Race in the War on Drugs by Doris Marie Provine.

About the book, from the publisher:

Race is clearly a factor in government efforts to control dangerous drugs, but the precise ways that race affects drug laws remain difficult to pinpoint. Illuminating this elusive relationship, Unequal under Law lays out how decades of both manifest and latent racism helped shape a punitive U.S. drug policy whose onerous impact on racial minorities has been willfully ignored by Congress and the courts.

Doris Marie Provine’s engaging analysis traces the history of race in anti-drug efforts from the temperance movement of the early 1900s to the crack scare of the late twentieth century, showing how campaigns to criminalize drug use have always conjured images of feared minorities. Explaining how alarm over a threatening black drug trade fueled support in the 1980s for a mandatory minimum sentencing scheme of unprecedented severity, Provine contends that while our drug laws may no longer be racist by design, they remain racist in design. Moreover, their racial origins have long been ignored by every branch of government. This dangerous denial threatens our constitutional guarantee of equal protection of law and mutes a much-needed national discussion about institutionalized racism — a discussion that Unequal under Law promises to initiate.

Among the early praise for Unequal Under Law:

“Unequal under Law goes beyond conventional analyses of the War on Drugs and probes into the historical antecedents of current policy. The picture that emerges is one in which racial dynamics have always pervaded drug policy, from the criminalization of opium in the nineteenth century to Prohibition to the indefensible crack cocaine penalties of today. Only by understanding these basic functions can we assess the true implications of current drug policy and develop more constructive policy responses.”
—Marc Mauer, executive director, The Sentencing Project

“Unequal under Law is a masterful overview of the War on Drugs, drawing compelling historical continuity between different eras of U.S. policies toward ‘mind-altering substances’ and vulnerable populations. For future research and informed policy discussions in this area, Provine has set a new bar, and the bar is very high. This is an unusual combination of meticulous scholarship, analytic acumen, and ‘the big picture.’”
—Troy Duster, New York University

“This book will help the forces for racial justice, for drug law reform, and more broadly for human rights in criminal justice and law. It should help rekindle the much-needed debate about the deeply racist consequences of current drug laws.”
—Craig Reinarman, University of California, Santa Cruz

Read more about Unequal Under Law at the University of Chicago Press website, and learn more about the author and her work at Doris Marie Provine's faculty webpage.

Provine is a professor in the School of Justice & Social Inquiry at Arizona State University, currently on leave as a Fulbright Scholar at the Centro de Investigaciones sobre America del Norte.

The Page 99 Test: Unequal Under Law.

--Marshal Zeringue

Most important books: Ann Patchett

Ann Patchett is the author of the brilliant novel Bel Canto, a PEN/Faulkner Award winner about a hostage crisis in South America, and the more recent novel Run, the story of a fictional mixed-race Boston family.

She recently told Newsweek about her five most important books. And addressed two related issues:

A classic book that, upon rereading, disappointed:

George Orwell's Animal Farm. The last time I had read it I was 12. Now I don't think it holds up past the age of 13.

A book you hope parents read to their children:

All of Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House on the Prairie" books. The girls grow up to be smart and resourceful. What could be better than that?

Read more about Ann Patchett's most important books.

--Marshal Zeringue