Pg. 99: Bradford Martin's "The Other Eighties"

Today's feature at the Page 99 Test: The Other Eighties: A Secret History of America in the Age of Reagan by Bradford Martin.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this engaging new book, Bradford Martin illuminates a different 1980s than many remember—one whose history has been buried under the celebratory narrative of conservative ascendancy. Ronald Reagan looms large in most accounts of the period, encouraging Americans to renounce the activist and liberal politics of the 1960s and ‘70s and embrace the resurgent conservative wave. But a closer look reveals that a sizable swath of Americans strongly disapproved of Reagan’s policies throughout his presidency. With a weakened Democratic Party scurrying for the political center, many expressed their dissatisfaction outside electoral politics.

Unlike the civil rights and Vietnam era protesters, activists of the 1980s often found themselves on the defensive, struggling to preserve the hard-won victories of the previous era. Their successes, then, were not in ushering in a new era of progressive reforms but in effecting change in areas from professional life to popular culture, while beating back an even more forceful political shift to the right. Martin paints an indelible portrait of these and other influential, but often overlooked, movements: from on-the-ground efforts to constrain the administration’s aggressive Latin American policy and stave off a possible Nicaraguan war, to mock shanties constructed on college campuses to shed light on corporate America’s role in supporting the apartheid regime in South Africa. The result is a clearer, richer perspective on a turbulent decade in American life.

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

Bradford Martin is an associate professor of history at Bryant University in Rhode Island. He is the author of The Theater Is in the Street: Politics and Public Performance in Sixties America.

The Page 99 Test: The Other Eighties.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ben Tanzer's "You Can Make Him Like You," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: You Can Make Him Like You by Ben Tanzer.

The entry begins:

Once upon a time, and in a galaxy far, far away I was once asked to tackle the challenge presented by "My Book, The Movie" for my novel Lucky Man. At the time I expressed a handful of desires and recommendations.

One, that when Lucky Man was optioned, and for the record it's still available, so please do contact my representatives, quickly, I hoped that one result would be that Diane Lane would become so enamored with the movie's writing she would be compelled to finally return one of my calls. Still waiting for that, though my hopes are on the rise again with the release of my new novel You Can Make Him Like You.

Two, that the soundtrack would have to include songs by the still largely unknown band The Hold Steady, and this will not change with You Can Make Him Like You, a novel both inspired by and an homage to the now much more widely loved music of that very same band.

Three, that for the director, I would favor Larry Clark, Gregg Araki, Sofia Coppola, Noah Baumbach or...[read on]

Read an excerpt from You Can Make Him Like You, and learn more about the book and author at the official website.

Tanzer is the author of the books Lucky Man, Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine, Repetition Patterns and 99 Problems. He also oversees day-to-day operations of This Zine Will Change Your Life.

My Book, The Movie: Lucky Man.

The Page 69 Test: Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine.

The Page 69 Test: You Can Make Him Like You.

My Book, The Movie: You Can Make Him Like You.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Michael Northrop reading?

Today's featured contributor at Writers Read: Michael Northrop, author of Trapped (2011), an Indie Next List selection and a Barnes & Noble “Must-Read for Teens.”

The entry begins:

I recently started the novel Little Bee by Chris Cleave. It’s too early to say anything more definitive than that it’s very British and the prose is beautiful, but I got it at one of my favorite indie bookstores: WORD in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. They sold me several of my favorite books of last year (including my absolute favorite, Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes), and I trust their recommendations completely.

Before that, I read...[read on]

Among the early praise for Trapped:

“Some snow days dump so much snow that only Stephen King could enjoy them. Trapped is narrated by a 15-year-old basketball player who’s trapped with six classmates — four other boys and two girls — in their rural New England high school while it snows for an entire week. The snow knocks out power, heat and, perhaps worst of all, cellphones. The compelling plot of this young-adult novel is more The Breakfast Club than Lord of the Flies. Author Michael Northrop deftly describes teens who are tested by the endless snow: ‘It wasn’t a storm; it was whatever comes after that.’”
—USA Today

“The pages turn like wildfire.”
—Booklist

“A gripping disaster story.”
—Publishers Weekly

“A rousing, suspenseful tale… It all felt real.”
—PW: ShelfTalker

“Truly impossible to put down.”
—RT Book Reviews Magazine

Northrop is also the author of Gentlemen (2009), one of the American Library Association’s “Best Books for Young Adults.”

Learn more about the books and author at Michael Northrop's website.

Writers Read: Michael Northrop.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best tales of dislocation

Jerome Charyn is the author of Johnny One-Eye, The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson, and The Seventh Babe, a novel about a white third baseman on the Red Sox who also played in the Negro Leagues.

His latest book is Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil.

For the Wall Street Journal, Charyn came up with a list of the five best tales of dislocation. One title on the list:

The Day of the Locust
by Nathanael West (1939)

Novels about Hollywood rarely work. Few novelists have been able to find the right quotient to deal with the apocalyptic vividness of the place—but Nathanael West is one of them. "The Day of the Locust" is a masterpiece of disaffection. Even the moon over Hollywood "looked like an enormous bone button." West's Hollywood is ruled by rapacious desire. Tod Hackett, the novel's hero, is in love with Faye Greener, a gorgeous Hollywood extra. Staring at a photograph of her in a provocative pose, he realizes that "her invitation wasn't to pleasure, but to struggle, hard and sharp, closer to murder than to love." This Hollywood is not a land of movie stars and moguls, but of bit players, hookers, dwarfs, and dying vaudevillians and their daughters, who all blend into a ravenous mob, ready to "grab and rend." Yet the novel still manages to delight and hold us in thrall with its startling sense of detail. West is like a cunning snake charmer as he describes a cockfight in a garage or an army of extras moving across a papier-mâché mountain in a Napoleonic swirl.

Read about another book on the list.

The Day of the Locust is on Jane Ciabattari's list of the five best novels on Hollywood, Jonathan Kellerman's list of the top ten LA noir novels, and Peter Conn's list of the five best novels from the Great Depression; it also appears on Jonathan Evison's list of books about the Spirit of California and John Mullan's list of ten of the best riots in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Robin Fox's "The Tribal Imagination"

Today's feature at the Page 99 Test: The Tribal Imagination: Civilization and the Savage Mind by Robin Fox.

About the book, from the publisher:

We began as savages, and savagery has served us well—it got us where we are. But how do our tribal impulses, still in place and in play, fit in the highly complex, civilized world we inhabit today? This question, raised by thinkers from Freud to Levi-Strauss, is fully explored in this book by the acclaimed anthropologist Robin Fox. It takes up what he sees as the main—and urgent—task of evolutionary science: not so much to explain what we do, as to explain what we do at our peril.

Ranging from incest and arranged marriage to poetry and myth to human rights and pop icons, Fox sets out to show how a variety of human behaviors reveal traces of their tribal roots, and how this evolutionary past limits our capacity for action. Among the questions he raises: How real is our notion of time? Is there a human “right” to vengeance? Are we democratic by nature? Are cultural studies and fascism cousins under the skin? Is evolutionary history coming to an end—or just getting more interesting? In his famously informative and entertaining fashion, drawing links from Volkswagens to Bartok to Woody Guthrie, from Swinburne to Seinfeld, Fox traces our ongoing struggle to maintain open societies in the face of profoundly tribal human needs—needs which, paradoxically, hold the key to our survival.

Learn more about the book and author at Robin Fox's website.

Robin Fox, anthropologist, poet, and essayist, is University Professor of Social Theory at Rutgers University and author of Kinship and Marriage: An Anthropological Perspective and The Red Lamp of Incest: An Enquiry into the Origins of Mind and Society.

The Page 99 Test: The Tribal Imagination.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: John Vorhaus's "The Albuquerque Turkey"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: The Albuquerque Turkey by John Vorhaus.

About the book, from the publisher:

Master con artist Radar Hoverlander is getting out of the life…unless his old man drags him back in.

After their last big con netted them a nice chunk of change, Radar Hoverlander and his grifter girlfriend, Allie Quinn, have vowed to go straight. But Radar’s fragile commitment to clean living is put to the test when an oddly hefty lady in red shows up and stalks him through the streets of Santa Fe. Except that’s no lady—it’s Radar’s dad, Woody Hoverlander, a world class con artist in his own right.

Radar correctly figures if his dad is in drag, he must be in trouble. Woody is on the lam, with a Vegas hard guy after him and a large debt to clear. To help him, Radar must break his vow to leave cons behind—and risk losing Allie, who is determined to protect their nest egg and steer clear of bad influences.

Radar’s best pal, the usually hapless Vic Mirplo, had started creating art as a con, but now he’s coming into money as his sculptures start to sell. When Radar needs someone to flash some cash in Vegas and play the reckless gambler so that he can get his father off the hook, he reinvents Mirplo as the ultimate high roller--the Albuquerque Turkey--and dangles him as bait.

Art fraud, casino cons, love, loyalty, and plenty of double- and triple-crosses…they all prove that the odds of what happens in Vegas staying in Vegas are about as long as Radar Hoverlander staying straight.

Learn more about the book and author at John Vorhaus's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: The Albuquerque Turkey.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Patricia Churchland reading?

Today's featured contributor at Writers Read: Patricia S. Churchland, author of Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality.

The entry begins:

Frank Dikotter’s book, Mao’s Great Famine, lately finished, taught me a great deal about how cruel, arrogant and pig-headed was Mao (apologies to pigs), and how death by starvation of tens of millions of Chinese could have been averted had a few fawning underlings been willing to...[read on]

Among the early praise for Braintrust:

"Churchland guides the reader through lucid, well-articulated explanations of subjects like oxytocin's effect on an individual's hormonal makeup, brain changes over time, and relevant gene research, tying these neuroscientific elements together with more social science oriented areas like cooperation, trust, and rule creation.... In bringing together aspects of philosophy and neuroscience, Churchland presents a persuasive argument that morality is not shaped solely by religious or social forces but, instead, also draws on hormonal triggers, genes, and brain evolution. This influential work is likely to be a valuable resource for anyone seeking to gain a fresh, exciting perspective on an oft-discussed area of philosophy."
--Elizabeth Millard, ForeWord Reviews

"The book is about: morality, fairness and the source of both. But don't expect tight definitions of either term, let alone a didactic treatise on human evolution. Instead, sit back and let Churchland run her ideas past you. She's so chatty you'll never guess the University of California, San Diego, philosopher is associated with a school of thought called eliminative materialism. (Don't ask. Even a philosopher friend was fuzzy on the details.) She's just plain interesting."
--Leigh Dayton, Australian

"In its search for the origins of morality, this book deftly balances philosophical questions and an understanding of how the brain actually works. It is a rare combination, and extremely fruitful. Churchland roots morality firmly in the social emotions rather than in some abstract principles, yet shows us how and why these principles nevertheless emerge."
--Frans de Waal, author of Our Inner Ape and The Age of Empathy

Read an excerpt from Braintrust, and learn more about the book and author from the Princeton University Press website and Patricia S. Churchland's website.

Churchland is professor emerita of philosophy at the University of California, San Diego, and an adjunct professor at the Salk Institute. Her books include Brain-Wise and Neurophilosophy. In 1991, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.

The Page 99 Test: Braintrust.

Writers Read: Patricia S. Churchland.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best books on college basketball

Joshua Robinson is a freelance writer based in Manhattan. He has written over 400 stories for The New York Times across the sports, metro, foreign, and obituary sections since his sophomore year of college. His work has also appeared in The Washington Post, Sports Illustrated, the New York Daily News, The International Herald Tribune, The Sunday Times, and Dow Jones News Wires.

For The Daily Beast he named a list of the five best books on college basketball, including:

A Season on the Brink
by John Feinstein

To understand how easily passion can turn to madness in college basketball, you have to understand Bobby Knight. Or at least try to, the way John Feinstein did for one head-spinning season in Bloomington, Ind. Granted total access to the University of Indiana’s men’s basketball program for the entirety of the 1985-1986 campaign, Feinstein details every twist of Knight’s attempt to salvage a winning record.

And it becomes immediately apparent why his players regarded him with both fear and admiration. Any loss, Feinstein writes, “leaves him angry, frustrated, and unable — or at least unwilling — to deal with the world on civil terms for hours, perhaps days, sometimes weeks, depending on the dimensions of the defeat.” Knight’s incomparable drive, after all, did make him one of the most successful coaches in college basketball history. But it also made him the man who once flung a chair across a court when he didn’t like a call.

Read about another book on the list.

A Season on the Brink is one of Marjorie Kehe's ten best books about college basketball.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Neeti Nair's "Changing Homelands"

Today's feature at the Page 99 Test: Changing Homelands: Hindu Politics and the Partition of India by Neeti Nair.

About the book, from the publisher:

Changing Homelands offers a startling new perspective on what was and was not politically possible in late colonial India. In this highly readable account of the partition in the Punjab, Neeti Nair rejects the idea that essential differences between the Hindu and Muslim communities made political settlement impossible. Far from being an inevitable solution, the idea of partition was a very late, stunning surprise to the majority of Hindus in the region.

In tracing the political and social history of the Punjab from the early years of the twentieth century, Nair overturns the entrenched view that Muslims were responsible for the partition of India. Some powerful Punjabi Hindus also preferred partition and contributed to its adoption. Almost no one, however, foresaw the deaths and devastation that would follow in its wake.

Though much has been written on the politics of the Muslim and Sikh communities in the Punjab, Nair is the first historian to focus on the Hindu minority, both before and long after the divide of 1947. She engages with politics in post-Partition India by drawing from oral histories that reveal the complex relationship between memory and history—a relationship that continues to inform politics between India and Pakistan.

Visit Neeti Nair's faculty webpage, and learn more about Changing Homelands at the Harvard University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Changing Homelands.

--Marshal Zeringue

Janice Eidus's "The Last Jewish Virgin," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: The Last Jewish Virgin by Janice Eidus.

The entry begins:

In my ideal film version, Lilith will be played by Zooey Deschanel, who will look lovely and seductive dressed in Lilith’s various ensembles: vampire seductress; Middle East harem girl; casual jeans/T-shirt/sneakers girl; madcap, bubbly ingenue in polka dots and heels, and whose urgent, blue-eyed intensity and doe-eyed prettiness I find extremely compelling.

As for Baron Rock, the black haired, blue-eyed, art professor/is-he-or-isn’t-he-a vampire/is-he-or-isn’t-he Jewish, 40-something male lead, I’ll have him played by...[read on]

Read an excerpt of The Last Jewish Virgin, and learn more about the book and author at Janice Eidus's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Last Jewish Virgin.

Writers Read: Janice Eidus.

My Book, The Movie: The Last Jewish Virgin.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Ben Dolnick reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Ben Dolnick, author of You Know Who You Are.

His entry begins:

My past year of reading has been dominated by a couple of writers.

(1) I’ve been rereading all of Alice Munro. The non-fiction project that prompted this bout may or may not ever amount to anything, but I’ve been enjoying it hugely and learning a giant amount about what depths are possible within what looks like a fairly ordinary, well-made story. I’ve been reading her chronologically, so I’ve been able to watch her develop in a way I couldn’t really the first time through. She was dauntingly good at 21, but by the time she was fifty or sixty she was just…untouchable.

(2) I’ve been reading Robert...[read on]

Among the early praise for You Know Who You Are:

"I love nothing more than a keen, kind eye reporting on lovably flawed characters, and Ben Dolnick has given me a story and a family to adore. Jacob Vine's journey from childhood into manhood is bittersweet, funny, so fondly told and so very smart. What a pleasure."
—Elinor Lipman, author of Then She Found Me

“Ben Dolnick brilliantly portrays the moment by moment intensity of adolescence, the bewildering adventure of growing up, and the often unbridgeable distance that exists between the world of young people and the world of adults. As the members of Dolnick’s Vine family cope with a devastating loss, they remain wholly believable and achingly lovable. Through Jacob, the middle child, we come to understand that such a loss can take years to fully register, and that recovery is not so much a process of letting go, but of remembering and holding on to one’s true self.”
—Kiara Brinkman, author of Up High in the Trees

Read an excerpt from You Know Who You Are, and learn more about the book and author at Ben Dolnick's website.

Dolnick grew up outside of Washington, D.C., and currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife. He is the author of a previous novel, Zoology, and his work has appeared in various publications, including The New York Times and Five Chapters.

The Page 69 Test: Ben Dolnick's Zoology.

The Page 69 Test: You Know Who You Are.

Writers Read: Ben Dolnick.

--Marshal Zeringue

Reza Aslan's five favorite books

Reza Aslan is author of No god but God and Beyond Fundamentalism.

For The Week magazine he named five favorite foreign novels.

One title on the list:

The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat

Widely recognized as one of the most important literary works of the 20th century in any language, The Blind Owl is a Kafkaesque novel about a lonely (and possibly psychotic) man living in a terrifying nightmare world of his own making, where the only person he can trust with his thoughts is his own shadow.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Ben Tanzer's "You Can Make Him Like You"

Today's feature at the Page 69 Test: You Can Make Him Like You by Ben Tanzer.

About the book:

You Can Make Him Like You, Tanzer's third novel is an adventure in being a grown up, in facing relationships and jobs, friendships and parenthood. A true exploration of what it means to live in our world, saturated with pop culture in the midst of real life struggles.

Read an excerpt from You Can Make Him Like You, and learn more about the book and author at the official website.

Tanzer is the author of the books Lucky Man, Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine, Repetition Patterns and 99 Problems. He also oversees day-to-day operations of This Zine Will Change Your Life.

My Book, The Movie: Lucky Man.

The Page 69 Test: Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine.

The Page 69 Test: You Can Make Him Like You.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Christopher Lane's "The Age of Doubt"

Today's feature at the Page 99 Test: The Age of Doubt: Tracing the Roots of Our Religious Uncertainty by Christopher Lane.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Victorian era was the first great “Age of Doubt” and a critical moment in the history of Western ideas. Leading nineteenth-century intellectuals battled the Church and struggled to absorb radical scientific discoveries that upended everything the Bible had taught them about the world. In The Age of Doubt, distinguished scholar Christopher Lane tells the fascinating story of a society under strain as virtually all aspects of life changed abruptly.

In deft portraits of scientific, literary, and intellectual icons who challenged the prevailing religious orthodoxy, from Robert Chambers and Anne Brontë to Charles Darwin and Thomas H. Huxley, Lane demonstrates how they and other Victorians succeeded in turning doubt from a religious sin into an ethical necessity.

The dramatic adjustment of Victorian society has echoes today as technology, science, and religion grapple with moral issues that seemed unimaginable even a decade ago. Yet the Victorians’ crisis of faith generated a far more searching engagement with religious belief than the “new atheism” that has evolved today. More profoundly than any generation before them, the Victorians came to view doubt as inseparable from belief, thought, and debate, as well as a much-needed antidote to fanaticism and unbridled certainty. By contrast, a look at today’s extremes—from the biblical literalists behind the Creation Museum to the dogmatic rigidity of Richard Dawkins’s atheism—highlights our modern-day inability to embrace doubt.

Learn more about The Age of Doubt at the Yale University Press website and Christopher Lane's website.

Writers Read: Christopher Lane.

Author Interviews: Christopher Lane.

The Page 99 Test: The Age of Doubt.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Patrick Mason reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Patrick Q. Mason, author of The Mormon Menace: Violence and Anti-Mormonism in the Postbellum South.

His entry begins:

The only good thing about flying these days is that, if you are lucky, you can read a good book. Fortunately, before my travel ordeal last week I had picked up The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, a book sufficiently slim to read on most flights. By the end of it, I had an argument with the title—the protagonist, in my view, is more a reluctant nationalist or resistance fighter than a fundamentalist per se—but that was about my only quibble with it.

In the literature on the American Civil War, there has blossomed a cottage industry of titles on the question of why soldiers fought. The same is increasingly true of our post-9/11 setting, as people try to get into the various minds of terrorists, religious extremists, and—dare I include them in the same sentence—American neocons and military personnel.

Hamid’s book meets the mark of excellent fiction. It features engaging and realistic characters in a complex but accessible world presented by captivating (and often captivatingly simple) prose. It builds steadily, and subtly, to a genuinely suspenseful ending. The narrative is touchingly humane, far less about politics than about an authentic, human, and tragic love story. But it also wrestles, as intelligently and incisively as almost anything I’ve read, with the question of—to use President Bush’s formulation—...[read on]

Among the early praise for The Mormon Menace:

"Written with flair and intelligence, this book finds large themes in the activity of Mormon itinerant ministers in the late 19th-century American South and provides new and valuable insights about religion and violence, second generation Mormonism, and postbellum white culture in the American South. Patrick Mason, one of the best of the new generation of LDS scholars, uses the case study of Mormon missionaries to look at the post-Civil War American South. He takes another step in the increasing maturity of Mormon studies, as old and narrow views are replaced with mainstream methods and ideas. He gives his topic a fresh look, and the result is a valuable new view of the Mormon role in the American experience. Mormonism becomes a case study for studying the values, religion, and violence of the postbellum American South."
--Ronald Walker, author of Massacre at Mountain Meadows

"Patrick Mason tells an adventurous and violent story in this account of Mormon lynchings in the nineteenth-century South. His careful dissection of these bloody events leads us deep into the southern mentality and the contentious images of Mormonism in America. He finds the southern experience even reshaped Mormonism's view of itself. No reader will come away from this book feeling entirely comfortable."
--Richard Bushman, Gouverneur Morris Professor of History, Emeritus, Columbia University

"A deeply researched, clearly written analysis of an almost unknown aspect of southern and religious history. It fills an important gap in scholarship and by so doing illuminates a wide variety of interpretative issues in both fields. This perceptive and creatively conceived study should be widely read and the author applauded for realizing the significance of a hitherto neglected topic."
--John Boles, William P. Hobby Professor of History, Rice University

Learn more about The Mormon Menace at the Oxford University Press website and visit Patrick Q. Mason's faculty webpage.

Mason is Research Associate Professor at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and Associate Director for Research of an interdisciplinary research initiative entitled Contending Modernities: Catholic, Muslim, Secular.

The Page 99 Test: The Mormon Menace.

Writers Read: Patrick Q. Mason.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best cases of blindness in literature

At the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best cases of blindness in literature.

One title on the list:

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Jane supernaturally hears Rochester's voice calling her back to Thornfield. She returns to find her former "master" blinded in the fire that has destroyed his house and killed the woman who started it, his maddened wife Bertha. Now Jane can look after him (and marry him).

Read about another book on the list.

Jane Eyre also made the Guardian's top 10 lists of "outsider books" and "romantic fiction;" it appears on Lorraine Kelly's six best books list, Esther Freud's top ten list of love stories, and Jessica Duchen's top ten list of literary Gypsies, and on John Mullan's lists of ten of the best weddings in literature, ten of the best pianos in literature, ten of the best breakfasts in literature, and ten of the best smokes in fiction. It is one of Kate Kellaway's ten best love stories in fiction.

The Page 99 Test: Jane Eyre.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Patricia S. Churchland's "Braintrust"

Today's feature at the Page 99 Test: Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality by Patricia S. Churchland.

About the book, from the publisher:

What is morality? Where does it come from? And why do most of us heed its call most of the time? In Braintrust, neurophilosophy pioneer Patricia Churchland argues that morality originates in the biology of the brain. She describes the "neurobiological platform of bonding" that, modified by evolutionary pressures and cultural values, has led to human styles of moral behavior. The result is a provocative genealogy of morals that asks us to reevaluate the priority given to religion, absolute rules, and pure reason in accounting for the basis of morality.

Moral values, Churchland argues, are rooted in a behavior common to all mammals--the caring for offspring. The evolved structure, processes, and chemistry of the brain incline humans to strive not only for self-preservation but for the well-being of allied selves--first offspring, then mates, kin, and so on, in wider and wider "caring" circles. Separation and exclusion cause pain, and the company of loved ones causes pleasure; responding to feelings of social pain and pleasure, brains adjust their circuitry to local customs. In this way, caring is apportioned, conscience molded, and moral intuitions instilled. A key part of the story is oxytocin, an ancient body-and-brain molecule that, by decreasing the stress response, allows humans to develop the trust in one another necessary for the development of close-knit ties, social institutions, and morality.

A major new account of what really makes us moral, Braintrust challenges us to reconsider the origins of some of our most cherished values.

Read an excerpt from Braintrust, and learn more about the book and author from the Princeton University Press website and Patricia S. Churchland's website.

Churchland is professor emerita of philosophy at the University of California, San Diego, and an adjunct professor at the Salk Institute. Her books include Brain-Wise and Neurophilosophy. In 1991, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.

The Page 99 Test: Braintrust.

--Marshal Zeringue

Elizabeth Buchan's "Separate Beds," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Separate Beds by Elizabeth Buchan.

The entry begins:

They did make my novel, Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman into a film – to be precise, a CBS Primetime Drama with Christine Lahti as the lead, Rose. So, in that respect, I have been lucky.

For Separate Beds, I would lay siege to Kate Winslet to play Annie. Matt Damon for Tom (he gave such an ace performance in True Grit). Or Leonardo DiCaprio might like to reprise the pairing with Kate of Revolutionary Road – with the incentive that it is...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Elizabeth Buchan's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: Separate Beds.

Writers Read: Elizabeth Buchan.

My Book, The Movie: Separate Beds.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Sarah Pekkanen's "Skipping a Beat"

This weekend's feature at the Page 69 Test: Skipping a Beat by Sarah Pekkanen.

About the book, from the publisher:

What would you do if your husband wanted to rewrite the rules of your relationship?

Julia Dunhill, a thirty-something party planner, seems to have it all: Married to her high school sweetheart and living in a gorgeous home in Washington D.C., she imagines her future unfolding very much as it has for the past few years, since she and her husband Michael successfully launched their companies. There will be dinner parties to attend, operas to dress up for, and weddings and benefits to organize for her growing list of clients. There will be shopping sprees with her best friend, Isabelle, and inevitably those last five pounds to shed. In her darker moments, she worries that her marriage has dissolved from a true partnership into a façade, but she convinces herself it’s due to the intensity of their careers and fast-paced lifestyle.

So as she arranges the molten chocolate cupcakes for the annual Opera benefit, how can she know that her carefully-constructed world is about to fall apart? That her husband will stand up from the head of the table in his company’s boardroom, open his mouth to speak, and crash to the carpeted floor… all in the amount of time it will take her to walk across a ballroom floor just a few miles away. Four minutes and eight seconds after his cardiac arrest, a portable defibrillator jump-starts Michael’s heart. But in those lost minutes he becomes a different man, with an altered perspective on the rarified life they’ve been living and a determination to regain the true intimacy they once shared. Now it is up to Julia to decide — is it worth upending her comfortable world to try to find her way back to the husband she once adored, or should she walk away from this new Michael, who truthfully became a stranger to her long before his change of heart?

Read an excerpt from Skipping a Beat, and learn more about the book and author at Sarah Pekkanen's website.

The Page 69 Test: Skipping a Beat.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Bathsheba Monk reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Bathsheba Monk, author of the recently released novel Nude Walker.

Her entry begins:

I am reading and loving Susan Straight’s Take One Candle Light a Room. Besides the beautiful language and dialects (Creole, street), I get the feeling that Ms. Straight knows these cultures intimately—cultures that are hidden to me—and so I am reading to find out about that, as well as to find out what happens to the characters, i.e. is she going to save her godson? The real question: Is it possible to save someone else? And she absolutely nails the guilt/ambition/nostalgia of those who chose to leave their familiar life behind and wing it alone in the world, forfeiting their...[read on]

Among the early praise for Nude Walker:

"Given its disparate cast of characters—soldiers, strippers, a Native American shaman, a born-again Bible thumper and a crazed pill popper—Nude Walker should be a muddled mess. Instead this novel about the son of nouveau riche Lebanese immigrants and the daughter of New England aristocrats, who fall for each other after serving in Afghanistan, is a pitch-perfect portrayal of class warfare in small-town U.S.A. Monk is a sure-footed storyteller who comically, affectionately, poignantly maps the emotional minefields of the northeastern heartland—and the heart."
--More Magazine

"An allegory of old society confronting a new world, and a rollicking good read."
--Kirkus Reviews

"...Monk's authority (she hails from Pennsylvania and served in the Army) and a winning mix of humor, mysticism, and sympathy for people adapting to a swiftly changing world make for an appealing tale."
--Publishers Weekly

Read an excerpt from Nude Walker, and learn more about the book and author at Bathsheba Monk's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: Nude Walker.

Writers Read: Bathsheba Monk.

--Marshal Zeringue