Virginia Reeves

Virginia Reeves's newest novel is The Behavior of Love.

From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: You note that your late father-in-law inspired your character Ed. How did his life story lead you to create Ed, and how did you come up with the idea for your character Laura, Ed’s wife?

A: My late father-in-law, Mike, was a behavioral psychologist (not psychiatrist, like Ed) who worked at the institution in Boulder. His timeline was later than Ed's, but that experience definitely gave me a starting point.

The most poignant part of Mike's life that inspired Ed's character, however, was his tragic aneurysm and subsequent stroke at the age of 39. Like Ed, my father-in-law led two different lives—one before and one after his brain injury.

I only knew Mike in that second life, and there were times I was envious of the people who'd known him before. It took time and perspective to realize how fortunate I was to share in that second life. I like to hope I imbued Ed with some of Mike's better second-life qualities.

Though Laura shares some surface-level traits with my mother-in-law (they are both artists, for example), she is a complete amalgamation of various people (which is true of most all of my characters, I'd say). There are parts of Laura that are me, and parts of her that are my own mother. There are parts of her that...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Serhii Plokhy

Serhii Plokhy's new book is Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front: American Airmen behind the Soviet Lines and the Collapse of the Grand Alliance.

From his Q&A with Richard Godwin for the Guardian:

What inspired you to tell the story of Operation Frantic now?

I grew up behind the iron curtain. The “great patriotic war”, as it is known in Russian, played a huge role in the collective memory and Soviet propaganda. But there was little space allocated to other allies. When I realised there were Americans at airbases in my backyard it was a “wow” moment.

Once I heard that there were all these volumes of KGB and Smersh [the Red Army’s counter-intelligence agencies] surveillance, I thought: “I’d better take a look!” On the one hand, you look at these documents and are disgusted so much spying was going on. On the other hand, as a historian, you’re delighted that someone was writing those reports.

How did the airbases come about?

There was military logic – but it was more about expectations. The Americans expected a long fight against the Japanese, so they wanted to show Stalin they were “good allies” to convince him to let them establish airbases in the far east. The Soviets didn’t see much advantage in the airbases militarily, but finally accepted the idea, wanting to charm the British and Americans into opening a second front against the Germans. Once the Americans and British had landed in Normandy, Stalin lost interest. And there was a devastating bombing raid on the bases. Also the eastern front moved fast, so they didn’t have the strategic impact they might have had. But...[read on]

My Book, The Movie: The Last Empire.

The Page 99 Test: The Gates of Europe.

The Page 99 Test: Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe.

--Marshal Zeringue

Oyinkan Braithwaite

Oyinkan Braithwaite’s is the author of My Sister the Serial Killer.

From her CrimeReads Q&A with Molly Odintz:

Molly Odintz: My Sister the Serial Killer is, on one hand, a not-so-universal story about a woman who ends up helping her sister cover up a string of murders. It is also a much more universal story about sibling dynamics, and how in many a household, one sister ends up doing all the work—and cleaning up all the messes—while the other, more beautiful sister, has fun. What did you want to explore about family power dynamics in your novel?

Oyinkan Braithwaite: The power dynamic between the sisters, between the father and his children, between husband and wife, developed somewhat organically as I fleshed the story out.

Initially, it was going to be a story about two friends, but I wanted something beyond choice that bound the two women together. You choose who your friends are. You don’t choose your family. And I set out to explore the love, loyalty and betrayal between the sisters.

Then I became fascinated with examining the age old debate of nature vs nurture and the different responses to trauma within the family.

And while we’re talking about sisters—do you have one? And, if so, what did she think of the novel?

I have two sisters and a brother. At first...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Christina Thompson

Christina Thompson is the author of Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia and Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All, which was shortlisted for the 2009 NSW Premier's Award and the 2010 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing.

From Thompson's Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: Why did you decide to write this book about Polynesia, and how did you choose the aspects of the region's history and culture to focus on?

A: I have been writing about the history of the Pacific for more than 30 years, ever since I went to Australia for graduate school. I am especially interested in stories of people who came to the Pacific from elsewhere, and in the beginning I was largely focused on Europeans and their encounters with the indigenous peoples of the Pacific.

But these indigenous peoples, including the people we now know as Polynesians, also came to the Pacific from someplace else. And so in this book I look deep into the history of the Pacific and try to answer a series of questions about who Polynesians are, where they came from, and how...[read on]

Visit Christina Thompson's website.

The Page 99 Test: Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All.

The Page 99 Test: Sea People.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jonathan Safran Foer

Jonathan Safran Foer's new book is We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast.

From his Slate Q&A with Inkoo Kang:

[I]s there a way to promote greater plant-eating other than this call to abstemiousness? [Foer advocates “no animal products before dinner” because meat production is such a big driver of climate change.]

A hundred percent. I approached a couple of chefs when I was writing this book, and chefs are bizarrely, or not bizarrely, the most enthusiastic endorsers of this idea. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in London, who literally wrote the book on meat, is a huge advocate of meat reduction. Yotam Ottolenghi just posted about my book, and it’s kind of worth seeing the little video that he made. [Editor’s note: In the video, Ottolenghi vows to “inject my vegetables with even more flavor.”]

Samin Nosrat, who does Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, the way she describes it is “vegan during daylight.” I know her a little bit. I don’t know anyone on Earth who likes food and celebrates food and loves the culture of food more than she does. I find it unbelievably inspiring and brave that she would even enter this conversation, much less go that far. She hasn’t talked about it that much, but what I’ve read that she said is like, “This is hard. Man, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do it. And I doubt I’ll do it consistently and I don’t want to do it, but we have to do it or we have to acknowledge that we’re giving up.”

[Editor’s note: Nosrat said about her “daytime” veganism, “I really don’t want to, but I feel like it’s something I have to do, and I feel like it’s what I need to, not necessarily bully other people into doing, but at least model for people.”]

We have to eat less meat. There’s no two ways around that unless we just decide to give up on climate change...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Adrienne Mayor

Adrienne Mayor is a research scholar in Classics and the History of Science, and a Berggruen Fellow 2018-19, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University.

Her newest book is Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology.

From Mayor's Q&A with James Pethokoukis for AEIdeas:

Pethokoukis: I often think about how science fiction stories seem to inspire actual inventions. One case is the Star Trek communicators, the design of which may have inspired the early flip phone. Did we see any of that in ancient Greece? Were things the Greeks tried to build inspired by stories, or did this work the other way around? Do the myths inspire actual attempts to create devices for the ancient Greeks?

Mayor: I think there is some evidence for that with real artisans and craftsmen and engineers, especially in what you might call the Silicon Valley of antiquity — the city of Alexandria in Egypt.

After the time of Alexander in the fourth Century BC up through about the first century AD, that city was a center of inventions that included self-moving devices, and robots, and automatons, some of them quite large and some of them miniaturized. So I found that many of the real inventions from that time period did actually feature mythological characters and situations. So, I think that the myths actually did inspire real technicians and engineers to build real self-moving devices and automatons.

Pethokoukis: You mentioned Alexandria as the Silicon Valley of the time. Given how much the Greeks focused on hubris, you know, arrogance gone wild in the cautionary tales, what would the Greeks have thought about Silicon Valley today? I mean, you work at Stanford University — what would they have made of the modern technologists?

Mayor: I think they would have thought back to the myth of Pandora, and I mentioned Prometheus. Prometheus was the guy who brought the gift of fire, actually the gods’ technology of fire, to the vulnerable humans. He was really worried about humanity and their survival. I mentioned that Pandora was brought down to earth to insinuate herself into human society. She was given as a bride to Prometheus’ brother, Epimetheus, and I think the Greeks had a sense of humor about these myths.

I mean, the name Prometheus means “foresight,” and the name of his brother Epimetheus, it means “hindsight,” the inability to look forward. And I think that the ancient Greeks today, if they traveled to Silicon Valley, would say...[read on]

The Page 99 Test: Gods and Robots.

--Marshal Zeringue

Rajia Hassib

Rajia Hassib's new novel is A Pure Heart.

From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: How did you come up with the idea for A Pure Heart, and for your characters Rose and Gameela?

A: I wanted to write a novel that explored the complex personal and geopolitical situations that form the backdrop of any terrorist attack. I’m always dismayed by how often such attacks are spoken of as if they were easily explained. When the terrorist is a Muslim, so many people seem too ready to buy into his own justification of his heinous act.

But research has proven that the real motives are much more complex than the simple justifications that terrorists resort to in order to assume a moral position that makes them believe their acts are good, not evil.

One way to portray this complexity was to depict an attack where the terrorist and his victims all belonged to the same religion, a very common scenario that automatically rules out the most simplistic explanation of how the terrorist justified murder through labeling his victims as infidels. So this was how Gameela’s character was born—she was to be the victim.

Once I started working on the personal stories of the various characters...[read on]

Visit Rajia Hassib's website.

Writers Read: Rajia Hassib.

The Page 69 Test: In the Language of Miracles.

--Marshal Zeringue

Rachel Monroe

Rachel Monroe’s new essay collection is Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession.

From her Q&A with Molly Odintz at CrimeReads:

Molly Odintz: Your introduction takes us through a true crime convention where there are some cringeworthy moments of true crime fandom—as the true crime craze continues, are fans maturing in their approach to the subject matter, or are we still just as likely to hear a squee as a yech when talking about a serial killer at one of these things?

Rachel Monroe: Fandoms are complex ecosystems, and I think fans often have more self-awareness than they’re given credit for. That said, fandoms can also be insular and resistant to critique or pushback. During my experience at CrimeCon, which I write about in the book, I spoke with true crime fans who were very attuned to and critical of the more voyeuristic, exploitative aspects of the genre. I also met people who were unabashedly enthusiastic and hungry for sensation without seeming to acknowledge that these stories involved real people’s real trauma.

MO: You mention that interest in murder as subject of research has increased as real-life murder rates have fallen over the past few years, and that interest in murder increases when the victim is young, white, wealthy, or all of the above. Is empathy restricted for the least vulnerable? Has the 24-hour news cycle led us to cut ourselves off from only the most manageable pain?

RM: Some true crime fans say they’re drawn to the genre because...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Lorenzo Carcaterra

Lorenzo Carcaterra is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Sleepers, A Safe Place, Apaches, Gangster, Street Boys, Paradise City, Chasers, Midnight Angels, and The Wolf. He is a former writer/producer for Law & Order and has written for National Geographic Traveler, The New York Times Magazine, Details, and Maxim.

Carcaterra's new novel is Tin Badges.

From his Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: How did you come up with the idea for Tin Badges, and for your character Tank Rizzo?

A: I had read quite a few books where the lead detective in a series can't seem to piece together his post-police department life. The character usually had two ex-wives and are bad at maintaining relationships; has children he never sees; and has drinking and, in some cases, drug issues. The life, in short, is a mess.

I wanted a lead character who, despite being shot off the job and missing the day-to-day activity of being a cop, had none of that baggage. Tank gets a three-quarter tax-free disability pension due to his wound; he inherited a four-story brownstone in the village and rents out the top two floors. He works out; loves sports; reads; travels; goes to the theatre; watches movies and TV, reads, collects wine.

More importantly, he has a close-knit community of friends--from his ex-partner to the woman he dates who happens to co-own his favorite restaurant; to the crew he uses to help him solve any cases that might come his way. Included in the mix is an old mob boss...[read on]

Visit Lorenzo Carcaterra's website.

Writers Read: Lorenzo Carcaterra.

--Marshal Zeringue

Angie Maxwell

Angie Maxwell is co-author of The Long Southern Strategy: How Chasing White Voters in the South Changed American Politics.

From her Salon interview with Paul Rosenberg:

First I want to ask about the need to understand the Southern strategy as something long-term and continuing or evolving, not just a one-time event.

In short, with the Southern strategy, the story we tell is that after the Civil Rights Act, first Barry Goldwater and then Richard Nixon really played to white racial angst, and the South flipped to red. But when you start looking at not just the electoral map, but voting trends, the South goes pretty heavily back to Jimmy Carter in 1976. And most Southern politicians don't change their party IDs during that period of time. You see from archival work and other scholarship how worried the GOP was post-Watergate that the inroads they made in the South they were going to lose. And sure enough, they do.

Now, if they were so adamant on a backlash to civil rights, then why pick Carter? But there this notion that Carter's one of them — he shares their Southern identity, they understand him, he’s a born-again Christian. So the South kind of goes back [to the Democrats]. Then the Reagan folks in 1980 dropped the Equal Rights Amendment from their platform. This to me is the bridge. In 1980, the Republicans are trying again to win those Southern voters back, because they’ve really based their electoral map on that. They took that fork in the road in the late '60s, and it's kind of hard, once you set your strategy, to say, "Oh, let's just pick a new one." So they dropped the ERA.

This was a radical thing to do because the Equal Rights Amendment — and second-wave feminism in general — was a completely bipartisan effort. There were legions of Republican women feminists. In fact, they were some of the leaders in the movement. At the 1977 National Women's Convention, the only national women's convention we've ever had, every living first lady of both parties was there.. All the major congresswomen from both parties were there. What happened then was Phyllis Schlafly's effort — she had written the book [A Choice, Not An Echo] that kind of inspired Goldwater to run years before — she started an anti-feminism counter rally, also in Houston, and had massive attendance at that, and their slogan was "family values."

The GOP took notice....[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue