Carl Hart

Carl Hart is an associate professor in the departments of psychology and psychiatry at Columbia University. He is also a research scientist in the Division of Substance Abuse at the New York State Psychiatric Institute; a member of the National Advisory Council on Drug Abuse; and on the board of directors of the College on Problems of Drug Dependence and the Drug Policy Alliance.

From a Q & A with Hart about his book, High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know about Drugs and Society:

After more than 20 years in the field of neuropyschopharmacology, you’ve come to the conclusion that drugs aren’t the main problem – that drug policy is the bigger problem. Please explain why this issue is important to you?

In the 1980s, a common misperception was that drugs in general, and crack cocaine specifically, were destroying the black community. Many black thinkers, both liberal and conservative, added their voice to the chorus that blamed drugs for everything from premature death to child abandonment and neglect to grandmothers being forced to raise a second generation of children. The Rev. Jesse Jackson said, “Our culture must reject drugs. … We’ve lost more lives to dope than we did to the Ku Klux Klan rope.” Thomas Sowell, the conservative economist, added “drugs are inherently a problem for the individual who takes them.”

Notably, these sentiments were frequently expressed by individuals with no training on drug effects. Their statements were inaccurate, shortsighted and mere hyperbole. For example, although crack was often blamed for child abandonment and for the raising of children by grandparents, this happened in my family as well as others long before crack hit the streets. The primary reason for this was poverty, not drugs. And the view that drugs are a problem for all who use them is inconsistent with the scientific evidence. Eighty-five percent or more of drug users — whether they use alcohol, prescription medications or drugs deemed illegal — do not have a problem....[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Mark Troy

Mark Troy is the author of Pilikia Is My Business, a private eye novel published in 2001 and republished in 2010. Pilikia was nominated for a Shamus Award by the Private Eye Writers of America for Best 1st P.I. Novel. Game Face, a collection of short stories featuring P.I. Val Lyon, was published in 2011. The Rules, the first story in the Ava Rome series, was published as an ebook and audiobook in 2013.

The Splintered Paddle is the latest book in the Ava Rome series.

From Troy's Q & A at Omnimystery News:

OMN: Into what subgenre would you place the Ava Rome crime novels? And do you find any advantage to labeling them as such?

MT: My stories are private detective novels. I like to think of them as hardboiled and as crime novels rather than mysteries.

Labels serve to guide readers to new books. Readers of "hardboiled" detective stories should know that's what they'll find here. I know there are some readers who might give the book a pass because of the label, but for everyone who does, there are others who will pick it up because that's what they like to read.

One reviewer recently called The Splintered Paddle "Hawaiian Noir". That's a label I hadn't heard before, but I like it. Maybe it will entice some readers to try something new. Hawaiian Noir: ukuleles, Mai Tais, and bullets.

OMN: Give us a summary of The Splintered Paddle in a tweet.

MT: Revenge and death in the Aloha State. Murder in the part of paradise tourists never see. Ava Rome's mission: protect the defenseless.

OMN: How much of your own personal or professional experience have you included in your books?

MT: None of...[read on]

Visit Mark Troy's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Splintered Paddle.

Writers Read: Mark Troy.

My Book, The Movie: The Splintered Paddle.

--Marshal Zeringue

Megan Abbott

Megan Abbott is the Edgar®-winning author of the novels Queenpin, The Song Is You, Die a Little, Bury Me Deep, and The End of Everything. Her 2012 novel, Dare Me, was chosen by Entertainment Weekly and Amazon as one of the Best Books of 2012 and is soon to be a major motion picture.

Abbott's new novel is The Fever:

From the author's Q & A with Emily Gatlin for BookRiot:

[The Fever] isn’t your first rodeo writing about teenage girls. What is it about them that makes for such compelling characters?

There’s just so darn much to explore there. I think teenage girls continue to suffer from these tightly fixed beliefs that they’re supposed to be these happy, smiling innocents—they’re not supposed to express anger, to desire, to have ambitions. So I love looking at all that longing and rage. I love exploring the often covert ways that teen girls frequently have to operate to acquire, or keep, power—since they’re not supposed to want it at all. And there’s so much about teen girls that, in “adult fiction” (note the quote marks), has been underexplored, or not taken seriously. The intensity of female friendships at that age, the unique pressures brought to bear by technology (texting, social media). It’s...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Megan Abbott's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Fever.

--Marshal Zeringue

Michael Blanding

Michael Blanding is a Boston-based investigative journalist whose work has appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, Salon, Consumers Digest, The Boston Globe Magazine, and Boston Magazine. His first book, The Coke Machine: The Dirty Truth Behind the World's Favorite Soft Drink, was published by Avery/Penguin in 2010. His new book is The Map Thief: The Gripping Story of an Esteemed Rare-Map Dealer Who Made Millions Stealing Priceless Maps.

From Blanding's Q & A at his publisher's website:

How many maps did Forbes Smiley steal?

Smiley admitted to stealing 97 maps from six libraries—Harvard, Yale, New York Public Library, Boston Public Library, the British Library, and the Newberry Library in Chicago—worth over $3 million in all. However, the libraries accuse him of taking many more. In all, they are missing around 250 maps, and have evidence that he stole at least a dozen of them. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle—but we may never know for sure exactly how many he stole.

How did he steal them?

In many cases, the maps were contained in rare books, and Smiley was able to go into a library and just rip them out or cut them out with a razor blade when no one was looking. In other cases, he would request a folder full of maps and just take one. Then, he folded them and put them in the pocket of his blazer and just walked right out. Library catalogs often don’t specify which exact maps should appear in which books or folders. So Smiley could rip out a map worth $100,000, and walk out without anyone knowing it was missing. Many of the map library curators knew him as a respected rare-map dealer and trusted him almost like a colleague; he abused that trust to walk out with rare maps right under their noses.

How could he ever sell these rare maps? Wouldn’t someone know they were stolen?

Maps...[read on]

Visit Michael Blanding's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Map Thief.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sue Miller

Sue Miller's new novel is The Arsonist.

From her Q & A with Melissa Albert at The Barnes & Noble Book Blog:

[Y]ou say you were a writer from your very early years. Do you remember any books that kind of set you on that path, any particular writers?

Jane Eyre must have been something I read six or seven times as an early adolescent. And Kristin Lavransdatter, and Lorna Doone when I was younger. My parents had a pretty rich library, no jackets on any of the books, so no descriptions. You just pulled something off the shelf and started to read it. There was no knowing what was going to happen in this book, no flap copy. And if you liked it, you kept reading. That was sort of magical in a certain way. Before I got married I always removed the jackets and threw them away because I just felt as though they’re sort of extraneous. That text that tells you what you’re about to read, it takes something away from the novel for me. Now I’ve learned to keep the jackets on, but I do think flap copy often gives away too much or tells you how you’re supposed to read this book. When I was a kid, I loved just launching into a book without any idea where it might head, what it was going to be about. It was...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

George Saunders

George Saunders's fourth collection of stories is Tenth of December.

From his Q & A--excerpted in The New Yorker--with Mike Sacks, in Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today's Top Comedy Writers:

Do any specific anecdotes [illustrating your memory of how you "got the idea that the high-serious and the funny were not separate" when you were growing up] come to mind?

My whole childhood we lived next door to this family I’ll call the Smiths. We didn’t know them very well at all. At one point, Mrs. Smith’s mother, who was in her nineties, passed away. My dad went to the wake, where this exchange occurred:

Dad: “So sorry for your loss.”

Mrs. Smith: “Yes, it’s very hard.”

Dad: “Well, on the bright side, I suppose you must be grateful that she had such a long and healthy life.”

Mrs. Smith (mournful, dead-serious): “Yeah. This is the sickest she’s ever been.”

My dad came home just energized from this. I loved his reaction. My family was such a big influence on me. There was a real respect for language. It was understood as a source of power. Everyone was funny in a different flavor. You could make anything right—diffuse any tension, explain any mistake—with a joke. A joke or a funny voice was a way of saying: All is well. We’ll live. We still ...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Katie Crouch

Katie Crouch's new novel is Abroad.

From her Q & A with Jessica Anya Blau at The Nervous Breakdown:

Sylvia Plath once said, “Kiss me and you will see how important I am.” When I read that sentence, I immediately think of your new book, Abroad. Aside from the obvious connection to the Amanda Knox trial, the book feels like it’s about sexual power and female friendships. Yes? No?

I am a huge Plath fan. I actually read her college journals while I was writing Abroad. She was so complex and passionate and brilliant and all over the place; I feel the same way about my young characters. Twenty-year-olds are usually not in control of their emotions and motives the way adults are. Taz is attracted to everyone and everything, and she’s intensely scared of that. And she’s at a time in her life when female friendships are particularly intense.

The book seems to say that we want to be close to our female friends, but there’s a way in which we also want to possess them. And there are ways in which we hate them, or want to reduce them. Taz, our protagonist, asks at one point, “What it is that really feeds a friendship between women?”

That line, “What is it, really, that feeds a friendship between women?” is about the hate that inevitably goes with the love of a friend. There’s this quote from Medea that I adore: “The fiercest anger of all, the most incurable, is that which rages in the place of dearest love.” Friendship is not all hearts and roses. If it’s real, it has an edge to it. And just like romantic love, it...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Jonathan Brown

Jonathan Brown is the Carroll and Miton Petrie Professor of Fine Arts, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. His new book is In the Shadow of Velázquez: A Life in Art History.

From the author's Q & A with David Ebony for the Yale University Press blog:

Ebony: One of the topics you discuss at length in the book that has significant relevance to contemporary art is the idea of branding—I was surprised you used that term. You talk about it in relationship to artists like El Greco and Ribera, who ran factory-like studios that closely correspond to more recent practice by artists like Warhol, Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst and others.

Brown: I used the term to make this process more understandable, particularly as it addresses the problem of authenticity. How can a work be deemed authentic if it results from a workshop with teams of assistants? There are so many paintings attributed to El Greco that aren’t by El Greco. He had such an individualistic style, and one might think it would be too advanced to appeal to a wide audience. But clearly he struck the right chord with the public at the time. The questionable paintings I’m referring to are not truly knock-offs, but they’re not autograph either. There’s often a distinction made between signed or unsigned works, but the signature means nothing. Ribera also created a distinctive style—or brand—and knew how to promote it. He signed works a lot more frequently than other significant painters of his time. In his later years, he signed about eighty percent of his studio productions. But are they authentic?

Ebony: Are you often called in to help authenticate works by these artists? There’s a wonderful story in the book about $10 million riding on the attribution of an early Velázquez.

Brown: I don’t offer my opinion for commercial purposes. The art market exerts enormous pressure, but to have the freedom to think and write, and decide on an attribution in a way I choose is more important to me than the financial prospects. Plus, I want to be...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Leah Vincent

Leah Vincent is a writer and activist. The first person in her family to go to college, she earned a BA in psychology as a night student on a Presidential Scholarship at Brooklyn College before going on to earn a Master’s in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School as a Pforzheimer Fellow. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Unpious and The Jewish Daily Forward. Vincent is an advocate for reform within ultra-Orthodoxy and for the empowerment of former ultra-Orthodox Jews seeking a self-determined life. She is a co-producer of the It Gets Besser project and a member and board member of Footsteps, the only organization in the United States supporting formerly ultra-Orthodox individuals.

Vincent's new book is Cut Me Loose: Sin and Salvation After My Ultra-Orthodox Girlhood.

From her Q &A with Caroline Leavitt:

You are incredibly brave. At 16, after exchanging letters with a male friend, your parents, ultra-Orthodox Jews, put you on a plane and cut off ties. How were you able to hold it together and become a dazzling author? Did you ever imagine that this would be the outcome of your life?

Thank you Caroline. It was a very long journey – and I did a whole lot of falling apart along the way. It took radical hope, and a willingness to pick myself up after I fell down, again and again and again, to get to where I am. When I was going through the worst of it, as a teenager and in my early twenties, it was inconceivable to me that I’d be as happy and blessed as I am now, with a new family, friends and community that support me, and a life busy doing what I love.

What sparked the writing of this book and what surprised you as you were writing it?

I had promised myself, that if I survived, I would write this book. About a year after finishing graduate school, I heard about the suicide of another former ultra-Orthodox Jew and it moved me to fulfill that promise. Hearing about this tragedy reminded me that there were still so many people out there struggling, and that telling my story might help them feel less alone and might help raise awareness about how challenging it can be to leave ultra-Orthodoxy.

I was surprised by how difficult it was to write this story. I thought I could just transcribe my dairies, but it takes...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Leah Vincent's website and Facebook page.

The Page 99 Test: Cut Me Loose.

--Marshal Zeringue

George R.R. Martin

George R.R. Martin is the author of The Song of Ice and Fire cycle, adapted for HBO as Game of Thrones.

From his Q & A with Mikal Gilmore for Rolling Stone:

One of the more dominant themes in Game of Thrones is family. It's what gives the characters purpose, but it also ruins them. What was your own sense of family and home like?

I was born in 1948, and raised in Bayonne, New Jersey, which is a peninsula just south of Jersey City. By bus, it was 45 minutes to the heart of Manhattan, but Bayonne really was a world in and of itself. New York was very close, but we didn't go there very often. From the age of four I lived down on First Street, in the public-housing projects, facing the waters of Kill Van Kull, with Staten Island on the other side.

My father was a Martin, but he was of Italian and German descent. My mother was a Brady – Irish. I heard a lot from my mother about the heritage of the Bradys, who had been a pretty important family at certain points in Bayonne history. I knew at a very early age that we were poor. But I also knew that my family hadn't always been poor. To get to my school, I had to walk past the house where my mother had been born, this house that had been our house once. I've looked back on that, of course, and in some of my stories there's this sense of a lost golden age, where there were wonders and marvels undreamed of. Somehow what my mother told me set all that stuff into my imagination.

Was your relationship with your parents close?

My father was a distant figure. I don't think that he ever understood me, and I don't know that I ever understood him. We didn't use the term then, but you could probably say he...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue