Simon Levis Sullam

Simon Levis Sullam’s new history is The Italian Executioners: The Genocide of the Jews of Italy. From his Q&A at the Princeton University Press blog:

How does your book supersede previous historiography on the fate of the Jews of Italy during the Holocaust?

Historians have long represented Italy during the Holocaust as a safe place for Jews, due to the many rescues of Jews by Italians, in particular by members of the Catholic clergy. Some of the founders of Holocaust historiography, such as Léon Poliakov or Raul Hilberg, viewed the Italians’ benevolent national character as antithetical to violence and genocide. But following a new stream of research starting with the work of Michele Sarfatti and Liliana Picciotto, The Italian Executioners claims that Italians—including ordinary Italians—were accomplices in the genocide of the Jews. Over 8,000 Jews, about 20% of the Italian Jewish population, were arrested and deported from Italy. Nearly half of these arrests were carried out by Italians.

Why do you prefer the category of genocide to those of Holocaust or Shoah? How do you apply it?

In the book, I use “genocide” as it was coined by...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Jason Stanley

Jason Stanley's new book is How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them.

From his Q&A with Isaac Chotiner at Slate:

Isaac Chotiner: There have been several books about fascism recently. What is it that you thought you could bring to the table that is new?

Jason Stanley: My book is about fascist politics. Not fascism as a system of government, but rather fascism as a set of rhetorical tropes to run for office to gain power. What I’ve been working on in this past almost decade now is propaganda and rhetoric. So I’m drawing on my expertise in the domains of propaganda and rhetoric and the history of political philosophy, because the history of political philosophy tells us that, in certain moments, democracy is a very vulnerable system and it’s vulnerable in particular to a high degree of inequality. Plato’s Republic and Rousseau are very clear about this: that in moments of terrible inequalities, resentment is easy to create.

Secondly, I think people make a mistake by not distinguishing the very particular kind of rhetoric that goes with fascist politics from other kinds of authoritarianism. There are lots of bad things. And fascism is just one kind of bad thing.

How is it different?

Well, fascism is one kind of authoritarianism. There’s also communism and systems that threaten our freedom by holding out the possibility of radical class equality. And that’s a very different rhetorical structure than with fascism. For instance, in fascist politics, you always have a return to a mythic past. Fascist politics involve this idea of purity, and the idea is that somehow this wonderful, incredible, glorious path of the pure nation has been ruined by liberalism, by foreign invasion, by feminism, by the tarnishing of the traditional family. That is completely different than the kind of thing you get in communist authoritarianism, where the idea is...[read on]

Visit Jason Stanley's website.

The Page 99 Test: How Propaganda Works.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eric Jay Dolin

Eric Jay Dolin is the best-selling author of Leviathan and Brilliant Beacons. His new book is Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America's Most Notorious Pirates. Dolin and his family live in Marblehead, Massachusetts, from which the pirate John Quelch departed in 1703, and returned to in 1704, only to be hanged in Boston.

From Dolin's Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: Why did you choose pirates as the subject of your new book, and what do you think accounts for the ongoing fascination with them?

A: This book’s origin story begins with my kids. After I finished Brilliant Beacons: A History of the American Lighthouse, I began searching for a new book topic. I asked Lily and Harry, who were then in their teens, what I should write about.

When I raised the possibility of pirates, their eyes lit up, both of them saying, “That’s it, you have to write about pirates.” Lily even threw out two possible titles for the book: “Swords, Sails, and Swashbucklers;” and “Argh”—or, perhaps more emphatically, “Arrrgh”—which, I had to tell Lily, much to her chagrin, is a word that probably was never uttered by a Golden Age pirate, and is more likely a creation of movies in which pirates dispense arghs with relish.

My children’s strong support is, of course, not the only reason I wrote this book. But the fact that they were early adopters of the pirate idea, was encouraging. Great credit is also due to my editor and the sales director at Liveright (part of W. W. Norton), who loved the idea, and picked it from a list of eight book ideas I had generated.

The many fictional representations of pirates, both in print, in plays, and on the silver screen has probably had the greatest impact in getting the general public interested in pirates, even though...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Eric Jay Dolin's website.

The Page 99 Test: Fur, Fortune, and Empire.

The Page 99 Test: When America First Met China.

The Page 69 Test: Brilliant Beacons.

The Page 99 Test: Brilliant Beacons.

Writers Read: Eric Jay Dolin.

The Page 99 Test: Black Flags, Blue Waters.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jonathan Zimmerman

Jonathan Zimmerman is the author of Too Hot to Handle: A Global History of Sex Education.

From his Q&A at the Princeton University Press blog:

Why did you write this book?

My mother spent her career in international family planning and sex education. So she imbued me with the standard liberal American view of the subject: the United States was "behind" other Western democracies, which provide much more extensive, honest, and effective sex education than we do. And that's why their teen pregnancy and STD rates are so much lower, or so the story goes.

So was your Mom correct?

Not exactly. First of all, it turns out that the USA was the global pioneer of sex education rather than a laggard. Eventually, countries like Sweden and the Netherlands did develop more detailed sex education than the USA, especially on the subject of contraception. But sex education is limited in those countries by citizen and teacher resistance, just as it is here. And, more interestingly, it has a different set of goals.

How so?

In Scandinavia and Continental Europe, the stated goal of sex education is not to limit negative social consequences, but rather to help each individual determine and develop her or his own sexuality. I didn't understand the difference until I found an exchange in the Swedish archives between an educator in Ireland (where sex education was much more like the American version) and the leader of the RFSU, Sweden's national sex education organization. The Irish educator wanted to know how Swedish sex educators kept teen pregnancy and STD rates so low. The RFSU guy replies with a kind note that says he doesn't know whether sex education actually influences those outcomes, because there are so many other factors that affect young people's behavior. And then he says, that's not the point anyway! It's to...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

J.A. Jance

J.A. Jance's newest suspense novel is Field of Bones, the latest in her series about Sheriff Joanna Brady. From the author's Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: How do you think your character Joanna Brady has changed over the course of the books you've been writing about her?

A: In the beginning she was a young married woman who is about to be left a 20-something widow, raising a single child. In Field of Bones she has married for the second time and has just given birth to her third child.

In the beginning she was in the insurance business and had no idea that she would go into law enforcement. At the beginning of Field of Bones, she has just won her third four-year term as sheriff.

As she has matured, she’s learned to understand that both her parents were flawed but loving in their own individual ways. And now, in Field of Bones, with both of her parents gone she’s now...[read on]

Learn more about the author and her work at J.A. Jance's website.

The Page 69 Test: Damage Control.

--Marshal Zeringue

Don Winslow

Don Winslow's The Border (forthcoming, February 2019) is a follow-up to his 2005 novel The Power of the Dog and 2015’s The Cartel. From the author's Entertainment Weekly Q&A:

[T]he title of the book — The Border — is a politically loaded phrase. And the cover shows a wall topped with razor wire. Why did you choose that for the name?

I chose that title because that’s what the story is about. Drug trafficking is about the border, immigration is about the border, the political conflict is about the border.

That’s the physical border, an external border, but the book is also about how every character confronts moral and emotional borders inside themselves, whether they choose to cross them or not, and, if they do, whether they can make it back.

Are you concerned about anyone misinterpreting your intention?

I understand that it’s a politically loaded phrase. But loaded phrases, like loaded guns, are more interesting, aren’t they? They certainly contain more threat. I never worry about anyone misinterpreting my intentions. My intentions in this book are pretty clear, but I think that each reader has a perfect right to his or her interpretation.

I know this book is going to make some people angry. I can...[read on]

Learn about Winslow's hero from outside literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tilar J. Mazzeo

Tilar J. Mazzeo's new book is Eliza Hamilton: The Extraordinary Life and Times of the Wife of Alexander Hamilton.

From Mazzeo's Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: Why did you decide to write a biography of Eliza Hamilton?

A: I had just finished writing Irena's Children, about one inspiring woman who helped the children of other people, and I was interested in the story of how Eliza Hamilton also did pioneering work and helped to found the first private orphanage in New York (which is still around today as Graham Windham).

Q: How would you describe the relationship between Alexander and Eliza?

A: Eliza was stoic and deeply loyal, and for Alexander that meant...[read on]

Visit Tilar J. Mazzeo's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Esi Edugyan

Esi Edugyan’s new novel is Washington Black. From her Q&A with Slate's Isaac Chotiner:

Isaac Chotiner: What are the particular challenges of constructing a book around a central character whose humanity and personhood are constantly being assaulted?

Esi Edugyan: I guess maybe the challenge is to remember to show that not all is darkness for him. He is somebody who has been denied every human right up until the time of his escape. He’s somebody who is searching for a sense of himself and is becoming a fully real human being, and that’s his journey.

There’s so much research that one does about the history of slavery and the legacy of slavery, and it’s important to depict the brutality of that. But what I really wanted to do with this novel is to show the transition from leaving the brutality of that kind of a life behind into regeneration, into trying to construct a new life. The challenge is to balance the light and the dark, I guess.

Novelists have different ideas on how much research they should do, but this seems like a subject that a novelist would want to do a significant amount of research on.

Yeah. The novel took about three years to write all told, but I started researching shortly before I started writing it. I’m somebody who will do research throughout the whole process almost until the very end. I was reading a lot about slavery and then found a few sources on how slavery manifested itself in Barbados specifically. I read deeply about that as well as reading about slave forts on the coast of West Africa. My parents came from Ghana, so 10 years or so ago we made a journey so we could visit our extended family. We visited Elmina and we visited Cape Coast Castle.

But I also did some research into things like historical science. How people went about collecting marine specimens and how they cataloged them. That was really fascinating. Of course, the invention of the first aquarium...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Catherine Reef

Catherine Reef is the author of more than 40 nonfiction books, including Noah Webster: Man of Many Words, Frida & Diego: Art, Love, Life, Florence Nightingale: The Courageous Life of the Legendary Nurse, Victoria: Portrait of a Queen, and other highly acclaimed biographies for young people. Her new book is Mary Shelley: The Strange True Tale of Frankenstein's Creator.

From Reef's Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: Why did you decide to focus on Mary Shelley in your new young adult biography?

A: I had so many good reasons to write about Mary Shelley. First, Frankenstein, her most famous book, continues to be widely read by people in a broad age range. Young adults study it in high school and college English classes, and some even seek it out on their own.

Second, 2018 marks the 200th anniversary of the publication of Frankenstein, which means that a biography of Mary Shelley published this year is especially timely.

And third, and perhaps most important in terms of creating an absorbing narrative, Shelley’s life story is such a compelling one. Think of it: she eloped with the married poet Percy Bysshe Shelley when she was 16 years old and began writing her classic horror novel two years later. She had to cope with children born and lost, suicides, drownings, and early widowhood.

In my book I write that if an author were to pack all this melodrama into a novel, readers would complain that the goings-on were too wild to be believed. But...[read on]

Visit Catherine Reef's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Catherine Reef & Nandi.

The Page 69 Test: Frida & Diego.

My Book, The Movie: Noah Webster.

The Page 99 Test: Florence Nightingale.

My Book, The Movie: Victoria: Portrait of a Queen.

The Page 99 Test: Victoria: Portrait of a Queen.

--Marshal Zeringue

Bandy Lee

Bandy Lee is an internationally recognized expert on violence. Trained in medicine and psychiatry at Yale and Harvard Universities, and in medical anthropology as a fellow of the National Institute of Mental Health, she is currently on the faculty of Yale School of Medicine’s Law and Psychiatry Division.

Lee is the organizer of A Duty to Warn and editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.

From her Q&A with Slate's Isaac Chotiner:

What was the response from people in your profession to your book, and what is the state of the debate on some of the issues you were trying to raise?

The book actually incurred an enormous response. It was an instant New York Times best-seller. For a multi-authored specialized knowledge book, this was rather surprising.

For those within our field, within mental health, we had garnered a lot of respect after the book came out. Those who have specialized knowledge will know that we kept the standard quite high, to, you might say, peer-reviewed standards, while still making the language accessible. And we removed all financial conflicts of interest. In other words, none of us are taking any profit from the book. And all of the income is being donated for the service of public mental health.

What was the main thing you were trying to get across in the book?

The initial impression for those who don’t read the book is that we’re diagnosing and we’re violating ethics. But people who have read the book would come back to us and state that they were really astonished by the ethical rigor and just how accurate and rigorous our assessment was.

The message is basically that we wanted the public to know of the dangers we saw. Dangerousness is different from diagnosis, so we tried to explain that. But the main crux is that the situation is...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue