David O. Stewart

David O. Stewart is the author of several works of history, including Madison’s Gift: Five Partnerships That Built America, which have been awarded the Washington Writing Award and the Society of the Cincinnati History Prize. His Fraser and Cook mystery novels are The Lincoln Deception, The Wilson Deception, and the newly released The Babe Ruth Deception.

From Stewart's Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: Why did you choose to focus on Babe Ruth for your third "Deception" novel rather than on another president?

A: Because Babe Ruth was Babe Ruth! He was an athletic god, funny and high-spirited, a man of the people with common – even crude – habits, a heavy drinker, a relentless womanizer, and such a legend that everyone in America STILL knows his name, nearly 70 years after his death.

By writing about the Babe’s first two years with the Yankees, 1920 and 1921, I could capture the moments when the young prodigy remade the game of baseball, when the nation plunged into Prohibition and bootlegging, and when the Black Sox Scandal threatened to destroy organized baseball forever.

The real question is...[read on]

Visit David O. Stewart's website and blog.

My Book, The Movie: The Wilson Deception.

The Page 69 Test: The Wilson Deception.

My Book, The Movie: The Babe Ruth Deception.

Writers Read: David O. Stewart.

--Marshal Zeringue

Duane Swierczynski

Duane Swierczynski was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best Novel for his book, Canary, and won the Shamus Award for his PI novel, Fun and Games. He is the author of nine novels, including 2016's  Revolver.

From Swierczynski 's Q&A with Stay Thirsty Magazine:

STAY THIRSTY: Your latest novel, Revolver, covers three generations of a law enforcement family in Philadelphia. You dedicated this book to your relative Joseph T. Swierczynski who was a Philadelphia beat cop gunned down by a gangster in 1919. Did you ever dream of a career in law enforcement or is writing about crime as close as you want to get?

DUANE SWIERCZYNSKI: When I was younger I did think about it—but then again, I also wanted to be Spider-Man. It doesn't mean I'd make a good cop (or webslinger). And I can't imagine a more challenging job, especially these days. I guess the fantasy about being a cop was the idea that they really know what's going on in the world, as opposed to us civilians. But as I get older, I don't think that's the case. We're all...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Lauren Belfer

Lauren Belfer's debut novel, City of Light, was a New York Times bestseller, as well as a number one Book Sense pick, a Barnes & Noble Discover Award nominee, a New York Times Notable Book, a Library Journal Best Book, and a Main Selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club. City of Light was a bestseller in Great Britain and has been translated into six languages. Her second novel, A Fierce Radiance, was named a Washington Post Best Novel of 2010 and an NPR Best Mystery of 2010.

Belfer's latest novel is And After the Fire.

From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: How did you come up with the idea for your new novel, and why did you decide to focus on Bach’s work in particular?

A: I got the idea for the book about 10 years ago. I received in the mail an announcement for an adult ed class about the work of Johann Sebastian Bach.

At that point I didn’t know much about Bach’s work except for the piano lessons I was forced to go to as a girl, yet I had a hunch that I should take the class.

It turned out to be very important—I met my husband in that class! What I learned in the class surprised me. Bach’s music was more glorious that I imagined, but when we studied the sacred music I learned that some [of it] does lash out at Catholics, Jews, Muslims, even Protestants of different denominations.

Bach was ordained as a minister of music in the Lutheran Church, and it was not a time of religious tolerance. To learn of the problematic pieces did not altogether surprise me given his era, but it was disturbing to me, [having] Jewish members of my family murdered during the war.

It was hard to come to terms with…It was hard to find a peaceful place to consider these issues and elements.

At the same time there were news stories about...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Lauren Belfer's website.

The Page 69 Test: A Fierce Radiance.

My Book, The Movie: A Fierce Radiance.

The Page 69 Test: And After the Fire.

Writers Read: Lauren Belfer (May 2016).

My Book, The Movie: And After the Fire.

--Marshal Zeringue

Caroline Leavitt

Caroline Leavitt is the author of Cruel Beautiful World, and the New York Times bestsellers Is This Tomorrow and Pictures of You, as well as eight other novels.

A book critic for the San Francisco Chronicle and People, she’s the recipient of a New York Foundation of the Arts Grant in Fiction, and was a finalist in both the Sundance Screenwriters’ Lab and the Nickelodeon Screenwriters’ Fellowships.

From Leavitt's interview with NPR's Scott Simon:

SIMON: And I gather this book started with something that really happened to you.

LEAVITT: It did. I've been obsessed with this book since I was 17. I sat beside this girl in study hall, and she was telling me how she was engaged to a much older guy who was a little controlling. And I didn't really understand that.

A year after I got out of high school, I heard the news. She'd broken up with him, and he had stabbed her to death. And it just haunted me. I couldn't figure out if she had been with him for so long, why didn't she see signs that he might be violent? How did somebody stay with somebody like that who was controlling?

And it wasn't until four years ago, when I was looking at click-bait (laughter) on the internet about, you know, 10 celebrities who aren't very nice people, that I happened to...

SIMON: (Laughter) I think I've seen that one, yeah.

LEAVITT: (Laughter) ...That I happened to see a posting from my high school friend's sister who was still obsessed with the crime and what had happened. And there were all these unanswered questions. And...[read on]

Visit Caroline Leavitt's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: Pictures of You.

My Book, the Movie: Pictures of You.

The Page 69 Test: Is This Tomorrow.

My Book, The Movie: Is This Tomorrow.

My Book, The Movie: Cruel Beautiful World.

The Page 69 Test: Cruel Beautiful World.

Writers Read: Caroline Leavitt.

--Marshal Zeringue

Miriam Horn

Miriam Horn is the author of Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman: Conservation Heroes of the American Heartland. From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: Your new book focuses on five different people. How did you pick them, and what do they have in common?

A: I had an idea for a book that would look at unsung heroes who are producing food at industrial scale, living in conservative regions of the country. I threw out a wide net, and got to know the candidates.

I spent time as a kid on a farm in California. In my 20s I worked for the Forest Service, and met people in logging and ranching. I work at the Environmental Defense Fund and have for 12 years. It’s unusual in seeking out partners in worlds a lot of environmentalists don’t see potential partners in.

My most important search engine was my colleagues at EDF. I ended up with dozens of possible stories. I was thinking about a coherent [story].

Many of them lived in the middle of the country, and it could be a journey of sorts, an opportunity to look at different ecosystems, the challenges the mountain ecosystems and high plains were facing, large-scale crop producers.

Then there was the storyteller’s instinct—who had the richest story, voice, and face—it’s also being made into a movie. They are people who bring different dimensions to it.

Once I settled on a journey down the Mississippi, then it pretty much zoomed me in on who the five should be.

What they have in common—they are all quite traditional in their values. They’re...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Peter Singer

Peter Singer's latest book is Ethics in the Real World: 82 Brief Essays on Things That Matter.

From his Q & A with Debra Liese for the Princeton University Press blog:

You’ve written essays on climate change, extreme poverty, animal rights, abortion, and the ethics of high-priced art, to name just a few. Is there a certain topic that has attracted the most attention?

PS: From that list, the two issues on which my views have been most widely discussed are our treatment of animals, and what we ought to be doing about extreme poverty. These are also the issues on which my writings have had the biggest impact. In the case of animals, they have contributed to new laws that have improved the lives of billions of animals, and in the case of extreme poverty, my work has spurred the development of the effective altruism movement, which has caused hundreds of millions of dollars to flow to the non-profit organizations that are most effective in helping people in extreme poverty.

You address a wide range of ethical questions with arguments that challenge people’s deeply held beliefs. In your experience, do people change their beliefs based on others’ arguments?

PS: There is no doubt that some of them do. Almost every time I give a public lecture, people come up to me afterwards and tell me how reading my work led them to become vegan, or start donating a share of their income to organizations that are aiding people in need. I know someone who donated a kidney to a stranger as a result of...[read on]

Peter Singer is Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. He is the author, co-author, or editor of more than thirty books, including Animal Liberation, widely considered to be the founding statement of the animal rights movement, Practical Ethics, and One World: Ethics and Globalization.

Visit The Life You Can Save website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

The Page 99 Test: The Life You Can Save.

The Page 99 Test: The Most Good You Can Do.

--Marshal Zeringue

Gayle Forman

Gayle Forman is a journalist and award-winning and New York Times bestselling author whose many young adult novels include I Was Here, Just One Day, and If I Stay, which was also a major motion picture. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.

Forman's new novel is Leave Me.

From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: How did you come up with the idea for Leave Me, and for your main character, Maribeth?

A: Several years ago I was on a family vacation when I started having chest pains. This was frightening for a number of reasons—my mother had her first bypass surgery at 48 in spite of having no visible risk factors or symptoms—but also because I had two young children.

If I needed this intense surgery, who would take care of my children? Who would take care of me? I was the default mom who worked from home. I did everything. The book began almost as a revenge fantasy, but when it turned out my heart was fine, it went into the drawer.

It came out years later, this time with Maribeth. I had some things to say about parenthood and the assumption we still have that mothers are the default parent and should martyr themselves for their families and sacrifice themselves. I wanted to look at what happens when...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Gayle Forman's website.

The Page 69 Test: If I Stay.

The Page 69 Test: Where She Went.

The Page 69 Test: Leave Me.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tim Harford

Tim Harford's new book is Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives.

From the transcript of his interview with NPR's Michel Martin:

MARTIN: So your book opens with a story that I had not heard before about the jazz pianist Keith Jarrett and the concert that almost didn't happen but gave us his most popular work, one of the most popular pieces in piano jazz. Actually, let me just play a little bit of it.

(SOUNDBITE OF KEITH JARRETT'S "THE KOLN CONCERT, PART IIC")

MARTIN: So the story - as I said, it's really fascinating. I had never heard this before, that he - could you just give me the short version? He shows up to play a late-night concert and the instrument is terrible, and you take it from there.

HARFORD: It's unplayable. There's been a mix-up. It's too quiet. It's out of tune. The pedals are sticking. And initially, he just refuses to play. But in the end, he's guilt-tripped into it. And because of all the adjustments he has to make in playing this piano, he finds a new way to play. And it is the most popular solo piano work, the most popular solo jazz work in history. But it was only recorded because Keith Jarrett thought it would be a disaster and he wanted documentary evidence of what a musical catastrophe sounds like. So it's a brilliant example that having to cope with all kinds of problems and imperfections can make us more creative.

MARTIN: What does messiness do for you that tidiness does not?

HARFORD: So one of the things is it is just helping you...[read on]

Visit Tim Harford's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

Tim Harford: top 10 undercover economics books.

The Page 69 Test: The Undercover Economist.

The Page 69 Test: The Logic of Life.

The Page 99 Test: Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure.

The Page 99 Test: The Undercover Economist Strikes Back.

--Marshal Zeringue

Andrew Nagorski

Andrew Nagorski's latest book is The Nazi Hunters.

From his Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: Why did you decide to focus on the Nazi hunters, and how did you research the book?

A: As a foreign correspondent, I often found myself examining the legacy of the war and the Holocaust. After the Nuremberg and Dachau trials, the victors in World War II were quick to turn their attention to the Cold War and largely lost interest in bringing Nazi criminals to justice.

Defying that trend, a relatively small group of men and women known as Nazi hunters dedicated their lives to making sure that there was some measure of justice—and fought against forgetting.

The hunted, those who participated in mass murder, are always a subject of morbid fascination. But I feel strongly that the hunters also deserve our attention. They are the ones who made Germans and so many others acknowledge and deal with their recent past, which is the first step towards learning the lessons of history.

Of course the era of Nazi hunting is coming to a natural end soon because there will no more Nazi war criminals still living. As a result, the story of the hunters and the hunted can now be told almost in its entirety. As a writer, I saw this as an opportunity to weave a narrative spanning the whole postwar era.

To do so, I needed to meet the surviving Nazi hunters in Europe, Israel and the United States and get their first-hand stories...[read on]

Visit Andrew Nagorski's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Beth Macy

Beth Macy is the author of Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother's Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South.

From the transcript of her Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross:

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. And if you're just joining us, my guest is Beth Macy, author of the new book "Truevine." And it's the true story of two albino African-American brothers, George and Willie Muse, who spent much of their lives in freak shows in the first half of the 20th century. And the larger story she's telling here is about race, class and entertainment in the first half of the 20th century. So at some point they're reunited with their mother by accident. They're performing in a - was it a carnival or a circus? - in Roanoke, where their mother now lived.

MACY: Right. It's 1927. Roanoke is this - was once a really booming city, and it's now big enough that it can play host to the big one or the Greatest Show on Earth, which was Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey. And somehow it came to her attention that the circus was in town. Remember, she couldn't read. She told relatives that it came to her in a dream that the circus was in town and her boys were on it. And she was going to go get them.

GROSS: And she did. How did she do it?

MACY: So she found her way to the fairgrounds in Roanoke, Va., which was just in the southern part of downtown. It was also the site of a roaring KKK rally soon before. And during that era when a carnival would come and play a show for a week, there would be one day that African-Americans would be allowed to attend. But on circus day, a big circus like Ringling would only stay one day and they'd go to the next location. And so there was seating in the back of the big top for African-Americans to sit.

And the side sideshow was the one place I was told where segregation codes would sort of break down because...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue