The Short List

Joe Nocera is The New York Times’ Talking Business columnist. He also writes a business-oriented blog at The Times called Executive Suite. A few years ago he asked his regular readers for suggestions for the best business fiction books. Unable to come up with a sufficient list of fiction, he turned his eye toward non-fiction books; narrative non-fiction, that is, and consulted a few other business-minded authorities for their advice. They agreed on the following list as the very best business books. If you have a title you feel has been unfairly excluded, you can let him know at the original blog post.

“Barbarians At The Gate by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar ~~ a rollicking account of KKR’s leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco.
Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis ~~ (even though I’ve since become convinced that the anecdote that gives the book its title never happened).
The Devil’s Candy by Julie Salamon ~~ (Greatest dissection of the movie business ever written.)
The Box by Marc Levinson ~~ (Hard to believe you can write a great book about the rise and importance of the shipping container, but he pulled it off.)
Indecent Exposure by David McClintick. (Published in 1982, it single-handedly created the business narrative genre).
The Go-Go Years by John Brooks ~~ (The best book by the most elegant writer to ever make business his subject.)
The Kingdom and the Power by Gay Talese ~~ (Yes, the subject is The New York Times, but how can you leave it off any list of great business books?)
Titan by Ron Chernow ~~ (Chernow’s magisterial biography of John D. Rockefeller.)
Do You Sincerely Want To Be Rich by Godfrey Hodgson, Bruce Page and Charles Raw ~~ (Hard to believe that this committee of authors could write a sensational narrative about the rise and fall of Bernard Cornfeld, but that they did.)
Disney War by James Stewart ~~ (”Best corporate psychoanalysis I’ve ever read,” says John Huey.)
The Informant by Kurt Eichenwald ~~ (Forget his Enron book, “Conspiracy of Fools.” This book, about the strange saga of Mark Whitacre and Archer Daniels Midland, is his masterpiece.)
Father, Son and Co.: My Life at IBM and Beyond by Thomas J. Watson and Peter Petre ~~ (The only great ghost-written C.E.O. autobiography ever written. No one else — not even Lee Iacocca or Jack Welch — even comes close.)
When Genius Failed by Roger Lowenstein ~~ (Another one of those “how-did-he-do-it?” books: this account of the fall of Long Term Capital Management, which by all rights should be a tough slog, is crackling good read.)
Greed and Glory on Wall Street by Ken Auletta ~~ (This book, about the crack up of Lehman Brothers, has a great cast of characters, starting with Steve Schwartzman.)
The Smartest Guys in the Room by Peter Elkind and Bethany McLean ~~ (O.K., O.K., they are former colleagues of mine, and I was deeply involved in editing this book — but I have to say, I think it turned out pretty well!)”

Liam Durcan is a writer whose most recent novel is Garcia’s Heart. He lives in Montreal and works as a neurologist. Recently, he wrote an essay for The Globe And Mail entitled: You’ve Got Me Under Your Skin. He asserts that reading fiction is good for us, not because it teaches life lessons but because it immerses us in other minds and other experiences. He goes on to defend this contention with evidence from a recent study conducted by University of Toronto psychologists where subjects who read a short story in The New Yorker scored higher on social reasoning tests than those subjects who read an essay from The New Yorker. Read the entire article if you’d like to learn more about why reading fiction is good for you.

The winners of the 2008 Thriller awards were announced last week at the annual ThrillerFest gala. The 2008 Thriller Award Winners include:

For Best Novel:
THE GHOST by Robert Harris

For Best First Novel:
HEART-SHAPED BOX by Joe Hill

The 2008 Thriller Award Nominees include:

For Best Novel
NO TIME FOR GOODBYE by Linwood Barclay
THE WATCHMAN by Robert Crais
THE CRIME WRITER by Gregg Hurwitz
TROUBLE by Jesse Kellerman

For Best First Novel
INTERRED WITH THEIR BONES by Jennifer Lee Carrell
BIG CITY, BAD BLOOD by Sean Chercover
FROM THE DEPTHS by Gerry Doyle
VOLK’S GAME by Brent Ghelfi

Kate Summerscale’s The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, “a detailed account of the famous murder, in 1860, of a three-year-old child of a respectable middle-class family,” won of the £30,000 (US$60,064) Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction. Patrick French’s biography of V.S. Naipaul had been the favorite.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Samuel Johnson Prize. Sponsored by BBC Four, it celebrates diverse and thought-provoking writing in non-fiction. The prize covers current affairs, history, politics, science, sport, travel, biography, autobiography and the arts. The competition is open to authors of any nationality whose work is published in the UK in English.

“The judges were unanimous: this is one of those great non-fiction books that uses the techniques of fiction to magnificent effect,” said judging panel chair Rosie Boycott. “On first reading, it is an absolute page-turner. Then, when you reread it, you realise how many levels it has, how much it tells you.”

The shortlist included:

The World Is What It Is: the authorized biography of V.S. Naipaul by Patrick French - available in the US in November, 2008

Blood River: A Journey to Africa’s Broken Heart by Tim Butcher -available in the US in October, 2008

Crow Country by Mark Cocker - currently unavailable in the US

The Whisperers by Orlando Figes

The Rest Is Noise by Alex Ross.

A recent spate of quality espionage fiction has come to our attention bringing with it a return to Cold War-style spy stories of old. John le Carré created the yardstick by which most other spy novels are measured against along with a number of other contemporaries who propelled the genre forward with protagonists who were as morally ambiguous as their enemies. Le Carré returns this fall with A Most Wanted Man. Set in Germany, it chronicles the fate of a Muslim man who relocates to Hamburg to begin medical school but has a shadowy past that attracts the attention of intelligence agencies from Germany and beyond.

Robert Littell also produced well-crafted spy fiction in the 70’s and still continues publishing. His 2002 fictionalized account of the CIA, The Company, a bestseller, was made into a multi-part series by both the BBC and TNT. He has followed that up with Legends, a darkly humorous story about an aging spy’s identity crisis and Vicious Circle, an account of a kidnapping plot gone bad sending Israel and Palestine to the brink of collapse.

Charles McCarry had a small but devoted following in the 70’s for his books featuring CIA agent Paul Christopher. McCarry too, has seen a recent renaissance in his popularity beginning with Old Boys which brought back Paul Christopher and an aging group of fellow co-workers. Last year’s Christopher’s Ghosts continues the popular series.

We are lucky to have a cadre of newer writers to continue presenting espionage in the Cold War tradition. Olen Steinhauer has a first-rate series of books featuring Inspector Emil Brod set in a fictional Eastern European country. The first, The Bridge Of Sighs, nominated for multiple awards, begins at the end of WWII. The series closes at the fall of the Berlin Wall with Victory Square, portraying the corruption that has etched itself on Brod over the preceding 40 years.

Jenny Siler also writes as Alex Carr. Her books depict events still resonating in our society: Easy Money, portrays drug running with its origins in the killing fields of Vietnam, and An Accidental American covers the 1983 Beirut bombings. Carr’s newest novel brings us up to date, exposing the underbelly of Morocco in The Prince of Bagram Prison.

Alan Furst uses WWII and the days immediately following as glamorous backdrops for his espionage tales beginning with The Night Soldiers and continuing with the just-published The Spies of Warsaw.

Daniel Silva’s bestselling series starring Mossad agent Gabriel Allon carries on the tradition with his take-no-prisoners scenarios and plenty of action just begging to be bought up by Hollywood. His latest installment, Moscow Rules, is due out in July.

In a similar vein, but already cashing in on the Hollywood interest, is Robert Ludlum with Eric Lustbader and the Bourne series. The latest Bourne book, The Bourne Sanction, is due out the end of July.

Although William F Buckley is gone, he’s certainly not forgotten, and his bestselling Blackford Oakes series will continue to find new fans. Oakes, a CIA agent described by Buckley as being “distinctly American”, acquits himself with style and charm. The series begins with Saving The Queen and concludes with Last Call For Blackford Oakes.

Science fiction stylist William Gibson brings his expertise with cyberspace to the genre with two espionage novels that won critical acclaim: Pattern Recognition and Spook Country.

Last but not least, Ted Bell has produced an enjoyable spy series with Alex Hawke as the lead character who works for both the American and British governments. The series includes Hawke, Spy, Assassin and TSAR due out this September.

From the study “Reading Aloud To Children: The Evidence” by Elisabeth Duursma EdD, Marilyn Augustyn MD and Barry Zuckerman MD published in May in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood: “Promoting healthy child development lies at the heart of pediatric practice, yet a major challenge facing the field is applying “evidence based standards” to our practice. In one area of this effort though, reading aloud to children, the evidence is clear. There is ample research demonstrating that reading aloud to young children promotes their development of language and other emergent literacy skills (e.g., Adams, 1990; Sénéchal & Levre, 2002; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998; Storch & Whitehurst, 2001) which in turn helps children getting ready for school (e.g., Ezell & Justice, 2005; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998).

“You can imagine if someone technologically came up with a widget that would stimulate all aspects of a two-year-old’s development, everyone would want to buy it,” said Boston University School of Medicine professor Barry Zuckerman, who led the study. See the full article in the Guardian.

Studies show that children who are read to from an earlier age have better language development and tend to have better language scores later in life. Getting children to grip pages with their thumb and forefinger improves their motor skills.

Most important, though, said Zuckerman, is that reading aloud is a period of shared attention and emotion between parent and child. This reinforces reading as a pleasurable activity.

“Children ultimately learn to love books because they are sharing it with someone they love,” he said.

This is a popular time of year for book awards and the Agathas, presented by Malice Domestic, announced their winners recently. The Agatha Awards honor the traditional mystery–books best typified by the works of Agatha Christie.The genre is generally characterized by mysteries that contain no explicit sex, excessive gore, or gratuitous violence; usually featuring an amateur detective, they have a confined setting and characters who know one another. Agatha Awards will be given for materials first published in the United States by a living author during the calendar year in hardcover, as paperback originals, or e-published by an e-publishing firm.

Nominees & Winners of Agatha Awards-Malice Domestic XX

BEST NOVEL

(Winner) A FATAL GRACE by Louise Penny

THE PENGUIN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH by Donna Andrews
HER ROYAL SPYNESS by Rhys Bowen
HARD ROW by Margaret Maron
MURDER WITH RESERVATIONS by Elaine Viets

BEST FIRST NOVEL

(Winner) PRIME TIME by Hank Phillippi Ryan

A BEAUTIFUL BLUE DEATH by Charles Finch
A REAL BASKET CASE by Beth Groundwater
SILENT IN THE GRAVE by Deanna Raybourn

BEST NON-FICTION

(Winner) ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE: A LIFE IN LETTERS by Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower and Charles Foley

BEST CHILDREN’S/YOUNG ADULT

(Winner) A LIGHT IN THE CELLAR by Sarah Masters Buckey

BRAVO ZULU, SAMANTHA! by Kathleen Benner Duble
COVER-UP: MYSTERY AT THE SUPER BOWL by John Feinstein
THE FALCONER’S KNOT by Mary Hoffman
THEODOSIA AND THE SERPENTS OF CHAOS by R.L. LaFevers

Richard Morgan’s novel Black Man, “a science fiction thriller, which follows a black, genetically-modified assassin, or Variant Thirteen, in pursuit of a serial killer,” has won the 2008 Arthur C. Clarke award for science fiction. The annual award is presented for best science fiction novel of the year and selected from a list of novels whose UK first edition was published in the previous calendar year.

“There has been a lot of controversy about this year’s shortlist,” Morgan said. “It’s nice to have won against the mainstream contenders because it shows the genre has tremendous self-confidence.”

The shortlist included The Red Men by Matthew de Albuitia, The H-Bomb Girl by Stephen Baxter, The Carhullan Army by Sarah Hall, The Raw Shark Texts by Stephen Hall and The Execution Channel by Ken MacLeod.

This year’s Nebula Awards, sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, were announced this past weekend at the Nebula Awards banquet in Austin, Tex.:

• Novel: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon
• Scripts: Pan’s Labyrinth by Guillermo del Toro

The Renaissance Learning report, What Kids Are Reading, “calculated the books most read by more than 3 million schoolchildren last year.” The report lists the top 20 books read in each grade from 1-12 and breaks them down by gender and by geographic area as well. The report also includes essays by Mary Pope Osborne, S.E. Hinton, Daniel Handler and Christopher Paul Curtis on the benefits of reading. And, finally, the report breaks down the top books read by the top students–those who score in the top 10% of their class for reading achievement. Here are the books read most overall:

• Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss (first grade)
• If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff (second grade)
• Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White (third grade)
• Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume (fourth grade)
• Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson (fifth grade)
• Hatchet by Gary Paulsen (sixth grade)
• The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton (seventh and eighth grades)
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (ninth through twelfth grade)

The Edgar Awards have been presented each year since 1954 by the Mystery Writers of America and are named in honor of Edgar Alan Poe. This year’s winners were announced on May 1st. Please visit our earlier postings with the list of the award nominees. This year’s winners include:
• Best Novel: Down River by John Hart
• Best First Novel by an American Author: In the Woods by Tana French
• Best Juvenile: The Night Tourist by Katherine Marsh
• Best Young Adult: Rat Life by Tedd Arnold