Omnivoracious

Omni Crush: "Lives of the Trees" by Diana Wells

I can't be certain, but it seems like Diana Wells was riffing on Lives of the Artists --that seminal work of art history by the Renaissance artist and critic, Giorgio Vasari-- when she cleverly named her new book, Lives of the Trees.  Like Vasari's sixteenth-century collection of short, but pithy artist biographies, Wells provides readers with nutshell-sized natural histories on a very diverse body of legendary figures.  What Giotto, Brunelleschi, Raphael, and Michelangelo are to Vasari, the Ginko, Baobab, Cypress, Oak, and Mahogany are to Wells' compendium.  Each of the hundred "tree bios" in this totally addictive book will have you gawking at trees (whether common or exotic) with new found appreciation.  I was totally taken in by the first lines of the chapter on the Cherry.

America's favorite cherry, the darkly sweet Bing, owes its name to the Chinese foreman who worked in the Lewelling orchards in Milwaukie, Oregon.  We don't know much about Mr. Ah Bing except that in 1889, after working for thirty-five years in the orchard, he visited China and was not permitted to reenter America.  Poor thanks for his delicious legacy.  (p.73)

Reading this anecdote on the origin of the Bing cherry's name was a bit like eating a single piece of the fruit itself--it delivered a bite-sized burst of flavor that couldn't help me from wanting more.  I devoured the next two and half pages which offered up a fascinating history of the Greek and Latin origins of the word, why George Washington is associated with chopping down the tree, and why the Japanese value cherry blossoms so highly.  What we call, how we use, and appreciate  trees (in words, images, and rituals) across cultures is fascinating.  Thanks to Diana Wells' gem of a book, we have a very handy way of accessing these life stories.

Readers looking for a fully illustrated field guide to trees won't find one in this book (although artist Heather Lovett does provide a loving sketch of each tree's leaves and fruit). For field guides, I'd suggest The Sibley Guide to Trees or just about any Audubon regional field guide on the subject. But,  Lives of the Trees belongs on your reference shelf beside them.   It's the perfect book to dip into from the comfort of your couch or while sipping a drink at the corner cafe--preferably while gazing out the window at the tree that is in full bloom.  

--Lauren

Omni Daily News

Following form: The NCAA brackets might have been announced yesterday (Go Terps!) but the Tournament of Books is already more than halfway through their initial round of 16. The big favorites have survived in the results so far: Let the Great World Spin over Miles from Nowhere, The Help over Lowboy, The Lacuna over Fever Chart, Burnt Shadows over That Old Cape Magic, and today, Wolf Hall over Logicomix, with three more intriguing matchups to come this week before the quarterfinals begin.

What rhymes with "cross check"?: The always game (and thoroughly Canadian) Margaret Atwood follows her recent goalkeeping tips video and book-tour hymn-singing with a cameo appearance in the upcoming Score: A Hockey Musical. (Via the Guardian)

The last word on leeches: Mental Floss highlights 11 fascinatingly odd library special collections, on topics from kidneys to showgirls to bloodletting. (Via the Rumpus)

Moving and shaking: Michael Lewis's appearance on 60 Minutes yesterday not only sent his new account of the investors who saw the crash coming (and made a bundle), The Big Short, to the #1 spot on our overall top 100, it also put the audio version, two editions of his Wall Street classic, Liar's Poker, his meltdown anthology, Panic, and his baseball bestseller, Moneyball, into our Movers & Shakers top 25. Must have been a heck of a profile! You can read an excerpt of The Big Short right now at Vanity Fair:

None of the sellers appeared to care very much which bonds they were insuring. He found one mortgage pool that was 100 percent floating-rate negative-amortizing mortgages—where the borrowers could choose the option of not paying any interest at all and simply accumulate a bigger and bigger debt until, presumably, they defaulted on it. Goldman Sachs not only sold him insurance on the pool but sent him a little note congratulating him on being the first person, on Wall Street or off, ever to buy insurance on that particular item. “I’m educating the experts here,” Burry crowed in an e-mail.

--Tom

Omni Daily Crush: Discussing "Citizens of London" with Lynne Olson

I'll show some restraint and avoid a Best of 2010 discussion less than 90 days into the year, but Lynne Olson's Citizens of London still has me buzzing weeks after finishing it.  Admittedly, the subject matter is right in my wheelhouse (I'm a big fan of World War II histories), but Olson's exploration of the toil and sacrifice faced by those who refused to capitulate to the Nazis will appeal to a wide range of readers outside the WWII genre (which is why I made it my Best of February pick).

I was fortunate to catch up with Lynne recently to discuss the origins of Citizens of London, as well as the politicians and leaders who acted as beacons during England's darkest days.

Amazon.com: Your last three books (Citizens of London, Troublesome Young Men, and A Question of Honor) have focused on England during the late 1930's/early 1940's. As a historian, what draws you to this period?

Olson: I’ve been fascinated with the place and the period ever since my husband, Stan Cloud, and I wrote our first book, The Murrow Boys, about Edward R. Murrow and the correspondents he hired to create CBS News before and during World War II. Several scenes in the book take place in London during the Battle of Britain and the 1940-41 Blitz. In doing research for The Murrow Boys, I got caught up in the story of Britain’s struggle for survival in those early years of the war – and the extraordinary leadership of Winston Churchill and courage of ordinary Britons in waging that fight. I discovered that there were still a number of stories about the period that remained largely unknown and untold, so I decided to tell them myself.

Amazon.com: Had Pearl Harbor not forced America's hand, how much longer could England have lasted against Germany?

Olson: That’s an excellent “what if” question. Churchill, for one, was desperately worried that Britain would be defeated by Germany in 1942 if the United States didn’t enter the war. In the days immediately before Pearl Harbor, he knew that the Japanese were also on the move, and he was afraid they were going to strike at British territory in Asia. If that had happened, his country would have been forced into a two-front war, with no lifeline from the United States – which almost assuredly would have meant the end for Britain. So it’s no wonder than when he heard the news of Pearl Harbor on the night of Dec. 7, 1941, he was euphoric. It meant, as he later wrote, that no matter how many military setbacks lay ahead, “England would live.”

Amazon.com: In contrast to Winant and Murrow, Harriman was a bit of a bourgeois playboy. What made you include him in this book?

Olson: There’s no question that Harriman’s social life was considerably more hectic in London than that of Winant and Murrow. At the same time, however, he was a dogged, extremely hard-working administrator of Lend Lease aid for Britain, who did what he could to speed up the flow of American help to the British and who pressed the Roosevelt administration hard for more vigorous action and more direct involvement in the war. He also carved out for himself quite an influential role as conduit and buffer between Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill.

I also wanted to include Harriman for another reason – to point up the contrast between his tough-minded pragmatism and the idealism of Winant and Murrow. These three men, I think, reflected the complexity of America and its attitude to the rest of the world at that time. Winant and Murrow, who championed economic and social reform as well as international cooperation, reflected America’s idealistic side. Harriman, who was intent on broadening his own power and influence, as well as that of his country, became an exemplar of U.S. exceptionalism. In the postwar era, it was his world view that, for the most part, dominated American foreign policy.

Amazon.com: You note an almost apathetic Churchill response to American dalliances within his family. Was this a diplomatic necessity or was he simply too focused on the larger picture?

Olson: I’m not sure I would call him “apathetic.” I think that “pragmatic” would be a better word. I should also point out that it’s not an absolute certainty he knew about the affair that occurred between Averell Harriman and Pamela Churchill, the wife of his son, Randolph, which began in 1941. When Randolph later accused his father of condoning adultery under his own roof, Churchill denied any knowledge of what was going on. That being said, I do believe, as did Pamela, that he was aware of what she and Harriman were up to. Churchill loved Randolph, and while I’m sure he was not thrilled about the Pamela/Harriman affair, he knew how important Harriman and the other Americans were to the survival of Britain, and he had no intention of letting personal matters interfere with the national interest. Besides, Pamela proved to be a useful conduit for him and Harriman, passing on to each man information and insights she had found out from the other.

When Pamela took up with Edward R. Murrow later in the war, she was already separated from Randolph, and I doubt that Churchill cared one way or the other. As for the affair between his daughter, Sarah, and John Gilbert Winant, the couple kept their involvement exceptionally discreet. Sarah believed her father knew about it, but he never said anything, and I don’t think he would have minded.

Amazon.com: Talk about the lower-profile "Citizens of London" -- the brave Americans who violated their own country's laws to volunteer for the RAF.

Olson: In the late 1930s, as part of its desperate effort to keep the United States out of war, the American government did, as you note, make it illegal for any U.S. citizen to join the military service of a warring power. But, after Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939, thousands of young Americans disregarded that law and traveled to England to join the British or Canadian armed forces. Unlike the hordes of Yanks who descended on Britain just prior to D-Day, the early U.S. volunteers became an integral part of Britain’s military and society.

The best-known volunteers were those who joined the Royal Air Force. Seven U.S. citizens were counted among “The Few” – the celebrated band of RAF pilots who, in their Hurricanes and Spitfires, successfully beat back the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain in the summer and fall of 1940. Over the next several months, an additional 300-plus Americans enlisted in the RAF -- so many that they were soon given their own units, called the Eagle Squadrons. Churchill, who instantly saw what a powerful propaganda tool the American squadrons could be, enthusiastically endorsed the idea.

When the U.S. finally entered the conflict, virtually all the Americans serving in the RAF transferred to the U.S Army Air Forces. Of the 244 pilots who flew in the Eagle Squadrons, more than 40 per cent did not survive the war.

Omni Daily News

The Other Russians:  In today's Daily Beast, author and Stanford prof. Elif Batuman shares four of her personal favorites of Russian literature.  And, no we're not talking about the bearded ones (neither Tolstoy nor Turgenev).  Her refreshing picks highlight works from the 20s and 30s that aren't as well known in the West, works from authors like Shklovsky and Platonov (whose work is being published in fine translations by New York Review Books). You can also learn much more about the literary culture of Russia from Batuman's The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them--a customer raves darling since it pub'd last month. 

Crichton's Collection on the Block:  The LA Times reports that the multi-million dollar art collection of the late author Michael Crichton (who died in November 2008) will be auctioned off by Christie's in New York City in May.  Crichton was an avid collector of modern and contemporary masters (including Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Andreas Gursky, and Ed Ruscha among others). 

Primed for a Breakout:  In today's New York Times, Richard Eder writes a glowing review of Italian author and mathematician Paolo Giordano's new novel, The Solitude of Prime Numbers.

Moving & Shaking:  Psychologists Vivian Diller and Jill Muir-Sukenick drop by the Today show to discuss Face It: What Women Really Feel as Their Looks Change.  The duo's candid consideration of where women are emotionally with aging and how they can embrace the process sends their book to the top our Movers and Shakers.

--Lauren

Omni Podcast: Peter Hessler on "Country Driving"

Country Driving is the sort of book that sneaks up on you. I knew Peter Hessler's China reporting from the New Yorker and had always considered him one of my favorite writers there, but I had never sat down with one of his books before. (Country Driving is his third book on China, after River Town and Oracle Bones.) As I read it, I began to say to people, "Hey, this book is really good," and the further I got in the book the more I said it. Hessler's not a flashy writer or a gung-ho, Redmond O'Hanlon-style traveler, but he's immensely enjoyable: he's observant, and patient, and good-humored. His portraits of China and of the Chinese he meets are rich and human, nowhere more so than in the middle section of his book, the story of a small village north of Beijing where he purchased a small writing retreat in 2001 and watched the place and its people transform over the next few years of rapid change. I expect that New Yorker readers and people interested in China will be the first to pick up Country Driving, but it's one of those books whose appeal is so broad that I'd be confident passing it on to any curious reader.

A couple of us got to meet Peter a few weeks ago when he was in Seattle. I mainly watched as he and my colleague Lauren compared notes on their travels and residences in China (and we got to see samples of the bra rings and underwires that the factory he profiles produced), and then Peter and I went down to our little podcast studio, where I asked him some much less knowledgeable questions. You can listen to our interview below, and read the full (and lengthy) transcript after the jump. You can also hear him talk about one of my favorite parts of the book, which we didn't touch on in our talk: the painters he meets in a small artists' community among the factory towns of the southeast, who look at their very skilled work of reproducing Western scenes and paintings for sale back in the places they depict strictly as a trade rather than art. Some of that section appeared in the New Yorker--I can't find it on their site, but I did find a slide show of their photos he narrates. And I also would have like to ask him about something I only realized from meeting him (and then saw in his acknowledgments in the finished copy of Country Driving), that his wife is Leslie T. Chang, author of Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China, which came out to wonderful reviews in 2008. I would have loved to hear about what it was like for them to be writing and reporting at the same time on their overlapping subjects.

Amazon: You've actually recently moved back to the States, but before that you were in China for how long?

Hessler: A little more than 10 years. I first went there as a Peace Corps volunteer in 1996 and ended up writing about the place and staying, and it was my home for more than a decade.

Whassup with the Economy? Questions for Econ Guru Roger E. A. Farmer

"Of all the economic bubbles that have been pricked," the editors of The Economist recently observed, "few have burst more spectacularly than the reputation of economics itself." Indeed, the market collapse in 2007 rippled through every sector of business, resulting in the loss of American jobs and homes. 

How and why did this happen?

By relying too heavily on either the Classical or Keynesian theories of economics, argues Professor Roger E.A. Farmer in How the Economy Works.  In this new book, Farmer--who is the UCLA Economics Department Chair and a member of the Financial Times Economists Forum--offers a jargon-free exploration of the current crisis. In 11 easy-to-read chapters he covers Classical and Keynesian economics, the impact of the central bank, why the stock market matters, and much more.

Taking it one step further, Farmer proposes a new theory that combines the best of Classical and Keynesian economics to correct market excesses without stifling capitalism. In the wake of bank bail-outs and grim unemployment statistics, we talked to Professor Farmer about why it's important for everyone to have a basic grasp of economics and understand how our economy works (or doesn't). 

Amazon.com: Why does the stock market matter to every American?

Roger E.A. Farmer:  In the 1930s, stock market wealth was much more concentrated than it is today. Middle and low income Americans held their savings in banks and it is for that reason that the collapse of the banking system in the 1930s was so devastating. In the 21st century, most middle class Americans own pension plans that invest in the stock market.

US wealth is roughly two-fifths houses and three-fifths factories and machines that are indirectly owned by households through their ownership of financial intermediaries such as bank accounts and pension rights. When the stock market plummets but recovers quickly, as it did in 1987, the effect on private households is minimal. When the stock market falls, as it did in 2000, but house prices keep rising, the effect is again small since households can borrow against housing wealth to maintain consumption. When houses and stocks fall together as they did in 1929 and again in 2008, the effect can be devastating.

Amazon.com: What is the difference between the Classical and Keynesian approach to macroeconomics?

Farmer: Classical economics sees the economy as self-correcting. Keynes thought that the stabilizing mechanisms in the private market system are nonexistent or, at best, very slow. In How the Economy Works, I put it like this:

The classical Norwegian economist Ragnar Frisch likened the economy to a child’s rocking horse. The horse is regularly buffeted by shocks. Think of a child hitting the horse with a stick. According to Frisch, these blows are like major economic events. A war in the Middle East. A hurricane in the Midwest. An airline pilots’ strike. After each shock, unemployment might rise temporarily as the economy readjusted to the blow but it would quickly return to its equilibrium level just as the rocking horse will come to rest if left alone. This is a good physical analogy to the classical idea of a self-correcting economic system.

Keynes had much less faith in the free market. In Keynesian economics the economy is like a boat on the ocean with a broken rudder. Gusts of wind represent major economic events. A war in the Middle East. A hurricane in the Midwest. An airline pilots’ strike. After each shock, unemployment rises or falls permanently and there is no self-correcting mechanism to return it to a unique equilibrium: Just as a sailboat will be becalmed wherever it comes to rest, the unemployment rate can end up anywhere. The classical economists saw the economy as a stable self-correcting system. Keynes did not. 

Amazon.com: What are you hoping readers will take away from this "jargon-free" exploration of the current economic crisis?

Farmer: I hope that the reader will understand three things. First, that the current crisis is just the latest in a series of crises that have plagued market economies since the inception of capitalism. Second, that politics and economics are irrevocably entwined and that government responses to financial crises have a symbiotic relationship with the evolution of the history of economic thought. Third, that the correct response to the crisis is to learn from it, and to develop new tools. In the words of Francis Bacon, “He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.” (Francis Bacon, Essays, 11. 1884 Of Great Place).

Read more of our exclusive interview with Roger E.A. Farmer, check out videos, and read the book's prologue.

--Jessica Schein and Lauren Nemroff

Omni Daily News

Palin's Next Book:  Sarah Palin is penning a second, as-yet untitled book. In a press release this morning, HarperCollins, publisher of her first book Going Rogue, announced it will publish the book in Fall 2010. The book is described as "a celebration of American virtues and strengths."  And, Palin will "include selections from classic and contemporary readings that have inspired her, as well as portraits of some of the extraordinary men and women she admires and who embody her love of country, faith, and family."   We'll keep you posted as details become available.  

First Novel Award Finalists Announced:   Amazon.ca and Quill and Quire magazine have just announced the finalists for the 34th annual First Novel Award--a uniquely Canadian literary award that highlights emerging literary talent in the country that just won Olympic hockey gold. The First Novel Award recognizes the outstanding achievement of a first-time novelist who published his or her first novel the previous year (2009). The winner for 2008 was Joan Thomas for her debut novel Reading by Lightning. The winner will be announced in Canada this April.  Previous FNA winners include Michael Ondaatje, Nino Ricci, Anne Michaels, and Gil Adamson.  Check out the 2009 finalists:

• No Place Strange by Diana Fitzgerald Bryden
• Come, Thou Tortoise by Jessica Grant
• The Golden Mean by Annabel Lyon
• Goya's Dog by Damian Tarnopolsky
• Diary of Interrupted Days by Dragan Todorovic
• Daniel O'Thunder by Ian Weir

More Honors and Awards:  Publishers Weekly reports that author Daniyal Mueenuddin has won the 2009 Story Prize for In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, his outstanding collection of interconnected short stories. The book was also a 2009 National Book Award finalist. The Story Prize's judges (author A.M. Homes, Los Angeles Times book critic and blogger Carolyn Kellogg, and Ohio librarian Bill Kelly) commented that “Each story, on its own, shines; layered together, there is a celebration of the beauty of the landscape, humor in the everyday, the irrefutable power of family and a lingering sadness for all who have not gotten quite what they wanted.”   The Story Prize committee also honored Victoria Patterson (Drift) and Wells Tower (Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned) for their short story collections.  

Movers & Shakers:  Doug Lemov's Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College (available April 26) moves to the head of the class in today's Movers & Shakers. Lemov, an author and educational consultant (who was also teacher, principal and charter school founder) was featured in a New York Times article last weekend.  What else is shaking: 

• The Myth of the Robber Barons by Burton W. Folsom
• I Am Nujood: Age 10 and Divorced by Nujood Ali 
• Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps for More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents by Christine Carter

--Lauren

"Genre is a maximum security prison": David Shields Talks to Heidi Broadhead Somewhere Else

Heidi Broadhead doesn't do all her good blogging for us: she's also the "Arts Nerd" over at our local politics/culture/etc. blog, Publicola, and yesterday she posted an excellent interview with David Shields (also local) about his new literary "manifesto," Reality Hunger. The book has often been seen as an argument against fiction (which it is in some ways) but here's a section from the interview that explains that it's really an argument against genre:

AN: And I wanted you to talk a little bit about the—wait, I wrote it down—”the reality continuum”—somewhere between J.R.R. Tolkien and a list of facts.

DS: Right. I talk about this guy who actually died a year or two ago named Shields who live in Eastern Washington. He kept the longest-running journal ever. He kept a journal of every single thing of every day. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of pages. That would be close to something quasi-real. And someone like Tolkien is obviously quite fantastical and even there, people who knew him say how unbelievably autobiographical that book is if you know how to read it, because it all just tracks very closely to his own life in a strange way....

It’s taken me a long time, but some of the work I love has a nonfictional frame to give the work a sense of urgency or risk or discomfort or nakedness or authenticity. So many of the works I love the most want to investigate the world rather than entertain the reader.

But I’m just as much opposed to, say, a straight-ahead memoir as I am to a conventional novel because they both seem to me to be way too comfortable with conventions of genre. There’s a line in the book where I say, “genre is a minimum security prison.” And also there’s a wonderful line by Walter Benjamin in the book, “All great works of literature either invent a genre or dissolve one,” which I really love.

To me, what happens when you dissolve a genre, you get to this: “When we are not sure, we are alive.” The ones that really knock me out are works in which we’re sort of off the click track and we don’t know where we’re going. Again, going back to Maggie Nelson’s book (which we had been talking about earlier): What is that book? Is it a memoir? Is it a philosophical meditation? Is it a history of the color blue? Is it a cri de coeur about her breakup? Is it art criticism? You don’t know where you’re going from paragraph to paragraph. All that you do know is that you’re going deeper into, you know, a human heart. I just love that feeling, and I think the best books have that quality. I’m interested in work that hovers between things because when you hover between things you can go anywhere you want and your loyalty as a writer becomes investigating something rather than going through the paces.

One thing that's striking to me: this "manifesto" has to this moment received 21 customer reviews on Amazon: all 5 stars. That unanimity is rare for any book, but especially one that aims to be provocative. I know customer reviews are a noisy piece of data--maybe they're all friends and family of Mr. Shields (surely he has one enemy out there somewhere!)--so I'm not sure what it means, if anything, but I wonder if his provocation is in fact so consistent with the cultural moment that no one disagrees with it (at least no one of the sort who will buy and read a literary manifesto right when it comes out).

Meanwhile, here's the "author video" we have on the site for the book, which captures a bit of Shields's mashup style and his taste for autobiographical reality:

--Tom

Update: My friend Brad Parsons points me to another Shields interview that GQ has just posted. It's a good one too. Here's a bit:

GQ: What I was really getting at, though, is that a lot of nonfiction writing still happens in monthly magazines, and always has. You mention Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing on The Campaign Trail '72, and I can think of a lot of stuff from that same period that falls into that same category, like Tom Wolfe's nonfiction. These stories are seen as high points for literary journalism, but I wonder if any of them would pass the fact-checking test today. I feel like a lot of those Hunter Thompson pieces would basically fall apart under the slightest scrutiny from, say, the research department of this magazine.
Shields: Well, but think of Wallace's piece on McCain, which began as a Rolling Stone piece and turned into a small book. I love that piece. To me, it's as good a thing as he ever wrote. Wallace's nonfiction, to me, is leagues better than his fiction.

GQ: I'm really glad to hear somebody else say that.
Shields: I mean, his fiction is so overvalued, it's ridiculous. He's a wonderful writer whose best works are the two collected books of essays. But the novels are just not good. A few of the stories are okay. But it's the essays, it's the articles, that he's fantastic at.

GQ: I feel like I never saw anybody really saying that, in all the tributes that came out after he died. Everyone treated his death as this great loss for modern fiction, and the nonfiction was generally dismissed as something that took his time and energy away from his true calling. I thought that was insane. 
Shields: It was unbelievable. And Wallace contributed to that. He always disparaged his nonfiction, for reasons I don't totally understand. There's a part of my book where I talk about how so many of the best works by fiction writers are in fact their works of nonfiction. I'm in the middle of preparing a talk, 'cause I'm going to go around and give a bunch of readings in the next month, so I'm sort of turning the book into a 45 minute talk, and part of it is the list of 50 writers who, for me, are far more exciting as nonfiction writers while they're primarily known as fiction writers. Whether it's Nathaniel Hawthorne, the introduction to The Scarlet Letter, which sort of dwarfs the rest of The Scarlet Letter for me, to Wallace, to Simon Gray, to Leonard Michaels, to Zadie Smith. And this is just my opinion. Who am I to say this? But that's my view, that these people come most alive as nonfiction writers.

Shields seems to be as nutty a listmaker as I, so if I can track that down that list of 50 I'll share it. One side note: funny to see Zadie Smith on his list, since she wrote a piece for the Guardian (whose copyright has apparently run out to host it) in the fall that, if I remember correctly, was appreciative of Shields's book but still argued fiction had more life in it than the essay.

Omni Daily News

Grisham's Writing for a New Audience: Look out kids, the long arm of the law is coming.  Well, the long arm of John Grisham's pen, anyway.  Grisham--the author of numerous mega-bestselling legal thrillers--follows the trend of the past few years of adult trade authors expanding their reach into the children's book market.  According to this morning's Publisher's Weekly Children's Bookshelf,  he's writing a new series for middle grade readers (and older fans, of course) which features a 13-year-old legal prodigy, Theodore Boone, Kid Lawyer.  The first book hits shelves on May 25.  We'll keep you posted when the product page goes live.  

Joe Hill's Latest Reviewed:  Catch Janet Maslin review of Joe Hill's new novel, Horns. This is the second novel from the critically-acclaimed author of Heart-Shaped Box. 

Moving & Shaking: Powerful minds prevail on today's Mover's & Shakers list as psychiatrist and researcher Richard Restak's Think Smart: A Neuroscientist's Prescription for Improving Your Brain's Performance takes the top spot today. 

--Lauren

Omni Daily Crush: "Forking Fantastic! Put the Party Back in Dinner Party"

Fact: I fantasize daily about dinner parties. While taming chaos in my garden this weekend, I mentally arranged bouquets, lit candles, and welcomed guests who devoured feasts and warmed the night with stories and drunken laughter, their faces lit by a crackling fire in the imaginary outdoor fireplace.

It’s not a stretch to say that my desire for these sorts of gatherings--fed by shimmering memories of open-air feasts in places and with people I’ve loved--has been my visceral motivation for making our garden, which has consumed most of my non-work time for six years now. This summer, as so much of this sweaty work comes to fruition, we must pause in our labor to celebrate!

Complicating Fact: Dinner parties stress the hell out of me (or rather, they have in the past). The need to keep guests not only occupied, but entertained; the pressure for the food not just to be good, but all hot at the same time. I don’t enough time and energy to recreate anything Martha would endorse, but that hasn't stopped me from trying--and then wondering why I wasn't enjoying my own party.

Everyone deserves the happiness of sharing home-made dinner with friends--and relaxing enough to be truly present. In parties past, I’ve transcended the stress for some wonderful, wine-soaked moments, but I never actually had a blast at my own party until last New Year’s Eve. Seized by the spirit of Zora O’Neill and Tamara Reynolds’s Forking Fantastic! Put the Party Back in Dinner Party, I invited a few friends over for dinner, and when they all accepted, I suddenly realized I had 18 people (OK, one was a baby) coming, and I couldn’t get off work to start cooking until 3:30. Oh, and some were staying the weekend. And the bathrooms weren’t clean, because Amazon’s a busy place during the holidays.

I panicked briefly, then drew courage from Zora and Tamara’s down-to-earth, salty-tongued stories about parties gone wrong but still awesome, and drew from their genius strategies for whipping up not just amazing food, but actual fun for all involved. Infused with their spirit, I put my guests to work in the kitchen, and we got three courses plus dessert on the table by 8:00. We all felt proud of the results, and even more fantastic was the forking amazing feeling we got from participating in that essential human ritual of sharing food and time together.

For a taste of Zora and Tamara’s style, watch this montage of their Sunday Night Dinners (and don’t miss the Naked Chef cameo).