Five best books about musical theater

Ethan Mordden, author of Ziegfeld: The Man Who Invented Show Business, named a five best list of books about musical theater for the Wall Street Journal.

Number One on his list:

Broadway Musicals
by Ken Bloom and Frank Vlastnik
Black Dog & Leventhal, 2004

This lavish coffee-table book can actually be used as a reference work. Its entries on each title provide a lengthy introductory essay, a concise synopsis and sidebars on everything from stars, writers and directors to backstage antics. "You don't give awards to the show," Zero Mostel cries when "Fiddler on the Roof" (1964) wins the Drama Critics Circle prize. "You give the awards to me!" The book's best element is its photographs, most of them never seen before. There is also an amazing amount of color, considering that the first show in the book, Victor Herbert's "Babes in Toyland," takes us back to 1903. The "Babes" entry includes the volume's only uncaptioned photo, presumably because it was mistakenly sitting in the "Babes" folder and the authors couldn't place it. It's from "The Wizard of Oz" (which also premiered in 1903), the first of several musicals based on the children's classic. The man in the 80-pound lion costume is Arthur Hill, beloved by a generation of kids whose first show this was.

Read about all five books on Mordden's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the most curious novel-writing politicians

At the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the most curious novel-writing politicians.

A couple of wannabe-presidents made the list, as did one actual president:

Jimmy Carter

As you might expect, the ex-President's foray into fiction - The Hornet's Nest - is a serious and hugely self-serious undertaking, a big historical novel set in Georgia and the Carolinas during America's revolutionary war.

Read about the other politician-novelists on Mullan's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

David Hare's best books

Playwright and director David Hare, whose screenplay for The Reader has just been nominated for an Academy Award, named a best books list for The Week.

One title on his list:

Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth by Gitta Sereny (Vintage, $25).

I think this is one of the most important books ever written, and certainly on one of the greatest themes: a Mephistophelean account of how Speer was flattered and corrupted into collaboration in Hitler’s crimes—and how he later denied it.

Read about all six titles on Hare's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Best books: Valerie Martin

Valerie Martin is the author of eight novels, including the Orange Prize winner Property and 2007’s Trespass. In October 2008 she recommended "six novels about doomed marriages" for The Week.

One book on her list:

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (Penguin, $9).

In this testament to the dangers of a romantic education, Emma Rouault imagines love as “a great rosy-plumaged bird soaring in the splendors of poetic skies,” but husband Charles Bovary’s conversation is “flat as a sidewalk.” One day Rodolphe Boulanger, a local aristocrat, whispers to Emma, “Ah, but there are two moralities.”

Read about the other five titles on Martin's list.

Madame Bovary also made Louis Begley's list of favorite novels about cheating lovers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten potato books

John Reader is a writer and photojournalist who holds an honorary research fellowship in the Department of Anthropology at University College London.

His new book, from Yale University Press, is Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent.

For the Guardian, he named his top 10 potato books.

Number One on the list:

History and Social Influence of the Potato by Redcliffe Salaman

Initially published by in 1949, but reissued in 1985, Salaman's book has to be first choice. He was nothing if not unrelenting in the breadth of his research, firing off letters to any institution or individual who might add something (or anything) to his study. The result is a deep and thorough book that amazes (in its detail) and exasperates (in its poor structural organisation) by turn. Indispensable.

See all ten titles on Reader's list.

Read an excerpt from John Reader's Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best prime ministers in fiction

At the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best prime ministers in fiction.

One title on the list:

Saturday, by Ian McEwan

Henry Perowne, McEwan's neurosurgeon protagonist, attends the opening of Tate Modern, where he is introduced to Tony Blair. "To Perownes surprise, Blair was looking at him with recognition and interest." The PM expresses admiration for his work. "In fact, we've got two of your paintings hanging in Downing Street." The episode is said to be autobiographical: Blair once mistook McEwan for a painter.

Read about the other nine PMs to pop up in stories.

Quite a few readers thought Mrs. Dalloway was a model for Ian McEwan's Saturday. Were they on to something?

--Marshal Zeringue

Books about Charles Darwin: 5 best

James A. Secord, the editor of Darwin's Evolutionary Writings (Oxford, 2008), is the director of the Darwin Correspondence Project and professor of the history and philosophy of science at Cambridge University.

Number One on his list of the five best books about Charles Darwin:

The Tree of Life
by Peter Sís
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003

It might seem surprising to begin a column on books about Charles Darwin with a children's title (age 8 and up), but this delightful volume is a superior introduction for all readers to the great naturalist. The delicate drawings and diagrams -- displaying animals, plants, instruments, portraits, maps -- lend to the book the flavor of a gorgeously illuminated medieval manuscript. Peter Sís's images, like Darwin's own writings, invite the reader to observe carefully and make connections. The emphasis on detail comes across best in a cross-section of the Beagle, the ship that took Darwin around the world. This is a book to think with and an ideal way to escape the mindless polemics (and hero worship) that will inevitably crop up during the 2009 bicentenary of Darwin's birth on Feb. 12. Give it to your kids, if you can stop looking at it long enough yourself.

Read about the other four titles on Secord's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Bryan Burrough: best books

Bryan Burrough, a Vanity Fair correspondent, has just published his fourth book, The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes.

For The Week, he named his six best books. One title on his list:

The Polish Officer by Alan Furst (Random House, $14).

Furst’s spy novels are fiction for people who don’t read fiction. This one tells the story of a refugee finding his way through the shadowy intrigues of prewar Europe before emerging into the bullets and bombs of the Nazi onslaught. You will believe every word.

Read about the other five titles on Bryan Burrough's list.

The Polish Officer is also one of Charles McCarry's favorite tales of espionage.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best chess games in fiction

At the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best chess games in fiction.

One title on the list:

The Royal Game by Stefan Zweig

One of the passengers on a ship is the world chess champion. Another, Dr B, tells the narrator of his incarceration by the Nazis, during which he tried to stay sane by playing mental chess against himself, dividing his mind into two contesting characters. With this training, he easily beats the world champion. In a return match, the champion plays as slowly as he can, driving Dr B to distraction and madness.

Read about the other nine chess games on Mullan's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Maria Semple's best books

Maria Semple has written for television shows including Arrested Development, Mad About You, and Ellen. This One Is Mine is her new novel.

For The Week, she named her six best books. One title on her list:

Last Night by James Salter (Vintage, $13).

I start every writing day by copying a few pages from Salter, one of the masters. Sometimes, I get to a sentence in this story collection that’s so gorgeous and devastating and short that I have to put my pen down and do what I feel is more my destiny, like troll the mall for sales.

See what other titles made her best books list.

Among the praise for This One Is Mine:

Maria Semple's remarkable first novel isn't just a witty, sharp-edged satire about adultery, social climbing, and the absurdities of L.A. On a deeper level, THIS ONE IS MINE is a complex, unexpectedly moving story about the risks and rewards of love, in all its irrational glory.
—Tom Perrotta, Little Children, Election

Read the CftAR interview with Maria Semple.

Learn more about the book and author at Maria Semple's website.

The Page 69 Test: This One Is Mine.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five most important books: Paul Auster

Paul Auster's latest book is Man in the Dark.

He named his five most important books for Newsweek.

Number One on the list:

"The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

This is where American literature begins.

Read about all five books on Auster's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten books about justice

"I write novels about justice, a rich and compelling subject because it always involves the great themes - the struggle between right and wrong, good and evil, and love and hate," wrote Lisa Scottoline in 2006 in the prefatory remarks to a list in the Guardian of her top 10 books about justice.

One title on the list:

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

Dame Agatha's brilliant and innovative mystery - and her first bestseller - celebrates its 80th birthday this year and breaks the rules even as it makes them. For mystery freaks like me, it's the Holy Grail.

Read about all ten titles on Scottoline's list.

--Marshal Zeringue