The five best books on the history of communication

Andrew Pettegree is professor of modern history at the University of St Andrews. A leading expert on the history of book and media transformations, Pettegree is the award-winning author of several books on news and information culture. Arthur der Weduwen is a British Academy postdoctoral fellow at the University of St. Andrews.

They are the authors of The Library: A Fragile History.

At Shepherd Pettegree tagged five top books on the history of communication, including:

Knowledge is Power: The Diffusion of Information in Early America, 1700-1865 by Richard D. Brown

The key obstacle to communication in the pre-modern age was distance: this was particularly the case in the transported communities of European settlers in distant continents, often sparsely settled and without the familiar settled infrastructure of roads and trade. In this landmark study, Richard Brown considers the case of colonial America and the early Republic through a series of well-chosen case studies. These reveals that Americans relied on a multi-media experience of newsgathering, where conversation, gossip, and neighbour networks competed with new media innovations. An instant classic full of insight.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top survival thrillers

Rektok Ross is the pen name of Liani Kotcher, a trial attorney turned award-winning young adult author and book blogger. An avid reader since childhood, Kotcher writes exactly the kind of books she loves to escape into herself: exciting thrillers with strong female leads, swoon-worthy love interests, and life-changing moments. She graduated from the University of Florida School of Journalism and obtained her juris doctorate at the University of Miami School of Law. Originally from South Florida, she currently splits her time between San Francisco and Los Angeles with her husband, stepkids, and her dogs.

Ross's debut YA survival thriller is Ski Weekend.

At The Strand Magazine she tagged six "truly wonderful survival thrillers that are guaranteed to get both your adrenalin—and your brain cells—pumping," including:

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Golding’s iconic 1954 novel has withstood the test of time and today it still remains one of the most unforgettable tales of what can happen to humans when the rules of society fall away. The story starts when a plane crashes on an uncharted island, stranding a group of schoolboys. At first, they celebrate having no adult supervision and being able to do whatever they want. But as the rules of civility quickly collapse, the boys turn wild and then turn on each other. The book is just as chilling and relevant today as when it was written all those years ago.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Lord of the Flies is on Julia Phillips's top eight list of books set in isolated locations, Kerri Jarema's list of fifteen classic novels with a page count mercifully below 200 pages, Brian Conaghan's list of ten favorite teen books about male friendship, Gillian Philip’s top ten list of islands in children's fiction, Janet Davey’s top ten list of schoolchildren in fiction, Frank Rich's ten top books list, Non Pratt's top ten list of toxic friendships in literature, Francesca Haig's top ten list of the greatest twins in children’s books, Shaun Byron Fitzpatrick list of thirteen favorite, occasionally-banned, YA novels, Matt Kraus's list of six famous books with extremely faithful film adaptations, Michael Hogan's list of the ten best fictional evil children, Danny Wallace's six best books list, Gemma Malley's top ten list of dystopian novels for teenagers, AbeBooks' list of 20 books of shattered childhoods and is one of the top ten works of literature according to Stephen King. It appears on John Mullan's lists of ten of the best pigs in literature, ten of the best pairs of glasses in literature, and ten of the best horrid children in literature, Katharine Quarmby's top ten list of disability stories, and William Skidelsky's list of ten of the best accounts of being marooned in literature. It is a book that made a difference to Isla Fisher and is one of Suzi Quatro's six best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten Southern gothic novels that changed the game

Daryl Gregory is the author of Revelator, Spoonbenders, Afterparty, The Devil's Alphabet, and other novels.

[My Book, The Movie: Afterparty; The Page 69 Test: Afterparty; Daryl Gregory's five top books about psi powers]

At Publishers Weekly he tagged ten "favorites books that do something remarkable with Southern gothic," including:

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Morrison’s haunting and haunted novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988, and there’s no better book about trauma and the way it cannot be escaped or erased. Sethe, a former slave, made it to the free state of Ohio and has raised her children there. But when a young woman named Beloved shows up on Sethe’s doorstep, long-buried secrets come rushing out. By centering this Southern story on a Black woman, Morrison makes us reckon with the greatest sin in American history.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Beloved also appears on Anne Enright's list of six amazing books, Candice Carty-Williams's list of six heroic women in literature, Kate Racculia's list of ten gothic fiction titles that meant something to her, Emily Temple's list of the ten books that defined the 1980s, Megan Abbott's list of six of the best books based on true crimes, Melba Pattillo Beals's 6 favorite books list, Sarah Porter's list of five favorite books featuring psychological hauntings, Matthew Fellion and Katherine Inglis' list of ten books that were subject to silencing or censorship, Jeff Somers's list of ten fictional characters based on real people, Christopher Barzak's top five list of books about magical families, Ayelet Gundar-Goshen's ten top list of wartime love stories, Judith Claire Mitchell's list of ten of the best (unconventional) ghosts in literature, Kelly Link's list of four books that changed her, a list of four books that changed Libby Gleeson, The Telegraph's list of the 15 most depressing books, Elif Shafak's top five list of fictional mothers, Charlie Jane Anders's list of ten great books you didn't know were science fiction or fantasy, Peter Dimock's top ten list of books that challenge what we think we know as "history", Stuart Evers's top ten list of homes in literature, David W. Blight's list of five outstanding novels on the Civil War era, John Mullan's list of ten of the best births in literature, Kit Whitfield's top ten list of genre-defying novels, and at the top of one list of contenders for the title of the single best work of American fiction published in the last twenty-five years.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best books set in Las Vegas

At the Guardian Malcolm Burgess tagged ten of the best books set in Las Vegas, including:

Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form, 1972

The sign for the Motel Monticello, a silhouette of an enormous Chippendale highboy, is visible on the highway before the motel itself. This architecture of styles and signs is anti-spacial; it is the architecture of communication over space; communication dominates space as an element in the architecture in the landscape. But it is for a new scale of landscape.

Now seen as a bible for postmodernist architecture, Venturi's seminal book saw the urban sprawl of Las Vegas as an architecture of communication over space, achieved through style and signs.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten crime books to help cure your hangover

At the Mulholland Books blog, Paul D. Brazill tagged "ten shots of crime writing medicine that will work as more than a little eye opener," including:

The Big O /Crime Always Pays by Declan Burke

The Big O and its follow up Crime Always Pays actually are that oxymoron ‘screwball noir’. These novels are like two cracking, fast paced, clever and very droll road movies with a top drawer cast that includes a narcoleptic called Sleeps and a one eyed wolf. Twists and turns, spicy dialogue and scenes which really make you ‘LOL’, as the young people say.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Page 99 Test:: The Big O (Irish edition).

The Page 99 Test: The Big O.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five notable novels that riff on—and rip off—Shakespeare

Lois Leveen is the award-winning author of The Secrets of Mary Bowser and Juliet's Nurse.

[The Page 69 Test: Juliet's Nurse; Writers Read: Lois Leveen (October 2014)]

In 2014, for the Daily Beast, Leveen tagged five books that share a shameless use of Shakespeare as a source, including:

Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion

If I describe Warm Bodies as “Romeo and Juliet with zombies,” I realize eye-rolling might seem a warranted response. But this novel is worlds away from Abraham Lincoln hunting vampires or the Bennet sisters battling brain-eaters between dress balls. It is a parable about how society demonizes (and even tries to obliterate) those it deems to be different, and it comes complete with a warning that if we follow along, we risk destroying our own chance for happiness. Like Smiley, Marion takes essential conflicts and themes from Shakespeare and transposes them to an entirely new (and in this case post-apocalyptic) setting, then makes them his own. But he is borrowing from more than one source; my beloved Nurse is transformed here into a teenage friend of Juliet’s, a la West Side Story. Spoiler alert: “Happily Ever After” takes on a whole new meaning if you’re undead.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Warm Bodies is among Rachel Aukes's five top books that take zombies in a new direction, Ceridwen Christensen's seven top books with thinking zombies, Jeff Somers's eight best speculative works with dead narrators, Sarah Skilton's six most unusual YA narrators, Rachel Paxton-Gillilan's five funniest YA zombie novels, Nick Harkaway's six favorite holiday books, and Nicole Hill's seven favorite literary oddballs.

The Page 69 Test: Warm Bodies.

My Book, The Movie: Warm Bodies.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10 books about self-improvement

Anna Katharina Schaffner is professor of cultural history at the University of Kent.

She is the author of Exhaustion: A History and the novel The Truth about Julia.

Her latest book is The Art of Self-Improvement: Ten Timeless Truths.

At the Guardian Schaffner tagged ten of the best guides to making a better life, including:

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

The Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius (AD 121–180) believed that all suffering is in our minds. Suffering is caused not by external events but by our reactions to those events – by faulty judgments and unrealistic expectations. Given that most external events are beyond our control, Aurelius argues in his Meditations that it is pointless to worry about them. Our evaluations of these events, by contrast, are completely within our control. It follows that all our mental energies should be directed inwards, with a view to controlling our minds. The key to a happy life, then, lies in adjusting our expectations, because “only a madman looks for figs in winter”.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Meditations is among five books that changed Elizabeth Gilbert.

--Marshal Zeringue

The five best novels written by poets

In 2015 at B&N Reads, Jeff Somers tagged "five novels written by poets you should absolutely check out," including:

Hausfrau, by Jill Alexander Essbaum

If you’re wondering what the term “precise language” might actually mean, read Essbaum’s remarkable debut novel, which tells the tale of Anna Benz, an American woman married to a Swiss man. Anna lives a comfortable life but lacks some inner quality, which gives her a taste for constant experience, including sexual affairs that quickly complicate her life. As Anna lies and twists to escape the consequences of her actions, Essbaum charts her descent in sentences that might as well be carved from diamonds: Beautiful, clear, and constructed with a precision of tone and vocabulary only a poet could achieve.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten fantastical literary parties

In 2014 the staff at Off the Shelf tagged ten of "the most fantastical (and sometimes fanatical) parties imaginable" in novels, including:

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

In a remote Hertfordshire village, far off the good coach roads of George III's England, a country squire of no great means must marry off his five vivacious daughters. At the heart of this all-consuming enterprise are his headstrong second daughter Elizabeth Bennet and her aristocratic suitor Fitzwilliam Darcy — two lovers whose pride must be humbled and prejudices dissolved before the novel can come to its splendid conclusion.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Pride and Prejudice also appears on KT Sparks's seven best graceless literary exits, Lit Hub's list of twenty-five actually pretty happy couples in literature, Ellie Eaton's list of eight of literature's notable mean girls, Sarah Vaughan's list of nine fictional bad mothers in fiction, Jessica Francis Kane's top ten list of houseguests in fiction, O: The Oprah Magazine's twenty greatest ever romance novels, Cristina Merrill's list of eight of the sexiest curmudgeons in romance, Sarah Ward's ten top list of brothers and sisters in fiction, Tara Sonin's lists of fifty must-read regency romances and seven sweet and swoony romances for wedding season, Grant Ginder's top ten list of book characters we love to hate, Katy Guest's list of six of the best depictions of shyness in fiction, Garry Trudeau's six favorite books list, Ross Johnson's list of seven of the greatest rivalries in fiction, Helen Dunmore's six best books list, Jenny Kawecki's list of eight fictional characters who would make the best travel companions, Peter James's top ten list of works of fiction set in or around Brighton, Ellen McCarthy's list of six favorite books about weddings and marriage, the Telegraph's list of the ten greatest put-downs in literature, Rebecca Jane Stokes' list of ten fictional families you might enjoy more than the one you'll actually spend the holidays with, Melissa Albert's lists of five fictional characters who deserved better, [fifteen of the] romantic leads (and wannabes) of Austen’s brilliant books and recommended reading for eight villains, Molly Schoemann-McCann's list of ten fictional men who have ruined real live romance, Emma Donoghue's list of five favorite unconventional fictional families, Amelia Schonbek's list of five approachable must-read classics, Jane Stokes's top ten list of the hottest men in required reading, Gwyneth Rees's top ten list of books about siblings, the Observer's list of the ten best fictional mothers, Paula Byrne's list of the ten best Jane Austen characters, Robert McCrum's list of the top ten opening lines of novels in the English language, a top ten list of literary lessons in love, Simon Mason's top ten list of fictional families, Cathy Cassidy's top ten list of stories about sisters, Paul Murray's top ten list of wicked clerics, John Mullan's lists of ten of the best housekeepers in fiction, ten great novels with terrible original titles, and ten of the best visits to Brighton in literature, Luke Leitch's top ten list of the most successful literary sequels ever, and is one of the top ten works of literature according to Norman Mailer. Richard Price has never read it, but it is the book Mary Gordon cares most about sharing with her children.

The Page 99 Test: Pride and Prejudice.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten groundbreaking horror novels

Gus Moreno is the author of This Thing Between Us. His stories have appeared in Aurealis, PseudoPod, Bluestem Magazine, LitroNy, the Burnt Tongues anthology, and a bunch of other places that are totally not defunct.

At Publishers Weekly he tagged ten books that "push the boundaries of the genre in terms of what terrifies us, what disturbs us, and what we expect from a horror novel." One title on the list:

The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum

Two young girls move in with their aunt and her sons in an assuming suburb and develop friendships with other neighborhood children. Is there a slasher? No. Is the house haunted? No. They’re cannibals then? No. Ghosts? Zombies? Serial Killers? Nope. Is it the most disturbing novel I’ve ever read? Yes. As the novel progresses, the walls begin to close in around what this story actually is about, and no work combines the domestic and the extreme more than The Girl Next Door. Many novels explore what’s beneath the thin veneer of suburban life, but not many reach the depths Ketchum’s book does, and you’re too ensnared in the story to stop by the time truly horrific things begin to happen. If the frog-in-a-pot-of-slowly-boiling-water fable was a novel, it would be this.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books about American disasters

Cynthia A. Kierner is professor of history at George Mason University and the author of Martha Jefferson Randolph, Daughter of Monticello and Inventing Disaster: The Culture of Calamity from the Jamestown Colony to the Johnstown Flood.

[The Page 99 Test: Inventing Disaster]

At Shepherd she tagged five of the best books about American disasters. One title on the list:

Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82 by Elizabeth A. Fenn

I am a historian of early America, including the American Revolution, though I'm not a huge reader (or writer) of conventional military history. Published in 2001, Elizabeth Fenn's book was in many ways ahead of its time in emphasizing how military outcomes—and strategies—were often contingent on other seemingly unrelated factors. In this case, she argues that smallpox was a decisive force in the American War for Independence. The continental scope of her study, moreover, provides a link between that war and the ultimately successful military offensives that the independent United States inflicted on disease-weakened Native American peoples in the post-revolutionary era.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

The twelve best novels with courtroom scenes

Jane Casey has written eleven crime novels for adults and three for teenagers. A former editor, she is married to a criminal barrister who ensures her writing is realistic and as accurate as possible. This authenticity has made her novels international bestsellers and critical successes. The Maeve Kerrigan series has been nominated for many awards: in 2015 Casey won the Mary Higgins Clark Award for The Stranger You Know and Irish Crime Novel of the Year for After the Fire. In 2019, Cruel Acts was chosen as Irish Crime Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards. It was a Sunday Times bestseller.

Born in Dublin, Casey now lives in southwest London with her husband and two children.

Her newest novel is The Killing Kind.

[My Book, The Movie: The Killing Kind]

At The Strand Magazine Casey shared twelve novels featuring some of her favorite courtroom scenes, including:

Pleasantville by Attica Locke

This brilliant thriller blends legal issues with political ones and a very fine murder mystery. It’s set in 1996, in Houston, as a mayoral election campaign heats up. A young campaigner disappears and the African-American mayoral candidate’s nephew is accused of her murder. Lawyer Jay Porter returns (after his first appearance in Black Water Rising) to defend in his first ever murder trial and to find out what really happened – and why. The courtroom scenes are key to unravelling the complex, brilliant plot that draws in politics, a corporate pollution suit, historic real estate decisions and two previous unsolved murders.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue