Allen Wyler's "Deadly Errors"

Allen Wyler is an internationally renown neurosurgeon and author of the thrillers, Deadly Errors and Dead Head.

He applied the “Page 99 Test” to Deadly Errors, and came up with:

Page 99 starts in the middle of a conversation between two minor characters and doesn’t give the flavor of the story or the writing. So I’d rather tell you about the plot.

In my practice, ideas for stories hit me at the most bizarre times. This book, for example. While serving on a committee to select a computerized medical records system for our medical center, I started wondering what might happen if the software had a bug that intermittently corrupted patient information. Could this ultimately kill patients? Yeah, probably. So this became the story’s kernel.

The push to switch from paper to electronic medical records is for a very good reason: computerization cuts down errors. Which is not a trivial issue. A 1999 study by the Institute of Medicine, To Err Is Human: Building A Safer Health System, reported that as many as 44,000 to 98,000 people die in hospitals each year from preventable medical errors. This makes preventable medical errors this country’s eighth leading cause of death — higher than motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer, or AIDS. About 7,000 people per year are estimated to die from medication errors alone. Although computers can definitely lower such errors, are they infallible? Shortly after the hardcover of Errors was released, I was contacted by a lawyer who specializes in just such cases. Scary.

So, the story goes like this: after fingering his boss for bilking Medicare out of millions, neurosurgeon Tyler Matthews framed for drug abuse and forced to complete a mandatory drug rehab program. After leaving San Francisco, he start his career over at a Seattle hospital. There he begins to suspect that the medical center’s revolutionary computerized medical records system is causing errors that kill patients. When he brings his concerns to management, he is not only scorned, but his life is put in danger and another potential whistle-blower turns up dead.

Read an excerpt from Deadly Errors, and learn more about the author and his work at Allen Wyler's website.

The Page 69 Test: Dead Head.

My Book, The Movie: Deadly Errors.

--Marshal Zeringue

Bill Emmott's "Rivals"

Bill Emmott is a writer, speaker and consultant on global affairs, with an expertise in Asia. Until 2006 he was editor in chief of The Economist, where his thirteen-year tenure was marked by many awards. He has published eight books and writes regularly for several international publications.

He applied the "Page 99 Test" to his new book, Rivals: How the Power Struggle Between China, India and Japan Will Shape Our Next Decade, and reported the following:

One page cannot of course be representative of a book’s substance and argument, but page 99 of Rivals does give a good sense of the approach and style that I have tried to use. My belief is that you cannot understand a society and its politics without also understanding its history and its economics; and that to understand Asia’s super-achievers in China and India it is essential also to look at Japan and other East Asian success stories, for Japan pioneered the paths that China and India are now following.

Thus, page 99 identifies some common aspects in the way Japan and China have been, and are, governed, even though one is a democracy and the other an authoritarian, nominally communist, regime. Elsewhere, I ask a former Japanese foreign minister what I should make of the recurrent tensions between China and Japan and he responds with a laugh: “China and Japan have hated each other for a thousand years. Why should it be any different now?” And yet there is also a lot that they have in common: their bureaucratic systems, their economic models, their environmental experiences.

The overall argument of Rivals is that Asia now needs to be understood both as a hotbed of political and economic competition—this is the first time in history when it has had three great powers all at the same time—and as an increasingly integrated continent. Japan’s growth was the big story of the first 80 years of the 20^th century; China’s emergence has been the big story of the past 25 years; but now India’s emergence, as a trading and manufacturing giant, looks likely to be the most important development of this decade and beyond. Not because it is going to overtake China, you understand. But rather because it sets up Asia’s new three-way power game, in which the United States will be a concerned but also active outside player.

Read an excerpt from Rivals, and learn more about the author and his work at Bill Emmott's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Steven Heyman's "Free Speech and Human Dignity"

Steven J. Heyman is Professor of Law, Chicago-Kent College of Law.

He applied the "Page 99 Test" to his new book, Free Speech and Human Dignity, and reported the following:

The problem I address in this book is how the law should approach conflicts between free speech and other values such as dignity, equality, privacy, and freedom from violence. Such conflicts lie at the heart of many recent debates, from hate speech and pornography to antiabortion protests and picketing at military funerals. As everyone knows, it’s almost impossible to find common ground in disputes like this. Instead, the two sides tend to talk past each other. One side argues that the speech causes serious harm to individuals, groups, or the community at large. The other side responds that our commitment to free speech is measured by our willingness to protect it even when it causes serious harm or offends our deepest values. Unfortunately, the debate rarely seems to move beyond this point. The underlying problem is that we have no coherent framework that would allow us to decide when speech should be protected, and when it can be regulated to protect other values. As a result, First Amendment controversies often seem irresolvable.

In the book, I seek to overcome this problem by developing a liberal humanist theory of the First Amendment. According to this view, freedom of speech is founded on respect for the autonomy and dignity of human beings. But these values also support other fundamental rights, ranging from personal security and privacy to citizenship and equality. Speech that invades these rights is subject to regulation through narrowly drawn laws, except in cases where the value of the speech is sufficient to justify the injuries it causes. This theory recognizes a strong, liberal right to free expression at the same time that it protects against the most serious forms of assaultive speech. In this way, the theory seeks to find some common ground between civil libertarianism and its critics.

In the section that ends on page 99, I address a somewhat different problem. How should the First Amendment apply when the government is not restricting speech, but is providing affirmative support for it (for example, by funding the arts)? Once again, I develop a centrist position on this issue: although the government should have substantial authority to determine how public funds are allocated, it must do so in a way that is fair in light of the purposes of the program, and that respects the liberty and equality of individuals who wish to participate in it.

Learn more about Free Speech and Human Dignity at the Yale University Press website.

Visit Steven Heyman's faculty webpage.

--Marshal Zeringue

James O'Toole's "The Faithful"

James M. O’Toole is Clough Millennium Professor of History at Boston College.

He applied the "Page 99 Test" to his new book, The Faithful: A History of Catholics in America, and reported the following:

Page 99 of The Faithful discusses the role of immigrants in the Catholic Church in the US in the 19th century. In many ways, the story of the church in this country has been the story of immigrants, and this is as true today as it was in the past. Then, Catholic immigrants were coming mostly from Europe; today, they are from all over the world: Central and South America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia. The ways in which the church has helped in their acculturation to their new country and the ways in which they have changed the church itself are very much a part of the story this book tells.

I also hope, however, that the book complicates that story. In the past, historians have tended to divide American Catholic history neatly into 3 periods: the pre-immigrant, immigrant, and post-immigrant church. I argue that it's better to think of six, which I call the Priestless Church (of the colonial era); the Church in the Democratic Republic (in the years before the Civil War); the Immigrant Church; the Church of Catholic Action (the early 20th century); the Church of Vatican II (the later 20th century); and the Church in the Twenty-first Century. By focusing on the experience of lay people, rather than the hierarchy and institutions of the church, I try to outline the characteristics of each period. In light of the still-ongoing crisis caused by the clergy sexual abuse scandal, understanding this history is, I believe, the first step in moving forward.

Read an excerpt from The Faithful, and learn more about the book at the Harvard University Press website.

Visit James O'Toole's faculty webpage.

--Marshal Zeringue

Blaize Clement's "Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues"

Blaize Clement is the author of Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter and Duplicity Dogged the Dachshund.

She applied the "Page 99 Test" to Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues, the third book in the Dixie Hemingway mystery series, and reported the following:

When I went to page 99 of Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues, I first thought, "No, Ford was wrong." But by the time I'd read it several times, I had decided the test works.

In the first sentence, Florida pet sitter Dixie Hemingway, no relation to you-know-who, wakes up unable to move. It's late at night, she's lying on the grounds of a mansion, and in dazed confusion realizes somebody has conked her on the head. By the end of the page, she understands that the gray swirls moving so artfully through the trees is smoke, and she is forcing herself to stand up and do whatever she can to avert a tragedy.

That scene pretty much sums up the quality of the entire Dixie Hemingway Mystery Series. A former deputy, Dixie went a little crazy three years ago when her husband and child were killed by a man who hit the gas pedal instead of the brake in a supermarket parking lot. Thinking that working with pets would provide escape from the pain humans cause one another, she left the sheriff's department and became a pet sitter.

Since it's a mystery series, people are murdered. And since it's a "pet mystery" series, the stories are full of lovable pets. But while the series points up the fact that the highest ideals of love and loyalty are more frequently shown by pets than by humans, the real story is about Dixie's ongoing struggle to overcome grief and live and love as a normal young woman. In each book in the series, she grows in strength and courage.

As Page 99 of the third book in the series shows, Dixie always gets up and does her best. Even if she gets banged on the head by an arsonist in the middle of the night, even if she's hallucinating and too woozy to walk, Dixie by god stands up.

Read an excerpt from Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues, and learn more about the author and her work at Blaize Clement's website and her blog.

--Marshal Zeringue

Robert Schlesinger's "White House Ghosts"

Robert Schlesinger is deputy assistant managing editor, opinion at U.S. News & World Report. Formerly political editor of the insider publication The Hill and a Washington correspondent for The Boston Globe, he has written for The Washington Monthly, Salon.com, The Weekly Standard, and People. He teaches political journalism at Boston University's Washington Journalism Center.

He applied the "Page 99 Test" to his new book, White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters, and reported the following:

White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters traces the history of presidential speechwriting from FDR through Bush 43. On page 99 we pick up the story at the end of the Eisenhower presidency:

During the first week of December, [speechwriter Malcolm] Moos gave Eisenhower a draft of the speech. It warned against a "military-industrial-scientific complex," a formulation that was later shortened at the suggestion of scientific adviser James Killian. A later draft discussed a "military-industrial-congressional" complex, but Eisenhower decided it was inappropriate to lecture Congress and dropped the legislative reference. "I think you've got something here," Eisenhower told Moos, slipping it into his desk. On December 14, Ike received a call from Norman Cousins, editor of the Saturday Review, urging him to "give a 'farewell address' to the country ... reviewing your administration, telling of your hopes for the future. A great, sweeping document."

Addressing the nation at 8:30 pm three days before John F. Kennedy's inaugural, Eisenhower delivered his famous warning:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

Eisenhower had told Moos that he was not interested in capturing headlines, and in that regard the speech was a success. While Walter Lippmann noted that Ike's speech "will be remembered and quoted in the days to come," it in fact went largely unremarked.

Things began to change months later. "There is an interesting development, Mr. President, involving your 'Farewell Address,'" [Bryce] Harlow wrote to Eisenhower on March 17, 1961...

In this case, the Page 99 Test works well -- White House Ghosts gives readers an inside portrait of presidents and how they approached the “bully pulpit.” Here we see Ike’s unwillingness to be seen as bullying Congress and lack of interest in saying something particularly flashy in his farewell.

And White House Ghosts also gives the back-story on famous presidential addresses (there’s more about Eisenhower’s farewell, but that’s on pages 97 and 98!), allowing readers to see the genesis and evolution of well-remembered phrases -- in this case "military-industrial complex."

Of course there’s so much more here: The book covers a dozen presidents -- I spoke to at least one speechwriter or other key aide from each administration, more than 90 in total -- and does so in what I think is a very readable, accessible manner. (Lesley Stahl said that the "book is fascinating. And funny. If you like reading American history, you’ll love this book.")

Read an excerpt from White House Ghosts, and learn more about the book and its author at Robert Schlesinger's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

John A. Adam's "Mathematics in Nature"

John A. Adam is professor of mathematics at Old Dominion University. His new book, with Lawrence Weinstein, is Guesstimation: Solving the World's Problems on the Back of a Cocktail Napkin.

Adam applied the "Page 99 Test" to his award-winning book Mathematics in Nature: Modeling Patterns in the Natural World, and reported the following:

On page 99 of this book, the reader might be very distressed to find two very complicated-looking equations, in addition to several innocuous-looking ones. But reader, fear not: these equations are present 'merely' to illustrate some of the underlying mathematical features of one of nature's most beautiful (and common) sights: a 22-degree ice-crystal halo around the sun. Still puzzled? Well, allow me to explain. When those highest of all clouds are seen in an otherwise clear blue sky, a ring, tinged faintly red on the inside, may be noticed around the sun. Those whispy, feather-like clouds known as cirrus, or cirro-stratus, are composed entirely of ice crystals, and sunlight refracted through myriads of these crystals produces this beautiful sight. Similar halos also can been seen around the moon when conditions are favorable.

[Warning: never look directly at the sun - when looking for halos always block off the solar disk with your hand, someone's head, or a conveniently located chimney on a neighbor's house, before examining the region near the sun.]

But this book is not just about halos. From rainbows, river meanders, and shadows to spider webs, honeycombs, and the markings on animal coats, the visible world is full of patterns that can be described mathematically. Examining such readily observable phenomena, and this book is designed to introduce readers to the beauty of nature as revealed by mathematics and the beauty of mathematics as revealed in nature. Illustrated with many color photographs and line drawings, written in an informal style, and replete with examples from everyday life, Mathematics in Nature is an introduction to the ideas and methods of mathematical modeling. It illustrates how mathematics can be used to formulate and solve puzzles observed in nature and how to interpret the solutions. In the process, it teaches such topics as the art of estimation and 'the problem of scale', that is, what happens as things get bigger. Each chapter has a non-mathematical introduction to the topic at hand. I hope that as a result, readers will develop a deeper appreciation for such natural phenomena as cloud formations, halos and glories, tree heights and leaf patterns, butterfly and moth wings, and even puddles and mud cracks.

Read an excerpt from Mathematics in Nature, and learn more about the book at the Princeton University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Guesstimation.

--Marshal Zeringue

David Ownby's "Falun Gong and the Future of China"

David Ownby is Professor of History and Director of the Center for East Asian Studies at the Université de Montréal, in Montreal, Canada. He is the author of Brotherhoods and Secret Societies in Early and Mid-Qing China: The Origins of a Tradition, and the co-author, with Qin Baoqi and Susan J. Palmer, of The Millennium and the Turning of the Kalpa: The Historical Evolution of Apocalyptic Discourse in China and in the West.

He applied the "Page 99 Test" to his new book, Falun Gong and the Future of China, and reported the following:

Page 99 of Falun Gong and the Future of China discusses Falun Gong founder Li Hongzhi’s teachings about the limitations of science as an adequate tool for understanding the meaning of life. While the conflict between the Falun Gong and the Chinese state has been much in the news, Li’s teachings and Falun Gong practices remain obscure, and one of the goals of my book is to explain the nature of Li’s ideas and what made them attractive to millions of Chinese. I argue that Falun Gong, and indeed the larger qigong movement which gave rise to Falun Gong, represent a recycling of traditional Chinese medical and spiritual concepts related to healing and wellness, repackaged as a “new and improved Chinese science” beginning in the 1980s, as Mao’s Communist revolution withered and died. Tens if not hundreds of millions of Chinese followed one charismatic master or another, doing qigong exercises, buying qigong manuals, drinking qigong tea…in a nation-wide craze which swept urban China. Falun Gong founder Li Hongzhi emerged in 1992, toward the end of the qigong boom, and accentued the moral and religious elements already implicit other schools of qigong, demanding that his followers read and reread his scriptures (available free on the internet) and promising them that moral behavior would help reduce their “karmic debt.” Li quickly attracted a following of several million and became a major player in the qigong world.

Chinese authorities initially supported qigong and Falun Gong, and many high Party officials were qigong practitioners. These leaders appreciated qigong and Falun Gong’s nationalistic pride in China’s traditional heritage, and hoped that a healthier population resulting from widespread qigong practice would reduce health care costs and contribute to good governance. As time passed, however, these same leaders came to realize that they had facilitated the creation of organizations of millions of people under charismatic leadership, a worrisome problem for an authoritarian regime concerned about its legitimacy. The result of China’s attempt to rein in the qigong movement was the spectacular demonstration of April 25, 1999, when some 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners staged a peaceful protest outside the gates of Chinese Communist Party headquarters in Beijing. The ensuing campaign of suppression continues to this day.

Read more about Falun Gong and the Future of China at the Oxford University Press website, and visit David Ownby's faculty webpage.

--Marshal Zeringue

Elizabeth Zelvin's "Death Will Get You Sober"

Elizabeth Zelvin is a New York City psychotherapist who directed an alcoholism treatment program on the Bowery for more than six years. Death Will Get You Sober is her first mystery. A related story, “Death Will Clean Your Closet,” has been nominated for an Agatha award for Best Short Story. Another story, “Death Will Tie Your Kangaroo Down,” won an honorable mention in the first annual CrimeSpace Short Story Competition.

She applied the "Page 99 Test" to Death Will Get You Sober and reported the following:

At the beginning of Death Will Get You Sober, Bruce Kohler wakes up in detox on the Bowery on Christmas Day and realizes he needs to change his life. How? “Don’t drink, go to meetings, and investigate a murder.” When a detox buddy dies in the next bed, Bruce cares more than he expected to. It’s only a few stops on the subway to Park Avenue, where the victim’s dysfunctional family has more than its share of money and secrets. Two friends Bruce thought he’d lost help him stay sober and find the killer: his best friend Jimmy and Jimmy’s girlfriend Barbara, the world’s most codependent addictions counselor.

Barbara loves to help and mind everybody’s business, so she’s a natural for the role of amateur sleuth. In early drafts of Death Will Get You Sober, she and Bruce were co-protagonists, alternating first-person chapters. Then the first editor at St. Martin’s who read the manuscript loved Bruce’s distinctive voice but thought Barbara would do better as a sidekick. So I rewrote the book.

Page 99 falls in the middle of one of the few chapters in which I used the third person to retain Barbara’s point of view. So if “the quality of the whole” hinges on the voice, which to a great extent it does, page 99 misses it completely. The page is also short on dialogue, another of the book’s strengths. The final paragraph describes in detail the appearance of the victim’s aristocratic sister, whom Barbara goes to interview, one of the few such passages in the book.

On the other hand, Barbara’s codependency is as important as Bruce’s alcoholism to the overall recovery theme of the book. In that sense, the page does contain hints of the essence of the story. And the writer’s voice, which is related but not identical to Bruce’s voice, comes through:

“Her well-sculpted legs were swathed in…near-invisible panty hose, her feet clad in black leather pumps that looked as if they would rather have died than become scuffed. Barbara marveled not only at the outfit, but that she had evidently put it on just to hang out at home. When Barbara hung out at home, she wore sweats and bunny slippers.”

Read an excerpt from Death Will Get You Sober, and learn more about the author and her work at Elizabeth Zelvin's website, her MySpace page, and the group blog, Poe's Deadly Daughters.

--Marshal Zeringue

Lawrence Weinstein & John A. Adam's "Guesstimation"

Lawrence Weinstein is professor of physics at Old Dominion University; John A. Adam is professor of mathematics at Old Dominion University. Their new book is Guesstimation: Solving the World's Problems on the Back of a Cocktail Napkin.

Weinstein applied the "Page 99 Test" to Guesstimation and reported the following:

Page 99 contains a question, “What are the relative costs of fuel (per mile or per kilometer) of New York City bicycle rickshaws (human pedaled taxis) and of automobiles?” plus a few hints to help the reader answer the question. While this is not one of the world’s most pressing questions, the answer (rickshaw fuel [i.e., food] is about twice as expensive per mile as automobile fuel, explained in detail on pp. 100-101) does help show why the automobile is the dominant form of transportation in America.

This book is comprised of questions and their answers to help the reader figure out how to estimate the size of almost anything, from the silly to the serious (but never solemn) and from the simple to the complex. Questions include:

• How many people are picking their nose at this instant?
• How much coal or uranium is needed to fuel a power plant for one year?
• How long is all of the DNA in your body?
• How much space is needed to landfill all of America’s garbage for a century?
  

In order to make the questions answerable, we only try to get the answer to within a factor of ten. Since size by itself is meaningless, the book also shows readers how to make useful comparisons, such as between the energy storage capacity of batteries and gas tanks or between the risks of driving to the beach and getting bitten by a shark while swimming.

Read an excerpt from Guesstimation, and learn more about the book at the Princeton University Press website.

Visit the webpages of Lawrence Weinstein and John A. Adam.

--Marshal Zeringue