David Kushner's "Levittown"

David Kushner is the author of Masters of Doom and Jonny Magic and the Card Shark Kids. A contributing editor at Rolling Stone and Wired, he has also been published in the New York Times, New York, Entertainment Weekly, Parade, Salon, and the Village Voice. He does commentary for NPR, and teaches journalism at New York University.

He applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Levittown: Two Extraordinary Families, One Ruthless Tycoon, and the Fight for the American Dream, and reported the following:

Levittown is about the dark side of the American Dream. It tells the true story behind the iconic suburb's whites-only policy - and the two families who challenged the builder's plan during the explosive summer of 1957.

Flipping to page 99, it seems Ford Madox Ford's statement might be right after all. The first two words on the page are "shattered window." I find that amazing, because it really does cut to the heart of the story.

The phrase comes at the moment when Levittown, Pennsylvania's first African-American family, the Myerses, came home to find a rock thrown through their front window. A mob had shown up on the day they moved in, and some attacked the home. In another sense, the "shattered window" suggests the shattering of this picture perfect dreamtown. But there's more. John Keats wrote a famous satire of a Levittown style community - the name of the book, The Crack in the Picture Window.

Further down page 99, however, there's the other key part of the Levittown story. It's not just about evil and hate. It's about the remaking of this model town. The page ends with the Myers' neighbors, the Wechslers, showing up with others to help them.

Learn more about the book and author at David Kushner's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

John Reader's "Potato"

John Reader is a writer and photojournalist who holds an honorary research fellowship in the Department of Anthropology at University College London. He has travelled all over the world and now resides in Surrey, UK.

He applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent, and reported the following:

The Spanish conquistadores had overthrown the Incas in 1532 and sent vast quantities of gold and silver back to Europe. But arguably the most valuable item they discovered was an odd-looking esculent that grew in the high Andes – the potato. Page 99 of Potato - a history of the propitious esculent comes at the beginning of a chapter which tells the story of how insecure Europe's food supply had been before the arrival of the potato:

July was the cruellest month, when the grass stood high in the meadows, demanding to be cut and dried and stacked before a turn in the weather spoiled it. Haymaking was the first great harvest of the year – but to feed livestock during the winter, not haymakers at midsummer. People toiling in the hayfields were hungry, burning up at least 3,000 calories a day at the time of year when their available supplies of energy-packed carbohydrates were lowest. The store of last year’s harvest was nearly finished – if there was any left at all – and crops planted in the spring would not be ready to reap for weeks yet. Thus, summer was not a sunblest romp for the rural majority in sixteenth century Europe – it was ‘the hungry gap,’ when people worked hardest and ate least, and many were starving if last year’s harvest had been poor. Brueghel painted hayfield scenes of bucolic fun. Midsummer madness? Perhaps, though as likely induced by the lightheadedness of starvation as by the excesses of consumption.

The potato is a supremely productive and reliable crop. It will thrive on land and in weather where grain would fail; output per unit of land and labour is four times that of grain; three-quarters of its biomass is edible, compared with one-third of grain; it is easily prepared and - most important of all - highly nutritious.

The potato filled Europe's hungry gap and fuelled a burst of population wherever it became a staple food. In due course, the city-based industrial revolution not only mopped up surplus rural populations but also fed the labouring masses on potatoes. As the renowned historian, William H. McNeill, wrote: 'the potato changed the world's history'. It is not even mentioned on page 99, but the context is clear. Read on …

Read an excerpt from Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent, and learn more about the book at the Yale University Press website.

Check out John Reader's top 10 potato books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Kitty Burns Florey's "Script and Scribble"

Kitty Burns Florey is the author of Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences. A veteran copy editor, she has also written nine novels and many short stories and essays.

She applied the “Page 99 Test” to her new book, Script and Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting, and reported the following:

I have a great fondness for Ford Madox Ford: I read The Good Soldier in a college literature course when I was a sophomore, and went on to read not only his tetralogy but minor works like his travel book Provence. I liked his funny name and his funny moustache, too.

So I feel bad that my new book, Script and Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting, fails his “page ninety-nine” test.

In my book, page ninety-nine turns up in the chapter on the pseudoscience of handwriting analysis known as graphology – a chapter that’s a digression from what the book is really about. Fun, I hope, but still a definite bend in the road.

On page ninety-nine are the signatures of three American writers of the mid-nineteenth century, and they are there to illustrate Edgar Allen Poe’s proto-graphological belief that by their scripts ye shall know them. As page ninety-nine puts it:

It’s probably no coincidence that the writers he approved of had – in his sometimes eccentric opinion – admirable handwriting, and the ones he considered shams couldn’t write their way out of a paper bag.

William Cullen Bryant, for instance, is cursed with “one of the most commonplace clerk’s hands which we ever encountered..., what mercantile men and professional penmen call a fair hand, but what artists would term an abominable one.”

Poor old Ralph Waldo Emerson, who “belongs to a class of gentlemen with whom we have no patience whatever – the mystics for mysticism’s sake,” writes a “bad, sprawling, illegible and irregular” hand.

On the other hand, in the handwriting of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (he has “first place among the poets of America”), Poe sees “plain indications of the force, vigor, and glowing richness of his literary style.”

If only Ford had recommended page eighty-nine, on which appears a rather dashing 1940 photograph of my father, a footnote about how he used to make pancakes for me and my friends shaped like our initials, and an instructive bit of the handwriting of a left-handed old school chum of mine. Or page nineteen, on which appears a quote from Oscar Wilde (“The tragedy of old age is not that one is old but that one is young”) as a sample of my own wretched penmanship before it was reformed in the course of writing this book. Even page one hundred nineteen, which, while it doesn’t sport an exciting illustration, is the beginning of my plea (and this is what the book is really about) that we not lose the ability to write with a pen as we gain the ability to type on a keyboard.

But page ninety-nine? Well, Fordie dear, I flunk. But I think you’d like the book anyway!

Read more about Script and Scribble at the publisher's website.

Learn more about the author and her work at Kitty Burns Florey's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Carrie Vaughn's "Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand"

Carrie Vaughn is the bestselling author of a series of novels about a werewolf named Kitty, as well as numerous short stories in various anthologies and magazines. She's also a contributor to the Wild Cards series edited by George R. R. Martin.

She applied the “Page 99 Test” to one of her new books, Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand, and reported the following:

Page 99 of Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand doesn't seem very exciting at first glance, which is a terrible thing to say about my own book. Every page should be critical! Riveting! Amazing! I'm not sure it's even representative of the book as a whole, since the Kitty novels tends to fast-paced and action oriented, and this scene is a pause in the action. Dead Man's Hand is a little different than the other books, though. I went into it thinking "screwball comedy." The previous two books were quite dark, and I wanted to lighten things up. Some silly as well as scary things happen throughout. Page 99 is the end of one scene -- Kitty has dinner with her parents -- and the start of another -- Kitty gets ready for her first televised show. It's a domestic, almost mundane scene, with no hint of the supernatural that forms the foundation of the series. And I've decided I like that, and that it is representative. Because what I try to keep emphasizing in the books is that Kitty has to continue dealing with mundane things -- her family, her job -- even though she's a werewolf, and even though this crazy supernatural stuff keeps happening to her.

Read an excerpt from Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand, and learn more about the author and her work at Carrie Vaughn's website, blog, MySpace page, and Facebook page.

The Page 99 Test: Kitty and the Silver Bullet.

--Marshal Zeringue

Molly Haskell's "Frankly, My Dear"

Molly Haskell is the author of From Reverence to Rape: the Treatment of Women in the Movies and the memoir Love and Other Infectious Diseases.

She applied the “Page 99 Test” to her new book, Frankly, My Dear: "Gone with the Wind" Revisited (part of the Yale University Press’s American Icon series), and reported the following:

I consider Scarlett O’Hara one of the most original and unusual characters ever to grace the page of an American novel, or, as played by Vivien Leigh, the American screen. So wicked (she steals her sister’s fiance, marries three men she doesn’t love, lies, cheats and runs roughshod over Christian and ladylike niceties); yet so courageous, resourceful, blunt and impatient with the pious mythologies of Southern paternalism. Hateful yet curiously forgiveable. And finally, though punished by rejection and loss, she doesn’t suffer the usual retribution dished out to wicked women: penance and transformation! Where did she come from?

One of the themes of my book, which deals with both the 1936 novel and the 1939 movie of Gone with the Wind, is an exploration of her roots in Margaret Mitchell’s life and divided psyche (divided, that is, between good-girl Melanie and renegade Scarlett). And I look at possible external sources, in film and literature. Page 99 is part of a discussion of the similarities and differences between Scarlett and Becky Sharp, Thackeray’s great Victorian adventuress whom contemporary reviewers saw as Mitchell’s inspiration. The Southern novelist denied any such kinship, saying she’d never read the novel. But she wasn’t always to be trusted in such matters, especially as she lived in terror of accusations of plagiarism. Whether or not she’d read Thackeray, she created a unique heroine, a bad-girl beauty, who has kept her edge for three-quarters of a century.

Read an excerpt from Frankly, My Dear, and learn more about the book at the Yale University Press website.

Visit Molly Haskell's website.

Read about Molly Haskell's list of the five best autobiographies by actresses.

--Marshal Zeringue

Robert Zaretsky & John T. Scott's "The Philosophers' Quarrel"

Robert Zaretsky is professor of French, Honors College, University of Houston. John T. Scott is professor of political science, University of California, Davis. Zaretsky and Scott are coauthors of Frail Happiness: An Essay on Rousseau.

Scott applied the “Page 99 Test” to their new book, The Philosophers' Quarrel: Rousseau, Hume, and the Limits of Human Understanding, and reported the following:

P. 99 happens to contain one of the main events in our chronicle of the rise and fall of the friendship between Jean-Jacques Rousseau and David Hume. Namely, it is on this page that Rousseau's friends, anxious to find him an asylum after he has been chased from his most recent place of exile, suggest Hume as a potential protector. The suggestion is made by several of their mutual friends, but the request is made by the comtesse de Boufflers. Hume had fallen in love with the countess during his stay in Paris over the past several years as part of the British ambassadorial staff. When Boufflers contacts him about Rousseau, Hume eagerly agrees to come to his rescue, despite never having met the man. "I assure your Ladyship," he replied to Boufflers' request, "there is no man in Europe of whom I have entertained a higher idea, and whom I would be prouder to serve." Their brief friendship began a few months after this letter, when they met in Paris before traveling together to England, and it would end only a few months later with bitter recriminations in a very public falling out.

Read an excerpt from The Philosophers' Quarrel, and learn more about the book at the Yale University Press website.

--Marshal Zeringue

J. D. Trout's "The Empathy Gap"

J.D. Trout is a Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago, and Adjunct Professor at the Parmly Sensory Sciences Institute.

He applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, The Empathy Gap: Building Bridges to the Good Life and the Good Society, and reported the following:

The Empathy Gap asks, and tries to answer, the question of why good people can look the other way when others are suffering and could be helped so easily. If you turn to page 99 of The Empathy Gap, you will find an important key to that answer in the brisk discussion of the omission bias.

One of our most cherished intuitions is that it is worse to bring about harm (an act) than to let harm occur (an omission). There is a moral difference, we ordinarily suppose, between acts and omissions. Feeling less responsible for omissions, we freely neglect to vote, to sign an organ donor card, and to enroll in a retirement plan. This disregard becomes the norm because humans are creatures of habit. People take the same route to work, read the paper at the same time of day, shower using the same sequence of steps, and so on. But government and culture, of course, have a role in determining what becomes habitual. Australia and England have higher voter turnout than the U.S. But there is an obvious reason for this discrepancy. In the U.S., in order to be counted in an election you have to surmount barriers like voter registration. This is typical when no-action is the default. But it is not the default everywhere. In Australia, you can be fined for neglecting to vote. In England, it is the government’s responsibility to make sure you are registered, not yours. I once asked a political scientist why voting isn’t mandated in the U.S. His response was: “Requiring people to vote just isn’t an American thing.” That’s a default view, to be sure, and one we’ve grown comfortable with. But it isn’t a justification. In the same way that our default is to not sign up to donate organs -- we have to take positive action to do so -- the same is true for voting. Inaction leads to not voting, for which there is no penalty. And you are blamed less, or feel less guilty, than if you take action by voting for the winning candidate, who then drives the country into the ground. Compelling people to vote would be regarded by Americans as just more meddling by a nanny state, not, as in some countries, as supporting or memorializing an obligation of civic participation in the life of our democracy.

Fighting the omission bias can have wonderful consequences. Fatality rates and health improved when we stopped neglecting inoculation. But that amounts to taking action. After all, wellness-promotion is an action, while health neglect is an omission. Decent policies can sustain us when our will or judgment fails. Putting fluoride in the water, providing inoculations, installing seat belts and requiring motorcycle helmets – actions requiring an infrastructure – are often disputed as meddlesome impositions, and threats to our liberty. But they improve, and even save, lives. So this is how good people can neglect those in need: We don’t acknowledge that while we are responsible for our actions, we are also responsible for our decisions. And letting a harm occur when the risk was known is itself a decision; it is a decision to not act. The Empathy Gap proposes policies that would deliver us from complicated decisions when we have little time and even less information to make them. As page 99 puts it: “It is not clear how we arrived at the current allocation of health care resources, but our system didn’t fall from the bottoms of cherubs.” When it comes to caring for ourselves and others, an empathic government will be more vigilant about monitoring our real risks, and less indulgent of our sentimental attachments to our gut, intuitive, folk judgments.

Learn more about the book and author at J.D. Trout's website and his Psychology Today blog, The Greater Good.

--Marshal Zeringue

Michael Krepon's "Better Safe Than Sorry"

Michael Krepon is co-founder of the Henry L. Stimson Center, Diplomat Scholar at the University of Virginia, and the author or editor of many books, including Cooperative Threat Reduction, Missile Defense, and the Nuclear Future, Space Assurance or Space Dominance? The Case Against Weaponizing Space, Nuclear Risk Reduction in South Asia, and Escalation Control and the Nuclear Option in South Asia.

He applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Better Safe Than Sorry: The Ironies of Living with the Bomb, and reported the following:

My book, Better Safe than Sorry: The Ironies of Living with the Bomb, starts by placing current nuclear anxieties into an historical context. These anxieties have led to wretched excesses. During the Cold War, we and the Soviets built up huge nuclear arsenals and engaged in extremely risky practices. In erring on the side of "safety," we nearly incinerated the planet. That was the first nuclear age. The second nuclear age began with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which has led to rising anxieties about nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism. The Bush administration undertook extreme measures to be safe rather than sorry, fighting the first preventive war in U.S. history. Here lies another irony: As the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals declined precipitously, a war of choice became conceivable for the world's sole superpower.

On page 99, we are beginning the chapter on the second nuclear age. Here is an excerpt:

During the first nuclear age, only one triangular relationship mattered. China, the weakest leg of the triangle, at first linked up to the Soviet Union, and then normalized ties with the United States. During the second nuclear age, a second nuclear triangle emerged. The original alignment of the Washington-Beijing-Moscow triangle returned, as China and Russia had no need to compete over leading the Communist movement and much reason to counterbalance predominant U.S. power. The second triangular nuclear relationship involved China, India and Pakistan. The newer triangular competition was fueled by keen status consciousness, contested borders, and grievances from previous warfare. Both triangles bear watching.

All sides of the China-India-Pakistan triangle are unequal, which makes for awkward geometry, instability, and the potential for increased competition. But all three parties have publicly resolved not to repeat the wretched excesses of the cold war competition between the Soviet Union and the United States, including the mistake of arms racing. At the same time, the existing nuclear hierarchy in southern Asia – China followed by India followed by Pakistan – grates on New Delhi and Islamabad. Beijing has not yet deigned to accept India's interest in dialogue on the Bomb, including discussions on nuclear stabilization and confidence-building measures. Perhaps China's leaders will think differently after New Delhi captures Beijing's attention by testing thermonuclear weapons that can be placed atop new missiles that can reach Beijing and Shanghai. Pakistan cannot compete with India in conventional arms, but Pakistan's generals have demonstrated every intention to compete with India with respect to nuclear weapons.

There's a lot here to munch on. My intention is to present dense material in an accessible way.

Read the preface to Better Safe Than Sorry, and learn more about the book at the publisher's website.

Learn more about Michael Krepon and his work at his Stimson Center webpage.

--Marshal Zeringue

Adrian Gregory's "The Last Great War"

Adrian Gregory is Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Oxford.

He applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, The Last Great War: British Society and the First World War, and reported the following:

Page 99 is largely about voluntary activity at a local level during the war in Liverpool and Bristol - this does reflect two important themes of the book- the need to look at the impact of the war in the locality and the mobilization of civil society to support the war effort. It also illustrates the way in which the volunteering of soldiers stimulated civilian volunteering on behalf of soldiers- a crucial point to set against the mythology of the alienated soldier and the indifferent civilian. It also has the statistic that 32,450 servicemen were entertained at the Bristol Zoo and 50,000 at the museum - I am always a sucker for numbers to make a point and do it a lot in the book.

Read an excerpt from The Last Great War and learn more about the book at the Cambridge University Press website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Michael Ezra's "Muhammad Ali: The Making of an Icon"

Michael Ezra is Chair of the American Multicultural Studies Department at Sonoma State University.

He applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Muhammad Ali: The Making of an Icon, and reported the following:

Page 99 is the midpoint of my book Muhammad Ali: The Making of an Icon. Does it reflect the quality of the whole? There’s probably a little more quoting of sources and a little less of my own analysis on that page than on most of the others, but otherwise I would say that my book conforms to the page 99 test.

Page 99 describes the negative responses by newspaper reporters to Muhammad Ali’s intended use of a Nation of Islam-led corporation to promote his February 1966 title fight against contender Ernie Terrell. One writer claimed that Ali was “as innocent as a puppet compared to the gang of fanatics that now owns and operates him.” Another feared the making of a “fight whose profits would go largely to the Black Muslims.”

These quotes go right to the heart of the book’s main idea, that Muhammad Ali’s cultural meanings have always been a product of their economic consequences. Although politicians, rival promoters, and newspaper writers may have used Ali’s draft resistance as the vehicle to criticize him, their ultimate concern was his financial empowerment of the Nation of Islam.

It is easy to attribute Ali’s iconic and beloved status today to his being right about the Vietnam War, or his being a fantastic fighter, or his renunciation of the Nation of Islam. Certainly those things are contributing factors in his becoming sacrosanct. But to truly understand Ali, one must never lose sight of the ways that people have capitalized by spinning such narratives into allegories.

My book explores these processes.

Read an excerpt from Muhammad Ali: The Making of an Icon and learn more about the book at the publisher's website.

--Marshal Zeringue