Current Series: About the Authors and the Books
Word Wizard by Richard Lederer
About the Author
"Richard Lederer is the author of more than 30 books about language, history, and humor, including his best-selling Anguished English series and his current book, Presidential Trivia. He has been profiled in magazines as diverse as The New Yorker, People, and the National Enquirer and frequently appears on radio as a commentator on language.
Dr. Lederer's syndicated column, 'Looking at Language,' appears in newspapers and magazines throughout the United States. He has been named International Punster of the Year and Toastmasters International's Golden Gavel winner."
- from http://www.verbivore.com/bio.html
About the Book
Word Wizard is a "collection of light-hearted essays pokes, prods and pinches the English language, taunting and protecting it like an older brother 
might for his weakling sibling. Lederer, a language columnist and author of Anguished English, often demonstrates the point of his essays with the language used to write them (a diatribe against the use of 'fadspeak' and clichés is composed almost exclusively of phrases from the maligned categories) and asserts that "if plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery, I am one of the most flattered people alive," citing the prevalence of his columns-often sans byline-in chain emails. (Which may explain why some of this material seems stale.) His upbeat tone results in Pollyannaish prose, and some of his essays, such as the interview with the palindrome-spouting camel, are clever but fail to convey a message. There are a number of gems sprinkled throughout this book, and attentive readers will take away interesting language facts, new ideas for their own writing and even an inspired car-trip word game. Essays of note include a history of the English language, why single-syllable words are better than their multi-syllabic counterparts, and a wildly inaccurate portrayal of the history of the world cobbled together entirely from student essays. Though classified as a reference, this book works best as a casual reader for grammar geeks.." - Publisher's Weekly, from Amazon.com
Dying for Heaven by Ariel Glucklich
About the Author
"Ariel Glucklich is a professor of religion at Georgetown University. He specializes in Hinduism and in the psychology and biology of religion. He is particularly interested in what motivates people to become and remain religious and the various ways that religion makes people self-destruct.
Glucklich is the author of several books on Hinduism, including The End of Magic and Climbing Chamundi Hill, which was translated into many languages. His most important book was Sacred Pain (Oxford, 2001), written to explain the voluntary use of pain in religious life.
Currently Glucklich is researching the likelihood that Iran and/or Pakistan will use a nuclear weapon against Israel or India. He is attempting to devise ways of thinking about undermining the culture of collective suicide that makes rogue states so dangerous. " - from Harper Collins
About the Book
Dying for Heaven offers a groundbreaking theory of religion and religious 
destructiveness; the book examines the motivations fueling those who perpetrate religious violence around the globe—from Al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorists to violent Hindu nationalists, from Jewish-Zionist fundamentalists in Israel to leaders in Iran's race for nuclear weapons, and to Christian messianic defenders of American power. The continuing rise of religion as a global force and the proliferation of nuclear weapons create a unique challenge for policy advisors, who now must understand how far religious extremists will go toward nuclear annihilation. Dying for Heaven provides the key for understanding the religious drive to self-destruct and offers ways to combat the culture of suicide terrorism. - from
Harper Collins
A Thousand Years of Good Prayers by Yiyun Li
About the Author
"Yiyun Li grew up in Beijing and came to the United States in 1996. Her stories and essays have been published in The New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, O Henry Prize Stories, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships and awards from Lannan Foundation and Whiting Foundation. Her debut collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, PEN/Hemingway Award, Guardian First Book Award, and California Book Award for first fiction; it was also shortlisted for Kiriyama Prize and Orange Prize for New Writers. She was selected by Granta as one of the 21 Best Young American Novelists under 35. She is a contributing editor to the Brooklyn-based literary magazine, A Public Space. She lives in Oakland, California with her husband and their two sons, and teaches at University of California, Davis. ." - from http://www.yiyunli.com/bio.php
About the Book
"Brilliant and original, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers illuminates how mythology, history, and culture intersect with personality to create fate. From the bustling heart of Beijing to a fast-food restaurant in Chicago to the barren expanse of Inner Mongolia, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers reveals worlds both foreign and familiar, with heartbreaking honesty and in beautiful prose. "Immortality," winner of The Paris Review Plimpton Prize, tells the story of a young man who bears a striking resemblance to a dictator and so finds a calling to immortality. In "Extra," the friendship between a lonely Chinese woman and a young boy reveals how love can overcome political and personal repression. In "The Princess of Nebraska," a man and a woman, both in exile, met at a Chicago restaurant and reminisced about a young actor they had both been in love in Beijing. "After A Life" illuminates the vagaries of marriage, parenthood, and gender, unfolding a story of a couple who keeps a daughter hidden from the world for twenty-eight years. These and other stories form a mesmerizing tapestry of revelatory fiction by an unforgettable writer." - from http://www.yiyunli.com/1000YearsBook.php
