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As I've been visiting various cities and promoting the book, people have been asking how I managed to get Art Williams to open up and tell his story. This is a natural question, given that he not only shared some very valuable criminal secrets, but also bared many of the emotional wounds that helped mold his criminality in the first place.

What can I say? I'm a journalistic ninja with the ability to get sources to instantly pour out their stories. Seriously, at the risk of sounding reductive, there are only two ways a journalist can get a source to talk honestly: because the source wants to, or because he is forced to. And Art definitely wanted to talk.

Why? The answer he first told me was that he was sick of his life. He wanted to put crime behind him, and telling our stories-whether we're criminals or congressmen-is a well-worn path towards exercising our demons. Confession must be as old as language. But as I got to know Art better, I saw other motives as well. He was proud of his counterfeiting accomplishments-not because he had "beat the system" or anything so vainglorious-but because buried within him was that 12-year-old kid who had skipped two grades before winding up in the projects. Even though poverty and crime had been determining factors with him, in his heart he wanted inclusion into a bigger world where he'd still be considered part of the smart set.

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Last night I read to a nice crowd at Shakespeare and Co. Then a bunch of writers and I (Jonathan Safran Foer, the poets Joshua Beckman and Matthew Roher) had dinner at a bistro near Notre Dame with Sylvia, owner of Shakespeare and Co and the daughter of its founder, a guy who used to hang with all the famous Beats. The night felt very Parisian - public reading, bistro, famous writers -- and was the first time I can say that I felt at all like Hemingway. (Not that I'm claining - are you listening crazy blog people? - not that I'm claiming to be anywhere near as good as Hemingway.... Though I do have a certain macho appeal, especially when my back isn't hurting and if I've avoided dairy, which can make me gassy.)

Anyway, I've been reading Updike a lot since he died, and am reading him now. (Of The Farm.) It's weird to feel the need to defend a guy whose career saw the abundant successes and lotto-size returns that Updike's did. But it's weird, too, what's happened to our bard of suburbia; why is it that so many younger writers don't groove on Updike?

 

 

 

 

» Jennifer Kolari, MSW, RSW, discusses and reads her guide to forming bonds with and understanding challenging children.

» Read more about Connected Parenting

» Read Jennifer Kolari's posts on the Penguin Blog

Jennifer Kolari, Connected Parenting, Podcast

 

 

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It's summer and that means summer movies! Check out the new Johnny Depp film, Public Enemies, which is based on a book by Penguin author, Bryan Burrough.

About the book:

"Ludicrously entertaining" (Time), Public Enemies is the story of the most spectacular crime wave in American history, the two-year battle between the young J. Edgar Hoover, his FBI and an assortment of criminals who became national icons: John Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly, Bonnie and Clyde, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and the Barkers. In an epic feat of storytelling, Burrough reveals a web of interconnections within the vast American underworld and demonstrates how Hoover's G-men overcame their early fumbles to secure the FBI's rise to power. Listen to a podcast with author Bryan Burrough for his book The Big Rich.

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Penguin Canada Takes Home Four Canadian Booksellers Awards

Penguin Group (Canada) followed up its 2008 Publisher of the Year win with four CBA Libris Awards from the Canadian Booksellers’ Association in 2009, including two awards for Joseph Boyden, who is published in the U.S. by Viking/Penguin.

• Marketing Achievement of the Year, for “Extraordinary Canadians,” biographies that re-imagine Canada’s most influential historical figures from the fresh new perspective of bestselling writers such as Joseph Boyden, Douglas Coupland and Vincent Lam;
• Sales Representative of the Year, to Adrienne Kerr, Penguin Canada Sales representative for Southwest Ontario;
• and a double win for Joseph Boyden, whose critically acclaimed Through Black Spruce (published in the US by Viking) won the Fiction Book of the Year Award, and whose outstanding literary work, contribution to Canadian culture, and support to the bookselling industry translated into an Author of the Year Award.

Boyden’s biography of Métis leaders Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont will be published as part of Penguin Canada’s Extraordinary Canadians series in March 2010. The series is also the subject of an upcoming 12-part documentary television series on OMNI and The Biography Channel; news on author events and upcoming titles can be found here.

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Greg Mortenson Honored by National Education Association

On July 2nd, the National Education Association (NEA) will honor Viking/Penguin author Greg Mortenson with the Mary Hatwood Futrell Award, a special Human and Civil Rights Award, at the NEA’s annual meeting in San Diego, California. The NEA Human and Civil Rights Awards program honors individuals and organizations that promote peace and advance social and economic justice for all people. The Mary Hatwood Futrell Award is given to a nominee whose activities make a significant impact on education and on the achievement of equal opportunity for women and girls.

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Three Cups of Tea has also received Pakistan’s highest civil award, Sitara-e-Pakistan (“The Star of Pakistan”) for his efforts to promote education and literacy and is also a nominee for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. Concerning Three Cups of Tea, NEA President Dennis Van Roekel stated, “Every student in America’s public schools should receive a copy to learn firsthand what one person can truly do to make a difference in the world.”

Explore the reading group guide for Three Cups of Tea.
 

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#1 New York Times Bestsellers from Catherine Coulter and Sarah Dessen Add to Penguin Group (USA)’s Outstanding Bestseller Performance

Penguin Group (USA) continues to lead the industry in #1 New York Times bestsellers, with a total of 20 titles reaching that coveted position so far in 2009, as KnockOut by Catherine Coulter (Putnam) hits at #1 on the hardcover fiction list, and Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen (Viking) appears at #1 on the children’s chapter books list for the week of July 5th.

KnockOut, the 13th novel in Coulter’s wildly popular FBI thriller series, starring husband-and-wife FBI Special Agent duo, Dillon Savich and Lacey Sherlock, introduces seven-year-old Autumn Backman. Autumn has a rare gift: she can communicate telepathically with a select few people, with whom she shares a special kinship. In a starred review in Publishers Weekly, Coulter was praised for the “well-developed characters and an expertly paced plot” that make KnockOut “one of the best in this paranormal suspense series.”

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So, I'm in Paris. Not the most natural place to be when your paperback is coming out in the US of A - but, I had a plan.

Today, Monday, June 29th, I'm reading at the venerable Shakespeare & Co.  - the independent Parisian bookstore that was instrumental in launching the careers of Hemingway and Joyce.  Plus, I'm scheduled to be interviewed on France24 -- a cable TV station that often does interviews in English - for a segment that's going to run six times today, all across Europe.

Or, that was the plan.

Somehow, though, things got screwed up. My French is bad (I mean, like trying-to-talk-to-a-dog bad). So when I answered France24 that, Yes,  I'd love to be in your studios, by some contortion of bad translation it came out as: Hell, no -I'd never do your stupid show, you French idiots.

So. Off to a good start.

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Jason Kersten is our guest blogger during the week of June 29th. If you have any questions for Jason Kersten, add a comment to any of his posts.

Here is more information on The Art of Making Money: The Story of a Master Counterfeiter:

 The true story of a brilliant counterfeiter who “made” millions, outwitted the Secret Service, and was finally undone when he went in search of the one thing his forged money couldn’t buy him: family.

Art Williams spent his boyhood in a comfortable middle-class existence in 1970s Chicago, but his idyll was shattered when, in short order, his father abandoned the family, his bipolar mother lost her wits, and Williams found himself living in one of Chicago’s worst housing projects. He took to crime almost immediately, starting with petty theft before graduating to robbing drug dealers. Eventually a man nicknamed “DaVinci” taught him the centuries-old art of counterfeiting. After a stint in jail, Williams emerged to discover that the Treasury Department had issued the most secure hundred-dollar bill ever created: the 1996 New Note. Williams spent months trying to defeat various security features before arriving at a bill so perfect that even law enforcement had difficulty distinguishing it from the real thing. Williams went on to print millions in counterfeit bills, selling them to criminal organizations and using them to fund cross-country spending sprees. Still unsatisfied, he went off in search of his long-lost father, setting in motion a chain of betrayals that would be his undoing.

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Darin Strauss is our guest blogger during the week of June 29th. If you have any questions for Darin Strauss, add a comment to any of his posts.

Here is more information on More Than It Hurts You:

Josh Goldin’s happy yet unexamined existence is shattered one morning when his wife, Dori, rushes their eight-month- old son to the emergency room in severe distress. Dr. Darlene Stokes, an African-American physician and single mother, suspects Munchausen by proxy, a rarely diagnosed and controversial phenomenon where a mother intentionally harms her baby. As each of them is forced to confront a reality that has become a nightmare, Darlene, Dori, and Josh are pushed to their breaking points.

Darin Strauss’s extraordinary novel is set in a world turned upside down—where doctors try to save babies from their parents, police use the law to tear families apart, and the people you think you know best end up surprising you the most.