Best Books on the Declaration of Independence

I promised to share my new list on Shepherd.com, the book recommendation site, as soon as it was up. The folks over there got it up pretty quick.

You can check out the new list right here:

The best books about the Declaration of Independence that bring the signers to life, warts and all

That brings my number of book lists on Shepherd to four. Besides the new one, the others are:

Best Books about the Creation of the U.S. Constitution.

Best Books for Discovering Italian Mystery Novels

Best Books for Helping Your Kid Fall in Love with Math

My wife has contributed three lists:

Best Books on or by Maverick Women

Best Books on Writing (from a NY Times Bestseller)

Best Books on the Manhattan Project and the Making of the Atomic Bomb

You might be wondering: Dude, why are you doing these lists? Shouldn’t you, like, be writing?

Good questions.

The easy answer is, writing these lists for Shepherd help my books reach a wider audience. There’s an acknowledged issue with recommendation engines on many sites. You buy a case of ham, and the damn engine keeps recommending the same fucking brand of ham to you, albeit in different size ham cans, even though you are now in the market for a giant wheel of Parmigiana. Or water shoes. Or a life raft.

It’s smarter to get recommendations from a live human being. And when it comes to books, authors know a lot about books—which to read, which to ignore, which really make a difference. So as long as Shepherd allows me to pitch lists to them, I will. I go through a lot of books in my life, and it’s good to pass that knowledge on to someone.

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Photo of the National Archives building (above) by me; bobblehead video also, sadly, by me.

My Double Whammy

A year ago today, I got blindsided by life.

My wife was in London on a trip in service to one of the nonprofits she volunteers for. The two of us were speaking via WhatsApp, when another call came through on my phone.

“Gotta go,” I said. “It’s the doctor.”

“Go!”

This was the call we were dreading, but still quite anxious to take. A few months ago, I’d spotted a lump under my jaw while shaving. As a writer, I’ve perfected the arts of avoidance and procrastination. I did my best to ignore the lump. After all, I had a physical coming up, I told myself. I’d mention it to my doctor then, a date which was three months in the future. That physical led to a battery of subsequent tests. And here on the line was my ear, nose, and throat specialist.

“It’s cancer,” he told me. “We don’t know what type yet, but I’m gonna make a referral. Get the ball rolling. You’re going to hear from the radiation oncologist within the next two days. Just sit tight. In a little while we’ll know exactly what kind it is.”

Here’s a piece of advice. Don’t Google head and neck cancer. Just don’t. The images are terrifying, and there are far too many different forms of cancer to be speculating about each without hard evidence.

All I knew at the moment was that I had cancer. But life wasn’t done with me yet. I hung up the phone intending to call Denise. But another call came through, this time from my brother in California.

“Dad’s gone, Joe,” he said. “It just happened.”

My father had entered the hospital the previous Friday after one of his home care workers found him sitting in bed complaining of a headache. He had trouble standing. At 91, Dad had a litany of health issues but he’d managed to bounce back for decades. He came from a long line of people who had miraculously lived into their nineties. His brother died at 92, his mother at 95, his aunt at 100, his uncle at 103. I’d last seen my father in June, and he still had all his marbles.

That all ended Friday. He needed immediate surgery for a brain bleed. That procedure went well, supposedly, but he hadn’t woken up post-op, as his doctors had wanted him to. At that age, if he didn’t immediately wake he never would. They recommended we take him off life support. We agreed. I was prepared for it. My brother asked if I wanted to speak to him before they did, but I said no. It felt like a foolish gesture for a guy in North Carolina to mouth words into a phone to a man lying in a bed in California in a virtual coma. I had just seen him a month ago! I struggled to remember: when we parted, had I told him how much I loved him?

I phoned Denise. “It is cancer,” I said, “and my father died.”

“Wait, what?” she said. “When did that happen?”

“Just now. My brother called.”

“We were off the phone five minutes!”

Well, sometimes it only takes five minutes for shit to go sideways.

Since then, my life has been on hold. The cancer turned out to be HPV-positive, which is eminently treatable; the chances of recurrence post treatment is less than five percent. Still, no one wants to wake up in the morning with only two things on their to-do list:

1. Get chemo

2. Blast face with gamma rays.

All the plans we had for the rest of the year evaporated. Naturally, I could not attend my father’s funeral because I now had a flurry of pressing medical appointments. That was crushing and painful. I used that time to hastily wrap up all current projects. I wrote a slew of articles for SleuthSayers, the mystery writers blog I write for, and scheduled them so there would be no interruption in my presence there. I submitted the book I was ghostwriting to my clients for review. Commitments honored, I proceeded to drop the ball on everything else. The garden went to crap. Receipts piled up. This blog and website went dormant. Short story ideas and personal book projects dried up. Any time I managed to get to the mailbox, I found a half dozen more fat envelopes with hospital bills and statements from the insurance company. They piled up too.

It’s been a year. The treatment’s over, as is the rehab, such as it was. I’m still quite scrawny, having lost 45 pounds and gained back half, mostly in the form of pasty white fat.

I’m just getting around to picking up the pieces. I’m told that somewhere under the detritus of my office lies my desk. I’ll let you know if I find it. That said, in the next few months I hope to be more present here. Tidy the place up. Post more often. Think. Write. Play the mother of all catch-ups.

Please don’t say you’re sorry for me. because I know you are. Hey, I’m one of the lucky ones. I still have my tongue, larynx, and pharynx. I’ll have a sexy, gravelly voice and live with dry mouth—and lozenges and gallons of drinking water and incessant peeing—for the rest of my life. Small price to pay. It could have been worse but wasn’t, for which I’m so, so grateful.

Just do me three favors: First, love those whom you love—loudly. If you have kids, get them the HPV vaccine. And if you find a lump, get it checked out. Like, now.

Image by Joshua Earle @ Unsplash

Best Christmas Cocktail Books

We have a little stash of cocktail/mixology books that get a workout every year in December. One year I shared my top four favorite books over at SleuthSayers, in a post entitled A Serious Case of Libations.

If you want to cut to the chase, visit that post immediately.

If you don’t like clicking over, let me make this painless. If you’re one of those people who hates planning parties because you never know what to buy, what food and drinks to set out for guests, and how much is too much, or worse, too little, then the book you need is the first one on my list.

What’s a Hostess to Do? by Susan Spungen. Why this book? Because Spungen is a freaking expert, a former food editor at Martha’s magazine. She teaches you the difference between a dinner party and a cocktail hour, and she spells out exactly what sort of menu you need to lay out for each. I hate thinking abut this stuff. But with this book in hand, suddenly I look like the second coming of the Galloping Gourmet. So get this first, mostly for the food, the recipes, and the logic. Yes, she talks about booze and how much you need to buy, but so much more. And if you’re a big hairy macho dude who thinks the title is too girly, write me and I’ll mail you a Sharpie.

The Imbible: A Cocktail Guide for Beginning and Home Bartenders, by Micah LeMon. I know the author. He’s a real bartender and mixologist. This book is as beautiful as the drinks he makes. It’s a little hard to find, but it’s a really lovely book, kind of like a small coffee table book with gorgeous photos. You won’t find mixer drinks in here (such as gin and tonics) because they are frankly too easy to make. It’s also a great gift book because it’s so damn attractive. Lots of photos showing such things as what kind of glassware to buy, what tools, and how to make perfect ice cubes.

To Have and Have Another: A Hemingway Cocktail Companion, by Philip Greene. Now we get to the literary books. This one is focused almost exclusively on the world of Erenst Hemingway—his books, his real-life settings, the actors and directors who brought those books to life on the big screen, and the sexy man-drinks that emanated from his typewriter. Yes, there are recipes, but there are also movie stills and photos of Bogey. If you have a writer friend who digs that world, this is the book to get them.

Mixed Up: Cocktail Recipes (and Flash Fiction) for the Discerning Drinker (and Reader), edited by Nick Mamatas and Molly Tanzer. Another literary book, but this one is packed with actual literature. The editors asked a bunch of writers to write short stories that each feature a cocktail. So you read the story, and then you get the recipe for how to make the drink. Clever idea, and the stories are equally so. This is a great gift for writer friends too. The stories are all flash fiction, which means you’ll down them quicker than the bevs.

Okay, those are the books I mentioned in my original post, but readers and my fellow bloggers also had ideas on the subject, so I’ll add a two of those.

The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto, by Bernard DeVoto. The author was a Pulitzer Prize-wining historian who really knew his cocktails. The original book was pubbed in 1951, but has been lovingly recreated for modern audiences. The prose is somewhat mannered and restrained tongue-in-cheek, as if anyone who drinks cocktails will be appropriate after knocking back a few. Definitely for friends who enjoy three- and four-syllable words.

The Deluxe Savoy Cocktail Book, by Henry Craddock. This is another historic text, pubbed in the 1930s in the UK. The author was an acclaimed mixologist who shared 750-plus drink recipes for newbies. You can find many versions of this book on the market. Get the cheaper one if you think you’ll spill angostura bitters all over it; save the nicer one for gifts.

Later this year, I discovered another marvelous book that I simply had to add to this list:

A Booze & Vinyl Christmas, by André Darlington. Lots of writers write about cocktails, but Darlington is the master, with 10 books to his credit. This one is the third in his Booze & Vinyl series, and grows out of his past as nightlife journalist, restaurateur, and DJ. He literally only focuses on vinyl, so if a Christmas album never appeared in that format, it’s not featured in this book. That allows him to dream up magnificent scenarios during which you can listen to, say, the A or B side of an album, drink one of his wonderful cocktails, and get your tree decorated, hide your pickle, write your Christmas cards, and so on. He includes wonderful light snacks along the way as well, and behind-the-scene stories about the songs and albums. Best of all, it’s a beautiful book with great photography. It’s my new favorite book to gift hosts when I arrive at their home for a Christmas party.

There you go—all the ones I have personally used and enjoyed.

I’ll leave you with one promise: The modern world of mixology owes a huge debt to two men, Harry Johnson and Jerry Thomas, who were bartenders in the 19th century. Both wrote bartenders’ manuals, which have entered the public domain and are often cheaply reissued. I’m trying to find which editions of their work is the best. When I do I will add them to this post in the future. Enjoy then, drink up!

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Photo above by little ol’ me. (And no, that monstrosity is not in any of these books, thank God.)

Best Books About the U.S. Constitution

A while back I wrote a post for SleuthSayers about the new book recommendation site, Shepherd.com, and why I thought writers should write some posts for them. They don’t pay, but they’re sending people to Amazon and Bookshop to buy your book. I’ve seen the data, and was impressed by the site’s creator, Ben Fox.

You can check out the SleuthSayers post here, if you’re a writer and you want to know my rationale. It’s called The Best Website about Best Books.

I’m proud to say that I have another list up on their site, as of yesterday. It’s five books I recommend if you’re interested in learning about the creation of the U.S. Constitution. You can check out my list here.

The only book that isn’t shown in the image at the top of this post is the one I wrote with my wife and-author, Denise Kiernan. That title is Signing Their Rights Away: The Fame and Misfortune of the Men Who Signed the U.S. Constitution.

If you want to go deeper, and explore articles on the U.S. Constitution contributed by other authors, you should check out Shepherd’s bookshelf on U.S. Constitution titles.

That makes three lists that I’ve contributed to Shepherd. The other two are:

Best Books for Discovering Italian Mystery Novels

Best Books for Helping Your Kid Fall in Love with Math

My wife has contributed three lists thus far:

Best Books on or by Maverick Women

Best Books on Writing (from a NY Times Bestseller)

Best Books on the Manhattan Project and the Making of the Atomic Bomb

I have a few other lists in the works, including one the should be up fairly soon. I’ll let you know when appears on the site.

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Image of the National Archives (above) by little old me.

Best Christmas Books

Some people leave their Christmas trees up all year. Some people bake Christmas dishes all year round. And some people—like me—read Christmas books throughout the year. I even have a bookshelf in our house where I keep all the Christmas books, so I can easily find them and display them attractively during the actual Christmas season.

To cut to the chase: I wrote a post for SleuthSayers some time ago called From the Christmas Shelf that focuses on only five of the books. I chose five at the time to make that article brief and approachable.

If you don’t want to click over, here are the books I mention. (Most of these are affiliate links, which means if you buy any of these books I’ll get a small commission at no cost to yourself.) Before you read this, understand that these are my picks for best books. Ones that I have personally enjoyed over the years. They may not necessarily be your cup of tea.

History Books

The Battle for Christmas: A Social and Cultural History of Our Most Cherished Holiday, by Stephen Nissenbaum. The title is bad, but the book is actually a historical look at how Christmas came to be such a massive holiday in the U.S. Nissenbaum, a historian, credits the creation of the Santa Claus myth for altering the holiday from its Baachanialin roots to something child- and family-centered

Christmas: A Biography, by Judith Flanders. Another book by a fine historian, but this one looks at the story of Christmas from a worldwide perspective.

Literary Fiction for Adults

A Christmas Memory, One Christmas, & The Thanksgiving Visitor, by Truman Capote. The lead story in this collection is a classic, about a boy and his older cousin enjoying the holiday together, making fruitcake. It’s amazing how great a writer he was at the beginning of his career. The stories are short enough that you can read them aloud in front of the fire.

Seth’s Christmas Ghost Stories, illustrated by Seth. This is a series of 22 short stories that celebrate the tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas. (A tradition, I might add, that inspired Dickens to write A Christmas Carol.) The stories are all by famous writers, and I encourage you to pick the one you like best. If you read on an e-reader, you can get all the stories for $18! (I have the short story by Edith Wharton shown at top right.)

For Kids

The Snow Queen, illustrated by Vladyslav Yerko. This edition of the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale by the Ukrainian artist Yerko is stunning. The book is out of print, but you can still find various editions online. There is a 32-page edition, but the one I love is a 96-page stunner in a slipcase cover. (The slipcase cover is shown top row, right; the book is shown separately in the image above—the one with the two kids.) I can’t provide a link for these books because as soon as one of these pops up online, it gets snapped up. Check rare book sites such as Biblio , Alibris, and Bookfinder. MAKE SURE YOU ARE BUYING THE ENGLISH EDITION—unless you speak Ukrainian, that is.

Okay—those are just the books I mentioned in that SleuthSayers post way back in 2021. Here are more books I keep on the Christmas shelf, in case you’re a bigger geek than I am.

Fiction for Adults

My fiction list skews heavily toward mysteries because—duh!— I’m a mystery reader and writer.

Mr. Timothy, by Louis Bayard. This is a strange, dense novel that imagines Tiny Tim’s adult years, after the reformed Scrooge’s largesse saved his life.

This is the 25th book in the Ellery Queen mystery series.

The Finishing Stroke, by Ellery Queen. This mystery novel has the great sleuth solving a murder at Christmas in the 1920s.

The Mistletoe Murder, and Other Stories, by P.D. James. I love P.D. James novels, and never knew that she wrote an abundance of short fiction. Luckily, they saved four for this edition, and they are more “cozy” in nature than any of her more realistic-yet-cleverly-plotted novels.

This is the first of the nine paperback editions of the Holiday Anthology series (edited by Kristine Kathryn Rusch) currently available.

The Holiday Anthology Series, by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Every year, the writer Rusch runs a subscription-based “advent calendar” of short stories, in which she emails a daily short story by a variety of writers from the day after Thanksgiving till the end of the year. Romance, mystery, ghost stories—you name it. I subscribed one year, and loved having a new story show up on my phone every day during the holidays. Later, she pubs them in paper editions. You can easily choose the genre you like.

A Lot Like Christmas, by Connie Willis. Willis, a giant in the field of SFF, is also a huge Christmas geek and a comic genius. This massive book collects most of her science fiction/fantasy Christmas stories, which often read like screwball comedies, but also reveal her encyclopedic knowledge of Christmas music, the Bethlehem story, the history of the Rockettes, the It’s a Wonderful Life vs Miracle on 34th Street debate, and so much more. Be warned that this might be the only book you read in a single Christmas season, because mot of the stories are sizable novellas. I can’t think of a better way to spend the season.

The Last Christmas Letter, by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. I read this one every year because it’s a short story. A group of sisters receive their father’s annual Christmas letter in the mail, which is strange, because their elderly dad has been in a hospice, lingering near death. Each time one of the women reaches for the letter, a new page appears. A magical, ultimately uplifting story by a master of the craft.

Nonfiction

The Man Who Invented Christmas, by Les Standiford. This was a surprise. A remarkable piece of narrative nonfiction that tells how Dickens came to write A Christmas Carol, thinking he’d make a mint on the Christmas market. He self published the book and nearly lost his shirt because it was so lavishly produced, with gilt edging and illustrations. Yet it ended up becoming his most famous book. I haven’t seen the movie version of Standiford’s book. Why would I, when this book is so good?

This is Christmas, Song by Song, by Annie Zaleski. This a gorgeous book, perfect for gift-giving, by a respected music writer. Zaleski tells the behind-the-scenes stories of 100 Christmas songs. In her hands, you really get to see the rich variety of tunes we've heard all our lives, from deeply religious to hilarious, fun-loving, romantic, and secular. The production value of the hardcover book itself is wonderful, so you’ll really make the music-lover on your list a happy camper.

Classic Books for Kids

How the Grinch Stole Christmas! by Dr. Seuss. I’d seen the TV version a million times but it wasn’t until I married that I read this book, which my wife has treasured since her own childhood. This is one of those books that is fun to read aloud to the family because nearly everyone knows—or can guess—the endings of all the rhymes, not unlike the next book on my list.

The Night Before Christmas, illustrated by Charles Santore. There have been tons of editions of this classic poem, but this specific hardcover with Santore’s illustrations became a New York Times bestseller and has been spun off into different types of books—board books, coloring books, a book-and-CD combo, etc. You can’t go wrong gifting any of these to a child on your list. Be sure to choose carefully so you pick the version appropriate for the child. (Board books are intended for really little kids, for example.) The CD version is read by the Dude himself, actor Jeff Bridges.

The Polar Express, by Chris Van Allsburg. I don’t love the movie, but I love the original book. This edition comes with a little ornament to hang on your tree. It’s fun to also hide a little “reindeer bell” in your pocket and ring it at the appropriate moment in the story. You’re sure to create magic when reading aloud to young family members. (Rest assured that you can find numerous “Polar Express Reindeer Bells” online.)

Digital Reads

These last two are not found on my shelf but on my phone. Technically they don’t really qualify for this post, but I’ll mention them because I think they are quite special.

A Child's Christmas in Wales, by Dylan Thomas. This audio version of the prose poem was recorded in 1952 by the Welsh poet himself. (He died a year later, at age 39.) As you listen, you really understand that the story consists of multiple voices, and Thomas is playing each of them. A treasure, and marvelous listening for the entire family. Also available via Apple iTunes and Audible.

A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. Public domain works are often churned out in crappy editions by no-name publishers trying to make a quick buck. Top Five Books is a Chicago publisher that curates a list of truly special ebooks. Their Complete Sherlock Holmes ebook, for example, is arguably the best on the market, and comes with all the original illustrations—none omitted. This ebook edition of Scrooge’s story contains all the illustrations that appeared in the first 1843 edition, plus ones that appeared in a U.S. edition published in 1869. This would be a lovely book to read to family members on an iPad or full-color Kindle.

That wraps my current list of Christmas books. I’m sure I’ll be adding more. I’m a junkie for the subject, obsessed with good stories and great illustrations. Christmas may well be the only time of year where families have the time to read to each other in a relaxed setting. If you’re going to do it, do it in style.

Today on SleuthSayers...and Life

Gee—it is 2023 already?

I really dropped the ball. On. A. Lot. Of. Stuff.

Not gonna lie: 2022 was a shit show. I’ll explain why in the next couple of posts. We dealt with everything from a destructive water leak in the house to a death in the family and personal health crises.

When stuff like that happens, the last thing you’re going to prioritize is keeping up with your blog and updating your website.

Which brings me to today. As most of you know, I contribute a post every three weeks to SleuthSayers, a blog cooperatively written by a group of mystery writers who mostly write short stories. I’ve been good about posting there, but bad about posting the results here.

I’m proud of those posts. Because that longstanding blog has a built-in audience, I tend to spend a lot more time crafting those pieces, and they constitute actual personal essays on my part. It’s a form of writing that comes naturally to me, and I like having a complete record of them in one spot—here—my Internet home.

Today, for example, I’ve got a post running based on a history-based road trip we took this spring. We went to Annapolis for a wedding, then took a circuitous drive back home that took us to Philly, Baltimore, DC, Mount Vernon, and Williamsburg.

Today’s post is entitled The President Who Played Detective, and other adventures. That’s a reference to none other than George Washington. It was cool to stand in the man’s study, but even cooler to see how the estate remembers the 150 or so enslaved and free black Americans who are buried on the property.

I hope you’ll take the time to check it out.

In the next few weeks, I’ll be trying to revamp the site, clean up the links, and catch up with my past SleuthSayers writing in a logical fashion. I’ll also be sharing what’s been going on with my work, and Denise’s. She alone has had a flurry of books pubbed that also need some huzzahs, with a new one pubbing this fall for young readers.

Please stick around. I’m sorry for the long delay. Life was hard, then it got harder. And there was still so much work to do.

But right now, I’m enjoying the summer. The garden is the best we’ve had in a long time. Flowers and veggies growing abundantly that we have never been able to keep pest-free and healthy until this year.

If you like my work, kindly consider bookmarking SleuthSayers.org in addition to my site. Heck, go check the work of my wife, Denise Kiernan.

You can read about my most recent books elsewhere on the site. The two latest that I’m most excited about are the cozy mystery, Murder on Book Row, and the cross-gender Santa Claus fantasy, Sorceress Kringle.

That’s it for now. Gotta scoot. The garden’s not going to water itself.

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Garden image above by little ol’ me.