Arvind Ethan David

Arvind Ethan David has written seven graphic novels, including most recently his adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s Trouble Is My Business and the Bram Stoker Award–nominated Darkness Visible with Mike Carey. David has also written multiple hit audio originals, including the science fiction anthology series Earworms, The Crimes of Dorian Gray, and the nonfiction audiobook Douglas Adams: The Ends of the Earth.

In theatre, David’s plays include The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, both based on the novels by Douglas Adams, and he received an Olivier nomination for his family musical The Boy With Wings, based on Lenny Henry’s children’s book. He also contributed additional material for David Baddiel and Erran Baron Cohen’s musical The Infidel and was a lead producer of the Grammy and Tony Award–winning Broadway musical Jagged Little Pill.

David has written and produced extensively in television, including Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency for Netflix, Anansi Boys for Amazon, and the Asian Academy Award winner The Garden of Evening Mists for HBO.

The Great Game is his debut prose novel.

Recently I asked the author about what he was reading. David's reply:

I tend to read three or four things at once, a mix of fiction and non-fiction, and consume some as audiobooks and others as print.

At the moment, like everybody else, I’m reading The Odyssey, but I’m simultaneously inhaling two different translations. I’m reading the print edition of Emily Wilson’s version whilst listening to Daniel Mendelsohn’s. The combination is so instructive. Wilson’s iambic pentameter is urgent, terse, resonant, modern, powerful, and really drives the story forward. Mendelsohn’s more prosaic rendition lacks music (unusually for him, as he is a usually graceful writer), but he makes up for it with enormous precision and detail that gives you the full context and meaning of every line. The fact that I’m reading both means it’s somewhat slow going, and I may not get to the film for another week or two!

I’m also reading the nonfiction book The Lost Girls of Autism, a roundup of all the research that is largely now showing us that we have massively underestimated undiagnosed and untreated girls and women with autism for many decades. It’s sobering and revealing on how heuristic bias (and a little sexism) can retard scientific research, urgent, and educational on what autism even is and more generally about how our brains work, and I’m learning more about my own neurotypical (as far as I know) brain by reading it.

Finally, just today I finished Percival Everett’s James, his bravura retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Jim/James, the enslaved man and Huck’s friend and companion. It was a book I’ve been wanting to read since it came out, but I was warned there were some thematic and formal overlaps with The Great Game, so, fearing the anxiety of influence, I couldn’t even look at it until my book was done and published. It was totally worth the wait: an extraordinarily audacious, funny, heartbreaking, revealing, insightful, and clever book.

Visit Arvind Ethan David's website.

Q&A with Arvind Ethan David.

--Marshal Zeringue

Allison Montclair / Alan Gordon

Allison Montclair (AKA Alan Gordon) is the author of the Sparks and Bainbridge mysteries, beginning with The Right Sort of Man, the American Library Association Reading List Council's Best Mystery of 2019. Under her real name, she has written more mystery novels and a damn good werewolf book, as well as short stories in many genres in magazines and anthologies. She is also an award-winning librettist and lyricist with several musicals to her credit that have been performed or workshopped across the USA. She currently lives in New York City where she also practiced as a criminal defense attorney.

Montclair's latest novel is Fire Must Burn.

Recently I asked the author about what he was reading. Gordon's reply:

I had the honor and privilege of conducting the Guest of Honor interview at the recent Malice Domestic Conference with Jim Huang, who has been involved in just about every aspect of the mystery world as a publisher, reviewer, bookstore owner, and conference organizer. I had used to prepare two of the compilations he had put together, drawing upon the collected knowledge of America's mystery bookstore owners, and am now actually going through them in their entirety.

100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century is a fantastically useful list of the classics, starting with Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles and finishing with Reginald Hill's On Beulah Height. Like all lists, it reminds me of how much I still need to read in my chosen genre. (I recently checked off Block's When the Sacred Ginmill Closes. Beautifully written and evocative of the time and place, troublesome in some of its attitudes.) They Died In Vain is a fun follow-up of mysteries that the booksellers consider unjustly overlooked, or have fallen by the wayside with the passage of time. Between them, I have my work cut out for me -- but that's what they're for.

Visit Alan Gordon's website.

The Page 69 Test: An Excellent Thing in a Woman.

Q&A with Allison Montclair.

My Book, The Movie: An Excellent Thing in a Woman.

The Page 69 Test: Fire Must Burn.

--Marshal Zeringue

Rosanne Limoncelli

Rosanne Limoncelli is a writer and filmmaker living in Brooklyn. . Her short fiction has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Suspense Magazine, and Noir Nation, and her short films have been screened in festivals around the world. Limoncelli also writes plays, screenplays, poetry, games, mysteries, and science fiction and has taught writing and filmmaking for more than three decades at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Her new novel is Death at King's Cross: A Four Queens of Crime Mystery.

Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Limoncelli's reply:

When I’m writing a new project, I usually keep my reading to books that will inspire me or keep me in the mood for what I am writing. But I will also take a break and read something completely different. Here are four books I recently read.

The Anatomy of Exile by Zeeva Bukai is a gorgeously written book about a young man and woman from two very different immigrant families growing up in Brooklyn in the 1970’s. It’s told from the mother’s point of view and focuses on her struggle to keep her family together. The beauty of this book is in the writing and the way that the mother’s understanding of the world grows through the love she has for her daughter as she learns what is important in life.

The Dutch House (2019) by Ann Patchett was a book I’d been wanting to read for a while and it pulled me in quickly. The story is about a family that grows up in a strange mansion, and the family dynamics of the brother and sister, their relationship with their father and the world around them, told from the point of view of the brother. The story spans five decades and the way Patchett tells the story through time, and through the experiences of the main characters is fascinating, funny, and heartbreaking all at once. I read it and then listened to the amazing Tom Hanks audio book, both brilliant experiences.

Unfinished Portrait by Agatha Christie writing as Mary Westmacott. This fascinating tale of a woman’s life that is so close to Agatha Christie’s own life that it must be read by any Christie fans who love her autobiography. I’d read all the Christie novels, except the Westmacott books, but once I read this one, immediately scarfed up the rest of them. Christie’s writing is at its best in these non-mysteries.

In keeping with my current need for an Agatha Christie mood, I recently reread The Clocks from 1963. Christie is best known for her murder mysteries, and this is a Hercule Poirot gem. Many of Christie's books written during and after WWII are at least part spy thriller and this one is one of the best. A typist is sent to private home for a job, is instructed to let herself in, but instead of the client she was supposed to meet, she finds a dead body and is then suspected of the crime. The Cold War details, the twisty and satisfying clues, and Hercule Poirot’s inimitable self, make this a fun read.

Visit Rosanne Limoncelli's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Four Queens of Crime.

The Page 69 Test: The Four Queens of Crime.

Q&A with Rosanne Limoncelli.

--Marshal Zeringue

Linda Kass

Linda Kass began her career as a magazine journalist and correspondent for regional and national publications. Along with her forthcoming novel, World News from Waverley High (September 2026), she is the author of three previous works of historical fiction: Tasa’s Song (2016), A Ritchie Boy (2020), and Bessie (2023). A longtime civic leader, she is the founder and owner of Gramercy Books, an independent bookstore in Central Ohio. Kass lives in Columbus with her husband, Frank; they have four children, six grandchildren, and a labradoodle named Wally.

Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Kass's reply:

A Pair of Aces is one of those rare novels that is co-authored, and seamlessly so. Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray have come together for the third time (The Personal Librarian and The First Ladies) to write this tale of two trailblazing women on opposite sides of the law—a prosecutor and a madam—who team up to bring down notorious mob boss Lucky Luciano in 1930s New York. Eunice Carter is the assistant district attorney for the City of New York and Manhattan’s first Black female prosecutor. Polly Adler, a Russian Jewish immigrant, has worked long and hard to build up her high- class brothel business, her client list filled with well-known names. As Lucky infiltrates the prostitution network and puts Polly’s girls in danger, an unlikely alliance develops between two women that launches the most sensational trial New York has ever seen. While these women are both historic figures and Eunice was part of the team to bring down Luciano, the alliance at the heart of A Pair of Aces was imagined. I love reimagining true history in fiction, something I’ve done in my work.

While I write historical fiction, I read broadly. I admire how tightly Michael Connelly writes his crime novels, and how darn prolific he is. I believe I first watched all seven seasons of Bosch before I read my first Connelly book. The Proving Ground was the recent selection of my personal book club and I happily dug in. The narrator in this Lincoln Lawyer series explains the “proving ground” is that sacred space directly in front of the jury where attorneys must prove their case, and it is exactly where Mickey Haller intimately connects with his jurors. (Mickey conducts most of his legal business from the backseat of his chauffeur-driven Lincoln, whether it’s a Town Car or Navigator, and that’s why he’s called the Lincoln Lawyer.) In this timely and riveting legal thriller, Haller’s client is a grieving mother suing a tech giant over her daughter's murder, allegedly incited by an unregulated AI chatbot, a topic that could be in today’s headlines with its focus on corporate negligence, adolescent loneliness, and AI ethics. Haller’s argument contends the AI company’s chatbot told a teenage boy that it was okay for him to kill his ex-girlfriend for her disloyalty. The story is meticulously researched and compulsively readable, carrying Connelly’s blend of gritty investigation, intense courtroom cross-examinations, and sharp legal tactics.

Whistler by Ann Patchett begins with a surprise encounter. Daphne is strolling with her husband Jonathan at the Metropolitan Museum only to run into the stepfather she hasn’t seen for forty years, a book editor named Eddie Triplett. The reader soon finds out that Daphne and Eddie were nearly killed in a car accident when Daphne was nine. This is a story of love, loss, memory, family, and kindness. As with several Patchett tales, our view of the present is more deeply considered by shining a luminous light on the past. And we also experience intense human connection and all that is good and right, even despite the childhood muddle that came long before. Some of the elements of the story may be inspired by her life, given that Ann, like Daphne, had three fathers and a childhood that was itinerant.

Visit Linda Kass's website.

Writers Read: Linda Kass (June 2026).

--Marshal Zeringue

Elizabeth H. Winthrop

Elizabeth Hartley Winthrop was born and raised in New York City. She earned her B.A. from Harvard University and her M.F.A. in fiction from the UC Irvine, where she was the recipient of the Schaeffer Writing Fellowship. She is the author of the novels Fireworks, December, The Why of Things, and The Mercy Seat. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband and daughter and is Associate Professor of English/Creative Writing at Endicott College.

Winthrop's new novel is Conviction.

Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Her reply:

I always have two books going at one, one of which I read, and one of which I listen to while running or driving. Right now I am listening to John of John, by Douglas Stuart, although I plan to get a hard copy as soon as can; it is one of those books that I know I will come back to over and over again in an attempt to savor and understand the artistry and architecture. If I were reading it in hardcover, I can imagine making all sorts of notes in the margins, marking gorgeous or strikingly original turns of phrase, noting the lengthy passages of dialogue Stuart is able to sustain, tracing the trajectories of characters and relationships. The novel is a quiet, intimate, and ultimately stunning study of personality and place, driven propulsively forward by the inner conflict of its characters. I haven’t been this blown away by a book in some time.

At the same time, I am reading The Singer’s Gun, by Emily St. John Mandel. I came to Mandel’s work by way of her 2014 novel Station Eleven, which I deeply admire and have taught several times at the college where I teach. What I love most about Mandel’s writing is the wild imagination and the confidence it exudes. Mandel is not tentative; what she says, goes. She is willing to take risks, to bounce around in time, to make connections between characters (and books) that might, in another writer’s hands, seem far-fetched, but which Mandel can pull off perfectly. Unlike Stuart, Mandel’s books are driven by mystery and action (though her characters are also fully realized!)- but mystery that is subtle enough to require the reader’s participation in unravelling, which this reader finds deeply satisfying.

Visit Elizabeth H. Winthrop's website.

My Book, The Movie: Conviction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Kathleen Barber

Kathleen Barber is the author of Truth Be Told, which was adapted by Reese Witherspoon's Hello Sunshine as a series on AppleTV+, Follow Me, and Both Things Are True. A certified book coach and former attorney, she lives in Washington, DC, with her family.

Amayah Shaienne is a lifestyle content creator and student at the University of Alabama who quickly grew a following during Bama Rush. To date, she has garnered a following of nearly 200K across TikTok and Instagram and has her audience obsessed with all parts of her college life. She is excited to continue bringing her loyal followers along as she attends key college moments such as sorority rush, football games, and more.

Barber and Shaienne's new novel is Sisterhood Above All.

Recently I asked Barber about what she was reading. The author's reply:

I am anxiously awaiting my copy of two books I cannot wait to read:

You First by Caroline Kepnes, which is a prequel to You, one of my favorite books of all-time. Joe Goldberg is my favorite fictional psychopath and I love Caroline’s sharp writing style, so I’m eager to read this one!

Man of My Dreams by Olivia Worley, which is about a romance writer who encounters her fictional hero … but things go dark. I recently read Olivia’s So Happy Together—about a woman who will do anything to secure the man she thinks is perfect for her—in one sitting, and it was so delightfully unhinged that I can’t wait for Man of My Dreams.

Additionally, I recently finished Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke, which was as good as everyone says it is—I’m eagerly awaiting my book club meeting about it to chat it out with my friends!

Visit Kathleen Barber's website.

The Page 69 Test: Follow Me.

Writers Read: Kathleen Barber (March 2020).

12 Yoga Questions with Kathleen Barber.

The Page 69 Test: Both Things Are True.

My Book, The Movie: Both Things Are True.

Q&A with Kathleen Barber.

Writers Read: Kathleen Barber (September 2025).

My Book, The Movie: Sisterhood Above All.

The Page 69 Test: Sisterhood Above All.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jackie McMahon

Jackie McMahon writes murder mysteries with history, twists, and perhaps a romance (or two). She currently resides in Florida with her two cats, and in her free time, she enjoys reading, traveling, and sharing obscure historical facts she has recently learned.

McMahon's new novel is The Cloak and Dagger Club, the first in a new historical mystery series.

Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. McMahon's reply:

I recently read An Ordinary Sort of Evil by Kelley Armstrong, the latest installment in the Rip Through Time mystery series. This series follows Mallory Atkinson, a modern-day homicide detective, who finds herself transported back in time to Victorian-era Edinburgh. In the body of a housemaid, she helps her employer, medical examiner Dr. Duncan Gray, solve murders. Mallory’s evolution in the series has been interesting as she finds her footing in the 1800s. What I particularly love about these books is the vibrant cast of side characters. (Major Hugh and Isla fan here!) The series has two very lovable, will-they-won't-they romances at its heart as well.

One of my favorite reads of the year so far was a NetGalley ARC, The Oxford Guide to Scandal and Lies by Kate Westbury. It is the first in a new historical mystery series set at 1950s Oxford University. I love a good romantically involved sleuthing duo (as anyone who has read my book can probably tell), and I'm eager to see more of the slow-burn between students-turned-spying-partners Ginevra and Sidney. This book follows Gin and Sidney when they're recruited by MI5 to investigate a murder at Oxford and a potential connection to a Soviet spy. I was left guessing until the very end and am eager to see what will happen in the second installment!

Finally, I have to shout out Death Was Not on the Guest List by Jenni L. Walsh. This is a stand-alone historical mystery set in Jazz Age Chicago. I instantly knew I wanted to read this when I discovered it was about Ginevra King and Edith Cummings, two real-life socialites who allegedly inspired the characters of Daisy Buchanan and Jordan Baker, respectively, in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. I loved Gatsby in high school, but had no idea it was partially inspired by two real women. Combine that with a closed circle Christie-style mystery, and I was hooked.

Visit Jackie McMahon's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Rachel León

Rachel León is a writer, editor, and social worker, who has worked in child welfare for nearly two decades. She serves as Managing Director for Chicago Review of Books, and is the author of the novel, How We See the Gray.

Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. León's reply:

I’m always reading multiple books, often in different genres. Right now, my fiction pick is Yasmin Zaher’s novel, The Coin, about a young Palestinian woman living in New York who gets involved in a scheme selling Birkin bags. Everyone in my writing group is working on novels, and we realized a while back that it would be more helpful to read each other’s entire manuscripts rather than just a chapter or two here and there. But novel writing takes a long time, so we began the practice of reading published novels together and discussing them. We don't exactly have a set reason for picking the books, though typically it’s something one of us has wanted to read. The Coin was my suggestion, as it had been recommended in a writing class I took a year or so ago.

My nonfiction book right now is Guest Privileges: Queer Lives and Finding Home in the Middle East by Gaar Adams, which recently won a Lambda Literary Award. This book was actually a gift from the author at an event I did for How We See the Gray. Gaar Adams lives in London, but was in the States to receive his award, and is from Wisconsin, and stopped in Madison where I was doing a reading. We had a lovely conversation after the event, and he gifted me the book. I’m not far, but let’s just say it’s clear why it won an award, which it certainly deserves.

Visit Rachel León's website.

Q&A with Rachel León.

--Marshal Zeringue

D.W. Buffa

The Dark Backward is among D.W. Buffa's more recent novels to be released. The story revolves around not just the strangest case William Darnell had ever tried;

it was the strangest case ever tried by any lawyer anywhere. It was impossible to explain; or rather, impossible to believe. The defendant, who did not speak English or any other language anyone could identify, had been found on an island no one knew existed, and charged with murder, rape and incest. He was given the name Adam, and Adam, as Darnell comes to learn, is more intelligent, quicker to learn, than anyone he has ever met. Adam, he learns to his astonishment, is a member of an ancient civilization that has remained undiscovered for more than three thousand years.

Buffa is also the author of ten legal thrillers involving the defense attorney Joseph Antonelli. He has also published a series that attempts to trace the movement of western thought from ancient Athens, in Helen; the end of the Roman Empire, in Julian's Laughter; the Renaissance, in The Autobiography of Niccolo Machiavelli; and America in the twentieth century, in Neumann's Last Concert.

Here is Buffa's take on The Life of George Washington by Washington Irving:

When George Washington died, just weeks before the end of the l8th century, an eminent British statesman, Lord Brougham, wrote: “The fame of Washington stands apart from every other in history.” He then added: “It will be the duty of the historian and the sage of all nations, to let no occasion pass of commemorating this illustrious man, and until time shall be no more, will a test of the progress which our race has made in wisdom and virtue, be derived from the veneration paid to the immortal name of Washington.”

This is the last sentence written in Washington Irving’s biography of George Washington, the first volume of which was published in l855. The fifth, and last volume, was published four years later in l859, sixty years after Washington’s death, and a year before the American Civil War. It was then still possible to entertain the hope that veneration for Washington would remain the measure for the progress made in the wisdom and virtue of Americans. The example of Abraham Lincoln, with his invocation of “our fathers,” seemed to prove the possibility.

For a long time Washington and Lincoln were seen as the models of what American greatness and nobility meant. More than what they had done, the kind of men they had been, was thought to be the standard by which to judge our own best efforts. Washington’s birthday and Lincoln’s birthday were both made national holidays, the only American statesmen to be so honored. Then, when our own early history became ancient, when the American Founding and the American Civil War began to recede further back in time and became part of a largely unremembered past, their example no longer seemed quite so relevant, and nothing like so urgent. The twentieth century, which some called the century of the common man, was less interested in the unique achievements of uniquely gifted human beings, and more concerned with what normal, average, people might be able to do. The two national holidays, now become archaic, were eliminated, replaced with just one, Presidents' Day, which celebrated everyone who had ever held the office, all of them treated with equal regard. Washington and Lincoln were no better, and no worse, than Warren Harding or Donald Trump.

Among the important documents Washington Irving included in the appendix to his biography is the statement issued by President John Adams on the death of George Washington. Remarkably close to what Lord Brougham had written, it carried an implicit warning about the future: “His example is now complete; and it will teach wisdom and virtue to magistrates, citizens, and men, not only in the present age, but in future generations, as long as our history shall be read.”

Yes, precisely; as long as our history shall be read. Adams might have added, so long as the history that is written tells the story as it was meant to be told. The history that Washington Irving writes is not the history written now. The story of Washington’s formative years, the history of the American Revolution, the history of Washington’s presidency, are told with all the detail anyone could want; but the details - the events, the decisions Washington made or did not make - are secondary, as it were, to the character of the man. Irving wants to tell us what there was about Washington that invariably led him to put the interests of his country over any of his own. He writes about the “wisdom and virtue” that marked the life of Washington in ways which, to eyes grown used to the small ambitions and tawdry corruptions of self-serving politicians, seem at times almost unbelievable.

Washington had at his birth in 1732 a background few others could claim: a family that traced itself back through six centuries of English history. “Hereditary rank may be an illusion; but hereditary virtue gives a patent of innate nobleness beyond all blazoners of Herald’s College.” Despite being part of Virginia’s landed aristocracy, Washington never attempted the “learned languages.” He studied mathematics and became an expert surveyor; so good that, when he was only sixteen, he made a survey of the Fairfax estate, the largest estate in Virginia, a property so large it took weeks to cross it on horseback. His knowledge of the territory was so extensive that, a few years later, he was attached to the British forces under General Braddock in the French and Indian war. Ignoring Washington’s advice about what the Indians were likely to do, Braddock led his men into a lethal ambush in which twenty-six of his eighty-six officers were killed and thirty-six wounded; two hundred of the rank and file lost their lives. Washington should have been killed. Two horses were shot out from under him, and four bullets passed through his coat without any harm. Years later, the Indian chief who led the attack, told Washington that, watching what happened, he and the other chieftains had decided that he must be the favorite of the Great Spirit who ruled over all of them.

Washington’s name was known everywhere. Elected to the legislature, his installation was greeted “by a singular testament of respect.” The Speaker “returned thanks for his distinguished military service.” Washington was so moved he could not speak. “Sit down, Mr. Washington,” he was told, “your modesty equals your valor, and that surpasses the powers of any language I possess.” When the discontent of the colonies with England required concerted action, Washington was sent, along with Patrick Henry and Edmund Randolph, to Philadelphia to meet with representatives from the other colonies. The fifty one delegates were, in the judgement of John Adams,“such an assembly as never before came together on a sudden, in any part of the world.” Out of that assembly, Patrick Henry thought Rutledge of South Carolina the best orator, but “if you speak of solid information and sound judgement,” Washington had been the greatest man there.

When peaceful efforts failed and the war began, Washington knew what he would do. “It is my full intention, if needful, to devote my life and fortune to the cause.” No one doubted he would do what he said, or that he should be put in command of the American forces. It is curious, the way Washington was seen by others, the remarkable first impression he made. When the wife of John Adams saw him for the first time, she wrote to her husband, describing what she had seen: “Dignity, ease, and complacency, the gentleman and the soldier look agreeably blended in him. Modesty marks every line and feature of his face. The lines of Dryden instantly occurred to me:

“‘Mark his majestic fabric! He’s a temple
Sacred by birth, and built by hands divine;
His soul’s the deity that lodges there:
Nor is the pile unworthy of the God.’”

The lines of Dryden! And we talk about all the progress we have made! We ought to be talking about how it is possible that the men and women who led this country at the beginning knew so much more than we do now what makes someone worthy of admiration.

When the war was over and independence had been won, Congress wanted “to produce some national reward for his imminent services.” Washington respectfully declined the offer, “jealously maintaining the satisfaction of having served his country at the sacrifice of his private interests.” That sacrifice was just beginning. Independence had been won; the question now was whether the Americans could govern themselves. In the summer of 1787, the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia, and for three months, under the watchful supervision of George Washington, the unanimous choice to preside over their deliberations, engaged in an exhaustive examination of how to create a government to protect, instead of destroy, the rights of its citizens. The Constitution was written; it had to be ratified by the states. It was approved, but in some of the states only “by a mere majority,” and only then because it was generally understood that the executive office - the presidency - would be held by Washington himself. By the unanimous vote of the new electoral college, George Washington became the first president of the United States. The country felt safe; Washington felt like a “culprit, who is going to his place of execution.”

Two things were needed immediately: someone who could put the country’s finances on a solid basis, and someone who could deal effectively with England, France, and Spain, the three countries which still retained a presence in North America. Washington chose Alexander Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury and Thomas Jefferson as Secretary of State, two men with widely different views of the kind of government the country should have. Hamilton had made no secret of his belief that the “idea of a perfect equality of political rights among the citizens, exclusive of a permanent or hereditary distinction,” was a proposition open to serious doubt. The new Constitution, however, deserved “the good wishes of every good man, whatever might be his theoretic doubts….” He meant what he said. He was one of the authors of the Federalist Papers, the greatest single defense of the Constitution ever put in print.

Jefferson had not been a delegate to the Constitutional Convention; he had been in Paris, awaiting what he hoped would be the end of both the French monarchy and the French aristocracy. He was alarmed to discover there was no limit to how often the president could be re-elected. Perpetual re-eligibility meant, in his mind, the inevitability of perpetual rule. It was only a matter of time before the president became a monarch, and, he was convinced, no one was more interested in having this happen than Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton, for his part, thought Jefferson more than a little insane. “The idea of introducing monarchy or aristocracy in this country…is one of those visionary things that none but madmen could meditate, and that no wise man will believe.”

What began as a disagreement over political principles soon devolved into a personal hatred made all the more intense by the French Revolution. Jefferson did not just favor the French Revolution, he hoped, according to Irving, that “revolution would be established and spread all over the world.” It did not matter the cost. When thousands were put to death during the Jacobin reign of terror, Jefferson thought it unfortunate, but rather than the revolution “should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated; were there but an Adam and Eve left in every country, and left free, it would be better than it now is.” For all his hatred of monarchy, however, Jefferson never included in his condemnations the one man who, had he wanted to, might have become an American monarch. When Washington seemed to have decided against a second term, Jefferson begged him to reconsider. No one else could stop the country from tearing itself apart; only Washington in the presidency guaranteed against the fear of a monarchy he believed Hamilton was plotting to bring about.

Washington agreed to serve a second term and was, for the second time, elected by the unanimous vote of the electoral college. The country would stay united, and the war between Hamilton and Jefferson would only get worse. Jefferson might believe that the French Revolution was only a continuation of the fight for the rights of man that had started with the American Revolution; Hamilton thought only a fool could fail to see the differences.

“Would to Heaven we could discern, in the mirror of the French affairs, the same decorum, the same gravity, the same virtue, the same dignity, the same solemnity, which distinguished the cause of the American Revolution!” The difference between them was “no less than that between liberty and license.”

Hamilton might write about the evils of the French Revolution, but when France declared war on England, the country followed Jefferson in support of France, and turned not just on Hamilton, but on Washington. The President’s insistence on a policy of strict neutrality was treated with contempt. It was nothing less than “a daring assumption of power; an open manifestation of partiality for England and hostility to France.” Washington had known what would happen; he had understood that “in withstanding the public infatuation with France,” he might lose all his popularity; “but he put it at hazard without hesitation; and in so doing set a magnanimous example for his successors in office to endeavor to follow.” An endeavor, it is perhaps needless to remark, few of his successors have thought advisable to attempt themselves.

After eight years in the presidency, Washington was finally able to retire to his beloved Mount Vernon. A few months later, war with France suddenly a real possibility, John Adams insisted that only Washington could lead the army. His answer was as simple as it was direct: “As my whole life as been dedicated to my country in one shape or another, for the poor remains of it, it is not an object to control for quiet and ease, when all that is valuable is at stake, further than to be satisfied that the sacrifice I should make of these, is acceptable and desired by my country.”

It will no doubt be objected by some that Washington owned slaves and does not deserve our full respect. This is to be expected from those who learn their history without bothering to read a page of what was written at the time. Washington, and Jefferson as well, inherited vast plantations, which had for generations been worked by slaves, but both thought slavery an abomination that needed, somehow, to be ended. In September of 1786, Washington wrote to John F. Mercer that it was “among my first wishes to see some plan adopted by which slavery in this country may be abolished by law.” Eleven years later, in August of 1797, he wrote to his nephew, Lawrence Lewis, “I wish from my soul that the legislature of this State could see the policy of a gradual abolition of slavery. It might prevent much future mischief.”

Two years later, the legislature still having done nothing to abolish slavery, Washington freed his own, and did it in a way that, once freed, his former slaves would be cared for. In his will he directed that those who were unable to support themselves because of infirmities or old age, “shall be comfortably clothed and fed by my heirs while they live.” Those still children were to be taught to read and write and “brought up to some useful occupation.” There was a specific provision for his “mulatto man, William.” He was free to do whatever he wished, but, because he was now incapable of walking or any “active employment,” he could also remain there, at Mount Vernon. Whatever he chose to do, he was to be given a fixed annuity during his natural life, “as testimony of my sense of his attachment to me, and for his faithful service during the revolutionary war.”

Who was George Washington? Washington Irving had an answer: “The character of Washington may want some of those poetical elements which dazzle and delight the multitude, but it possessed fewer irregularities, and a rarer union of virtues than perhaps ever fell to the lot of one man.”

If we do not honor George Washington as much as we once did, it proves only that we have, ourselves, become incapable of honor. Washington Irving’s biography is the perfect place to start if we want to remember what greatness and honorable conduct really means.

Visit D.W. Buffa's website.

Buffa's previous third reading essays: The Great Gatsby; Brave New World; Lord Jim; Death in the Afternoon; Parade's End; The Idiot; The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; The Scarlet Letter; Justine; Patriotic Gore; Anna Karenina; The Charterhouse of Parma; Emile; War and Peace; The Sorrows of Young Werther; Bread and Wine; “The Crisis of the Mind” and A Man Without Qualities; Eugene Onegin; The Collected Works of Thomas Babington Macaulay; The Europeans; The House of Mirth and The Writing of Fiction; Doctor Faustus; the reading list of John F. Kennedy; Jorge Luis Borges; History of the Peloponnesian War; Mansfield Park; To Each His Own; A Passage To India; Seven Pillars of Wisdom; The Letters of T.E. Lawrence; All The King’s Men; The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus; Naguib Mahfouz’s novels of ancient Egypt; Main Street; Theodore H. White's The Making of the President series, part I; Theodore H. White's The Making of the President series, part II; Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Fiction's Failure; Hermann Hesse's Demian; Frederick Douglass, Slavery, and The Fourth of July; Caesar’s Ghost; The American Constitution; A Tale of Two Cities; The Leopard; Madame Bovary; The Sheltering Sky; Tocqueville’s America and Ours; American Statesmen; Ancient and Modern Writers Reconsidered; Père Goriot; The Remarkable Edmund Burke; The Novels of W.H. Hudson; America Revised; The City And Man; "The Use And Abuse Of History"; I, Claudius; The Closing of The American Mind; History of Rome; Before The Deluge; Herodotus's Histories; The Education of Henry Adams; Talleyrand; The Golden Bowl

--Marshal Zeringue

Bryan Gruley

Bryan Gruley is the Edgar-nominated author of seven novels and one award-winning work of nonfiction. A lifelong journalist, he shared in The Wall Street Journal's Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the September 11 terrorist attacks. A longtime Chicago resident, he now lives in northern lower Michigan with his wife, Pamela.

Gruley's new novel is River Deep.

Recently I asked the author about what he was reading. Gruley's reply:

I’m a judge for the Edgar Awards this year and my favorite book so far is—sorry, if I told you I’d have to kill you.

Best book I’ve read in the past few years: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, a book published many years ago that resonates even now. Moving, funny, suspenseful, heartbreaking, with a perfect first-person voice inhabited by an autistic boy. (Almost as effective voice-wise is the autistic boy in Ken Jaworowski’s What About the Bodies).

Another book I love is my fellow Michiganian Sara Maurer’s debut novel, A Good Animal. A gorgeous rendering of a romance on a sheep farm in the Upper Peninsula. I haven’t finished it because: contest reading.

Also, two books by guys named John:

Bear County, Michigan by John Counts. This short-story collection by my fellow journalist is funny and searing and written with clarity and simplicity that reveres attention to physical detail.

The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald by John U. Bacon. You think you know the story, but you don’t. You know the ending, but you will be on the proverbial edge of your seat. Great reporting + exhaustive research + propulsive writing = fantastic book.

And now, back to that contest and all those great books, the best of which so far is ?????????

Learn more about the book and author at Bryan Gruley's website.

The Page 69 Test: Starvation Lake.

The Page 69 Test: The Hanging Tree.

The Page 69 Test: Bleak Harbor.

The Page 69 Test: Purgatory Bay.

The Page 69 Test: Bitterfrost.

Q&A with Bryan Gruley.

My Book, The Movie: Bitterfrost.

My Book, The Movie: River Deep.

The Page 69 Test: River Deep.

--Marshal Zeringue