Jasper Fforde
Three separate interviews in which Jasper Fforde discusses the Thursday Next series, his Nursery Crime novels and Shades of Grey, the first in a trilogy set in a future world recognizable as our own - but only just.
Abraham Verghese
An interview with Abraham Verghese about his life and writing and in particular about his extraordinary 2009 novel Cutting for Stone, set in 1960s and '70s Ethiopia and 1980s New York.
Martha A Sandweiss
An interview with Martha Sandweiss in which she discusses her book Passing Strange, a biography of Clarence King who lived a double life—as the celebrated white explorer, geologist, and writer Clarence King and as a black Pullman porter named James Todd, married to Ada with whom he had five children.
Amy Greene
Amy Greene talks about her first novel, Bloodroot, which brings her native Appalachia—and the faith and fury of its people—to rich and vivid life.
Nearly a decade ago Frank McCourt became an unlikely star when, at the age of sixty-six, he burst onto the literary scene with
Angela's Ashes, the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir of his childhood in Limerick, Ireland. Then came 'Tis, his glorious account of his early years in New York.
Now, here at last, is McCourt's long-awaited book about how his thirty-year teaching career shaped his second act as a writer.
Teacher Man is also an urgent tribute to teachers everywhere. In bold and spirited prose featuring his irreverent wit and heartbreaking honesty, McCourt records the trials, triumphs and surprises he faces in public high schools around New York City. His methods anything but conventional, McCourt creates a lasting impact on his students through imaginative assignments (he instructs one class to write "An Excuse Note from Adam or Eve to God"), singalongs (featuring recipe ingredients as lyrics), and field trips (imagine taking twenty-nine rowdy girls to a movie in Times Square!).
McCourt struggles to find his way in the classroom and spends his evenings drinking with writers and dreaming of one day putting his own story to paper.
Teacher Man shows McCourt developing his unparalleled ability to tell a great story as, five days a week, five periods per day, he works to gain the attention and respect of unruly, hormonally charged or indifferent adolescents. McCourt's rocky marriage, his failed attempt to get a Ph.D. at Trinity College, Dublin, and his repeated firings due to his propensity to talk back to his superiors ironically lead him to New York's most prestigious school, Stuyvesant High School, where he finally finds a place and a voice. "Doggedness," he says, is "not as glamorous as ambition or talent or intellect or charm, but still the one thing that got me through the days and nights."
For McCourt, storytelling itself is the source of salvation, and in Teacher Man the journey to redemption -- and literary fame -- is an exhilarating adventure.
Book Reviews
Publishers Weekly
McCourt throws down the gauntlet on education, asserting that teaching is more than achieving high test scores. It's about educating, about forming intellects, about getting people to think....should be mandatory reading for every teacher in America. And it wouldn't hurt some politicians to read it, too.
Booklist - Brad Hooper
[A]nother easily embraceable memoir by the best-selling author of Angela's Ashes (1996) and
'Tis (1999)...a tough but poignant and certainly eloquent defense of the sacrifices and honorableness of those in the teaching profession
...and a lesson itself in taking yourself seriously--but not too.
Billy Collins
Moving out of the poor Irish lanes of his childhood and now into the high school classrooms of New York City, Frank McCourt exchanges one garden of suffering for another, but always with a comic eye, a sympathetic heart, and the perfect timing of a master story-teller.
Teacher Man is a cry from the barricades of public education and should be required reading not just for all teachers but for anyone who ever set foot in a high school. Happily, there will be no
test.
Named for a flower whose blood-red sap possesses the power both to heal and poison, Bloodroot is a stunning fiction debut about the legacies—of magic and madness, faith and secrets, passion and loss—that haunt one family across the generations, from the Great Depression to today.
Samara Taylor used to believe in miracles. But her mother is in rehab, and her father seems more interested in his congregation than his family. And when a young girl in her small town is kidnapped, her already-worn thread of faith begins to unravel.
When she's not digging up bones or other ancient objects, quirky, tart-tongued archaeologist Ruth Galloway lives happily alone in Norfolk. But when a child's bones are found on a desolate beach nearby, and Detective Chief Inspector Harry Nelson calls Galloway for help, Ruth finds herself in...
Few works of literature are as universally beloved as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Now, in this spellbinding historical novel, we meet the young girl whose bright spirit sent her on an unforgettable trip down the rabbit hole –and the grown woman whose story is no less...
The Coral Thief, as riveting and beautifully rendered as Ghostwalk, Rebecca Stott’s first novel, is a provocative and tantalizing mix of history, philosophy, and suspense. It conjures up vividly both the feats of Napoleon and the accomplishments of those working without fame or...
I rarely read anything before this. Years ago I picked this one up and couldn't put it down. It changed me into a book nut. It was a wonderful ...
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I can't believe I waited so long to read this book. Shame on me. This book was wonderful, lyrical, entertaining - all the makings of a wonderful ...
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The book held so much for the reader but in the end I felt robbed. The evolution of Trudy was disturbing and somewhat insulting. She came across as ...
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Justice Department still has issues with Google Settlement(Feb 05 2010) The Department of Justice dealt a serious blow Thursday evening to the chances that the Google Book Search settlement will gain court approval later this...
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Hachette formally adopts 'agency model'(Feb 05 2010) Hachette Book Group USA became the second major U.S. publisher to officially announce its intention to move to an agency model for the sale of e-books....
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Teacher Man
Billy Collins
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