THE RIGHT WAY TO DO WRONG: A Unique Selection of Writings by History's Greatest Escape Artist

Jan 20, 2013 by Washington Post book reviewers

Harry Houdini
Melville House
ISBN 978-1612191669
150 pages
$15

Reviewed by Justin Moyer

Before David Copperfield made the Great Wall of China disappear and David Blaine was frozen in a block of ice, there was a Hungarian-born Jew who made a career of escaping from handcuffs, milk cans and prison cells: Harry Houdini. In "The Right Way to Do Wrong," the reprint of a book originally published in 1906, he offers advice, in memoir form, for upright citizens seeking to avoid pickpockets and confidence men. Houdini himself was famous not just as an illusionist but for exposing spiritualist mediums, whom he was able to catch cheating during seances.

"There is an under world - a world of cheat and crime - a world whose highest good is successful evasion of the laws of the land," he writes. "You who live your life in placid respectability know but little of the real life of the denizens of this world." Unfortunately, one learns little about Houdini himself from this at least partly ghost-written book. Transplanted to Wisconsin at age 4, he ran away to join the circus at 9. Yet "The Right Way to Do Wrong" doesn't explore his passions for carnivals and escapes.

Still, Houdini's words give a sense of the man and his times in a way that a straight autobiography might miss. Sure, it would be nice to know more about why he ran away from home, but it's also fun to learn about "defiers" of poisonous reptiles and about burglars' superstitions, which include the avoidance of stopped clocks, broken mirrors, unframed oil paintings and newly painted houses.

Perhaps more interesting than Houdini's lengthy asides on sword-swallowing and escaping rope ties, however, is Teller's short introduction to the book. Unlike Houdini, the silent half of the libertarian magic duo Penn and Teller dares ask what's interesting about the dark arts. "Part of us still hungers to chase our steak through the forest and kill it with our own sharp teeth," Teller writes. "So the people who love to read about crime and violence are generally gentle folk like you and me." Houdini's century-old peek into the criminal underworld may be dated, but it gives some insight into the mind of an American original.

Justin Moyer can be reached at moyerj@washpost.com.

Copyright 2013 Washington Post Writers Group

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FREEDOM NATIONAL: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865

Jan 20, 2013 by Washington Post book reviewers

James Oakes
Norton
ISBN 978-0393065312
595 pages
$29.95

Reviewed by Howell Raines

The Republican newspaper publisher Horace Greeley bowed to no man north of Richmond when it came to underestimating Abraham Lincoln. In the late summer of 1862, his New York Tribune was pummeling the president for dragging his feet on an expected blanket announcement freeing all slaves in the rebel states. In response to these stinging editorials, on August 22 of that year Lincoln penned one of the most puzzling letters of his presidency. He reminded Greeley that the great mission of the war was restoration of the Union. He continued, "If I could save the Union without freeing (BEGIN ITAL)any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing (BEGIN ITAL)all(END ITAL) the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others I would also do that."

Was Lincoln really a "Reluctant Emancipator," as Greeley and many historians since his day have insisted? Then why did the 16th president, only a month later, on Sept. 22, convene his cabinet for a surprise reading of the Emancipation Proclamation and release it upon the public "like a thunderbolt" that same day?

In "Freedom National," historian James Oakes answers that question eloquently and, in the judgment of this amateur student of the Civil War, fully. Oakes argues that Lincoln, from the moment of his inauguration, began using every political and military means at his disposal to wipe out slavery forever. Yet he also believed, as did virtually all politicians on both sides, that the Constitution protected slavery as a right of individual Southern states and therefore allowed him to designate only one casus belli- the preservation of the federal nation.

"Unless the Constitution was rewritten, the federal government could not constitutionally wage a war for the purpose of destroying slavery," Oakes explains. "Only the 'military necessity' of suppressing the rebellion could legally justify emancipation. That, at least, was the standard Republican Party position all through the war, and Lincoln's answer to Greeley merely restated it."

Yes, one must agree, but what a restatement! Lincoln's letter embodied the kind of virtuous obfuscation that only Lincoln, the presidency's greatest natural political genius, could have managed. Or make that stage-managed. The theatrical analogy seems proper for a moment when the film "Lincoln" is vividly recreating the final act of the emancipation drama. As the film demonstrates, so attuned was Lincoln to the social, legislative and constitutional uncertainties of the coming Reconstruction that he foresaw that he could fully liberate 4 million new black citizens only by pushing for a new amendment to the Constitution (the 13th). This valuable book, along with Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals," gives inquisitive moviegoers access to the full back story.

Oakes' detailed account of this complex story cannot be fully summarized here. But his argument that emancipation was a process, not the result of a single document, has produced some helpful distinctions and benchmarks. Lincoln understood from the moment his armies went South that "military emancipation" would permanently free blacks in conquered territory. Early in the war, slaves who fled into Union lines were deemed to be beneficiaries of "self emancipation." Oakes also explains Lincoln's coldly pragmatic decision to allow slavery to continue throughout the war in the border states of Delaware, Maryland, Missouri and, most critically, Kentucky. He concluded that upsetting their slaveholders could hand victory to the Confederacy.

"Freedom National" also highlights an unlikely hero, the hated Union proconsul of occupied New Orleans, Gen.Benjamin "Beast" Butler, the notorious insulter of Southern womanhood. At a time when Union generals like Don Carlos Buell were forcing freedom-seeking slaves back into the arms of their masters, Butler set an example for other generals by unilaterally emancipating blacks who came to his camps. Later, his tactic of allowing cooperating owners of Louisiana sugar plantations to stay in production by putting former slaves on salary and forswearing the lash won praise from Lincoln as a model for the future.

Oakes makes his case that Lincoln and many of his Union colleagues intended from the start to achieve slavery's "ultimate extinction" by meticulous combing of documents of the time. He goes back to the words they spoke in Congress or wrote in newspapers between 1860 and 1862. Lincoln was not alone in his eloquence and passion. It was a time of great oratory and precise argumentation. The technique points up the impoverished nature of our current political dialogue. How could any future historian reconstruct a detailed picture of our current national crisis by drawing on, say, the collected speeches of John Boehner or transcripts of the Bill O'Reilly show?

Howell Raines, a former executive editor of the New York Times, is researching the Civil War period for a historical novel.

Copyright 2013 Washington Post Writers Group

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LEONARDO AND THE LAST SUPPER

Jan 20, 2013 by Washington Post book reviewers

Ross King
Walker
ISBN 978-0802717054
336 pages
$28

Reviewed by Michael S. Roth

In the middle of the 1490s, Leonardo da Vinci was given the task of painting a religious scene on a wall in a church refectory where Dominican friars took their meals. His boss was Lodovico Sforza, the duke of Milan. The artist certainly didn't view this as a plum assignment - although it might have been preferable to painting the bedroom of the duchess, which he was also called upon to do. Leonardo had had far greater ambitions than wall painting when he entered the duke's service. Although celebrated for his painterly skills, he thought of himself as an engineer and military planner and had hoped to develop weapons and fortifications that would ensure the long rule of his mercurial patron. But although Sforza was interested in Leonardo's sketches for what would have been the world's largest equestrian statue (75 tons of bronze!), the ruler often treated his artist "first and foremost as an interior decorator and stage designer." Though there seemed no limits to Leonardo's imagination or his ambition, his employer wanted him to paint the wall where the friars took their frugal meals. And so that's what he did.

The convent wall became "The Last Supper," one of the great masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance. The painting, which depicts the moment when Jesus tells his apostles that one of them will betray him, has great narrative power, and Ross King's book embeds the grand work in the intersecting story lines of 15th-century political, military and art history, setting the historical stage with verve. He shows how Sforza schemed to get the French armies to invade Italy, and then betrayed his French allies when their victories seemed to endanger his own status. King has a fine feel for military matters, underscoring the brutality of laying siege to a city, the remarkable lack of discipline among soldiers. And their lack of loyalty, less surprising given that they were fighting to serve tyrants whose legitimacy was often as tenuous as that of a pope's son's.

King presents a portrait of the artist as a middle-aged man - Leonardo was 43 when he began the work. He had already acquired a reputation as an independent and freewheeling artist, but also one who could not be depended on to complete commissions. He was "willing to disregard fashion, tradition and precedent," King writes; "no artist had ever peered so deeply into the physical features of men and their world." Leonardo searched for a visual language that would do justice to the teeming heterogeneity of the world around him. Convention would not do. In art as in science, intense observation and experimentation were the keys to real achievement.

Leonardo had no experience with painting directly on walls when he began his work on "The Last Supper." Fresco painting required rapid execution, not the careful layering of colors that was so important to Leonardo. So the artist tried priming the wall with lead-white and then developed his own mixture of oil and tempera paints. He was delighted with the nuance and vibrancy this allowed. However, the mixture did not hold up well, and it wasn't long before the paint began to flake. Restoration after restoration has been necessary to keep remnants of "The Last Supper" visible.

The restorations have kept coming for good reason. The painting has fascinating stories to tell, and King is an excellent guide to the biblical sources and artist's choices that invest the work with so much power. Leonardo made use of the laws of perspective, whose rediscovery in the 15th century revolutionized painting. The "numinous resplendence" of Christ's face draws the eye to the work's center. The painting's brilliance, however, has less to do with geometry than with the artist's ability to render personality through physiognomy, to create drama through drawing, and to provide a sense of the divine by paying attention to the details of the mundane. The food on the table, from oranges to eels, gets as much loving attention as the apostles.

King's wonderfully readable book abounds in interesting art historical insights. He shows how Leonardo's talents for blurring the distinction between the sexes "came out of an artistic tradition that relished this kind of gender bending." His chapter on hands and gestures in the painting is fascinating, especially in light of his observation that the Dominicans signed to each other during meals when silence was imposed. King likes to debunk myths about the work, though I am not sure why he thought it was necessary to devote so much space to showing that the novel "The Da Vinci Code" was based on a misinterpretation of the painting as depicting Mary Magdalene as Jesus' bride. On the other hand, it was interesting to read how Leonardo departed from convention in having Judas reach for the same dish as Jesus with his left hand. The artist (left-handed himself) knew more than most about the strong prejudices against southpaws.

Very few of Leonardo's paintings were known to the public, and for centuries his reputation as an artist rested primarily on "The Last Supper." He began painting the Mona Lisa in 1503, but it remained in the artist's studio while he was alive and didn't get a real public viewing until the 19th century. Leonardo spent his final years in a manor house in France's Loire Valley, only 20 miles from where Sforza, his former Milanese patron, languished away in a dungeon. Neither was thinking very much about painting anymore.

"The Last Supper" seemed to many to be a miraculous work of art because its revolutionary combination of realism, dramatic power and attention to detail was unlike anything that had come before. Leonardo had created a new standard for painterly excellence in the Renaissance. Yet Henry James called it "the saddest work of art in the world," because it had for hundreds of years been on the verge of falling into invisibility. By casting light on the historical context of "The Last Supper," Ross King has enabled us to see the painting anew.

Michael S. Roth is the president of Wesleyan University and author of "Memory, Trauma, and History: Essays on Living With the Past."

Copyright 2013 Washington Post Writers Group

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RESET

Jan 20, 2013 by Washington Post book reviewers

Peter Bagge
Dark Horse
ISBN 978-1616550035
96 pages
$15.99

Reviewed by Douglas Wolk

Guy Krause, the protagonist of Peter Bagge's new graphic novel, "Reset," is kind of a creep. A movie comedian whose career has flatlined ("But I've only been washed up for a year! Two, tops!" he wails), he's perpetually angry, indignant and broke, but he hasn't quite lost enough of his pride to join a reality show.

As he's attending a DUI class after a road-rage conviction, he's offered an opportunity to make some money by testing a virtual-reality system that allows him to live his life over again. The program, created by a company that's collected an unnerving amount of personal information, lets Krause change the decisions he made the first time around. Whenever he doesn't like how the simulation is going, he can press a "reset" button that begins his adult life again, starting from a humiliating moment at his high school graduation.

Will Krause ultimately be redeemed by this power of choice? One of Bagge's gifts is giving narrative cliches a hard slapdown, and the "Groundhog Day" premise laid out by the opening scenes quickly mutates into something weirder and funnier. Every character is keeping secrets from everyone else, and each successive revelation raises the stakes and changes the rules. Bagge's previous graphic novel, "Other Lives" (2010), was a broader but much shakier look at the relationship between virtual reality and flesh-and-blood existence. "Reset" pares down those themes into a wickedly sharp satire about the distance between intentions and actions.

The look and tone of Bagge's comics haven't changed much since his "Hate" series lacerated Seattle hipster culture in the early '90s. "Reset" is, as always, filled with characters whose rubbery limbs and misshapen-cookie heads somehow add up to recognizable human forms, yelling and whispering at one another, in panels packed with snappy, ricocheting dialogue. Bagge has adapted the tools of slapstick to what's essentially a drawing-room comedy, if a cheerfully profane one, and his enthusiasm for sabotaging Hollywood-style resolutions makes the few hopeful moments of "Reset" even sweeter.

Douglas Wolk is the author of "Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean."

Copyright 2013 Washington Post Writers Group

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THE INTERCEPT

Jan 16, 2013 by Washington Post book reviewers

Dick Wolf
Morrow
ISBN 978-0062064837
387400 pages
$276.99

Reviewed by Patrick Anderson, who regularly reviews thrillers and mysteries for The Washington Post.

About 40 years ago, a young advertising copywriter named Dick Wolf set out to write screenplays. He had three movies produced, then shifted to television, where he wrote for "Hill Street Blues" and "Miami Vice," among other shows. In 1990, he created a police drama called "Law & Order," which proceeded to run for 20 years, spawn numerous spinoffs, win countless prizes and earn him a fortune estimated at $250 million. He makes his home these days in Montecito, Calif., which is, as the saying goes, where God would live if he had the money.

Now, at 66, Wolf is publishing his first novel, and you can be sure that all across America, struggling novelists will devoutly hope and pray that this interloping TV tycoon falls on his face. No such luck. Wolf's "The Intercept," wherein al-Qaeda attempts another major attack on New York, is a smart, suspenseful, highly professional piece of work that should rank with the best of this year's thrillers.

In an early scene, Osama bin Laden, not long before his death, is plotting a new assault on the United States. He tells his lieutenants that he wants "a strike that will break the soul of the Western demon." Then it's July 1, 2011, and we're aboard a Swedish airliner headed for the United States. A young Muslim, armed with a knife and a fake bomb, tries to force his way into the cockpit but is overpowered by five passengers and a member of the flight crew. Among those who interrogate the hijacker is Detective Jeremy Fisk of the New York Police Department's Intelligence Division; he's Wolf's hero for this novel and a projected series.

As news of the failed hijacking reaches the nation, the five passengers and the flight attendant - The Six, they are soon dubbed - are hailed as heroes who saved hundreds of lives by stopping the terrorist from crashing the airliner in Manhattan, his admitted target. But Fisk is not so sure. He thinks the man is not very smart, had little chance of seizing control of the plane and might be a diversion from a more serious assault planned by al-Qaeda.

The immediate need is to find another suspect, supposedly a Saudi art dealer, who was on the plane. As this search develops, "The Intercept" becomes a first-rate police procedural. Wolf clearly has access to senior police officials, and he provides state-of-the art detail about how federal and local police would seek one man in a city of 8 million. They have pictures of the man, and their search for him is supported by hundreds of surveillance cameras poised around the city and computers that can scan for a particular face. Other computers monitor key words - like "bomb" or "explode" - spoken in Arabic on cellphones.

Wolf is good with characters, too. Fisk is a smart, tough detective who's also independently wealthy, has a swanky two-bedroom apartment on Sutton Place and is conveniently unmarried. My heart sank when he met cute with a sexy young detective who joined him on the case. But meeting cute is a hallowed pop-culture tradition, and the relationship soon becomes more interesting. The scene when they consummate their flirtation is quite nicely done. He's equally good with a triangle that arises among The Six, as two women compete for the favors of a handsome young Swede. Wolf has a sophisticated understanding of the games grown-ups play, even amid terrorist attacks.

He's also good on the terrorists themselves. We meet four who are part of an intricate Fourth of July plot to inflict spectacular damage at a dedication ceremony at Ground Zero. The terrorists' plan is a bit fanciful, but its telling is fascinating, and we are swept along. Wolf's terrorists are not monsters or madmen but real people whose religious beliefs make them eager to die a martyr's death. In our fiction, of course, the terrorists tend to lose, but Wolf raises disturbing questions about just how, in the real world, you win wars, at home or abroad, against people who aren't afraid to die.

Wolf's tale gallops to an exciting, disturbing conclusion. The storytelling skills he brought to our television screens prove quite transferable to the printed page, which is not to say "The Intercept" couldn't become a first-rate movie. It probably will.

Copyright 2013 Washington Post Writers Group

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THE EVE OF DESTRUCTION: How 1965 Transformed America

Jan 20, 2013 by Washington Post book reviewers

James T
Patterson
ISBN 978-0465013586
310 pages
$28.99

Reviewed by Jonathan Yardley

James T. Patterson takes his title from a song that was released in September 1965, "written primarily by P.J. Sloan, a nineteen-year-old admirer of (Bob) Dylan's 'Like a Rolling Stone,'" and performed on record by Barry McGuire. Just about everyone associated with "Eve of Destruction" is now forgotten, and the song itself hasn't much staying power, but Patterson finds it significant as evidence of a shift then taking place in American popular music, away from bubble-gum soft rock and toward songs of protest: "Its lyrics, accompanied by sounds of bombs going off, were bitter, blunt, and devastatingly bleak about contemporary events, predicting that all manner of terrible developments - war in Vietnam, racial tensions, nuclear weapons - were propelling the United States (and 'the whole crazy world') toward the apocalypse."

Things never got quite that bad (not yet, at least), but Patterson certainly is right to see "1965 - the year of military escalation, of Watts, of the splintering of the civil rights movement, and of mounting cultural change and polarization - as the time when America's social cohesion began to unravel and when the turbulent phenomenon that would be called 'the Sixties' broke into view." To be sure, "historical transformation does not arise out of nowhere on January 1 or end on December 31," any more than "the Sixties" were contained solely within the decade from which they took their name. But 1965 was clearly a turning point for the United States, beginning its transformation from "a nation at once hopeful and complacent, largely trusting its institutions and feeling assured about its future path, even as certain deprived groups, notably black people, were complaining angrily of exploitation," into one in which many people "seemed to have become considerably less optimistic about the future than they had been a year earlier."

Patterson, emeritus professor of history at Brown University, has been down this road before, in his deservedly well-regarded "Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974" (1997), a volume in the similarly well-regarded Oxford History of the United States. "The Eve of Destruction," though obviously it deals with a small part of the territory covered in that volume, is by no means merely a rehash. My hunch (and it is nothing more than that) is that upon reflection Patterson came to see that the events of 1965 needed to be discussed at greater length and their significance analyzed more deeply. This is what he has done in "The Eve of Destruction."

As 1965 began, the United States seemed to be, as Lyndon Johnson said near the end of 1964, living in "the most hopeful times in all the years since Christ was born in Bethlehem." Typical Johnsonian exaggeration, to be sure, but the economy was booming, and the overwhelmingly Democratic Congress that had been swept into office on LBJ's coattails in 1964 stood ready to enact his massive "Great Society" legislative program, presumably extending the benefits of prosperity to many more Americans and lifting the burdens of discrimination from those who labored under them. As one who had turned 25 in the fall of 1964, I was old enough to be beginning a career and a family, young enough to be filled with optimism undiminished by hard, instructive experience. Like millions of others, I saw the dawning of the Age of Johnson as a great moment in American history and eagerly awaited all the wonderful things it was sure to bring.

Didn't quite work out that way, did it? Reading Patterson's chronicle, I am all too painfully put back in that terrible year, with all the shock and disenchantment it brought. Its central figure, both heroic and tragic, was Johnson, and though Patterson adds nothing of consequence to our understanding of him, he gets him down exactly right in a very short space - without, I am pleased to note, a scintilla of reference to or dependence on Robert Caro's bloated, wildly overpraised, multi-volume biography. Surely Johnson was the most complex, elusive and troubled man ever to occupy the Oval Office, which is saying something. He "yearned to be loved and honored by all," and his smashing victory over Barry Goldwater certainly pointed him in that direction, but he was "domineering, deceitful, and needy," and even though he also could be "charming, compassionate, sentimental, and openhearted," he was at heart compulsively secretive and a loutish bully who may have been "a consummate insider and wheeler-dealer as Senate [majority] leader" but never mastered the communicative and empathetic skills necessary for a successful presidency.

For all that, his heart was often in the right place. His "determination to effect transformative change" across the whole spectrum of American life arose from his own experiences as a poor boy in Texas, and his empathy for the downtrodden was genuine. But neither he nor his advisors nor his allies in Congress understood the incredible complexity of the problems they sought to remedy through the Great Society, with the result that from education to poverty to civil rights they built up a bureaucratic superstructure that not merely threatened to strangle their good intentions but also laid the groundwork for the conservative counterattack: "Was the growth of the federal government leading to bureaucratic deadlock and confusion, thereby calling into question the effectiveness of democratic government?" The appearance in October 1965 of a new journal, the Public Interest, made plain that serious people as well as political opportunists were asking that question:

"In a remarkably quick time, the journal succeeded in appealing to a number of well-educated readers, many of whom swelled the ranks of a 'neoconservative' movement, as it became called [sic]. Other readers of the journal included policymakers who, like the essayists, were coming to believe that the government was erecting a thicket of regulations, encumbrances, and torts that would baffle federal administrators and clog up the courts. More broadly, they wondered if LBJ and his liberal advisers possessed enough expertise to deal effectively with large and complex socioeconomic problems, such as poverty, inadequate schools, and racial discrimination, and whether the administration was promising more than the federal government - a maze of bureaucracies - could deliver. The success of the (BEGIN ITAL)Public Interest was a warning sign, one among many as of late 1965, that more conservative approaches to governing were gaining favor in the country."

In short, the Great Society was too much, too soon, too carelessly thought through. Add to that the disastrous turns the Vietnam War was taking late in 1965 - and LBJ's angry, secretive, duplicitous response to the war's critics - and you had a fail-safe recipe for political rancor and stalemate. More and more the country became divided between sharply hostile camps on the left and the right, while the "political center, slowly being squeezed, was one of the many stabilizing forces that were to lose strength in the [years] that followed." To lay at the feet of Lyndon Johnson all the blame for the governmental and political mess in which we now find ourselves obviously is unfair, and indeed Patterson is at pains to point out that, especially with regard to Vietnam, "the choices he had to make would have tormented any president," but actions do have consequences, and what took place in 1965 led fairly directly to the present crisis.

"The Eve of Destruction" should be read, then, as a cautionary tale about the dangers of hubris and, by no means incidentally, the dangers of misreading election returns as mandates. The election of 1964 probably was at least as much a rejection of Goldwater as an endorsement of Johnson, and the rapidity with which Johnson's poll numbers soon collapsed was evidence enough that the electorate can turn on a political leader with astonishing speed and vehemence. Johnson did see through to enactment the two great civil-rights laws of 1964 and '65, but the rest of his record should be seen as an object lesson in the price of vanity. Nineteen sixty-five was indeed a very bad year, and we're still counting its costs.

Jonathan Yardley can be reached at yardleyj@washpost.com.

Copyright 2013 Washington Post Writers Group

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HOW TO CREATE A MIND: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed

Ray Kurzweil
Viking
ISBN 978-0670025299
336 pages
$27.95

Reviewed by Simson Garfinkel

In January 1976, Ray Kurzweil introduced the Kurzweil Reading Machine, a breakthrough system that could photograph a book (with Kurzweil's flat-bed scanner), recognize the text (with Kurzweil's omnifont character recognition technology) and speak the text (with Kurzweil's speech synthesis software). Fifteen years later he struck gold again, this time a program that could turn natural speech into text. Today a descendant of that technology is Apple's voice-recognizing Siri. Clearly Kurzweil knows inventions: In 1999 President Clinton awarded him the National Medal of Technology.

These days, Kurzweil is better known as a futurist. Starting with his 1990 book, "The Age of Intelligent Machines," he has delivered books and lectures explaining artificial intelligence, predicting the development of computers that are smarter than humans, and dispensing diet and health advice so that his followers can live long enough to have their brains mapped and uploaded to some Great Computer in the Cloud. To quote the title of his 2005 book, our goal - realizable in 25 to 50 years - should be to "Live Long Enough to Live Forever."

Realizing these predictions requires that science actually deliver a computer that can think. That's the premise that Kurzweil sets out to prove in his latest effort, "How to Create a Mind." He argues that the brain's fundamental building block for intelligence has been discovered by neuroscientists, that the algorithm for intelligence has both been observed in nature and independently invented by artificial intelligence researchers, and that the steady progress of Moore's Law will produce a computer fast enough to simulate an entire human brain by 2020. That wish is ultimately an appeal for a continuation of technological progress - humanity should create an intelligent machine unless something unforeseen stops us from doing so.

Kurzweil is at his best when he presents the reader with his "thought experiments on thinking." For example, he asks you, the reader, to recite the alphabet. Next he suggests that you recite the alphabet backward. Most people can easily do the first but have a hard time with the second. This proves, he writes, that memories are stored as sequences of patterns that can be accessed only in the order in which they are remembered. Kurzweil presents similar experiments that he claims establish that knowledge is stored in the brain as a series of hierarchical patterns, and that much of what we call "thinking" is really just pattern-matching and pattern-synthesizing.

Of course, these simple thought experiments don't really prove anything, but they are entertaining. The next two chapters present Kurzweil's misnamed "Pattern Recognition Theory of Mind (PRTM)" and delve into the anatomy of the human brain. PRTM is not a theory because it can't be tested. For example, Kurzweil argues that neuroplacticity, the ability of one part of the brain to take on the functions of another that's damaged, implies that different parts of the brain must be using "essentially the same algorithm" to perform their computations. He then cites some recent neurological research to argue that this algorithm must be running on some kind of neural "module," which he says consists of about 100 neurons, and that there are roughly 300 million of these modules in each of our brains. That's too big a conceptual jump for many of Kurzweil's detractors, who say that the brain is likely to have many more secrets and algorithms than the ones that Kurzweil describes. Over the next three decades we'll see who is right.

Later chapters discuss scientists who are working to simulate a brain, briefly retell the history of computer science, and present critiques of artificial intelligence from some of the field's greatest detractors. It's an eclectic collection, perhaps better suited to a dinner party or a TED talk than a scholarly effort; it's also a bit disorganized. The arguments on the nature of consciousness are interesting, although Kurzweil has presented many of them before. His recipe for creating a mind, then, is to build something that can learn and then give it stuff to learn. That, after all, is what parents do when they conceive and raise children. But this is not "the secret of human thought" that Kurzweil promises in the book's subtitle.

Sadly, Kurzweil's in-book autobiography, repeated mention of his company's products, and snipes at his detractors come off as blatant self-promotion. This book would have benefited from a strong edit - perhaps in a few years there will be a program that Kurzweil trusts to critique his work. As it stands, much of the warmth and humanitarianism that are so evident in his talks are lost in this written volume.

Simson Garfinkel writes and researches information technology; he is the author of 14 books, including "Architects of the Information Society: Thirty-Five Years of the Laboratory for Computer Science at MIT."

Copyright 2013 Washington Post Writers Group

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A writer on the trail of presidents' assassins

Jan 20, 2013 by Washington Post book reviewers

ISBN NA

Reviewed by Carole Burns

An unsolved mystery surrounding the assassination of Abraham Lincoln prompted the idea for "The Fifth Assassin" (Grand Central, $27.99). Brad Meltzer, the best-selling crime novelist and host of the History Channel's "Decoded," spoke about his new thriller by phone from his home in Florida.

(BEGIN ITAL)How did you come up with the premise for "The Fifth Assassin"?

Everyone knows about when Abraham Lincoln was killed. They can tell you what John Wilkes Booth had in his wallet, and what kind of drink he had at the bar next door to Ford's Theatre. The only detail not known to history is how Booth got past the White House valet. He very famously handed the valet a card. To this day, no one knows what was on that card. Some people say it was a calling card; some say it was a playing card, which once were used as calling cards. I loved that idea that there was this secret, mysterious card that somehow altered the history of the United States. When I went to the Museum of Health and Medicine to do research, they handed me a little leather square and said, "It's the tattoo of Charles Guiteau, President Garfield's assassin." And I realized that what I was holding was not leather: It was someone's skin. And in the corner of the tattoo was a red diamond. My brain immediately went to this mysterious card that John Wilkes Booth famously had. As a thriller writer, I started finding playing card connections: What if all these assassins were somehow working together, were part of a larger plan? Finally, I had my link.

(BEGIN ITAL)Are you a conspiracy theorist?(END ITAL)

I do not believe the government sits around and lies to us. (BEGIN ITAL)People (END ITAL)lie. And they tend to lie for very human and self-protective reasons. History, to me, is a giant game of telephone. Our job is to find the first whisper. People want to see conspiracies, but the scariest story of all is the true story.

(BEGIN ITAL)Are the presidential assassinations depicted with historical accuracy in your novel? (END ITAL)

I spent two years doing the research. I surrounded myself with presidential death. I'm like the Harold and Maude of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. When you see Leon Czolgosz folding his handkerchief over and over on his hand to cover the gun as he goes to shake President McKinley's hand, that's real. The nice part about writing a thriller about the four men who have killed presidents is that you don't have to come up with the crazy. They are so crazy on their own.

(BEGIN ITAL)Of the many artifacts you combed through for this story, which was your favorite?(END ITAL)

One of my favorites - I actually pulled it from the book - is a letter from a little girl to Abraham Lincoln telling him that if he grew a beard, he'd win the presidency. And he wound up growing the beard, and he wins. The National Archives has a letter she then writes to him asking for a job. And he basically says, "No." And I thought: "My gosh, man, the girl gave you the beard. Give her a job!"

(BEGIN ITAL)How much did writing comic books influence your writing of political and legal thrillers? (END ITAL)

Whether it's George Washington or Superman or Abraham Lincoln, to me they are all part of American mythology. Their stories persist because they reveal something about us.

(BEGIN ITAL)Your characters are very meticulous, and a little nerdy - especially the fictional archivist Beecher White, who also was featured in your previous novel, "The Inner Circle." Are they like you?(END ITAL)

You officially just called me a nerd. Hey, I can't help it! I'm a guy who spent four years studying historical details about the deaths of presidents. Of course I'm a nerd. I'm obsessed with history and always have been. I write comic books for a living! I out-nerd anyone in that alone.

Carole Burns, editor of "Off the Page: Writers Talk About Beginnings, Endings, and Everything in Between," teaches creative writing at Cardiff Metropolitan University in Wales.

Copyright 2013 Washington Post Writers Group

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A CAUSE GREATER THAN SELF: The Journey of Captain Michael J. Daly, World War II Medal of Honor Recipient

Jan 20, 2013 by Washington Post book reviewers

Stephen J
Ochs
ISBN 978-1603447836
271 pages
$42.50

Reviewed by Bing West

This is a classic tale about how the values of the "one percent" generation shaped military leadership during World War II. After he graduated from Georgetown Prep, Michael Daly's insouciant willfulness caused his dismissal from both Princeton and West Point; he seemed spoiled and wealthy enough not to care. Yet rather than disappoint his family, he volunteered for the Army infantry and fought splendidly from the time of the 1944 Normandy invasion until he was gravely wounded as the war ended.

Stephen J. Ochs, who teaches history at Georgetown Prep, has interwoven Daly's career with the rise of his Irish Catholic-family and the U.S. Army's implacable drive across France and Germany. Throughout the narrative, Daly's tactical brilliance in leading a squad, a platoon and a company shine through. His repeated acts of valor rivaled those of the much-decorated Audie Murphy. After the war, though, Murphy became a moody loner. In contrast, Daly took on an ever-expanding role as a volunteer at St. Vincent's Hospital in Bridgeport, Conn., tending to the indigent and the dying.

His daughter summed up Michael Daly's life by calling war "the one time in life when you are willing to sacrifice everything for the guy alongside of you. ... You had a cause greater than yourself."

Bing West can be reached at bookworld@washpost.com.

Copyright 2013 Washington Post Writers Group

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Weekend picks for book lovers

'The Entertainer: Movies, Magic and My Father's Twentieth Century' by Margaret Talbot

Margaret Talbot writes a warm memoir of her actor father'The Black Box' may be best Michael Connelly yetKeith Richards is a fan of 'Me and the Devil'

What should you read this weekend? USA TODAY's picks for book lovers include an engaging portrait of character actor Lyle Talbot by his daughter, and Michael Connelly's hot new Harry Bosch thriller.

The Entertainer by Margaret Talbot; Riverhead, 432 pp.; non-fiction

New Yorker writer Margaret Talbot has written a unique memoir of her late father, character actor Lyle Talbot, using him as a symbol to explore the rise of mass entertainment in the 20th century and the cult of personality.

It's a fascinating social history of America, and an endearing portrait of her dad, who was best known as the affable next-door neighbor on the popular Ozzie and Harriet TV series in the 1950s and '60s.

At the same time, The Entertainer is a warm father/daughter story.

Lyle Talbot (1902-1996), although good-looking and charming, lacked the essential charisma to be a movie star. But he didn't care. He knew his strengths and limitations as an actor and was happy just to be working regularly during the Depression.

USA TODAY says *** out of four. "Thoughtful and well-researched."

The Black Box by Michael Connolly; Little, Brown, 400 pp.; fiction

In this 18th in a 20-year-old series starring L.A.P.D. detective Harry Bosch, Harry hunts down the killer of a Danish journalist dumped in an L.A. alley in 1992.

USA TODAY says ****. "Could be the best (Connelly) yet."

Me and the Devil by Nick Tosches; Little, Brown, 387 pp.; fiction

An aging, cynical writer named Nick narrates this graphically sexual tale of depraved darkness in the lineage of Henry Miller and William F. Burroughs.

USA TODAY says ***. "Disturbing yet compelling …brilliantly bizarre."

Dead Asleep by Jamie Freveletti; Harper, 403 pp.; fiction

In this fourth in the Emma Calridge series, set on a Caribbean island, the biochemist struggles to solve the the mystery of why islanders are falling into a paralyzing sleep from which they can't wake up.

USA TODAY says ***. "A wonderfully entertaining bit of escapism."

38 Nooses: Lincoln, Little Crow, and the Beginning of the Frontier's End by Scott W. Berg; Pantheon, 309 pp.; non-fiction

With Lincoln a hit at the movies, this history examines a little-known 1862 uprising of Dakota warriors impoverished by decades of broken treaties, and the president's role in the crisis.

USA TODAY says *** ½ out of four. Berg "crafts a heady narrative from his extensive research …an impressive new history."

Contibuting reviewers: Bill Desowitz, Carol Memmott, Don Oldenburg and Matt Damsker

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New Voices: Lisa O'Donnell, from Scotland via L.A.

Lisa O'Donnell, author of 'Death of Bees.' (Photo: Vanessa Stump)

Novel features two abused but resilient sistersFormer screenwriter uses three alternating narratorsInspired by scene in East L.A., but set in Glasgow

The book: Lisa O'Donnell's debut novel The Death of Bees (Harper, 309 pp., on sale Jan. 2), set in Glasgow, Scotland, concerns two neglected, abused but resilient sisters, 15 and 12, who, after the deaths of their drug-dealing parents, hide their bodies in the backyard.

Why it's notable: After rave reviews in Britain, it's a Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers pick and an Indie Next Great Reads selection.

Memorable lines: "Today is Christmas Eve. Today is my birthday. Today I am fifteen. Today I buried my parents in the backyard. Neither of them were beloved."

The author:

Quick bio: O'Donnell, 40, grew up on the "wee isle" of Bute in the Fifth of Clyde, Scotland, graduated from Glasgow Caledonian University, worked in marketing, and in 2000, won the Orange Screenwriting Prize for The Wedding Gift, a quirky gangster story which was optioned but not produced. Divorced, she lives in Los Angeles with her son, 8, and daughter, 4.

Inspiration: In East L.A., she spotted a young girl pushing a stroller with a baby in itand began thinking about "kids who have to raise themselves or raise their younger siblings."

On using three narrators (the two sisters and an elderly neighbor): "That comes from my screenwriting experience. I've been told I'm good at dialogue. I hear voices in my head."

If she, like Marnie, the novel's older sister, ever buried her sorrows in algebra: "I used to bury my sorrows in books. But I wanted Marnie to be more intelligent than I was."

Is Scotland is "always waddling about in the muds of yesterday," as one of her characters says? "Yes. I hope this doesn't get me in trouble, but in a place where there's not many jobs they keep talking about teaching Gaelic which hardly anyone speaks anymore."

What's next: Another novel, Closed Doors, set in Rothesay, her Scottish hometown, "where everyone knows everything about everyone, but where a secret has repercussions for everyone who's kept it."

Bob Minzesheimer has written about books and authors since 1997 - as close to a dream job as any job can be for someone who loves to read. A former political reporter and editor, he was president of his local library board.

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2 new books explore Charles Dickens' messy private life

'Charles Dickens in Love' by Robert Garnett

Charles Dickens (Photo: NONE AP)

The author's family life lacked the warmth of his 'A Christmas Carol'He was talented and energetic but secretive, complicated and conflictedThere are roots to the desire and longing as well as the misery and unhappiness found in Dickens' work

As we're reminded every year at the time, no other novel has been as widely adapted as Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol — on stage, in film and TV, more than 250 versions and counting.

And no other author continues to fascinate other writers as much as the secretive Dickens, whose private life lacked the heartwarming, redemptive happy ending of his classic Christmas tale.

As part of the latest burst of books marking his bicentennial — Dickens was born in 1812 — are two books that explore not just his extraordinary talent and energy but also his complicated and conflicted personal life:

Charles Dickens in Love

Charles Dickens in Love ( * * ½ out of four) by Robert T. Garnett is the more ambitious and academic of the pair. It builds on Claire Tomalin's groundbreaking 1992 book, The Invisible Woman, which strongly made the case that actress Ellen "Nelly" Ternan was Dickens' mistress for the last 14 years of his life. (When they met, she was 18, he was 45. He died at 59.)

Garnett, an English professor at Gettysburg College who has written for The Dickens Quarterly, offers a detailed look at three women whom Dickens loved. Anyone who knows anything about Dickens will not be surprised that none of the three was Dickens wife, Catherine, who gave birth to their 10 children.

Yes, 10, plus at least two miscarriages. Dickens himself famously claimed to have raised "the largest family ever known with the smallest disposition to do anything for themselves."

Beyond Dickens' passionate romance with Ternan — and the circumstantial evidence they had a son who died within months — Garnett explores Dickens' infatuation with two other women.

First came Maria Beadnell — "no doubt vain and flirtatious," Garnett writes — who jilted Dickens two years before he met and married Catherine Hogarth. "With Maria, Dickens had known ecstasy and suffered despair; with Catherine, he avoided risk by lowering his expectations."

Garnett concludes that Dickens' unrequited love taught him crucial lessons: "how passionately he could love and how hard he could work."

Beadnell's rejection, Garnett writes, served as a painful lesson about love — "its devotion, desire, longing and absorption, as well as misery, unhappiness, and desire" — that would enrich Dickens' fiction.

The second woman was Mary Hogarth, his wife's younger sister, who died at 17 of a heart attack in Dickens' arms. All of Dickens fictional deathbeds, Garnett writes, "are indebted to the poignant memory of Mary quietly slipping away in his arms."

Garnett finds "no evidence of any dangerous attraction, much less impropriety" between Dickens and his sister-in-law. Instead, she served as his "virgin icon."

Garnett is an impressive literary detective who distinguishes between what's known and what's speculation. But as a writer, he's not the best stylist, unless you like flourishes such as "the river of life had carried Dickens far downstream" or references to "the labyrinth of Eros."

As a scholar, he's a bit of a showoff — which may work better in the classroom than writing for a general audience.

Great Expectations: The Sons and Daughters of Charles Dickens

Great Expectations: The Sons and Daughters of Charles Dickens ( * * * ) by Robert Gottlieb is more accessible and conversational. It's an exploration of Dickens' tenuous role as a father and what happened to his children.

Not all were failures, although none lived up to their father's expectations (hence the title). Gottlieb, an accomplished book editor, is bemused by how Dickens not only held his wife solely responsible for what he perceived as his children's failings but also managed to ignore his own involvement in all her pregnancies.

"It's always she who's responsible — his sexual requirements seemed to have nothing to do with it; you would think he was a father only because she made him into one," Gottlieb writes.

A problem with the book is that none of Dickens' children — from Kate, a successful painter, to Plorn, a drunk and a gambler who died in debt in Australia — would merit much attention if it weren't for their father. That said, it's a pleasure to read Gottlieb even when he's merely musing.

Gottlieb finds "almost no overlap" between Dickens' fictional children — the orphaned Oliver Twist, the tragic Smike in Nicholas Nickleby, or the pathetic Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop — and his real kids.

Dickens' son Charley, who became a journalist, wrote that "the children of his brain were much more real to him at times than we were."

To which Gottlieb can add only questions: "Were his versions of his actual children — the feckless sons, the fond daughters — simply further inventions? To them he was compellingly real, but what were they to him?"

Bob Minzesheimer has written about books and authors since 1997 - as close to a dream job as any job can be for someone who loves to read. A former political reporter and editor, he was president of his local library board.

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Book Buzz: Bill O'Reilly's secret, 'The Giver' on big screen

Bill O'Reilly found success this year with his books 'Killing Kennedy' and 'Killing Lincoln.' (Photo: Kathy Willens, AP)

Here's a look at what's buzzing in the book world today:

New and noteworthy: Ready to relax this holiday week? USA TODAY books editor Jocelyn McClurg picks three new reads for every taste, including The Intercept, a thriller by Law & Order creator Dick Wolf, and Empress of Fashion, a biography of legendary editor Diana Vreeland.

Weekend reviews: Elysa Gardner writes that Philip Sington's new novel, The Valley of Unknowing, is "as accessible as it is intricate," giving it 3 stars out of four. And Bob Minzesheimer writes that A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II is "a Christmas story worth retelling" (3 stars).

What to read: Jocelyn McClurg appears on Salon to discuss USA TODAY's 10 books we loved reading and reveals the book that "seems to best encapsulate America in 2012."

O'Reilly's factor: Bill O'Reilly wrote two best-selling books this year, Killing Kennedy and Killing Lincoln, now No. 3 and No. 8 respectively on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list. The New York Times profiles the Fox News host, exploring his literary success and why his secret is to "write for the ear, not for the eye." Watch a USA TODAY video with O'Reilly and read more about his research for Killing Kennedy from Bob Minzesheimer.

'The Giver' on screen: Before The Hunger Games popularized the young adult dystopian genre, Lois Lowry found fame with her 1994 Newbery Medal-winning novel The Giver. GalleyCat reports Lowry has confirmed that a film is "finally on the road," and plans are for Jeff Bridges to star.

Pulitzer-worthy advice:Middlesex author Jeffrey Eugenides quotes his good friend Christopher Hitchens when addressing the 2012 Whiting Award winners: "A serious person should try to write posthumously," not conforming to the fashion of the time. An adaptation of his speech about achieving success as a writer is posted at The New Yorker.

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Book Buzz: End-of-the-world reads, crowd-sourced romances

Tom Cruise in a scene from 'Jack Reacher,' based on Lee Child's character. Cruise plays a former military cop investigating a sniper case. (Photo: Karen Ballard AP)

Here's a look at what's buzzing in the book world today:

Mayan madess: Read like today's the end of the world with Flavorpill's list of required reading.

E-Sparks: Nicholas Sparks is jumping into the world of enhanced e-books with the movie tie-in edition of Safe Haven, which merges the original book with extras from the movie starring Julianne Hough and Josh Duhamel.

'Tis the season: Did you catch USA TODAY's Craig Wilson's five fun facts about Christmas trees yesterday? Keep the holiday spirit going by flipping through GalleyCat's gallery of book Christmas trees submitted by readers.

Bookish trends: The New York Times reports that the e-reader market is shrinking faster than predicted because of the dominance of tablets, while NPR tackles the story of self-publishing, a once-scorned practice that has gained significant legitimacy this past year. And for holiday book sales, Publishers Weekly explains that while there have been gains since Thanksgiving, the upward trend is slower than in 2011.

Swoon-worthy: Macmillan Children's has announced the launch of Swoon Reads, a crowd-sourced romance imprint targeted to teens, launching in 2014. The imprint "will be a community, one whose members are included in every step of the publishing process, from the initial discovery of the manuscript to providing edit notes, designing covers, and marketing," the release explains.

Child's play: Quite a few fans are unimpressed by Tom Cruise's portrayal of Lee Child's Jack Reacher in the movie adaptation.

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TV's Dick Wolf tweaks approach for novel 'Intercept'

Dick Wolf, the creator of the Emmy-winning 'Law & Order' franchise is out with his first novel, 'Intercept.' (Photo: William Morrow)

The producer has been intrigued by domestic terrorism ever since scrubbing a miniseries in the aftermath of 9/11His first novel will be published Dec. 26Wolf is also working on two new series for NBC, plus projects for USA and TNT

In September 2001, television producer Dick Wolf (Miami Vice, Law & Order) was weeks away from starting principal photography on a miniseries about a terrorist attack on New York City. When the Twin Towers fell, he canceled the project, but it never curbed his craving to tell a story wrapped in domestic terrorism.

Eleven years later, he's releasing his debut novel, The Intercept (William Morrow, 387 pp., out Wednesday), about a detective's single-minded determination to thwart a New York City bombing.

The miniseries would have opened at an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. "It was a class of 10-year-olds with their fists raised, saying 'God is great' and 'Death to America,' " says Wolf in a phone interview from his office in Universal City. Calif. "The older brother of one of them is on his way to America to become a great hero." He and three other young men, Wolf says, were to set off a bomb under Times Square, killing 3,500 people.

Then, 9/11 happened. "I remember talking to Barry Diller and saying, 'Thank God we weren't shooting this when this happened,' and he said, 'No, Dick, thank God it didn't air and then this happened.' "

The cover of Dick Wolf's novel 'The Intercept.' (Photo: William Morrow)

Wolf tells a different story in The Intercept, which kicks off with passengers and a flight attendant thwarting the hijacking of a commercial airliner.

The plot foilers are hailed as heroes and are feted for their bravery. New York celebrates dodging a bullet, but Jeremy Fisk, a detective in the NYPD's Intelligence Division, has a bad feeling. His gut tells him the hijacking may have been a diversion. Especially after one of the plane's passengers disappears after deplaning. What follows is a high-stakes cat-and-mouse game, as Fisk tries to stay one step ahead of what he believes is the actual terror plot against America.

Early reviews of the book have been positive. Kirkus Reviews writes "Storytelling pro Wolf knows how to ratchet up tension and sustain it until the end." Publishers Weekly notes "the stunning plot twists, graphic violence, and frantic pace of the novel are more reminiscent of a season of 24."

"Anybody who says writing is writing, it's not true," says Wolf, 66, about what it was like to write a novel. "The canvasses get completely different-sized. I've written features and those are sort of like big paintings and television episodes are slightly smaller paintings and novels are kind of like the Sistine Chapel ceiling. It's a much broader canvas. I don't know if it's a different skill level, just a different set of storytelling ability."

Wolf says he's learned a lot about story structure over the years "and hopefully the book reflects that. I hate to make it obvious, but the first 25 pages are really very similar to the teaser in a television show. You do learn after 1,300 hours of television that people like certain things. I'm not selling it as great literature but, hopefully, it's a great ride. That's what I set out to do."

As he researched the book, what Wolf learned about how terrorists are hunted in the real world didn't shock him. Rather, he says, "it was reassuring. Tens of thousands of phone calls are monitored on a daily basis."

Fisk, who Wolf says is "an amalgam of a lot of people I've met over the years," will be featured in another novel, to be published late next year. This time, the plot will center around narcoterrorism.

Wolf, who set his novel as well as the original Law & Order and two of its spinoffs in New York, has lived in California for 37 years. But New York, where he was born, "is much more my emotional home than California. I love living here, but New York never gets out of your blood."

In addition to Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, in its 14th season, and this year's debut drama Chicago Fire, Wolf is working on myriad other TV projects.

He's awaiting NBC's go-ahead on two new series: an American adaptation of the BBC miniseries Injustice, which starred James Purefoy as a high-powered defense attorney who kills a client, and The Church, about a family who discovers that the upstanding organization they belong to is really a cult.

Also in development are a project for USA about an insurance investigator and a docudrama for TNT about cracking cold cases

But right now it's all about promoting The Intercept. "You won't be disappointed," Wolf says.

I cover books and television for USA Today. Favorite books: mysteries and thrillers especially noir crime and police procedurals. Favorite shows: The Walking Dead, The Good Wife, Masterpiece Mystery, Downton Abbey.

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E.L. James is USA TODAY's author of the year

E.L. James, author of the 'Fifty Shades of Grey' phenomena, is USA TODAY's author of the year. (Photo: Michael Lionstar)

The three books in James' trilogy sold 35 million copies in the USA in 2012Other writers of erotic romance, such as Sylvia Day, are getting a boost now"I think women love a passionate love story," James tells USA TODAY

Back in January 2008, Steve Jobs famously observed, "The fact is that people don't read anymore."

Not quite.

Fast-forward to 2012, when an unknown Brit proved that Americans can be passionate, feverish, even obsessive readers — at least those with double X chromosomes.

Which is why E.L. James is USA TODAY's author of the year.

After being acquired by a U.S. publisher, James' erotic trilogy, Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed, sold 35 million copies in this country alone in 2012.

MORE: Q&A with 'Fifty Shades of Grey' author E.L. James

Adore it as a sizzling romance bravely probing the forbidden side of sadomasochistic desire or loathe it as demeaning anti-feminist tripe, but James' series has proven that the novel — whether in print or e-book pixels — remains a heavyweight in the boxing ring of popular entertainment.

"I think women love a passionate love story," James tells USA TODAY. "That's it. Fundamentally, that's what (the trilogy) is." The "mommy porn" label is "misogyny in its finest form. I just ignore it."

James' 'Fifty Shades of Grey' spent 21 weeks atop USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list.

James' breathless depiction of the journey by virginal Anastasia and bad-boy billionaire Christian Grey to the farther shores of kinky sex introduced a once-Puritan nation to "the red room of pain." The series also mastered USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list for much of the year. Fifty Shades of Grey, the first book, spent 21 weeks at No. 1.

The series turned the entire erotic-romance category from tepid to torrid. As 2012 ends, James reigns as the queen, but there's a growing court of ladies in waiting (among them Sylvia Day) ready to seize her NC-17 throne.

This time last year, James was a little-known London TV producer who went by her real name, Erika Leonard. Today, she's one of Barbara Walters' 10 most fascinating people of 2012.

Alas, for James' detractors, neither she nor erotic romance is going away. There's a Fifty Shades of Grey movie in the works, and the author is working on a new series.

"I am rewriting the first book I ever wrote," says James with calm assurance. "It's another sort of passionate love story."

Deirdre Donahue considers her job - writing about books authors for USA TODAY - to be an honor and privilege. Lit major ever immersed in a book. Platform and genre: irrelevant. Human craving for story - eternal.

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10 books we loved in 2012

10 best books of 2012

The main female character in 'Flight Behavior' is unforgettableAnd who can forget Amazing Amy, the psycho heroine of Gone Girl'The Patriarch' paints a surprising portrait of Joseph P. Kennedy

1. Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver (Harper, fiction)

You, too, will fall in love with Dellarobia Turnbow, the young Tennessee mother whose accidental encounter with millions of misguided Monarch butterflies sets her on her own flight to freedom.

Read USA TODAY's 4-star review.

2. Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel (Henry Holt, fiction)

The Man Booker-winning novelist brings alive Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII's ruthless low-born fixer, and the endlessly dramatic world of Tudor England in all its blood and glory.

Read USA TODAY's 4-star review.

3. Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama by Alison Bechdel (HMH, non-fiction)

The brilliant creator of Fun House, the best-selling 2006 graphic memoir about her father, turns her pen to her relationship with her mother in this fascinating illustrated book that probes feminism, psychology, therapy and Virginia Woolf.

Read USA TODAY's 3 1/2-star review.

4. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (Crown, fiction)

Nick Dunne and his "Amazing" wife Amy earn the crown of Psycho Couple of the Year in this entertaining yo-yo of a thriller that had everybody talking about the five-year itch.

Read USA TODAY's 3-star review.

5. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce (Random House, fiction)

Only stone-hearted readers will resist rooting for an unlikely hero, an emotionally numb retired sales rep, who decides to walk the length of England to see an old friend who's dying.

Read USA TODAY's 4-star review.

6. The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy by David Nasaw (The Penguin Press, non-fiction)

This compelling bio reveals that old Joe — disastrous diplomat, compulsive womanizer, adoring father — was the most complicated of all the Kennedys.

Read USA TODAY's 4-star review.

7. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (Dutton, fiction for ages 14 and up)

A pitch-perfect elegiac comedy about star-crossed teen lovers who meet at a support group in Indianapolis for kids with cancer.

Read USA TODAY's 4-star review.

8. What It Was by George Pelecanos (Reagan Arthur / Back Bay, fiction)

Vintage Pelecanos at his best as crazy Red "Fury" Jones goes on a killing spree in this thrill ride of a crime novel set in 1972 Washington, D.C.

Read USA TODAY's 3 1/2-star review.

9. Canada by Richard Ford (Ecco, fiction)

A triumph of voice as the narrator, a 65-year-old teacher, remembers how everything changed when he was 15 and his parents robbed a North Dakota bank.

Read USA TODAY's 4-star review.

10. Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo (Random House, non-fiction)

An unforgettable portrait of an impoverished neighborhood in Mumbai, courtesy of Boo's brilliant reporting, extraordinary language and psychological insights into human beings trapped in a poverty unimaginable to Americans.

Read USA TODAY's 3 1/2-star review.

Deirdre Donahue considers her job - writing about books authors for USA TODAY - to be an honor and privilege. Lit major ever immersed in a book. Platform and genre: irrelevant. Human craving for story - eternal.

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Book Buzz: Dickens' Christmas, 'Godfather' settlement

Marlon Brando stars as Don Vito Corleone in 'The Godfather.' Mario Puzo's estate has settled with Paramount over copyright infringement. (Photo: Getty Images)

Here's a look at what's buzzing in the book world today:

Dickens' Christmas: The day after Christmas, read reviews of two Dickensian books, Charles Dickens in Love by Robert T. Garnett and Great Expectations: The Sons and Daughters of Charles Dickens, by USA TODAY's Bob Minzesheimer.

Amazing reviews: Amazon is cracking down on suspicious user reviews of books after several cases of authors writing positive reviews of their own books or manipulating the reviews through social media campaigns.

'Godfather' settles: Paramount Pictures and the estate of Godfather creator Mario Puzo have reached a settlement in the case that argued the movie studio infringed copyright.

Teen read: Young blogger Tavi Gevinson writes about The Virgin Suicides and teen angst for NPR's book club, PG-13.

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