The Why Not 100

When we at Why Not Books were considering titles for the memoirs of the late Carolyn Goodman, mother of slain civil rights worker Andrew Goodman and a civil rights icon herself, we harkened back to a particular story she told:

When my youngest son David was seven years old, he came running home from school one day, breathless with excitement. In his hands he held a large piece of construction paper smothered in assorted colors, lines, shapes, and squiggles. In the eyes of a seven-year-old, it was a creation of unmatched brilliance, Monet and Degas and O’Keeffe all rolled into one. In fact, that’s quite literally what it looked like. With the flamboyance only a true artist can exude, David boomed into our Upper West Side apartment, raised his magnum opus, and proudly declared, “Mom, come here! Look at my mantelpiece!”

A masterpiece is essentially the product of another’s estimation. Someone else reviews your life’s work and pronounces judgment. But a mantelpiece is a personal statement of values and choices, your life’s work presented as a museum of the self… My life has been a work of art—a wondrous, colorful, tragic, flawed, intimate and epic work of art. This is my story. This is my mantelpiece.

So that’s what it became—MY MANTELPIECE: A Memoir of Survival and Social Justice.

Selecting a title for a well-known person’s autobiography or memoir can be a challenge. For some reason, iIf you’re an unknown with a remarkable story, it seems easier to choose evocative titles like Girl, Interrupted (Susanna Kaysen), The Color of Water (James McBride), or Reading Lolita in Tehran (Azar Nafisi). But when you’re a celebrity of some sort, it can be a bit trickier. And not always successful.

We at the Why Not 100 have ranked 69 of the more interesting choices through the years. Those at the top of the list are wonderful. Those at the bottom are wince-inducing. You be the judge where the line is drawn.

1.Me (Katherine Hepburn)

2.The Memoirs of an Amnesiac (Oscar Levant)

3.Long Walk to Freedom (Nelson Mandela)

4.I Can’t Wait Until Tomorrow, Cause I Get Better Looking Every Day (Joe Namath)

5.Kiss and Make-Up (Gene Simmons)

6.Last Words (George Carlin)

7.Up From Slavery (Booker T. Washington)

8.An Unseemly Man (Larry Flynt)

9.Born Standing Up (Steve Martin)

10.I’m Still Hungry (Carnie Wilson)

11.Wishful Drinking (Carrie Fisher)

12.The Bedwetter (Sarah Silverman)

13.Leading With My Chin (Jay Leno)

14.Getting It Through My Thick Skull (Mary Jo Buttafuoco)

15.Things I Did and Things I Think I Did (filmmaker Jean Negulesco)

16.I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou)

17.It Would Be So Nice If You Weren’t Here (Charles Grodin)

18.Open (Andre Agassi)

19.My Wicked Wicked Ways (Errol Flynn)

20.Living History (Hillary Clinton)

21.Then Again (Diane Keaton)

22.The Moon’s a Balloon (David Niven)

23.Everyone is Entitled to My Opinion (David Brinkley)

24.They Made a Monkee Out of Me (Davy Jones)

25.Flashing Before My Eyes (Dick Schaap)

26.Speak, Memory (Vladimir Nabokov)

27.Please Don’t Shoot My Dog, Mister (Jackie Cooper)

28.Out of Sync (Lance Bass)

29.Hitting Back (Wimbledon champ Andy Murray)

30.Me Moir (British comic Vic Reeves, aka Jim Moir)

31.The Measure of a Man (Sidney Poitier)

32.Happy Accidents (Jane Lynch)

33.Does the Noise in My Head Bother You (Steven Tyler)

34.The Kid Stays in the Picture (Robert Evans)

35.I Am Not Spock (Leonard Nimoy)

36.Most Talkative (Andy Cohen)

37.Dreams from My Father (Barack Obama)

38.This Time Together (Carol Burnett)

39.Dispatches from the Edge (Anderson Cooper)

40.Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I’ve Learned (Alan Alda)

41.Dirty Blonde (Courtney Love)

42.I, Shithead (punk rocker Joey Keithley)

43.Lou’s on First (Lou Costello)

44.Is Everyone Hanging Out With Me? (Mindy Kaling)

45.Bossypants (Tina Fey)

46.Landing on My Feet (Kerri Strug)

47.Surprised by Joy (C.S. Lewis)

48.A Book (Desi Arnaz)

49.Anorther Book (Desi Arnaz)

50.Belly Laughs (pregnant Jenny McCarthy)

51.Larger Than Life (Eddie Large)

52.It’s All About a Ball (Alan Ball)

53.Let’s Talk About Pep (Sandy “Pepa” Denton)

54.The Stone Cold Truth (Stone Cold Steve Austin)

55.All You Need is Ears (Beatles producer George Martin)

56.It’s Not About the Bike (Lance Armstrong)

57.Winking at Life (Wink Martindale)

58.Lettin’ It All Hang Out (RuPaul)

59.Losing My Virginity (Richard Branson)

60.Back Stage With the Original Hollywood Square (Peter Marshall)

61.Nerd Do Well (Simon Pegg)

62.Hitch-22 (Christopher Hitchens)

63.My Booky Wook (Russell Brand)

64.sTORI Telling (Tori Spelling)

65.The Hardest (Working) Man in Showbiz (Ron Jeremy)

66.Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea (Chelsea Handler)

67.Just Farr Fun (Jamie Farr)

68.Mountain, Get Out of My Way (Montel Williams)

69.Don’t Hassel the Hoff (David Hasselhoff)

You can love Shel Silverstein because he was a Renaissance Man, yet a Captain of the Unpretentious—singer-songwriter, screenwriter, playwright, cartoonist, iconic children’s author. You can love him because of his range. He wrote iconic songs like “A Boy Named Sue” (he won a 1970 Grammy) and iconic books like The Giving Tree. He created illustrated travel journals for Playboy about everything from a baseball training camp to a nudist colony, from Haight-Ashbury to Fire Island, from Spain to Switzerland (“I’ll give them 15 more minutes, and if nobody yodels, I’m going back to the hotel.”)

You can love him because he said things like this: "When I was a kid… I would much rather have been a good baseball player or a hit with the girls, but I couldn't play ball. I couldn't dance. Luckily, the girls didn't want me. Not much I could do about that. So I started to draw and to write… By the time I got to where I was attracting girls, I was already into work, and it was more important to me. Not that I wouldn't rather make love, but the work has become a habit."

You can love him because he called himself Uncle Shelby, even those his real name was Sheldon. You can love him because he was a survivor. He was a Korean War veteran who espoused peace. He was a poet who made children smile around the world—with illustrated poetry collections like Where the Sidewalk Ends, A Light in the Attic, Falling Up, and Every Thing On It—even though he himself lost a daughter to a cerebral aneurysm when she was 11.

It may be that only Dr. Seuss combined whimsy and profundity—imagination and insight—as deftly as Silverstein did. And Silverstein could do it in only a few lines. So we at the Why Not 100 have chosen our 46 favorite Shel Silverstein mini-masterpieces, starting with the perfect one:

1.INVITATION (Where the Sidewalk Ends)

If you are a dreamer, come in,
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer…
If you’re a pretender, come sit by my fire
For we have some flax-golden tales to spin.
Come in!
Come in!

2.HOW MANY, HOW MUCH (A Light in the Attic)

How many slams in an old screen door?
Depends how loud you shut it.
How many slices in a bread?
Depends how thin you cut it.
How much good inside a day?
Depends how good you live ‘em.
How much love inside a friend?
Depends how much you give ‘em.

3.LISTEN TO THE MUSTN’TS (Where the Sidewalk Ends)

Listen to the MUSTN’TS, child,
Listen to the DON’TS
Listen to the SHOULDN’TS
The IMPOSSIBLES, the WON’TS
Listen to the NEVER HAVES
Then lost close to me—
Anything can happen, child,
ANYTHING can be.

4.MASKS (Every Thing On It)

She had blue skin.
And so did he.
He kept it hid
And so did she.
They searched for blue
Their whole life through,
Then passed right by—
And never knew.

5.PANCAKE? (Where the Sidewalk Ends)

Who wants a pancake,
Sweet and piping hot?
Good little Grace looks up and says,
“I’ll take the one on top.”
Who else wants a pancake,
Fresh off the griddle?
Terrible Theresa smiles and says,
“I’ll take the one in the middle.”

6.SNOWBALL (Falling Up)

I made myself a snowball
As perfect as could be.
I thought I’d keep it as a pet
And let it sleep with me.
I made it some pajamas
And a pillow for its head.
Then last night it ran away,
But first—it wet the bed.

7.SOMETHING MISSING (A Light in the Attic)

I remember I put on my socks,
I remember I put on my shoes.
I remember I put on my tie
That was printed
In beautiful purples and blues.
I remember I put on my coat,
To look perfectly grand at the dance,
Yet I feel there is something
I may have forgot—
What is it? What is it?...

8.UNDERFACE (Every Thing On It)

Underneath my outside face
There’s a face that none can see.
A little less smiley,
A little less sure,
But a whole lot more like me.

9.I WON’T HATCH (Where the Sidewalk Ends)

Oh I am a chicken who lives in an egg,
But I will not hatch, I will not hatch.
The hens they all cackle, the roosters all beg,
But I will not hatch, I will not hatch.
For I hear all the talk of pollution and war
As the people all shout and the airplanes roar,
So I’m staying in here where it’s safe and it’s warm,
And I WILL NOT HATCH!

10.PUT SOMETHING IN (A Light in the Attic)

Draw a crazy picture,
Write a nutty poem,
Sing a mumble-gumble song,
Whistle through your comb.
Do a loony-goony dance
‘Cross the kitchen floor,
Put something silly in the world
That ain’t been there before.

11.YESEES AND NOEES (Every Thing On It)

The Yesees said yes to anything
That anyone suggested.
The Noees said no to everything
Unless it was proven and tested.
So the Yesees all died of much too much
And the Noees all died of fright,
But somehow I think the Thinkforyourselfees
All came out all right.

12.HUG O’WAR (Where the Sidewalk Ends)

I will not play tug o’ war.
I’d rather play hug o’ war,
Where everyone hugs
Instead of tugs,
Where everyone giggles
And rolls on the rug,
Where everyone kisses,
And everyone grins,
And everyone cuddles,
And everyone wins.

13.RIDICULOUS ROSE (Where the Sidewalk Ends)

Her mama said, “Don’t eat with your fingers.”
“OK,” said Ridiculous Rose,
So she ate with her toes.

14.MONSTERS I’VE MET (A Light in the Attic)

I met a ghost, but he didn’t want my head,
He only wanted to know the way to Denver.
I met a devil, but he didn’t want my soul,
He only wanted to borrow my bike awhile.
I met a vampire, but he didn’t want my blood,
He only wanted to nickels for a dime.
I keep meeting all the right people—
At all the wrong times.

15.EARLY BIRD (Where the Sidewalk Ends)

Oh, if you’re a bird, be an early bird
And catch the worm for your breakfast plate.
If you’re a bird, be an early bird—
But if you’re a worm, sleep late.

16.JAKE SAYS (Every Thing On It)

Yes, I'm adopted.
My folks were not blessed
With me in the usual way.
But they picked me,
They chose me
From all the rest,
Which is lots more than most kids can say.

17.COLORS (Where the Sidewalk Ends)

My skin is kind of sort of brownish
Pinkish yellowish white.
My eyes are grayish blueish green,
But I’m told they look orange in the night.
My hair is reddish blondish brown,
But it’s silver when it’s wet.
And all the colors I am inside
Have not been invented yet.

18.MAGIC (Where the Sidewalk Ends)

Sandra’s seen a leprechaun,
Eddie touched a troll,
Laurie danced with witches once,
Charlie found some goblins’ gold.
Donald heard a mermaid sing,
Susy spied an elf,
But all the magic I have known
I’ve had to make myself.

19.LITTLE PIG’S TREAT (Falling Up)

Said the pig to his pop,
“There’s the candy shop.
Oh, please let’s go inside.
And I promise I won’t
Make a kid of myself
If you give me a people-back ride.”

20.FALLING UP (Falling Up)

I tripped on my shoelace
And I fell up—
Up to the roof tops,
Up over the town,
Up past the tree tops,
Up over the mountains,
Up where the colors
Blend into the sounds.
But it got me so dizzy
When I looked around,
I got sick to my stomach
And I threw down.

21.FISH? (Where the Sidewalk Ends)

The little fish eats the tiny fish,
The big fish eats the little fish—
So only the biggest fish gets fat.
Do you know any folks like that?

22.OURCHESTRA (Where the Sidewalk Ends)

So you haven’t got a drum, just beat your belly.
So I haven’t got a horn—I’ll play my nose.
So we haven’t any cymbals—
We’ll just slap our hands together,
And though there may be orchestras
That sound a little better
With their fancy shiny instruments
That cost an awful lot—
Hey, we’re making music twice as good
By playing what we’ve got!

23.MORGAN’S CURSE (Falling Up)

Followin’ the trail on the old treasure map,
I came to the spot that said, “Dig right here.”
And four feet down my spade struck wood
Just where the map said a chest would appear.
But carved in the side were written these words:
“A curse upon he who disturbs this gold.”
Signed, Morgan the Pirate, Scourge of the Seas.
I read these words and my blood ran cold.
So here I set upon untold wealth
Tryin’ to figure which is worse:
How much do I need this gold?
And how much do I need this curse?

24.THE EDGE OF THE WORLD (Where the Sidewalk Ends)

Columbus said the world is round?
Don’t you believe a word of that.
For I’ve been down to the edge of the world,
Sat on the edge where the wild wind whirled,
Peeked over the ledge where the blue smoke curls,
And I can tell you, boys and girls,
The world is FLAT!

25.THE PLANET OF MARS (Where the Sidewalk Ends)

On the planet of Mars
They have clothes just like ours,
And they have the same shoes and same laces,
And they have the same charms and same graces,
And they have the same heads and same faces…
But not in the
Very same
Places.

26.IT’S DARK IN HERE (Where the Sidewalk Ends)

I am writing these poems
From inside a lion,
And it’s rather dark in here.
So please excuse the handwriting
Which may not be too clear.
But this afternoon by the lion’s cage
I’m afraid I got too near.
And I’m writing these lines
From inside a lion,
And it’s rather dark in here.

27.COMPLAININ’ JACK (Falling Up)

This morning my old jack-in-the-box
Popped out—and wouldn’t get back-in-the-box.
He cried, “Hey, there’s a tack-in-the-box,
And it’s cutting me through and through.”

“There also is a crack-in-the-box,
And I never find a smack-in-the-box,
And sometimes I hear a quack-in-the-box,
‘Cause a duck lives in here, too.”

Complain, complain is all he did—
I finally had to close the lid.

28.STONE AIRPLANE (Falling Up)

I made an airplane out of stone…
I always did like staying home.

29.INVENTION (Where the Sidewalk Ends)

I’ve done it, I’ve done it!
Guess what I’ve done!
Invented a light that plugs into the sun.
The sun is bright enough,
The bulb is strong enough,
But, oh, there’s only one thing wrong…

The cord ain’t long enough.

30.WHO (Where the Sidewalk Ends)

Who can kick a football
From here out to Afghanistan?
I can!
Who fought tigers in the street
While all the policemen ran and hid?
I did!
Who will fly and have X-ray eyes—
And be known as the man no bullet can kill?
I will!
Who can sit and tell lies all night?
I might!

31.THE FOURTH (Where the Sidewalk Ends)

Oh
CRASH!
my
BASH!
it’s
BANG
the
ZANG!
Fourth
WHOOSH!
of
BAROOM!
July
WHEW!

32.I MUST REMEMBER (Where the Sidewalk Ends)

I must remember…
Turkey on Thanksgiving,
Pudding on Christmas,
Eggs on Easter,
Chicken on Sunday,
Fish on Friday,
Leftovers, Monday,
But ah, me—I’m such a dunce.
I went and ate them all at once.

33.SCALE (Falling Up)

If I could only see the scale,
I’m sure that it would state
That I’ve lost ounces… maybe pounds
Or even tons of weight.
“You’d better eat some pancakes—
You’re skinny as a rail.”
I’m sure that’s what the scale would say…
If I could see the scale.

34.THE ACROBATS (Where the Sidewalk Ends)

I’ll swing
By my ankles,
She’ll cling
To your knees
As you hang
By your nose
From a high-up
Trapeze.
But just one thing, please,
Don’t sneeze.

35.A LIGHT IN THE ATTIC (A Light in the Attic)

There’s a light on in the attic.
Though the house is dark and shuttered,
I can see a flickerin’ flutter,
And I know what it’s about.
There’s a light on in the attic.
I can see it from the outside,
And I know you’re on the inside… lookin’ out.

36.THE WORST (Where the Sidewalk Ends)

When singing songs of scariness,
Of bloodiness and hairyness,
I feel obligated at this moment to remind you
Of the most ferocious beat of all:
Three thousand pounds and nine feet tall—
The Glurpy Slurpy Skakagrall—
Who’s standing right behind you.

37.CRYSTAL BALL (Falling Up)

Come see your life in my crystal glass—
Twenty-five cents is all you pay.
Let me look into your past—
Here’s what you had for lunch today:
Tuna salad and mashed potatoes,
Green pea soup and apple juice,
Collard greens and stewed tomatoes,
Chocolate milk and lemon mousse.
You admit I’ve told it all?
Well, I know it, I confess,
Not by looking in my ball,
But just by looking at your dress.

38.HOW NOT TO HAVE TO DRY THE DISHES (Falling Up)

If you have to dry the dishes
(Such an awful, boring chore)
If you have to dry the dishes
(‘Stead of going to the store)
If you have to dry the dishes
And you drop one on the floor—
Maybe they won’t let you
Dry the dishes anymore.

39.WARNING (Where the Sidewalk Ends)

Inside everybody’s nose
There lives a sharp-toothed snail.
So if you stick your finger in,
He may bite off your nail.
Stick it farther up inside,
And he may bite your ring off.
Stick it all the way, and he
May bite the whole darn thing off.

40.CAPTAIN HOOK (Where the Sidewalk Ends)

Captain Hook must remember
Not to scratch his toes.
Captain Hook must watch out
And never pick his nose.
Captain Hook must be gentle
When he shakes your hand.
Captain hook must be careful
Openin’ sardine cans
And playing tag and pouring tea
and turnin’ pages of this book.
Lots of folks I’m glad I ain’t—
But mostly Captain Hook!

41.MY ZOOOTCH (Every Thing On It)

I never have nightmares,
I’m happy to say.
The Zoootch on my bed
Always scares ‘em away.

42.NOPE (Falling Up)

I put a piece of cantaloupe
Underneath the microscope,
I saw a million strange things sleepin’,
I sawa zillion weird things creepin’,
I saw some green things twist and bend—
I won’t eat cantaloupe again.

43.MY RULES (Where the Sidewalk Ends)

If you want to marry me, here’s what you’ll have to do:
You must learn how to make a perfect chicken-dumpling stew.
And you must sew my holey socks,
And soothe my troubled mind,
And develop the knack for scratching my back,
And keep my shoes spotlessly shined.
And while I rest you must rake up the leaves,
And when it’s hailing and snowing
You must shovel the walk… and be still when I talk,
And—hey—where are you going?

44.DIVING BOARD (Falling Up)

You’ve been up on that diving board
Making sure that it’s nice and straight.
You’ve made sure that it’s not too slick.
You’ve made sure it can stand the weight.
You’ve made sure that the spring is tight.
You’ve made sure that the cloth won’t slip.
You’ve made sure that it bounces right,
And that your toes can get a grip—
And you’ve been up there since half past five
Doin’ everything… but DIVE.

45.HAPPY ENDING? (Every Thing On It)

There are no happy endings.
Endings are the saddest part,
So just give me a happy middle
And a very happy start.

46.YEARS FROM NOW (Every Thing On It)

Although I cannot see your face
As you flip these poems awhile,
Somewhere from some far-off place
I hear you laughing—and I smile.

Award-winning illustrator Zak Pullen contributed the gorgeous illustrations that made an art piece out of the first picture book from Why Not Books -- Francis and Eddie, which tells the tale of the stunning triumph of 20-year-old amateur golfer Francis Ouimet (and his 10-year-old caddie) at the 1913 U.S. Open. We consider it an unprecedented contribution to the world of children's literature about golf --which is appropriate because Pullen loves golf, and he loves literature. The latter is evident in the following: Pullen's 51 portraits of legendary writers -- from Maya Angelou and Edward Abbey to Jack London and James Joyce to Lewis Carroll and Langston Hughes. In this case, their literary contributions are forever priceless, but a picture is worth at least a thousand words.

Often when I stand up in front of audiences and discuss my trilogy of American travel memoirs, some curious soul in the crowd asks me about my process. Do I write while I’m in the road? (Not usually.) Do I tell people exactly what I’m doing when I sit down to extract their story? (Always.) Do I conduct preliminary research on the places I’ll be going and the concepts I’ll be mining? (Gobs of it.)

I tell them that I bring along a digital recorder, not only for the interviews, but for my own commentary as I’m strolling through a small-town or rumbling along a ribbon of highway beneath an endless sky. And I always marvel at the fact that some of my favorite passages from my books are nearly word for word what I spoke into my recorder—because I’m in the moment, and the words come out with a lyrical quality inspired by a flash of epiphany. A dollop of description will often finds its way from my mouth to the pages virtually verbatim.

So, for instance, in my first travel narrative States of Mind, I described a foray from the coast to the desert in Southern California thusly:

Trees shrank, mountains grew, and the land became harsh, the naked earth exposing itself. Blemishes of outcroppings, pock-marked hillsides, bald peaks, wrinkled valleys, a rash of red here, a gash of rock there, as if the forest had been sheared away by a razor.

And in my second installment, Small World, I portrayed the landscape around the little city of Paris, Kentucky in this way:

Like the streets radiating from the Arc de Triomphe, quiet roads fan out in all directions from Paris, winding their way through the countryside, past stately trees and verdant pastures. What one notices most, however, are the fences, miles and miles of them, made of wood or stone, undulating with the hills.

Finally, in my third travel memoir, Turn Left at the Trojan Horse, I rolled through north-central Montana:

Here, for the first time, I notice the big sky for which Montana is famous. More than that, it is big space. The pale green landscape, speckled with ink-black Angus cows on each side of the highway, looks like a massive bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream.

But while the landscape itself always inspires me, people inspire me, too. Writers, that is. I collect classic descriptions of places—sometimes on paper, often in the recesses of my mind—and they motivate me to try to match the evocative and intriguing qualities of such passages. Sort of like the way an aspiring basketball player watches old video of Allen Iverson’s crossover dribble. Yep, just like that.

So I practice my literary dribbles by recalling that Joseph Conrad portrayed “a sea the colour of lead, a sky the colour of smoke” and Henry Miller described “a riot of changing color patterns” and Bill Bryson commented on how “a pink dawn was pilled across the sky.” These, I remember.

With that in mind, and as summer travel season is about to begin, here is a list that will take you places—29 great writers describing 29 American locales:

1.John Steinbeck on California’s Cannery Row:

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, 'whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,' by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, 'Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,' and he would have meant the same thing.

2.Harper Lee on small-town Alabama:

Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then; a black dog suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning.

3.Jack London on Alaska:

They went across divides in summer blizzards, shivered under the midnight sun or naked mountains between the timber line and the eternal snows, dropped into summer valleys amid swarming gnats and flies, and in the shadows of glaciers picked strawberries and flowers as ripe and far as any the Southland could boast. In the fall of the year they penetrated a weird lake country, sad and silent, where wild fowl had been, but where then there was no life nor sign of life—only the blowing of chill winds, the forming of ice in sheltered places, and the melancholy rippling of waves on lonely beaches.

4.Tracy Kidder on Northampton, Massachusetts:

From the summit, the cornfields are a dream of perfect order, and the town seems entirely coherent, self-contained, a place where a person might live a whole life and consider it complete; a tiny civilization all its own. Forget the messiness of years and days—every work of human artifice has a proper viewing distance. The town below fits in the palm of your hand. Shake it and it snows.

5.Edward Abbey on Utah’s desert:

Not until the afternoon does the wind begin to blow, raising dust and sand in funnelshaped twisters that spin across the desert briefly, like dancers, and then collapse—whirlwinds form which issue no voice or word except the forlorn moan of the elements under stress. After the reconnoitering dust-devils comes the real, the serious wind, the voice of the desert rising to a demented howl and blotting out sky and sun behind yellow clouds of dust, sand, confusion, embattled birds, last year’s scrub-oak leaves, pollen, the husks of locusts, bark of juniper…

6.William Least Heat Moon on New Mexico:

Walking back to the highway, I saw a coil of sand loosen and bend itself into a grainy S and warp across the slope. I stood dead still. A sidewinder so matched to the grit only its undulating shadow gave it away. And that’s something else about the desert: deception. It can make heat look like water, living plants seem dead, mountains miles away appear close, and turn scaly tubes of venom into ropes of warm sand. So open, so concealed.

7.Mark Twain on the Mississippi River:

If there had been a conspicuous dead tree standing upon the very point of the cape, I would find that tree inconspicuously merged into the general forest, and occupying the middle of a straight shore, when I got abreast of it! No prominent hill would stick to its shape long enough for me to make up my mind what its form really was, but it was as dissolving and changeful as if it had been a mountain of butter in the hottest corner of the tropics. Nothing ever had the same shape when I was coming down-stream that it had borne when I went up.

8.Barbara Kingsolver on Arizona:

June is the cruelest month in Tucson, especially when it lasts till the end of July. This is the season when every living thing in the desert swoons south toward some faint salt dream of the Gulf of Mexico: tasting the horizon, waiting for the summer storms. This year they are late. The birds are pacing the ground stiff-legged, panting, and so am I. Waiting. In this blind, bright still-June weather the shrill of the cicadas hurts your eyes. Every plant looks pitiful and, when you walk past it, moans a little, envious because you can walk yourself to a drink and it can’t.

9.James Michener on Texas:

He was staring at a spread of flowers along the banks of the Colorado River, so many and in such dazzling array that they almost blinded him. Here rose the wonderful bluebonnets of Texas, each stem ending in a sturdy pyramid of delightful blue flowers. Intermixed with them was the only other flower that could make the blue stand out, the Indian paintbrush in burnt orange. Blue and red-orange, what a surprising combination, made even more vibrant by the fact that both flowers bore at their apex a fleck of white, so that the field pulsated with beauty.

10.Norman Maclean on Montana:

On the Big Blackfoot River above the mouth of Belmont Creek the banks are fringed by large Ponderosa pines. In the slanting sun of late afternoon the shadows of great branches reached from across the river, and the trees took the river in their arms. The shadows continued up the bank, until they included us.

11.Michael Perry on Wisconsin:

Summer here comes on like a zaftig hippie chick, jazzed on chlorophyll and flinging fistfuls of butterflies to the sun. The swamps grow spongy and pungent. Standing water goes warm and soupy, clotted with frog eggs and twitching with larvae. Along the ditches, heron-legged stalks of canary grass shoot six feet high and unfurl seed plumes. In the fields, the clover pops its blooms and corn trembles for the sky.

12.Kent Haruf on Colorado:

When they were in front of the empty house at the end of the road they stopped to study it and everything around it. The broken-down neglected locust trees, shaggy barked, the overgrown yard, the dead sunflowers grown up everywhere with their heads loaded and drooping, everything dry and brown now in the late fall, dust-coated, and the sunken house itself diminished and weathered, with the front door swung open carelessly and the windows broken out over the years, and the sole square intact window in the attic bearing a fly screen that was turned down loose from one corner in a way that looked peculiar, like it was sleepy-eyed.

13.Thomas Wolfe on North Carolina:

They flattened noses against the dirty windows, and watched the vast structure of the earth sweep past—clumped woodlands, the bending sweep of the fields, the huge flowing lift of the earth-waves, cyclic intersections bewildering—the American earth—rude, immeasurable, formless, mighty.

14.Truman Capote on Kansas:

The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call “out there.” Some seventy miles east of the Colorado border, the countryside, with its hard blue skies and desert-clear air, has an atmosphere that is rather more Far West than Middle West. The local accent is barbed with a prairie twang, a ranch-hand nasalness, and the man, many of them, wear narrow frontier trousers, Stetsons, and high-heeled boots with pointed toes. The land is flat, and the views are awesomely extensive; horses, herds of cattle, a white cluster of grain elevators rising as gracefully as Greek temples are visible long before a traveler reaches them.

15.Jack Kerouac on Louisiana:

The air was so sweet in New Orleans it seemed to come in soft bandannas; and you could smell the river and really smell the people, and mud, and molasses, and every kind of tropical exhalation with your nose suddenly removed from the dry ices of a Northern winter.

16.Sherwood Anderson on Ohio:

The fruition of the year had come and the night should have been fine with a moon in the sky and the crisp sharp promise of frost in the air, but it wasn’t that way. It rained and little puddles of water shone under the street lamps on Main Street. In the woods in the darkness beyond the Fair Ground water dripped from the black trees. Beneath the trees wet leaves were pasted against tree roots that protruded from the ground.

17.F. Scott Fitzgerald on New York:

About half way between West Egg and New York the motor road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.

18.Walt Whitman on a Midwestern prairie sunset:

Shot gold, maroon and violet, dazzling silver, emerald fawn,
The earth’s whole amplitude and Nature’s multiform power consigned
for once to colors

19.Peter Orner on Chicago cicadas:

Summer and chaos in the trees. Carcasses rain from branches. Lawns wear coats of brittle, crunchable bodies. Pebbles of eyes stare up at the sky. Over breakfast, Miriam explains their sudden appearance: “These harmless insects emerge out of the ground every seventeen years in order to have intercourse. That’s enough sugar in your cereal, honey. Then they die. In Mexico, people consider them a delicacy.”

20.Hunter S. Thompson on Las Vegas:

So once you get blacklisted on the Strip, for any reason at all, you either get out of town or retire to nurse your act along, on the cheap, in the shoddy limbo of North Vegas… out there with the gunsels, the hustlers, the drug cripples and all the other losers. North Vegas, for instance, is where you go if you need to score smack before midnight with no references.

21.Henry Miller on southern California:

For twenty miles outside of Barstow you ride over a washboard amidst sand dunes reminiscent of Bergen Beach or Canarsie. After a while you notice farms and trees, heavy green trees waving in the breeze. Suddenly the world has grown human again—because of the trees. Slowly, gradually, you begin climbing. And the trees and the farms and the houses climb with you. Every thousand feet there is a big sign indicating the altitude. The landscape becomes thermometric. Around you rugged, towering mountain ranges fading almost to extinction in the dancing heat waves of mid-afternoon.

22.Sinclair Lewis on Minnesota:

Beyond the undeviating barbed-wire fences were clumps of golden rod. Only this thin hedge shut them off from the plains—shorn wheat-lands of autumn, a hundred acres to a field, prickly and gray near-by but in the blurred distance like tawny velvet stretched over dipping hillocks. The long rows of wheat-shocks marched like soldiers in worn yellow tabards. The newly plowed fields were black banners fallen on the distant slope. It was a martial immensity, vigorous, a little harsh, unsoftened by kindly gardens.

23.Charles Kuralt on Maine:

I lay there imagining all the ways I could see again the coves and points and islands of that infinite, indented coast—from a lobster boat, maybe, or a windjammer, or a fishing smack. In Maine, it’s fun to glimpse the sea from the land, but to survey the dark forests and rocky headlands from the sea with a fair wind and a running tide is a glory to last you all your life.

24.Eric Weiner on Miami:

Miami is associated with happiness, if not paradise itself. Beaches. Palm trees. Sunshine. But paradise comes with its own inherent pressures. It screams: “Be happy, God damn it!” I remember driving by a billboard on the way to work one day. There was a photo of a yellow convertible VW Beetle and, underneath, the words, “Woe isn’t you. Dare to be happy.” What is that ad saying? It’s saying, I think, that at the dawn of the twenty-first century, American happiness isn’t left to the gods or to fortune, as was the case for most of human history. No, happiness is there for the taking.

25.Stephen G. Bloom on Iowa:

Iowa, we discovered, was a rural canvas of extremes. From 110-degree summer days to -16 degree winter nights, there was no moderation in the seasons. The in-between times were short and transitory. By mid-October, fall was over, and we had to brace for bone-chilling cold that lasted until the end of April. For weeks, the winter skies would be pewter-colored without even a tentative ray of sun. Formerly light and fluffy banks of vestal snow turned into cold, hard, blackish gray ice mounds. The days were short.

26.William McKeen on Arkansas:

We slip out of Missouri through the boot heel, crossing into Arkansas just north of Blytheville, taking a turn like something out of the Indianapolis 500 and driving under a replica natural bridge. Irrigation tractors span the fields like huge mutant insects from an old science-fiction film. We’re eager to get to Memphis, and this two-lane stretch is slowgoing. Over a ridge, we narrowly avoid hitting tractors using the highway while switching fields. One rusted John Deere has a Confederate-flag sticker on the wheel cover.

27.Roy Blount, Jr. on Georgia:

“Georgia is a place you get sent to or you come from or you march through or you drive through. Convicts settled it. It’s got some fine red dirt, hills, vegetables, and folks, but I don’t believe anybody has ever dreamed of growing up and moving to Georgia.”

28.Kathleen Norris on the Dakotas:

The silence of the Plains, this great unpeopled landscape of earth and sky, is much like the silence one finds in a monastery, an unfathomable silence that has the power to re-form you. And the Plains have changed me. I was a New Yorker for nearly six years and still love to visit my friends in the city. But now I am conscious of carrying a Plains silence within me into cities, and of carrying my city experiences back to the Plains so that they may be absorbed again back into silence, the fruitful silence that produces poems and essays.

29.Dayton Duncan on the Oregon coast:

But it’s as good a spot as any to sit and watch the sun sink into the water, a Farewell Sunset. The ocean, at low tide, hisses rather than roars. A thick mist clings to the hills to the south. Cloud banks out to sea look like yet another mountain range across a liquid plain… The gold sun has touched the horizon now, distorting like a hot egg yolk dropped on water. It lingers for a moment, allowing one last look from the continent it has crossed in a day, and sinks from sight.

Last month, I was invited to give a TED talk—at TEDxMonterey to a room full of folks eager to hear about the latest insights, eye-opening innovations, impressive pursuits. I was joined on the list of presenters by a NASA space scientist who has discovered hundreds of distant planets, a charismatic marine biologist from Sri Lanka who studies humpback whales, a Naval captain who focuses on systemic strategy and complexity, a developmental psychologist, a tech innovator… All I do is tell stories. What the hell was I supposed to talk about?

So I told stories. More accurately, I told them how I FIND stories.

For me, the idea is always paramount. I’m often asked about the writing process, but that ignores the first step: What are you going to write about? Good writing begins before the first line is ever written. It all starts with subject matter that captures readers' attention, a story or angle that is simply too clever for an editor or publisher to pass up, something that just might make a student actually enthusiastic about writing.

I’m a bit of a literary jack of all trades, mostly because I enjoy experimenting, challenging myself. I’ve written more than 30 books for kids and adults, newspaper articles, magazine features, poems, movie screenplays, blogs, you name it. It keeps me fresh as a writer, if rather exhausted and often humbled. I tend to pursue whatever piques my interest—a broad range of subjects that includes just about anything (from sports car racing to civil rights) and anyone (from Dr. Seuss to Dr. Joyce Brothers). But each started as merely the germ of a notion.

My hope is that by learning about how these stories came to me over the years, it might offer some insight into the spectrum of creative possibilities. So here I offer 10 paths to a good idea:

1.WONDER OUT LOUD

The most overused phrase in describing the literary process is “Write what you know.” Sure, knowledge about a particular subject breeds confidence, and confidence is absolutely the most important attribute that a writer can possess. A writer who has confidence in his or her skills and subject matter uses a stronger voice, takes more chances, crafts a more compelling story, simply writes better.

However, I enjoy writing what I DON’T know—that is, writing about what I would LIKE to know. As an author and freelance writer, every project that I pursue, every assignment that I tackle is like a mini-education, an opportunity to learn about a subject that I deemed fascinating enough to spend some time pursuing.

So often this consists of wondering out loud. For instance, I’ve written magazine articles revolving around questions like these: Who designed the Nike swoosh? What is it like to live along a time zone boundary? What was the worst team in major league baseball history? (Answer: the 1899 Cleveland Spiders. Their worst hitter was named Michael Jordan.) What is it like to drive the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile?

Curiosity is like that mechanical rabbit that greyhounds chase around a racetrack. It motivates. It spurs you forward.

2.EMBRACE WHIMSY

Whimsy has been my friend for many years, even when writing for adults. Although I occasionally write very serious, profound stories, I’ve also written articles about everything from the World Shovel Racing Championships to the Pez Memorabilia Museum. But when I write for kids, whimsy is vital. So I often try to view the world through the eyes of a child. It helps that I have two sons. It also helps that I have a juvenile side to me. I have a pretty immature sense of humor. But it’s useful.

So for instance, earlier in my career, I was asked by an educational publisher to write a novel specifically for 5th grader. The only instructions: Make it 120 pages long, and make it funny.

That’s not so easy—twenty-four-thousand words of funny. And I had trouble coming up with an idea. I roamed my house… What’s funny? What’s funny? Nothing seems all that hilarious when you’re trying so hard. But then I arrived in my kitchen. I was hungry. I opened the refrigerator… and a light bulb came on. Literally. The fridge light turned on when I opened it.

Aha! So I wrote a book called Freddy in the Fridge—about an eight-inch-tall fellow named Freddy who lives in the refrigerator, sleeps on the cottage cheese, and relishes his role of being the person solely responsible for turning on and off that light. Of course, Freddy escapes the fridge, follows a kid to school, and the mayhem ensues. It’s a pretty funny book.

But it was a taste of whimsy that led to it. Childishness isn’t always a negative thing.

3.COUNTER CONVENTIONAL WISDOM

I used to write quite a bit for various in-flight magazines, which was great for two reasons: First, it’s a captive audience. They’re not going anywhere. Second, the subject matter was almost unlimited. All I needed was a good idea, and the editors were thrilled to let me run with it.

One of my recurring tricks was to debunk accepted notions. For instance, I once wrote about the most famous misquotes in history. Captain Kirk never actually said “Beam me up, Scotty.” Not once in any of Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories did Sherlock Holmes ever say, “Elementary, my dear Watson.” And in none of his films did James Cagney ever say “You dirty rat!” You get the idea—and it’s a compelling notion.

I also once wrote an article about a study undertaken by my old Cornell University psychology professor, Tom Gilovich. His study was an objective analysis of reactions by Olympic medalists. He compared immediate reactions and medal-stand stand reactions of silver medalists vs. bronze medalists. And he found that bronze medalists actually seemed happier.

This notion stems from one of my favorite Jerry Seinfeld bits (and you have to picture it being said in Seinfeld’s voice and cadence): “When you think about it, if you win the gold, you feel good. If you win the bronze, you think, "Well, at least I got something". But when you win that silver, it's like, ‘Congratulations, you almost won. Of all the losers, you're the number one loser.’”

So I examined that counterintuitive theory , the kind of thinking that makes readers sit up and take notice.

4.CELEBRATE THE UNCELEBRATED

I wrote about a dozen Sports Illustrated articles over the years. They weren’t going to let a freelancer like me write about the Super Bowl. And I didn’t want to. Instead, I wrote about people and feats that had been overlooked.

For example: You’ve probably heard of Roger Bannister, but how about Don Bowden? He was the first American to run a four-minute mile. Or Ray Ewry? Before Michael Phelps, he had won more gold medals (10, at the beginning of the 20th century) than any other American. Or Tom Cheney? When I found him, he was driving a propane truck in Georgia. But Cheney’s 21 strikeouts as a Washington Senators pitcher in 1962 remains the major league record. Or how about the sport of sprint football? Seven colleges in the country play it—it’s football for little guys. There’s even a weight limit.

So I’d always rather write about overlooked people than overrated people. In fact, I began to discover people whose names have largely been lost to history, but these people had enormous impacts on American sports. So armed with that information, I decided to write a book called The Sports 100. Published by Macmillan in 1995, it was a ranking of the 100 most important people in American sports history. Not the best athletes or coaches, but the most influential figures.

The first three are Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali and Babe Ruth. But the list also includes people you don’t know, people who fall under the category of celebrating the uncelebrated—like Danny Biasone (inventor of the 24-second shot clock for basketball) and Charles McNeil (a bookie who invented the point spread for gambling). They’re largely unknown, but by no means unimportant.

5.MAKE LISTS

As if this comprehensive blog all about lists isn’t evidence enough, I’ll just come out and say it: I absolutely love lists. To-do lists. “Best of” lists. Any list. If someone produced a television show about the 25 most misunderstood salad dressings, I would probably DVR it.

So I’ve turned that love of lists into a number of stories. For a travel magazine, I wrote about the 8 most iconic trees in the western U.S. (i.e. the General Sherman Tree in Sequoia National Park and the Lone Cypress in Pebble Beach). For a short-lived magazine all about lists, I wrote about the 20 most powerful family dynasties in America. For Basketball Digest, editor Alex Gordon and I chose the 100 greatest basketball players in NBA history. And for an airline magazine, I celebrated the eleven wackiest plays in football—from “The Play” (Cal-Stanford and the band on the field) to an early 20th century trick in which Pop Warner had his players crowd around a kickoff returner. One of them stuffed the football down the back of his shirt and ran untouched into the end zone.

The Why Not 100 is simply an extension of this passion—or maybe it’s an obsession…

6.REMEMBER ANNIVERSARIES

In general, as a husband, that’s a rather important tip. But as a writer, it has been a great tool when trying to find a hook for stories ideas. For instance, for Cornell Alumni Magazine, my alma mater’s publication, I wrote a feature in 2012, which was the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the HMS Titanic. I discovered that there were four Cornell grads on the ship—two survived, two didn’t.

So anniversaries are a great hook, but only if it’s a compelling story, too. It’s one reason we at Why Not Books are so delighted with our picture book FRANCIS AND EDDIE (published on the 100th anniversary of the 1913 U.S. Open, which I believe is the greatest championship story in sports history). And it’s why we are so proud of MY MANTELPIECE, the memoirs of Carolyn Goodman, mother of slain civil rights worker Andrew Goodman. The book is being published 50 years after the “Mississippi Burning” murders that were a movement-changing event for many and a life-changing event for her.

7.PARTICIPATE

I’m a big fan of first-person stories because it allows me to put some humor into my writing, often in a self-deprecating way. One of my favorite examples of this is the magazine article that I wrote about the Masters of Miniature Golf. Yup, really.

When I found out that there were actually professional miniature golfers—folks who traveled from tournament to tournament, not as full-time professionals, but with enough prize money here and there to make their travels worthwhile—I knew it would make a pretty good story. But I didn’t think it was enough. Then I heard about the Masters of Mini Golf—the national championship played annually in South Carolina—and I knew that would be a better angle. But still, I wanted more.

So I figured, why not compete myself? I convinced a magazine to send me to Myrtle Beach. I convinced the tournament organizers to let me play. And I competed against some of the world’s best miniature golfers.

I wrote it up as my Walter MItty-esque version of competing in the Masters—the azeleas being replaced by, oh, a mid-course faux volcano. As it turns out there were 31 participants—28 miniature golfers, two grandparents who came across the tournament while on vacation… and me.

I scored a hole-in-one on my first two holes. And then I promptly tanked. Out of the 31 competitors, I finished… 31st. Even the grandparents beat me. But it still ranks as one of my favorite stories. Rather than telling readers how good these pro mini golfers were, I showed how much better they were than I. Participating, however disappointingly, made all the difference.

8.PURSUE A SEARCH

We all know that the best adventure stories are a quest of some sort, going all the way back to the story of The Odyssey 3,000 years ago. But you don’t need Cyclops and Sirens and gods and goddesses to embark on a quest. The search for something—anything—can be a great way to tell a tale.

For Cornell Alumni Magazine, I once wrote a story called “The Quest for the 4.3.” It was an attempt to find a student with a perfect A-plus grade point average. Thank goodness (for my own self-esteem) I didn’t find one. But in the process, that search allowed me to explore my own psyche, my own biases, which added a great deal of depth and humor and profundity to the story. It actually won something called a Grand Gold Medal for best article of the year… although it turns out I received neither a grand, nor a gold medal.

Pablo Picasso once said, “I do not seek. I find.” Well, he obviously wasn’t a writer. It’s often the search—the quest—that makes the story.

9.FIND THE REAL STORY

Research is obviously a huge aspect of the writing life. Usually, the concept precedes the research. But there are times when you don’t know exactly what your idea is until you start exploring it further. My favorite example of that is Bill Larned.

I would bet my house that you’ve never heard of Bill Larned. I certainly hadn’t until one day when I was leafing through a sports encyclopedia, and I came across a list of intercollegiate tennis champions over the years. I may be the only person who ever actually read through that list, but in doing so I discovered that a fellow named Bill Larned was the college champ in 1892. He was a Cornell student at the time, and Cornell students don’t win many national championships, so I figured it was probably worth a little story in the alumni magazine.

But then I discovered that Bill Larned went on to an illustrious post-collegiate career. He won seven national titles, still a record. And over the course of 20 years, he was ranked among the top 10 players in 19 of them, a remarkable combination of peak performance and longevity. Okay, I thought, it’s a better story now. But then I noticed that the one year in which he was NOT ranked among the top players was 1898, right in the middle of his career.

So I wondered: What happened to him in 1898? And that’s when I found the real story. In 1898, Larned was one of Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders.

Suddenly it wasn’t a story about a tennis player. It was the tale of a man who decided to volunteer for hazardous duty at the peak of an athletic career, becoming part of a motley crew of Ivy League athletes and outlaws who rushed San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War. I soon discovered that there was much more even than that. Larned may have been gay. The record is suggestive but unclear. Certainly, he was severely depressed. At the age of 53, he killed himself with a pistol.

Really, someone should make a movie about Bill Larned. Me? I just wrote a magazine article that was published in 1998, the 100th anniversary of the Rough Riders. So sometimes an idea is just a seed of an idea, not yet fully bloomed until you shine a light on it.

10.SET THE TONE

There are times when you know exactly what you want to write about, but that idea is only fully realized once the writing begins. In other words, sometimes the writing style is almost inseparable from the subject matter. Those are the times when half of the idea is conveyed by the tone of the story.

My first ever published story was an account of my one-game stint as a bat boy for the Chicago White Sox. It was May 26, 1983. The White Sox were the worst team in baseball at the time, having won only 16 of 40 games. But after May 26, they won 83 of their next 122 games. They won their division easily. They almost made it the World Series. In Chicago, that’s a very big deal.

So I wrote about my bat boy experience for my high school newspaper, but as I went along I realized that a tongue-in-cheek tone seemed to be most appropriate. So the headline became THE REAL REASON BEHIND THE SOX. And I declared that I was the real MVP of the team.

In writing that story as a teenager, I discovered the notion of the writer’s voice and the understanding that sometimes an idea can stand on its own, but sometimes it needs a point of view to be fully fleshed out. I also discovered that I LOVED seeing my byline.

So writing started as a bit of a narcissistic enterprise for me, and really, it hasn’t changed. If you love and idea, and you must share it with the world, then writing is inevitably both a selfless act and a selfish one.

In 1934, a male English author named Evelyn Waugh wrote a book called A Handful of Dust, which focused on the breakdown of a marriage and has been named more than once as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. It was originally called A Handful of Ashes, but after a dispute with his American publishers, Waugh renamed it—after a line from T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Waste Land,” which was written a dozen years earlier.

I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

But “The Waste Land,” regarded as one of the century’s most important poems and loosely following the legends of the Fisher King and the Holy Grail, also borrowed its title from another source. In his notes about the poem, Eliot wrote, “Not only the title, but the plan and a good deal of the incidental symbolism of the poem were suggested by Miss Jessie L. Weston’s book.” That book, From Ritual to Romance, was an academic examination of the roots of the King Arthur legend and had been published only two years earlier.

So let’s recap, shall we? Over the course of just 14 years, one book borrowed its title from a poem, which borrowed its title from another book. Oh, and a line from “The Waste Land” also led to the title of two Iain Banks novels—Consider Phlebas and Look to Windward. And another poem by Eliot (“Whispers of Immortality”) contributed the title for P.D. James’s The Skull Beneath the Skin. And still another bit of poetry by Eliot (“Gerontion”) sparked the title of another book, this one a detective novel by Peter Robinson called In A Dry Season. Who says all literature isn’t derivative?

Then again, these titular literary loans are far more common that you might think. Charles Dickens did it. Ernest Hemingway did it. William Faulkner did it. E.M. Forster, George Orwell, Margaret Mitchell, Maya Angelou… they all borrowed. In fact, Aldous Huxley, Agatha Christie, John Steinbeck, and Madeleine L’Engle were serial borrowers.

So for the Why Not 100, I have come up with a list that honors the best-of-the-best of the borrowers—74 titles from renowned authors, all of which were taken from other literary creations.

First, there are the titles that come straight from the Bible:

1.The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway)
2.Abalom, Absalom! (William Faulkner)
3.If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem (William Faulkner)
4.The Violent Bear It Away (Flanner O’Connor)
5.A Time to Kill (John Grisham)
6.Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (James Agee)
7.The House of Mirth (Edith Wharton)
8.The Way of All Flesh (Samuel Butler)
9.Fear and Trembling (Soren Kierkegaard)
10.The Golden Bowl (Henry James)
11.The Lilies of the Field (William E. Barrett)
12.Vile Bodies (Evelyn Waugh)

And here are 46 more classic books and the literature from whence the titles came:

13.For Whom the Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemingway)—from “Meditation XVII” (John Donne)

14.Gone With the Wind (Margaret Mitchell)—from “Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae” (Ernest Dowson)

15.Look Homeward, Angel (Thomas Wolfe)—from “Lycidas” (John Milton)

16.As I Lay Dying (William Faulkner)—from The Odyssey (Homer)

17.Tender is the Night (F. Scott Fitzgerald)—from “Ode to a Nightingale” (John Keats)

18.This Side of Paradise (F. Scott Fitzgerald)—from “Tiare Tahiti” (Rupert Brooke)

19.In Dubious Battle (John Steinbeck)—from “Paradise Lost” (John Milton)

20.I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou)—from “Sympathy” (Paul Laurence Dunbar)

21.A Confederacy of Dunces (John Kennedy Toole)—from Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting (Jonathan Swift)

22.A Passage to India (E.M. Forster)—from Leaves of Grass (Walt Whitman)

23.Where Angels Fear to Tread (E.M. Forster)—from “Essay on Criticism” (Alexander Pope)

24.Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (Dee Brown)—from “American Names” (Stephen Vincent Benet)

25.No Country For Old Men (Cormac McCarthy)—from “Sailing To Byzantium” (William Butler Yeats)

26.O Pioneers! (Willa Cather)—from “Pioneers! O Pioneers!” (Walt Whitman)

27.Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe)—from “The Second Coming” (William Butler Yeats)

28.Of Human Bondage (W. Somerset Maugham)—from Ethics (Baruch Spinoza)

29.The Painted Veil (W. Somerset Maugham)—from “Lift Not The Painted Veil Which Those Who Live” (Percy Shelley)

30.Waiting for the Barbarians (J.M. Coetzee)—from “Waiting for the Barbarians” (Constantine P. Cavafy)

31. Cricket on the Hearth (Charles Dickens)—from “Il Penseroso” (John Milton)

32.The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Mark Haddon)—from “Silver Blaze” (Arthur Conan Doyle)

33.A Handful of Dust (Evelyn Waugh)—from “The Waste Land” (T.S. Eliot)

34.All the King’s Men (Robert Penn Warren)—from “Humpty Dumpty”

35.Dying of the Light (George R.R. Martin)—from “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” (Dylan Thomas)

36.The Golden Apples of the Sun (Ray Bradbury)—from “The Song of the Wandering Angus” (William Butler Yeats)

37.I Sing the Body Electric (Ray Bradbury)—from Leaves of Grass (Walt Whitman)

38.Blood’s A Rover (James Ellroy)—from “Reveille” (A.E. Housman)

39.Surprised By Joy (C.S. Lewis)—from “Surprised By Joy” (William Wordsworth)

40.Cabbages and Kings (O. Henry)—from “The Walrus and the Carpenter” (Lewis Carroll)

41.Far From the Madding Crowd (Thomas Hardy)—from “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” (Thomas Gray)

42.From Here to Eternity (James Jones)—from “Gentleman-Rankers” (Rudyard Kipling)

43.The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (Carson McCullers)—from “The Lonely Hunter” (William Sharp)

44.Vanity Fair (William Makepeace Thackery)—from The Pilgrim’s Progress (John Bunyan)

45.A Catskill Eagle (Robert B. Parker)—from Moby-Dick (Herman Melville)

46.Pale Kings and Princes (Robert B. Parker)—from “La Belle Dame sans Merci” (John Keats)

47.A Darkling Plain (Philip Reeve)—from “Dover Beach” (Matthew Arnold)

48.A Monstrous Regiment of Women (Laurie R. King)—from The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (John Knox)

49.Cover Her Face (P.D. James)—from “The Duchess of Malfi” (John Webster)

50.The Skull Beneath the Skin (P.D. James)—from “Whispers of Immortality” (T.S. Eliot)

51.Everything is Illuminated (Jonathan Safran Foer)—from The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Milan Kundera)

52.In A Dry Season (Peter Robinson)—from “Gerontion” (T.S. Eliot)

53.Some Buried Caesar (Rex Stout)—from “Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam” (Edward Fitzgerald)

54.The Lathe of Heaven (Ursula K. Le Guin)—from Zhuangzi, Book XXIII

We’ll add four more from Madeleine L’Engle, one that references a poem and three more from the Bible:

55.A Swiftly Tilting Planet—from “Morning Song of Senlin” (Conrad Aiken)

56.An Acceptable Time

57.Many Waters

58.The Moon By Night

And several classics from John Steinbeck:

59.Of Mice and Men—from “To a Mouse” (Robert Burns)

60.East of Eden—from the Bible

61.The Grapes of Wrath—from “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”(Julia Ward Howe)

62.To a God Unknown—from Rigveda Book X

The prolific Agatha Christie borrowed five titles from other literary works:

63.Butter in a Lordly Dish—from the Bible

64.Endless Night—from “Auguries of Innocence” (William Blake)

65.The Moving Finger—from “Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam” (Edward Fitzgerald)

66.Postern of Fate—from “The Gates of Damascus” (James Elroy Flecker)

67.The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side (Agatha Christie—from “The Lady of Shalott” (Alfred, Lord Tennyson)

And finally, nobody liked to borrow quite like Aldous Huxley:

68.The Doors of Perception—from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (William Blake)

69.Those Barren Leaves—from “The Tables Turned” (William Wordsworth)

70.Antic Hay—from “Edward II” (Christopher Marlowe)

71.Eyeless in Gaza—from “Samson Agonistes” (John Milton)

72.Beyond the Mexique Bay—from “Bermudas” (Andrew Marvell)

73.Jesting Pilate—from “Of Truth” (Francis Bacon)

74.Brave New World—from “The Tempest” (William Shakespeare)

In his memoir On Writing, Stephen King commented on how he was considered to be prolific despite having written “only” a few dozen novels to date (this was back in 2000). Yet he contended he was nothing compared to a British mystery novelist named John Creasey, who wrote more than five hundred novels under ten different names. On the other hand, some renowned novelists have written fewer than five books in a career. “Which is okay,” King stated, “but I always wonder two things about these folks: how long did it take them to write the books they did write, and what did they do with the rest of their time?”

Well, here are the 17 writers who are to “prolific” what King is to “horror.” In fact, King isn’t even close to making this list. But Creasey? He’s ninth.

1.Spanish writer Corin Tellado (her real name was Maria del Socorro Tellado Lopez) lived from 1927 to 2009 and published more than 4,000—yes four thousand—novels. She sold more than 400 million of them.

2.Brazilian author Ryoki Inoue is a thoracic surgeon. He also… er, dabbles in Portuguese-language pulp fiction—to the tune of nearly 1,100 books. And he’s still writing.

3.Kathleen Lindsay was an English romance writer with as at least 11 pen names. She died in 1973 (at the age of 70) having written more than 900 books.

4.Seventy books would constitute a prolific career. Lauran Bosworth Paine had 70 different pen names. She wrote mostly Western fiction. Lots of it. More than 850 books.

5.Enid Mary Blyton was an English writer of children’s books who died in 1968. Her work has been translated into almost 90 languages, and she wrote more than 800 books, generating more total sales than J.K. Rowling.

6.Whether writing as Barbara Cartland or Barbara McCorquodale, whether writing cook books or health books or historical fiction, she was most certainly writing. She lived 99 years (until 2000) and wrote 723 books.

7.Jozef Ignacy Kraszewski was a 19th century Polish writer of everything from novels and biographies to plays and poetry, totaling in excess of 600 books.

8.A former Confederate soldier named Prentiss Ingraham wrote more than 600 dime novels. He was best known for his Buffalo Bill series.

9.Finally, we get to John Creasey. The story goes that he received 768

rejection letters before his first book was published. Then he went on to write nearly that many books—more than 600, actually—under 28 pseudonyms. That includes Westerns under names like Tex Riley and Ken Range—and even romance novels as Margaret Cooke.

10.Religious scholar and teacher Jalaluddin Al-Suyuti is believed to have written more than 550 books, primarily during the 15th century in Egypt.

11.Georges Joseph Christian Simenon was born in 1903. He died in 1989. In between, the Belgian author wrote nearly 200 novels under his own name and 300-plus under more than a dozen pen names.

12.In 1994, Harold Bloompublished The Western Canon, focusing on 26 major literary works over the previous six centuries that he considered most sublime and representative of their nations. Ursula Bloom (1892-1984) wasn’t close to making the cut. But the English romance novelist wrote more than 520 books.

13.Howard Roger Garis, who died in 1962, was best known for a series of books featuring an elderly rabbit called Uncle Wiggily Longears. He wrote more than 500 books in all. Rabbits multiply.

14.Japanese novelist Jiro Akagawa has written close to 500 novels over his 30-year career, many of them humorous mysteries. And he’s still going.

15.Acclaimed sci-fi novelist Isaac Asimov published at least 468 books before dying in 1992 from an HIV infection caused by a blood transfusion. He also wrote an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. Another fascinating factoid: His books have been published in all but one of the ten major categories of the Dewey Decimal Classification.

16.The master of the macabre for the mini-set, R.L. Stine has written close to 450 books, mostly horror fiction novels in the Goosebumps, Rotten School, Fear Street, Mostly Ghostly and The Nightmare Room series. So far.

17.He was the American founder of the syndicate that published the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series (among other books for children), but Edward Stratemeyer also used various pseudonyms to write more than 400 novels himself.

Prospective authors, take note: The list of literary legends who didn’t attend college for one reason or another includes Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Edith Wharton, Truman Capote, Ray Bradbury, Raymond Carver, Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Parker, Maya Angelou, William Saroyan, John Cheever, Sherwood Anderson, and Louis L’Amour. And the likes of Edgar Allen Poe, Jack London, J.D. Salinger, and Henry Miller made only fleeting attempts at the university experience.

But before you decide to give the heave-ho to higher education, you might be interested to learn that these folks went to Harvard: Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, John Updike, Horatio Alger, Gertrude Stein, Norman Mailer, William S. Burroughs, John Dos Passos, George Plimpton, Michael Crichton, Peter Benchley, and Eric Segal.

Every year, the U.S. News & World Report puts out a ranking of American colleges and universities—based on all sorts of criteria. But I wondered: How would we rank the way they’ve churned out celebrated writers?

So I came up with a list of 128 American authors, poets, and playwrights—from Pulitzer winners to super-bestsellers, from 19th century transcendentalists to 21st century “Oprah” faves. Did I miss some good ones? Undoubtedly. But the list is as varied as this dozen: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Stephen Crane, Langston Hughes, Toni Morrison, S.E. Hinton, James Michener, John Irving, Thomas Pynchon, Dave Eggers, Garrison Keillor, Daniel Steel, and R.L. Stine. Or if you prefer, the list included the authors of everything from Slaughterhouse-Five to Seabiscuit to Superfudge.

I slotted them by undergraduate degrees (including those who made a decent stab at getting a degree if not quite finishing the deal—guys like Frost at Harvard, John Steinbeck at Stanford, and Cormac McCarthy at Tennessee). Then I ranked the schools—first by quantity, then by legacy (or, to be honest, personal preference). Essentially, there’s a massive tie for 20th place, but I kept ranking them to the end.

The results suggest two obvious conclusions. One is that Harvard and Columbia have damn impressive literary pedigrees. The other is that the rest of America’s greatest writers drew on a remarkably diverse education. Here’s the list:

1.Harvard University
Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, John Updike, Horatio Alger, Gertrude Stein, Norman Mailer, William S. Burroughs, John Dos Passos, George Plimpton, Michael Crichton, Peter Benchley, Eric Segal

2.Columbia University
Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Joseph Heller, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Herman Wouk, Carson McCullers, Paul Auster, Isaac Asimov, William Goldman

3.Princeton University
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Philip Roth, John McPhee, Jodi Picoult

4.Yale University
Robert Penn Warren, Eugene O’Neill, Thornton Wilder, Sinclair Lewis

5.University of Cal-Berkeley
Philip K. Dick, Terry McMillan, Beverly Cleary, Irving Stone

6.Cornell University
E.B. White, Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Pynchon

7.Northwestern University
Saul Bellow, Sidney Sheldon, George R.R. Martin

8.City College of New York
Upton Sinclair, Bernard Malamud, Mario Puzo

9.Smith College
Sylvia Plath, Margaret Mitchell, Ann M. Martin

10.Rutgers University
Robert Pinsky, Junot Diaz, Janet Evanovich

11.Bowdoin College
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne

12.Washington and Lee University
Tom Wolfe, Tom Robbins

13.Swarthmore College
James Michener, Jonathan Franzen

14.Sarah Lawrence College
Alice Walker, Ann Patchett

15.Duke University
William Styron, Anne Tyler

16.New York University
Judy Blume, Danielle Steel

17.Amherst College
Dan Brown, Scott Turow

18.Wesleyan University
Robert Ludlum, Robin Cook

19.University of Kansas
Sara Paretsky, Rex Stout

20.Huntingdon College
Harper Lee

21.Dartmouth College
Theodore Geisel

22.Stanford University
John Steinbeck

23.University of Mississippi
William Faulkner

24.University of New Hampshire
John Irving

25.University of Maine
Stephen King

26.Georgia College and State University
Flannery O’Connor

27.Mississippi University for Women
Eudora Welty

28.University of Utah
Wallace Stegner

29.University of Pittsburgh
Michael Chabon

30.Hampshire College
Jon Krakauer

31.University of Missouri
William Least Heat-Moon

32.University of Nebraska
Willa Cather

33.U.S. Naval Academy
Robert Heinlein

34.University of Arizona
Richard Russo

35.DePauw University
Barbara Kingsolver

36.Tulane University
John Kennedy Toole

37.University of New Mexico
Edward Abbey

38.University of Michigan
Arthur Miller

39.University of Tennessee
Cormac McCarthy

40.University of Texas
Rick Riordan

41.University of Tulsa
S.E. Hinton

42.Tuskegee University
Ralph Ellison

43.Howard University
Toni Morrison

44.University of Illinois
Dave Eggers

45.Mississippi State University
John Grisham

46.University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
Garrison Keillor

47.Haverford College
Dave Barry

48.University of Iowa
Tennessee Williams

49.University of Oregon
Ken Kesey

50.Fordham University
Don DeLillo

51.Michigan State University
Richard Ford

52.Syracuse University
Joyce Carol Oates

53.University of Vermont
Annie Proulx

54.Randolph-Macon Women’s College
Pearl Buck

55.The Citadel
Pat Conroy

56.San Jose State University
Amy Tan

57.University of Detroit Mercy
Elmore Leonard

58.Bradley University
Charles Bukowski

59.University of Notre Dame
Nicholas Sparks

60.Kenyon College
E.L. Doctorow

61.Loyola University-Maryland
Tom Clancy

62.Vassar College
Jane Smiley

63.Manhattan College
James Patterson

64.Ohio State University
RL Stine

65.Davidson College
Patricia Cornwell

66.University of Connecticut
Wally Lamb

67.Kenyon College
Laura Hillenbrand

68.University of Alabama
Winston Groom

69.Hofstra University
Nelson Demille

70.University of Pennsylvania
Zane Grey

71.UCLA
Jonathan Kellerman

72.Claverack College
Stephen Crane

73.Shippensburg University
Dean Koontz

74.Indiana University
Suzanne Collins

75.University of Louisville
Sue Grafton

76.Brandeis University
Mitch Albom

77.University of North Texas
Anne Rice

78.Brigham Young University
Stephenie Meyer

My Mantelpiece: A Memoir of Survival and Social Justice, recently published by Why Not Books, is Carolyn Goodman’s account of her lifetime of love and loss, courage and conviction. Her life was punctuated by tragedy—a brother’s premature death, childhood molestation, teenaged abortion, a mother’s callousness, a father’s suicide, the loss of two husbands. But hers is foremost a tale of survival, of turning personal anguish into social conscience—and the fulcrum of this tragedy-and-triumph dichotomy was the murder of her son in the summer of 1964.

That was Freedom Summer, when the forces of good went on the offensive, flooding the South with northern college students who would start Freedom Schools and register African-American voters. On the very first day of summer, Carolyn’s 20-year-old son, Andy, was one of three volunteers to disappear in Philadelphia, Mississippi, an event that galvanized the nation and transformed the civil rights struggle.

The names Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner—their bodies were discovered 44 days later—still spark raw emotion in those who recall the era’s turmoil. Carolyn Goodman turned her son’s martyrdom into a mission. She formed The Andrew Goodman Foundation, organized an anniversary Freedom Summer, and produced documentary films celebrating young activists. In 1999, she was arrested at a protest in New York City—at age 83. She passed away in 2007, but not before recounting her life—and the lessons therein—in full.

On the 50th anniversary of the Mississippi Summer Project, My Mantelpiece marks the first time that a family member of one of the victims has expounded about the experience. It is an intimate perspective of Freedom Summer—the story of one mother, one cause, one decision, one tragedy, and the myriad emotions it spawned, from guilt to pride to resolve.

But it also one of many ways in which Freedom Summer has been explored over the years—historically, legally, spiritually, in fiction, in books for adults and for young readers, in first-person accounts and academic studies. A journey through the literature is a means of examining this seminal moment in the civil rights struggle from all angles.

So here follows that journey—25 fascinating books about Freedom Summer. We’ll start with:

ONE MOTHER’S MEMOIR:

1.My Mantelpiece (Carolyn Goodman, 2014)

With a foreword by Dr. Maya Angelou, My Mantelpiece is the posthumously published story of a woman who was faced with a decision: Do I let my son go to Mississippi? Do I allow him to follow in my footsteps as a social activist, or do I protect him and let someone else do the dangerous work? She realized she had no choice. As she states in the book, “I allowed him to go there, and I was both guilt-ridden and proud, and I devoted the rest of my life to making sure he did not die in vain. I permitted him to go to Mississippi because that is who he was. And it is who I was, too.” As part of the charity partnership mission of Why Not Books, half of all proceeds go directly to The Andrew Goodman Foundation.

THREE MORE BOOKS PUBLISHED AMID FREEDOM SUMMER’S 50th ANNIVERSARY:

2.The Freedom Summer Murders (Don Mitchell, 2014)

Mitchell, who has previously authored books about Henry Ford and John Glenn, focuses his attention on the three civil rights volunteers slain by the Ku Klux Klan. This 256-page book is published by Scholastic Press, which describes it as “the first book for young people to take a comprehensive look at the brutal murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, through to the conviction in 2005 of mastermind Edgar Ray Killen.”

3.Freedom Summer: The 1964 Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (Susan Goldman Rubin, 2014)

Published in March 2014 by Holiday House, this 144-page juvenile nonfiction account of that fateful summer includes new interviews with Freedom Summer volunteers and many never-before-seen photographs. Among Susan Goldman Rubin’s nonfiction titles are Diego Rivera: An Artist for the People, The Anne Frank Case: Simon Weisenthal’s Search for the Truth, and Music Was It: Young Leonard Bernstein.

4.The 1964 Freedom Summer (Rebecca Felix, 2014)

Educational publisher ABDO has produced an Essential Events Series for adolescents—dozens of books about historical touchstones, from the Salem Witch Trials and the Boston Tea Party to the Trail of Tears and the Transcontinental Railroad to the fall of the Berlin Wall and Hurricane Katrina. In 2014, the story of Freedom Summer took its place in the series about some of the nation’s most seminal events.

TWO BOOKS ABOUT THE MISSISSIPPI MURDERS:

5.Three Lives for Mississippi (William Bradford Huie, 1965)

Because the author was sent by the New York Herald Tribune to cover the breaking story of the missing civil rights workers Mississippi, this book is billed as “the only complete on-the-scene account of the heinous Freedom Summer murders.” And it includes a foreword by Martin Luther King, Jr., who described Huie’s reporting as “part of the arsenal decent Americans can employ to make democracy for all truly a birthright and not a distant dream.”

6.We Are Not Afraid (Seth Cagin and Philip Dray, 1988)

The definitive account of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, Mickey Schwerner and the civil rights campaign for Mississippi. Publisher’s Weekly gushed that “the infamous murder of three civil rights workers by a Ku Klux Klan mob and Mississippi law-enforcement officers in 1964 takes on the dimensions of a personal, political, and national tragedy in this riveting account” that includes a “brilliant re-creation of the incident, interwoven with a full-scale history of the civil rights movement.”

TWO BOOKS ABOUT THE MURDER TRIALS:

7.Murder in Mississippi (Howard Ball, 2004)

Ball’s book focuses primarily on the murder trial. From Booklist: “Eighteen Klansmen were tried, seven convicted of lesser civil rights violations, and the main conspirator let go under United States v. Price… Ball recounts the legal obstacles that led to the unprecedented conviction of whites for violating the rights of blacks. He focuses on the summer of 1964, when civil rights organizations such as CORE, SNCC, and SCLC brought to Mississippi huge numbers of white college students to work with black college students and local activists on a voter registration drive. Although the legal landmark decision remains important, the murderous resistance by the Klan was a situation the nation could no longer ignore.”

8.Justice in Mississippi (Howard Ball, 2006)

Soon after Ball’s original book was published, 80-year-old Edgar Ray Killen, the alleged mastermind of the murders, was finally put on trial. Ball revisits the crime, the series of events that led to the resurrection of the “cold case,” the strategies of the prosecution and defense, and the unanimous guilty verdict delivered on the 41st anniversary of the murders.

TWO PICTURE BOOKS ABOUT FREEDOM SUMMER:

9.Freedom Summer (Deborah Wiles, 2009)

The story of integration—and the opportunities and challenges of the 1964 Civil Rights Act—is most profoundly told on a very personal level. In this children’s picture book (illustrated with impressionist paintings by Jerome Lagarrigue), Joe and John Henry are best pals. John Henry’s mother works as a housekeeper for Joe’s family. Both boys like to shoot marbles. Both dream of being firemen. Both love to swim. But Joe is white, and John Henry is black, and this is the South in 1964. They can’t swim together. When a law is passed forbidding segregation, the two friends excitedly race to the newly integrated pool… only to find a work crew filling it in with asphalt. They discover that changing a law doesn’t necessarily change hearts and minds.

10.Freedom School, Yes! (Amy Littlesugar, 2001)

Another powerful picture book about Freedom Summer, this one illustrated by Floyd Cooper. The review from Publishers Weekly: “In the summer of 1964, Jolie's family plays host to Annie, a 19-year-old white woman who has volunteered to teach Freedom School. The segregated community of Chicken Creek is rattled by this arrangement--blacks are skeptical of learning about their history and their heroes from a white stranger; whites are suspected of violent efforts (burning down the church, throwing bricks through windows) to drive Annie away. Despite the unrest and tension in the air, Annie helps open Jolie's eyes to her heritage and to the great test of courage that the Freedom School poses to all involved.”

FOUR PERSONAL ACCOUNTS OF FREEDOM SUMMER:

11.Letters from Mississippi (edited by Elizabeth Martinez, 2007)

An intimate account of Freedom Summer through collected letters from Mississippi Summer Project volunteers and more than 40 pages of poetry written by students in the Freedom Schools of 1964. Bruce Watson (see above) wrote this review: “In addition to being of enormous help to me as I wrote ‘Freedom Summer,’ this book is simply the best collection of letters I have ever read on any topic. The volunteers of Freedom Summer were more than courageous and idealistic. They were great writers, and this very well-arranged collection follows them from training in Ohio through to the shock of arrival in Mississippi and on through that turning point summer. Stirring images, vivid conversations, startling violence, amazing courage.”

12.Freedom Summer (Sally Belfrage, 1965)

Here is the story of Freedom Summer told in the immediate aftermath by a participating volunteer. Sally Belfrage was assigned to Greenwood, a Mississippi Delta town that still relied on racial exploitation amid an old-time cotton economy. It also happened to be the headquarters of the Student Nonviolent Coordinator Committee—with Stokely Carmichael as its local project director. Belfrage (who passed away in 1994) was herself a remarkable story. In the 1950s, her parents were deported from the U.S. as alleged Communists (Belfrage wrote Un-American Activities, a memoir of that experience). In 1965, she married Bernard Pomerance, author of the Tony Award-winning play “The Elephant Man.”

13.Risking Everything: A Freedom Summer Reader (edited by Michael Edmonds)

A collection of 44 documents selected from among the 25,000 pages about the Mississippi Summer Project in the archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society. When the manuscripts were collected, in the mid-1960s, few other institutions were interested in, as the book states, “saving the stories of common people in McComb or Ruleville, Mississippi.”

14.Finding Freedom: Memorializing the Voices of Freedom Summer (Jacqueline Johnson, 2013)

On the campus of Western College at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, is a monument commemorating Western’s role in Freedom Summer and memorializing Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Mickey Schwerner. Johnson’s 136-page account contains essays from participants in the 1964 training sessions at Western, Oxford residents who supported the cause, and monument architect Robert Keller.

FIVE GENERAL STUDIES OF FREEDOM SUMMER:

15.Freedom Summer (Doug McAdam, 1988)

A comprehensive (including several appendices) chronicle of the 1964 Mississippi Summer Project. The summary on the cover well describes it: “June, 1964. Over 1,000 volunteers head to Mississippi to register black voters. By August, 4 people are dead, 80 beaten, 1,000 arrested, 67 churches, homes and businesses burned or bombed. This is the story of that summer and its impact on a generation.”

16.Freedom Summer (Bruce Watson, 2010)

The subtitle: The Savage Season of 1964 That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy. The opening quotation, a passage from “An Odor of Verbena” by William Faulkner: “A dream is not a very safe thing to be near, Bayard. I know; I had one once. It’s like a loaded pistol with a hair trigger: if it stays alive long enough, somebody is going to be hurt. But if it’s a good dream, it’s worth it.” The first line of Watson’s prologue: “In the fall of 1963, America was suffused with an unbearable whiteness of being.”

17.Faces of Freedom Summer (Herbert Randall, 2001)

Sometimes black-and-white pictures best tell the story. Published by the University of Alabama Press, this 160-page book includes more than 100 photographs by Randall, who was a young black man from New York in 1964, assigned to photograph Freedom Summer in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. The photographs, now part of a collection at the University of Southern Mississippi, show volunteers, visiting activists like Pete Seeger, freedom schools, community centers, voter registration efforts—they represent the record of a single town during the upheaval of that summer.

18.Stranger at the Gates: A Summer in Mississippi (Tracy Sugarman, 1965)

Published only one year after Freedom Summer, this book examines the human experiences amid the movement, focusing less on the historic events and important figures and more on the ordinary citizens and volunteers and hosts, their interpersonal relationships, the training, the travel to Mississippi, the living conditions, and the day-to-day activities.

19.Freedom Summer (David Aretha, 2007)

Part of The Civil Rights Movement juvenile nonfiction series from Morgan Reynolds Publishing (which offers titles like Plessy v. Ferguson, Montgomery Bus Boycott, Black Power, and The Murder of Emmett Till), this 128-page account covers everything from volunteer experiences to the murder of Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner to the formation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.

SIX EXAMINATIONS OF FREEDOM SUMMER’S LEGACY:

20.God’s Long Summer (Charles Marsh, 1997)

A unique take on the civil rights turmoil in the summer of 1964. In the struggle over racial justice, activists across the political spectrum claimed that God was on their side. Focusing on central figures ranging from Fannie Lou Hamer (who “worked for Jesus” in civil rights activism) to Sam Bowers (Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi), the book examines how their religious convictions led them to the fight and how their images of God clashed.

21.Mississippi Freedom Summer (John F. McClymer, 2004)

Part of the American History series, the book examines the summer of 1964 as part of the larger context of national politics and race relations. History professor McClymer touches on everything from the Kennedy Administration’s response to the attempt to integrate the University of Mississippi to LBJ’s response to the attempt by the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to unseat the “regular” delegates at the national convention to the strains within the multiracial coalition working in Mississippi during Freedom Summer.

22.Lessons from Freedom Summer (Kathy Emery, Linda Reid Gold, and Sylvia Braselman, 2008)

Subtitled Ordinary People Building Extraordinary Movements, this 250-page book from Common Courage Press provides context. Not only historical context (how four major civil rights organizations joined together in Mississippi to battle southern segregation), but also a case study of the elements that are crucial to the success of social activism.

23.I’ve Got the Light of Freedom (Charles M. Payne, 2007)

As the subtitle (The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle) suggests, this book is about the Mississippi Project from an organizational and general community activism perspective. From Library Journal: “Payne… presents an illuminating examination of the Civil Rights movement at the local level, in this case Greenwood, Mississippi, in the 1960s. As Payne deftly grafts Greenwood's struggle onto the larger movement, he challenges several widely accepted conclusions, such as overemphasizing a core cadre of male leaders while overlooking the important contributions of women and youth and the belief that the black church was an early leader in the movement.”

24.Like A Holy Crusade (Nicolaus Mills, 1993)

Mills’s book (subtitled Mississippi 1964—The Turning of the Civil Rights Movement in America) recalls the racial coalition that led to successes of the movement. But Mills also examines the divisiveness amid the quest, which marked the beginning of a split between white liberals and black activists and laid the foundations for the Black Power movement.

25.After Freedom Summer (Chris Danielson, 2011)

No study of the Mississippi Summer Project would be complete without an examination of the aftermath. Danielson looks at the history of black politics and white resistance in Mississippi from 1965 through 1986. Freedom Summer changed the state forever. Using newspaper articles, legal cases, and interviews, Danielson examines how those changes played out. One testimonial describes it as “a sobering account of what happened after the singing and marching stopped.”

The Gold Rush notwithstanding, California’s most precious commodity may be the nugget of an idea, which turns into a story, which graces a piece of literature for the ages. The number of famous authors who lived and worked in San Francisco alone is remarkable, from Ambrose Bierce and Dashiell Hammett to Upton Sinclair and Mark Twain. Several of them even have streets named after them. Stroll across Keroauc Drive. Stretch your legs at William Saroyan Place.

But the convergence of literature and place is a curious one, and it begs a question: Do we really need to create monuments to writers? Shouldn’t the writer’s plays or poems or novels be enough of a legacy? The answers: Yes and yes. While a writer’s creations are legacy enough, it can also be fascinating to understand the setting that sparked that creativity.

With that in mind, here are five of the most significant such landmarks in California, all within three hours of each other. It would make a helluva weekend literary excursion. We’ll start north and move south:

1.JACK LONDON’S WOLF HOUSE

On the outskirts of the community of Glen Ellen in southern Sonoma County, you can get more than just a taste of London. You can buy a used or rare book at the Jack London Bookstore, grab a few beers at the Jack London Saloon and sleep it off at the Jack London Lodge. But whatever you do, don’t miss 800-acre Jack London State Historic Park at 2400 London Ranch Road. Few men crammed more adventure into life than London, a full-time author and adventurer. But nestled among the redwoods in the state park is an ironic memorial to the man—a burned-out symbol of his unrealized dreams.

By 1905, London, already world famous for Call of the Wild, The Sea Wolf and other stories based on his own experiences, began purchasing land in the Sonoma Valley, seeking “a quiet place in the country to write and loaf in.” By 1911, he owned nearly 1,400 acres, which he called Beauty Ranch. He moved into a cottage in the middle of his holdings, and from there he supervised the construction of his dream house. It was a four-story, 26-room, nine-fireplace mansion, made from boulders of maroon lava and redwood logs. There was a two-story living room, a dining room seating 50, a pool stocked with bass, a gun and trophy room, a library, a sleeping tower. The entire structure, which he named Wolf House, stood on an extra-thick concrete foundation to withstand earthquakes. London expected it to stand for one thousand years.

In late July 1913, the $80,000 project was nearly complete, and London wrote, “…when it is done, I shall be really comfortable for the first time in my life.” But three weeks later, just as he and his wife Charmian, were preparing to move in, Wolf House burned to the ground, a mystery that remains unsolved. Crushed and suspicious, London planned to rebuild, but he died of kidney disease exactly 39 months later. His dream house remains a haunting collection of charred rock walls and chimneys among the towering trees.

2.LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI’S CITY LIGHTS BOOKS

In 1953, poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter D. Martin founded a simple bookstore in San Francisco’s North Beach district. City Lights was the nation’s first all-paperback emporium, situated at 261 Columbus Avenue, and while it carried with it a whiff of anti-authoritarian sensibilities, it was another couple of years before it offered the scent of revolution.

Ferlinghetti expanded from selling books to creating them in 1955, launching City Lights Publishers. The fourth book in his Pocket Poets Series was a poem by Allen Ginsberg called “Howl.” Its publication proved to be a watershed moment for the book and the bookstore. Ginsberg’s work elicited obscenity charges, followed by the arrest of Ferlinghetti and long court trial (in which the beatniks beat the rap), all of which turned the poem into a nexus of censorship debate, the poet into a herald of insurgent literature and City Lights into Ground Zero of everything bookishly beatific. Tour buses even began to pull to a halt in front of City Lights, passengers eager to claim beatnik sightings.

“Howl,” which had an original print run of 1,000 copies, now has something like 800,000 copies in print. City Lights Publishers has published more than 200 titles, and the bookstore has expanded several times over the years. It is no longer exclusively paperback, and isn’t solely a small press outlet. You can find new-release hardcovers from major publishing houses on any of its three stocked-to-the-gills floors. But while the place has become internationally famous, the attitude remains intimate and alternative. Inscriptions above doorways pronounce things like “Abandon all despair, ye who enter here,” and books are listed under quirky categories like Green Politics, Commodity Aesthetics, Muckraking, Anarchism and Class War.

In many ways, City Lights’ founder came full circle in 1998 when he was appointed San Francisco’s first Poet Laureate. If it seems like a somewhat Establishment honor, know that his inaugural speech was vintage Ferlinghetti. Taking the measure of “this far-out city on the left side of the world,” he rallied against freeways, warplanes and chain stores, called for writing poems that say something supremely important, and suggested painting the Golden Gate Bridge golden.

3.EUGENE O’NEILL’S TAO HOUSE

By early 1937, Eugene O’Neill had firmly established himself as the architect of modern American theater. Having refashioned it as serious art rather than a pleasant diversion, he had already had 35 plays produced and had earned three Pulitzer Prizes. But as firmly entrenched as O’Neill the playwright was, O’Neill the man was not. He and his wife Carlotta (she was his third wife; he was her fourth husband) were living in a San Francisco hotel.

One year earlier, however, O’Neill had become the only playwright from the United States to win the Nobel Prize. The accompanying stipend allowed the couple to purchase a 158-acre ranch near Danville, California, a plot of land offering a view of Mount Diablo across the San Ramon Valley. There they built what O’Neill, always a lover of the sea, hoped would be his “final harbor,” a quirky house with a Spanish colonial exterior but Asian inclinations.

They named it Tao House, a nod to O’Neill’s interest in Eastern philosophy and his wife’s yen for Oriental art, and indeed there are several elements of Taoism inside and out—from the curved walkways to the sky-blue ceilings and terra cotta floors. Despite the view, the outdoor pool and the player piano, there is a somewhat shadowy aura about the house, and the existence of colored mirrors—green, blue, even black—adds to the ghostly atmosphere. But as the park ranger will explain, it’s not a haunted house; it’s just the house of a haunted man.

O’Neill didn’t care for guests traipsing about his house, ironic considering it is now open for tours. Every Sunday in May, the Eugene O’Neill Foundation presents dramatic readings of the playwright’s works in a historic barn on the premises, and one weekend in October is set aside for a full, costumed performance of an O’Neill play. But nothing can match the drama of a visit to O’Neill’s isolated second-floor study where he penned his final and most successful plays, including “The Iceman Cometh”, “A Moon For the Misbegotten,” and the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Long Days Journey Into Night.”

4.DOC RICKETTS’S LAB

Perhaps nobody tapped the intimate relationship between humans and the places they inhabit more profoundly than John Steinbeck, California’s only Nobel-prize-winning novelist, who introduced readers the world over to the people harvesting the Salinas Valley and the shores of Monterey Bay.

Steinbeck Country offers widespread homage to the man, ranging from a $10 million museum (the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas) to nominal nods (the Steinbeck Electrolysis Center). But the most sacred memorial to the writer is essentially a monument to his muse. It is a tiny, two-story, wooden edifice tucked along a stretch of the Monterey shoreline known as Cannery Row. Once named Pacific Biological Laboratories, it is now revered as Doc Ricketts’ Lab.

Ed Ricketts was a self-taught marine biologist who has been called the inspiration for the creation of the world-famous Monterey Bay Aquarium, which sprouted up next to his old lab in 1984. But he had an equally large impact on Steinbeck, who met him in 1930, after Ricketts had established PBL amid the city’s sardine canneries, brothels and flophouses.

For nearly a dozen years, until Steinbeck moved to the East Coast, the two would often end a day by swapping philosophy and swigging beers at the lab (which was rebuilt after being destroyed by fire in 1936). Steinbeck later claimed Ricketts “was part of my brain.” He became part of his literature, too, as the model for a half-dozen characters, most notably “Doc,” the beloved protagonist in Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday, the books that transformed Ed the scientist into Doc the legend.

Although Ricketts died in 1948 when his car was struck by the Del Monte Express train at the other end of Cannery Row, his famous laboratory remains very much alive. In 1957, it was sold to a group of 14 local men, several of them Doc’s old friends, and it became an exclusive club of sorts. Every Wednesday for years, the men enjoyed cold drinks and cool jazz, continuing the celebration of artistry and informality at 800 Cannery Row.

But in 1993, the remaining members of the group decided to assure that such sacred ground was treated reverently. They sold Doc’s lab for a song to the City of Monterey, and the Cannery Row Foundation sponsored a restoration and seismic retrofit so successful that the city recently received the Governor’s Award for Historic Preservation.

While the lab is used for special occasions, it is open for public tours only three times a year—on Steinbeck’s birthday (February 27), on Ricketts’ birthday (May 14) and during the annual Sardine Festival (in early June). Visitors can imagine themselves back into the 1930s, when a biologist-philosopher found life teeming in the strangest places and his writer friend found much the same thing.

5.ROBINSON JEFFERS’S TOR HOUSE

Poet Robinson Jeffers and his wife, Una, arrived in Carmel, California—a few miles south of Cannery Row on the Monterey Peninsula—in 1914. They realized that, as Jeffers wrote, they “had come without knowing it to their inevitable place.” Often, their walks would take them to a large and nearly empty tract of land known as Carmel Point, where only the ocean and the elements reigned. Their favorite spot was a craggy hill—or tor—which by 1919 would mark the site of their home, the Tor House, built primarily from the rocks of Carmel Point (though one can also spot lava from Hawaii, a headstone from Ireland, even a portion of the Great Wall of China).

Visitors today can experience the scene just as Jeffers did—or at least close to it, relaxing in the poet’s furniture while listening to poems written about and within those stone walls. The Tor House, located at 26304 Ocean View Avenue, offers docent-led tours. But it has always attracted visitors over the years, from Charlie Chaplin to Charles Lindbergh.

When Jeffers lived there, most days were quiet and predictable. He would construct his poems in the morning and his home in the afternoon. This work included a romantic decision in 1920 to build for Una a stone tower reminiscent of ancient Irish architecture. For five years, Jeffers rolled boulders up from his private beach and meticulously set them into place, eventually constructing a tower 40 feet high and, in places, six feet thick. He named it Hawk Tower, and with typical poetry, observed, “I hung stone in the sky.”

While touring the tower, visitors are first led into the two tiny rooms on the ground floor, one of them— “the dungeon”—several feet below ground level. Then they corkscrew their way up a secret stairway to Una’s second-floor sanctuary, where they might enjoy a Jeffers paean to his love. From there, visitors can ascend to a little turret on the third floor and then an even steeper stairway to the top of the turret, commanding a breathtaking view of the ocean and the remarkable development surrounding the once-lonely Jeffers abode.

Up there, looking out toward the crashing waves, one realizes that Jeffers’ finest poem was made of stone and that, as he wrote in “Carmel Point,” its pristine beauty “lives in the very grain of the granite.”

“Every man’s life ends the same way,” Ernest Hemingway once declared. “It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.” With that in mind, this edition of the Why Not 100 presents 15 odd and extraordinary facts—somewhat chronologically—about the Pulitzer- and Nobel-winning author, his family, and how he lived and died:

1.HIS MOTHER LIKED TO DRESS HIM AS A GIRL

Grace Hemingway liked to fashion young Ernest’s hair like a girl and dress him in lacy white frocks. She called him her “Dutch dolly” and her “Sweetie.” Ernest pronounced it “Fweetee.” But he soon grew not to like it. One day he retorted, “I not a Dutch dolly… Bang, I shoot Fweetee.” As John Walsh wrote in The Independent, “He’d spend the rest of his life in a galloping parody of masculinity.”

2.HE HUNTED JUST ABOUT ANYTHING

At age three, Hemingway killed a porcupine. Then he ate it. In 1940, he went out with his third wife and two of his kids and reportedly killed four hundred jackrabbits in a single day. While deep sea fishing one day, he grabbed a Thompson submachine gun and opened fire on a group of sharks that were scavenging a huge tuna that he was trying to land. He once established a record by catching seven marlins in one day. Over countless hunting trips through the years, he bagged lions, leopards, hyenas… “I spent a lot of time killing animals and fish,” he once told Ava Gardner, “so I won’t kill myself.”

3.HE LOVED A SIX-TOED CAT

When he wasn’t hunting big cats, Hemingway loved little ones. And his most beloved pet was a polydactyl cat—that is, a cat with six toes—named Snowball. It was a gift from a ship’s captain. Today, the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West, Florida—the writer’s 1930s island retreat—is positively brimming with dozens and dozens of descendants of Hemingway’s original cats, and about half of them carry a polydactyl gene.

4.HIS LONGEST SENTENCE WAS REALLY LONG

The longest sentence Hemingway ever wrote—in Green Hills of Africa—consisted of 424 words: “That something I cannot yet define completely but the feeling comes when you write well and truly of something and know impersonally you have written in that way and those who are paid to read it and report on it do not like the subject so they say it is all a fake, yet you know its value absolutely; or when you do something which people do not consider a serious occupation and yet you know truly, that it is as important and has always been as important as all the things that are in fashion, and when, on the sea, you are alone with it and know that this Gulf Stream you are living with, knowing, learning about, and loving, has moved, as it moves, since before man, and that it has gone by the shoreline of that long, beautiful, unhappy island since before Columbus sighted it and that the things you find out about it, and those that have always lived in it are permanent and of value because that stream will flow, as it has flowed, after the Indians, after the Spaniards, after the British, after the Americans and after all the Cubans and all the systems of governments, the richness, the poverty, the martyrdom, the sacrifice and the venality and the cruelty are all gone as the high-piled scow of garbage, bright-colored, white-flecked, ill-smelling, now tilted on its side, spills off its load into the blue water, turning it a pale green to a depth of four or five fathoms as the load spreads across the surface, the sinkable part going down and the flotsam of palm fronds, corks, bottles, and used electric light globes, seasoned with an occasional condom or a deep floating corset, the torn leaves of a student’s exercise book, a well-inflated dog, the occasional rat, the no-longer-distinguished cat; all this well shepherded by the boats of the garbage pickers who pluck their prizes with long poles, as interested, as intelligent, and as accurate as historians; they have the viewpoint; the stream, with no visible flow, takes five loads of this a day when things are going well in La Habana and in ten miles along the coast it is as clear and blue and unimpressed as it was ever before the tug hauled out the scow; and the palm fronds of our victories, the worn light bulbs of our discoveries and the empty condoms of our great loves float with no significance against one single, lasting thing—the stream.”

5.HE LIKED TO WRITE ON HIS FEET

Hemingway supposedly said, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” But legend has it (and photos confirm) that he often preferred to write standing up. He usually wrote in his bedroom, where there was a desk. But instead, he placed a typewriter atop a bookcase. He called that his “work desk.” And he generally liked to write while standing, moving only to shift his weight from one leg to another.

6.HE DIED BEFORE HE DIED

Hemingway survived two airplane crashes in two days. He was in Nairobi in 1954 when he and his fourth wife, Mary, chartered a sightseeing flight toward the Belgian Congo. But the plane struck a utility pole and crash landed in heavy brush. Mary broke two ribs. Her husband sprained his shoulder. So they boarded a second plane the next day, hoping to reach medical care in Entebbe. This time, the airplane burst into flames on the runway. Hemingway ruptured his liver, spleen and kidney and fractured his skull. By the time they finally reached Entebbe, a page one newspaper headline was shouting: HEMINGWAY, WIFE KILLED IN AIR CRASH. A photo caption began added: “NO SIGN OF LIFE” AT WRECK.

7.HE PUT THE “ART” IN PARTY

In 1959, Mary spent months preparing for a lavish 60th birthday party for her husband. She flew exotic foods into Pamplona—Chinese food from London, codfish from Madrid, champagne from Paris. She hired waiters, barmen and cooks from all over the world, too. There were flamenco dancers. There were fireworks. There was a “shooting booth.” Guests included Italian royalty and the Maharajah of Behar. The party lasted from noon of July 21st to noon of July 22nd.

8.HE COULDN’T SHAKE WRITER’S BLOCK

Once he reached his sixties, Hemingway found that he could no longer write. In the spring of 1961, he was asked to contribute something brief to a presentation volume for John F. Kennedy’s inauguration. Just a single sentence. He couldn’t do it. “It just won’t come anymore,” he told a close friend, and he was weeping as he said it.

9.HE COULDN’T DEFEAT DEMENTIA

At the end of his life, Hemingway was fraught with paranoid delusions. He thought his friends were trying to murder him. He thought two men working late in a bank were “Feds” auditing his bank accounts. When his car grazed another vehicle, he worried that he would be thrown in jail. He was given medication and electro-shock therapy. Three months before his death, Mary found him sitting with a gun in one hand and two bullets in the other. Not long after that, he tried to kill himself—by walking into the path of a plane taxiing on a runway.

10.HE DIDN’T KILL HIMSELF, BUT REALLY HE DID

The New York Times headline that appeared on the morning of July 3, 1961 declared: HEMINGWAY DEAD OF SHOTGUN WOUND; WIFE SAYS HE WAS CLEANING WEAPON. The early assessment was that, clad in a robe and pajamas on a morning 19 days before his 62nd birthday, he was cleaning his favorite double-barreled, 12-gauge shotgun at his house in Ketchum, Idaho. Mary, still in bed, was awoken by a shotgun blast. She went downstairs to find her husband’s body near a gun rack in the foyer. After a preliminary investigation, the Blaine County sheriff stated that the death “looks like an accident” and “there is no evidence of foul play.” As it turns out, along with the two air crashes, over the years Hemingway survived everything from skin cancer and malaria to hepatitis and diabetes to blood poisoning and a car accident that hurled him through the windshield. That may be one reason why it took Mary several months to admit that her husband had actually killed himself.

11.SUICIDE WAS A TRAGIC FAMILY TRADITION

Hemingway’s grandfather committed suicide. His father shot himself at the age of 57, using a Civil War pistol. His brother and sister and a granddaughter killed themselves, too. The New York Times described the family tree as “blood-soaked as any from Greek tragedy,” and the term ”Hemingway curse” has become shorthand for the cycle of mental illness, addiction and suicide can afflict multiple generations. In his book Strange Tribe: A Family Memoir, John Hemingway (the author’s youngest son) called suicide “the family exit.” In 2013, a documentary chronicling the family’s troubled history was shown at the Sundance Film Festival. It was called Running from Crazy.

12.HE NEVER MET HIS MOST FAMOUS DESCENDANT

Actress Mariel Hemingway was born less than five months after her famous grandfather ended his life. For years, she believed that he had accidentally killed himself. No one told her otherwise. She was named after the Cuban port of Mariel, where her father and grandfather regularly went fishing. She’s an author, too—of a yoga memoir, an organic foods cookbook, and two self-help books. When she was a baby, her older sister Margaux (who would die from an intentional overdose at the age of 41) was so jealous that she cut off Mariel’s eyelashes with a scissors. Mariel’s oldest sister Joan (called Muffet) used LSD so prolifically that it triggered a full-blown psychosis. After she ran naked through the streets of Ketchum, Idaho, she was finally institutionalized.

13.HIS BROTHER FOUNDED A MICRO-NATION

Leicester Hemingway, Ernest’s younger brother and a somewhat successful author himself, towed a small barge 12 nautical miles off the coast of Jamaica, anchored it to the floor of the Caribbean with the aid of an old Ford Engine block, and declared it New Atlantis. Citing the 1856 Guano Islands Act, he claimed half of the barge as a new nation and half for the United States. A tropical storm destroyed it two years later, so he created a second micro-nation—on a 300-foot-long sandbar in the Bahamas. The U.S. State Department’s response? “Attempts at creating this island would be viewed by the United States as a highly undesirable development averse to our national security, particularly as it might encourage archipelagic claim.” Leicester shot himself less than a decade later.

14.HIS SON SPENT HIS LAST DAYS AS A WOMAN

Hemingway’s son, Gregory, was a doctor who lost his medical license, a husband who divorced four wives, and a transvestite and transsexual who late in his life was arrested for walking down a Key Biscayne street naked, carrying a dress and high heels. A kind and gentle person who sometimes preferred to be called Vanessa or Gloria, Hemingway collapsed and died six days after being arrested (for the naked thing) in 2001. As the Chicago Tribune wrote, “The third son of the 20th century’s most resolutely macho literary figure had died, at age 69, in a women’s jail.”

15.HEMINGWAY COMES BACK TO LIFE EVERY JULY

Every year on the third Saturday in July at Sloppy Joe’s Bar in Key West, the Hemingway Look-Alike Society holds the largest sanctioned look-alike competition in the world. The 34th annual “Papa” Hemingway Look-Alike Contest, a highlight of the annual Hemingway Days celebration, took place in 2014. More than 120 look-alikes entered, the winner (selected by previous winners) being crowned “Papa.” It’s a bunch of portly, white-bearded men, most of them wearing safari garb or wool fisherman’s sweaters. One winner (Bob Anderson, 1991) previously made props and sets for the film To Kill a Mockingbird. Another (Leo Rost, 1983) was a published playwright. (By the way, there’s an urban legend that Charlie Chaplin once anonymously entered a Chaplin look-alike contest. He finished in third place.)

I’ve long believed that reading across America is one of the best ways to experience it. The Fourth of July celebrates a nation, but really it’s a community-by-community display of attitudes and priorities. Fireworks? A parade? A lawn party? A slo-pitch softball tournament? A symphony? What say you? No, you have to travel to truly rejoice in America.

As long as there have been travelers, there have been attempts to put the experience into words. But sometimes what has already been written can improve the ride. On my first-ever cross-country RV excursion in 1995-96, I began by reading a trilogy of road classics to get me in the mood – On the Road by Jack Kerouac, Travels with Charley by Steinbeck and Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon. But I soon found an even better way to give myself a sense of place – by regionalizing my reads.

So while we were parked for the night in Montgomery, I journeyed through the pages of To Kill a Mockingbird, and I could almost taste the red Alabama dust. In Missoula, I dove into A River Runs Through It and began to understand Montanans’ relationship with the landscape. On the banks of the Mississippi River, I spent some time with Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and realized the myriad stories at every bend in the great waterway.

Each and every time, I was infused with a greater understanding of where I was.

I could ponder Thomas Wolfe’s description of North Carolina in Look Homeward, Angel (“clumped woodlands, the bending sweep of the fields, the huge flowing lift of the earth-waves”) and then appreciate the scenic poetry myself during my drive the following day. I could read Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire in Utah’s Arches National Park and then anticipate a sunrise consisting of a “flaming globe, blazing on the pinnacles and minarets and balanced rocks.”

So for the would-be traveler out there—either by vehicle or vicariously—what follows is a list of 50 must-reads, one for each state. The list, of course, is subjective. In fact, a compilation of books NOT included would feature the likes of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (John Behrendt, Georgia), Empire Falls (Richard Russo, Maine), and Walden (Henry David Thoreau, Massachusetts). But then I would have to discard some of these:

Alabama: To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
Alaska: Coming Into the Country (John McPhee)
Arizona: The Monkey Wrench Gang (Edward Abbey)
Arkansas: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou)
California: Cannery Row (John Steinbeck)
Colorado: Plainsong (Kent Haruf)
Connecticut: Revolutionary Road (Richard Yates)
Delaware: Blinded (Kashamba Williams)
Florida: Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Thurston)
Georgia: Gone With the Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
Hawaii: Hawaii (James Michener)
Idaho: The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon (Tom Spanbauer)
Illinois: The Jungle (Upton Sinclair)
Indiana: The Magnificent Ambersons (Booth Tarkington)
Iowa: The Iowa Baseball Confederacy (W.P. Kinsella)
Kansas: PrairyErth (William Least Heat Moon)
Kentucky: Icy Sparks (Gwyn Hyman Rubio)
Louisiana: A Confederacy of Dunces (John Kennedy Toole)
Maine: The Cider House Rules (John Irving)
Maryland: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Frederick Douglass)
Massachusetts: Home Town (Tracy Kidder)
Michigan: Middlesex (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Minnesota: Main Street (Sinclair Lewis)
Mississippi: Absalom, Absalom (William Faulkner)
Missouri: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain)
Montana: A River Runs Through It (Norman Maclean)
Nebraska: O Pioneers! (Willa Cather)
Nevada: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas(Hunter S. Thompson)
New Hampshire: A Prayer for Owen Meany(John Irving)
New Jersey: American Pastoral (Philip Roth)
New Mexico: The Milagro Beanfield War(John Nichols)
New York: The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
North Carolina: Look Homeward, Angel(Thomas Wolfe)
North Dakota: Peace Like a River (Leif Enger)
Ohio: Winesburg, Ohio (Sherwood Anderson)
Oklahoma: Pigs in Heaven (Barbara Kingsolver)
Oregon: Sometimes a Great Notion (Ken Kesey)
Pennsylvania: Rabbit, Run (John Updike)
Rhode Island: My Sister’s Keeper (Jodi Picoult)
South Carolina: The Lords of Discipline(Pat Conroy)
South Dakota: Dakota: A Spiritual Geography(Kathleen Norris)
Tennessee: The Orchard Keeper (Cormac McCarthy)
Texas : The Last Picture Show (Larry McMurtry)
Utah: Desert Solitaire (Edward Abbey)
Vermont: South of the Northeast Kingdom (David Mamet)
Virginia: The Confessions of Nat Turner(William Styron)
Washington: The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (Sherman Alexie)
West Virginia: The Glass Castle (Jeannette Walls)
Wisconsin: Population: 485 (Michael Perry)
Wyoming: Close Range (Annie Proulx)

My sons Luke and Jesse were prolific readers from the beginning, and I remember two picture books in particular that captured the fancy of the boys (and their parents). Jesse had a few books in the Jesse Bear series by Nancy White Carlstrom and Bruce Degen—I particularly recall Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? And Luke and I both enjoyed a book called Luke’s Way of Looking by Nadia Wheatley and Matt Ottley. It’s the story of a kid whose art teachers and classmates don’t have the imagination that he has—and don’t like it. So Luke discovers his own world filled with colorful and crazy pieces of art, and knowing about that place changes the rest of the world for him.

Well, Jesse’s now on the cusp of adolescence, but once in a while he’ll still answer to Jesse Bear. And Luke, the one who saw his name in a book about a child who embraces his imagination? At age 13, he’s the published author of Dragon Valley and a soon-to-published fantasy novel called Griffin Blade and the Bronze Finger.

Maybe every child deserves a book title, a lead character of their own. With the publication of our picture book Francis and Eddie in 2013, we at Why Not Books tried to help the cause, Any four-year-old Francises out there? Any eight-year-old Eddies? Yeah, not so much.

Well, I found another way to help—by simply locating the top baby names of 2013 (according to the half a million parents who shared the information with BabyCenter.com) and finding at least one book for almost every one of them.

I focused on picture books specifically. That means no Charlotte’s Web, no Amelia Bedelia, and no Sarah, Plain and Tall. And, of course, personalized book series don’t count either. Sure, I cheated a bit by using titles like Hello, Brooklyn and Queen Victoria’s Christmas. And a few remain elusive—names that desperately need to be immortalized by somebody in the title of a picture book. Keira, anyone? Aaliyah? Aubrey? Adalyn? Alaina? How about Kennedy and Reagan? Or girls named Harper and Charlie?

Still, I found a whole lotta books. So what follows are 68 picture books for 68 of the most popular girls’ names today. Gift-givers, you’re welcome.

1. Sophia—Princess Sophia and the Frog (Suzy Liebermann)

2. Emma—Emma Dilemma (Kristine O’Connell George)

3. Olivia—Olivia (Ian Falconer)

4. Isabella—My Name is Not Isabella(Jennifer Fosberry)

5. Mia—Mia’s Quest for Courage(Karen Yadid)

6. Ava—Ava’s Poppy (Marcus Pfister)

7. Lily—Lulu Lily Gets Smart(Sally Huss)

8. Zoe—Zoe’s Hats (Sharon Lane Holm)

9. Emily—Emily Brown and The Thing(Cressida Cowell)

10. Chloe—Chloe, Instead (Micah Player)

11. Layla—Layla’s Head Scarf(Miriam Cohen)

12. Madison—Madison and the Two Wheeler (Vanita Braver)

13. Madelyn—Madeline (Ludwig Bemelmans)

14. Abigail—Abigail and Her Pet Zombie (Marie F. Crow)

15. Charlotte—Charlotte’s Web(E.B. White)

16. Amelia—Because Amelia Smiled(David Ezra Stein)

17. Ella—Ella the Elegant Elephant(Carmela and Steven D’amico)

18. Kaylee—Kaylee the Caterpillar in the Adventure of Life (Peggy Hunt)

19. Avery—Avery and Cousin Ella’s Adventure (Frederic and Sonia Mendelsohn)

20. Hailey—Hailey’s Halloween(Lisa Bullard)

21. Hannah—Hannah on the Farm(Marjan Van Zeyl)

22. Addison—Holly and Addison’s Adventures at Doggie Daycare (Betsy Manchester)

23. Riley—The Short and Incredibly Happy Life of Riley (Colin Thompson)

24. Aria—Aria the World Traveler(Anna Kim)

25. Arianna—Arianna and the Strawberry Tea (Maria Fasal Faulconer)

26. Mackenzie—Mackenzie’s Gift(Cari Poock)

27. Lila—What Lila Loves (Bronwen Scarffe)

28. Evelyn—That Evelyn Margaret!(Christina K. Hanrahan)

29. Grace—Grace for President(Kelly S. DiPucchio)

30. Brooklyn—Hello, Brooklyn(Martha Day Zschock)

31. Ellie—Ellie’s Bad Hair Day(Jerome Keane)

32. Anna—Anna’s Table (Eve Bunting)

33. Kaitlyn—I’m Kaitlyn! (Crystal Bowman)

34. Isabelle—My Friend Isabelle(Eliza Woloson)

35. Sophie—Sophie’s Squash (Pat Zietlow Miller)

36. Scarlett—The Bravest Cat: The True Story of Scarlett (Laura Driscoll)

37. Natalie—Natalie & Naughtily(Vincent X. Kirsch)

38. Leah—Leah’s Voice (Lori DeMonia)

39. Sarah—Thank You, Sarah: The Woman Who Saved Thanksgiving (Laurie Halse Anderson)

40. Nora—Nora’s Ark (Eileen Spinelli)

41. Mila—Maks and Mila on a Special Journey (Merel Bakker)

42. Elizabeth—My Name is Elizabeth(Annika Dunklee)

43. Lillian—Princess Lillian & the Creature (Erica de Muir)

44. Kylie—Kylie’s Song (Patty Sheehan)

45. Audrey—Audrey Bunny (Angie Smith)

46. Lucy—Lucy Goosey (Margaret Wild)

47. Maya—Maya and the Turtle(John C. Stickler)

48. Annabelle—Annabelle’s Wish(Susan Korman)

49. Makayla—Makayla Cares About Others (Virginia Kroll)

50. Gabriella—Gabriella’s Song(Candace Fleming)

51. Elena—Elena’s Serenade(Campbell Geeslin)

52. Victoria—Queen Victoria’s Christmas (Jackie French)

53. Claire—Ollie and Claire (Tiffany Strelitz Haber)

54. Savannah—Savannah’s Swim Lessons (Pamela Baker)

55. Peyton—Peyton Penguin Prefers Peas (Tammy Fitzherbert)

56. Maria—Maria Had a Little Llama(Angela Dominguez)

57. Stella—Stella: Star of the Sea(Mary-Louise Gay)

58. Liliana—Liliana’s Grandmothers(Leyla Torres)

59. Allison—Alison Investigates: Does Chocolate Milk Come from Brown Cows? (Colette Omans Nicoletta)

60. Samantha—Samantha on a Roll(Linda Ashman)

61. Alyssa—Alyssa and the Spider(Alan St. Jean)

62. Molly—Have Fun, Molly Lou Melon(Patty Lovell)

63. Alexandra—Dear Alexandra(Helen Gudel)

64. Violet—Goodnight My Sweet Violet(Heather Young)

65. Julia—Mikolay & Julia in the Attic (Magda M. Olchawska)

66. Sadie—Sadie’s Dream(Charlotte Perry)

67. Ruby—Ruby’s Cupcakes(Rosemary Wells)

68. Eva—Eva and Sadie and the Worst Haircut Ever (Jeff Cohen)

In my last Why Not 100 post, I offered up 68 pictures books for 68 of the most popular girls’ names these days. Now it’s the boys’ turn. Again, I’m focusing on picture books specifically. That means no James and the Giant Peach or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. And, of course, personalized book series don’t count either.

And there are currently popular names that haven’t attached themselves to book titles over the years. Can someone write a picture book about Brayden? Jayce, maybe? Carter? Colton? How about boys named Christian or Hunter or Parker? Is it possible that we can’t locate a book title about Evan?

Still, I found a bunch. So what follows are 67 picture books for 67 boys’ names:

1. Jackson—Jackson and the Big Blue Boots (Mary Jane Kooiman)

2. Aiden—Aiden’s Aquarium Adventure(Bill Connors)

3. Liam—Dirty Face Liam (Flo Barnett)

4. Lucas—Lucas the Littlest Lizard(Kathy Helodoniotis)

5. Noah—Noah and the Magic Dragon(Amy McNeil)

6. Mason—Mason & Buddy(Annelien Wejrmeijer)

7. Jayden—Jayden’s Jealousaurus(Brian Moses)

8. Ethan—Ethan Out and About(Johanna Hurwitz)

9. Jacob—Jacob’s Eye Patch(Jacob and Beth Kobliner Shaw)

10. Jack—Jack and the Beanstalk(Nick Page)

11. Caden—Caden Loves His Momma(RyAnn Adams Hall)

12. Logan—Logan’s Caterpillar(Diane Branch)

13. Benjamin—Benjamin’s Lost Sneeze(Chelsey Patriss)

14. Michael—Michael and the Magic Markers (Michael Yu)

15. Caleb—Caleb and Jack(Jennifer Jones-Bates)

16. Ryan—Sir Ryan’s Quest (Jason Deeble)

17. Alexander—Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (Judith Viorst)

18. Elijah—Elijah Makes New Friends(Beth Arnold)

19. James—James and the Red Balloon(Rev. W. Awdry)

20. William—William’s Dinosaurs(Alan Baker)

21. Oliver—Oliver and His Alligator(Paul Schmid)

22. Connor—Connor Goes to Camp(Rachel Gregories)

23. Matthew—Matthew’s Dream (Leo Lionni)

24. Daniel—Daniel the Irascible(Yael Aharoni)

25. Luke—Luke’s Way of Looking (Nadie Wheatley and Matt Ottley)

26. Henry—Flying Henry (Rachel Hulin)

27. Dylan—Dylan the Eagle-Hearted Chicken (David L. Harrison)

28. Gabriel—This is Gabriel: Making Sense of School (Hartley Steiner)

29. Joshua—Joshua and Bigtooth(Mark Childress

30. Nicholas—Nicholas, That’s Ridiculous! (Christa Carpenter)

31. Isaac—Isaac the Ice Cream Truck(Scott Santoro)

32. Owen—Owen’s Marshmallow Chick (Kevin Henkes)

33. Nathan—Nathan’s Wish (Laurie Lears)

34. Grayson—Grayson Gorilla Learns to Grin (Joyce Wold)

35. Eli—Eli Ate a Fly (Corey Colombin)

36. Landon—Landon & the Dragon(Joy Fridman)

37. Andrew—A, My Name is Andrew(Mary McManus Burke)

38. Max—Max’s Words (Kate Banks)

39. Samuel—Samuel Rigby Loves Bugs(Ann Vance)

40. Gavin—Gavin Grasshopper’s Costume(Julie Haydon)

41. Wyatt—Quiet, Wyatt! (Larry Dane Brimner)

42. Cameron—Cameron the Charming Chimpanzee (Ginger De Vine)

43. Charlie—Charlie the Ranch Dog(Ree Drummond)

44. David—No, David! (David Shannon)

45. Sebastian—Sebastian’s Roller Skates (Joan De Deu Prats)

46. Joseph—Joseph Had a Little Overcoat (Simms Taback)

47. Dominic—Dominic Ties His Shoes (Etta Sare)

48. Anthony—Big Anthony (Tommie dePaola)

49. John—Johnny Tractor and the Big Surprise (Judy Katschke)

50. Tyler—Tyler Makes Pancakes!(Tyler Florence)

51. Zachary—Zachary’s Ball (Matt Tavares)

52. Thomas—Thomas the Tank Engine’s Book Lift-and-Look Book (Owen Bell)

53. Julian—Julian (Dayal Kaur Khalsa)

54. Levi—Levi Noodle Loves to Doodle(Jill Wisotzke)

55. Adam—Adam Raccoon and the Circus Master (Glen Keane)

56. Isaiah—Vote for Isaiah!(Anastasia Suen)

57. Alex—Alex and Lulu: Two of a Kind(Lorena Siminovich)

58. Aaron—Aaron’s Hair (Robert Munsch)

59. Cooper—Nighty-Night, Cooper(Laura Numeroff)

60. Miles—When Miles Got Mad (Sam Kurtzman-Counter)

61. Chase—Chase is on the Case(Christopher Jacobson)

62. Muhammad—Muhammad (Demi)

63. Christopher—Christopher’s Harvest Time (Elsa Beskow)

64. Blake—My Snake Blake (Randy Siegel)

65. Austin—Austin Alligator: I’ll See You Guys Later (Cindy G. Foust)

66. Jordan—Jordan’s Hair (Edward and Sonya Spruill)

67. Leo—Leo the Late Bloomer(Robert Kraus)

Only a dozen men have walked on the moon. It is, perhaps, the ultimate in elite accomplishment. Someday, certainly, a thirteenth Earthling will follow in their dusty gray footsteps, but it won’t be a surprise performance. So everyone should know these 12 names. They should be taught in schools—beyond Neil Armstrong. I’m not saying every elementary school student should be as enamored with space minutia as I am. I’m not saying Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff should be a required part of the curriculum, right alongside To Kill A Mockingbird and Tom Sawyer. I’m just saying this: If we’re going to insist that kids learn, say, the seven inert gases, then we may as well teach them the names of the 12 men who are the only people to have left footprints beyond Earth.

So to facilitate that education for all of us, we at the Why Not 100 offer a reading list: Twelve books written by or about the 12 men who have touched the moon.

Here they are, in chronological order of their moon moment:

Neil Armstrong

Armstrong commanded Apollo 11, which landed on the moon surface on July 20, 1969. In the long run, his name may actually outshine the George Washingtons and Nelson Mandelas of the world. The sociopolitical map of the world will evolve over the epochs, making even U.S. origins and South African apartheid remnants of a vague, academic history. But Armstrong, who shied away from the spotlight until his death in 2012 at age 82, will always be the first man to step on the surface of another heavenly body.

First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong by James R. Hansen

From a Booklist review:

For the first time, the cool, precise, and celebrity-averse Neil Armstrong has authorized a biography. Its readers cannot expect any more access to his emotional interior than the first man to walk on the moon has ever allowed, but they will learn about everything he achieved in aerospace engineering. Deflecting aerospace historian Hansen's inquiries about personal crises, such as the death of an infant daughter or his divorce, Armstrong proves disarmingly more voluble about his involvement with airplanes and spacecraft. Quelling apocrypha circulated at the time of Apollo 11 about the all-American boy who dreamed of going to the moon, Hansen follows the empirical arc of Armstrong's interest in aviation, his engineering studies at Purdue University, and his qualification as an aircraft-carrier pilot. After the Korean War, Armstrong resumed his engineering career, wrote technical papers, flew hotshot planes like the X-15, and stepped irrevocably into history with Apollo 11. Dramatizing the mission in meticulous detail, Hansen capably captures both Armstrong's expertise and his Garbo-like demurral of fame.

Buzz Aldrin

The lunar module pilot for Apollo 11 has long been the most visible of the moonwalkers, as willing to court celebrity as Armstrong was keen to avoid it. The second man to walk on the moon, he has done everything from authoring several books and lecturing worldwide to starting a company devoted to promoting his vision for the future of space exploration. Oh, and he competed on “Dancing With the Stars.”

Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home from the Moon by Buzz Aldrin with Ken Abraham

From a Publishers Weekly review:

Picking up the threads of his acclaimed 1973 autobiography, Return to Earth, Aldrin presents as no-holds-barred account of how his celebrity, career and human weaknesses nearly destroyed his life… Millions witnessed Neil Armstrong and Aldrin become the first two people on the moon; an instant American hero, Aldrin was "greeted with ticker-tape parades" and spent the next two years, along with his fellow astronauts, as public relations assets for NASA and the Nixon administration. With a PhD from MIT, Aldrin had not only spent eight years training for the mission, but also helped developed technology needed for the mission; upon returning home from his world tour as an "unofficial space ambassador," however, he found the doors at NASA "pretty much closed"; the moon-landing program had given way to the shuttle project. That homecoming would catapult Aldrin into a decades-long struggle with alcoholism and clinical depression (both his grandfather and mother committed suicide) that broke up two marriages before psychiatric treatment and rehab put him on the road to recovery. This inspiring story exhibits Aldrin as a different, perfectly human kind of hero, giving readers a sympathetic look at a man eclipsed by his own legend.

Charles “Pete” Conrad

My favorite astronaut, and the third man to step on the moon as commander of Apollo 12 in December 1969. He was dyslexic as a child. He stood only 5-foot-6. He was the merry prankster among the Mercury-Gemini-Apollo crews. When he died tragically in motorcycle accident at age 69 in 1999, he—like many astronauts before him, was honored with a tree in the Astronaut Grove at Johnson Space Center. But Conrad often said, reflecting his personality, “If you can’t be good, be colorful.” So during the holiday season, when the rest of the astronaut trees are adorned in white lights, Conrad’s shines bright red.

Rocketman: Astronaut Pete Conrad's Incredible Ride to the Moon and Beyond by Nancy Conrad and Howard Klausner.

From a Booklist review:

The late astronaut Pete Conrad had a distinguished record and a wide streak of cowboy in him. This biography by his widow and screenwriter Klausner draws on their recorded interviews with Conrad, the last completed just before his accidental death, and does him as much justice as possible. The scion of a Main Line Philadelphia family ruined by the Depression, Conrad paid for flying lessons by working at airports and went to Princeton on a navy scholarship. Highly rated as a test pilot, he walked out of the original Mercury selection process because he disliked the tests and the doctors. He returned to fly two Gemini missions, command Apollo XII (the second moon landing), and command and repair, on the spot, Skylab during its first mission.

Alan Bean

The Apollo 12 lunar module pilot spent more than a day on the surface of the moon with Pete Conrad, his commander and good buddy. Since his retirement from NASA in 1981, he has turned his rare glimpse of space exploration into an artist’s rendering of the wonder of it all. Bean is a painter. He almost exclusively paints astronauts and space scenes, sometimes sprinkling his work with a smidge of moon dust.

Apollo : An Eyewitness Account by Alan Bean and Andrew Chaikin

From a Publishers Weekly review:

With the descent of the lunar lander Intrepid, Apollo 12 astronaut Bean became the fourth man to walk on the moon. Since his retirement from NASA in 1981, Bean has devoted himself to his realist paintings; this handsome volume allows him to display both his artistic skills and his orbital experience, reproducing dozens of Bean's paintings of lunar surfaces, moonwalks, astronaut gear and so on, alongside a blow-by-blow narrative of Apollo 12, which Chaikin (The National Air and Space Museum Book of Aviation and Space Flight) has written very much from Bean's perspective. Chaikin and Bean describe the thrills and setbacks on the latter's path from naval aviator to astronaut, his first view of the blue-and-white Earth from 293,000 miles and the technical problems of making sure an American flag stays up on the moon. Final chapters track Bean's adventures with the paint and canvas he took up in 1974 ("Flying skills are so much like painting skills, it's amazing"), the exploits and close calls of other astronauts and Bean's hopes for his art and for space exploration. Short paragraphs in which Bean explains his pictures' subjects and techniques alternate with the longer segments of narrative; this format can make the whole book seem scattered, though the images, and the anecdotes, retain undeniable power. The meticulously detailed paintings themselves add warmth and a mid-19th-century softness to the photos and equipment on which many of them are based.

Alan Shepard

The first American in space (aboard Freedom 7 on May 5, 1971) and the fifth man to walk on the moon (as commander of Apollo 14 in 1971), Shepard would be on the Mount Rushmore of U.S. astronauts, probably alongside Armstrong, Aldrin and John Glenn. He was the first one of theose four to leave this Earth permanently, dying of leukemia in 1998. He was also the first and only one of them to play golf on the moon, famously one-handing a ball into space during his time on the lunar surface.

Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America's Apollo Moon Landings by Alan Shepard, Deke Slayton, Jay Barbee, and Howard Benedict

From a Booklist review:

It's hard to believe, but most teens and people in their early twenties don't remember Americans walking on the moon. This book, written lovingly by two of the most respected astronauts in U.S. history, will remedy that. Journalists Jay Barbree and Howard Benedict organized the material, and they portray Shepard and Slayton as two close friends who shared the dream of many children of the 1960s: to fly in outer space. Sadly, Shepard, after becoming the first American in space in a mere hour's trip, developed inner ear problems that prevented him from going back, and Slayton's irregular heartbeat kept him from going at all. Meanwhile, President Kennedy escalated the space race to get a leg up on the Russians. Despite covering some of the same ground as Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff, Shepard and Slayton vividly portray the great bond uniting the original Mercury Seven. The most terrifying chapter describes the fire on the launchpad that killed three Apollo 1 astronauts, but problems on many flights (unbeknownst to TV viewers) were only solved by the skill of the astronauts as pilots.

Edgar Mitchell

He’s the mystic among the moonwalkers. The Apollo 14 lunar module pilot spent more than 216 hours in space with Shepard and came home with a yen to pursue the study of consciousness, founding the Institute of Noetic Sciences. His book is very much a reflection of that. As the flap copy states: He was engulfed by a profound sense of universal connectedness. He intuitively sensed that his presence and that of the planet in the window were all part of a deliberate, universal process and that the glittering cosmos itself was in some way conscious. The experience was so overwhelming, Mitchell knew his life would never be the same.

The Way of the Explorer: An Apollo Astronaut's Journey Through the Material and Mystical Worlds by Edgar Mitchell and Dwight Williams

From a Publishers Weekly review:

Among authors trying to bridge the gap between science and spirit, former astronaut Mitchell brings unique credentials. Originally scheduled for the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, Mitchell, as told in this smooth blend of autobiography and exegesis, journeyed to the Moon in 1971 (and generated great controversy over ESP experiments he conducted on the flight). As he gazed on Earth, surrounded by blackness and an unfathomable number of stars, he experienced "an overwhelming sense of universal connectedness" that was to change his life. Within a few years, he had left NASA and founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences, aimed at the systematic study of the nature of consciousness. At the institute, he came to some fascinating conclusions, detailed here and based on principles of resonance, regarding a possible natural explanation for psychic powers.

David Scott

The commander of Apollo 15, Dave Scott and his lunar module pilot, Jim Irwin, were the first people to drive a lunar rover along the surface of the moon. Having served aboard Gemini 8 in 1966 and Apollo 9 in 1969, Scott eventually totaled 546 hours and 54 minutes in space. Later, he served as director of NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base. His fascinating book chronicles the space race—from both sides—and with a foreword by Neil Armstrong and an introduction by Tom Hanks.

Two Sides of the Moon: Our Story of the Cold War Space Race by David Scott and Alexei Leonov

From Tom Hanks’s introduction:

Leonov and Scott have gone to extra lengths to explain the inexplicable in Two Sides of the Moon. And thank goodness they have. Theirs was a gamble taken voluntarily and eagerly with the single-minded pursuit of earning the assignment and then getting the job done. Sometimes they were first. Often they were best. Always they were colorful. And yet each time they returned, neither man claimed to have come back a changed man who had gone into space and seen the spirit of the universe. They came back from their missions in space having seen the spirit of themselves as even more of the human beings they were before leaving our world of air, land, and water…. Leonov, the artist and Scott, the engineer/dreamer. The two of them-the Cheaters of Death.

James Irwin

Irwin was the first of the moonwalkers to pass away, succumbing to a heart attack at age 61 in 1991. Apollo 15 marked his first and only voyage into space, during which he collected more than 170 pounds of moon rocks in 1971. He left NASA soon after to become a preacher, forming a religious organization called High Flight Foundation and actually leading several expeditions to Turkey’s Mount Ararat in search of another iconic vessel—Noah’s Ark.

Destination Moon: The Spiritual and Scientific Voyage of the Eighth Man to Walk on the Moon by James Irwin

Here’s how one Amazon.com reviewer described Irwin’s 52-page book:

With amazing storytelling craft, James Irwin recounts his physical and spiritual journey to the moon and back. I was hooked from the first line of the prologue: "When you lean far back and look up, you can see the Earth like a beautiful, fragile Christmas tree ornament hanging against the blackness of space. It's as if you can reach out and hold it in your hand."

John Young

Young led the fifth manned moon landing mission, Apollo 16, in April 1972, when he and Charlie Duke collected 200 pounds of moon rocks and drove more than 16 miles in the lunar rover. Before that, he served on Gemini 3, Gemini 10, and Apollo 10, which orbited the moon in 1969, but did not land. He also flew two space shuttle missions, logging a whopping 835 hours in space.

Forever Young: A Life of Adventure in Air and Space by John W. Young with James R. Hansen

From the publisher’s description:

He walked on the Moon. He flew six space missions in three different programs--more than any other human. He served with NASA for more than four decades. His peers called him the "astronaut's astronaut." Enthusiasts of space exploration have long waited for John Young to tell the story of his two Gemini flights, his two Apollo missions, the first-ever Space Shuttle flight, and the first Spacelab mission. Forever Young delivers all that and more: Young's personal journey from engineering graduate to fighter pilot, to test pilot, to astronaut, to high NASA official, to clear-headed predictor of the fate of Planet Earth.

Charles Duke

A retired brigadier general in the U.S. Air Force, Duke joined NASA in 1966 and served as the lunar module pilot on Apollo 16 six years later, before retiring from NASA in 1975. He and Young deployed a cosmic ray detector and an ultraviolet camera on the lunar surface. He later went on to found organizations ranging from an investment firm called Charlie Duke Enterprises to the Duke Ministry for Christ.

Moonwalker : The True Story of an Astronaut Who Found that the Moon Wasn't High Enough to Satisfy His Desire for Success by Charlie Duke and Dotty Duke

From an Amazon.com review:

Charlie Duke does a nice job of telling his story from a small town in South Carolina to the surface of the Moon and back again. Duke does an admirable job of telling the story the way it happened. Knowing of his "born-again" status, I was unsure how Duke would tell the story. He is refreshingly honest about the toll the astronaut years took on his family and marriage. Only when he finds Christianity does the issue enter the book. I was pleased, as often people who find religion tend to color the facts of their life previous to their conversion in terms of how they feel later. Certainly not a tell-all book, Duke seems to have a genuine like for those he works, and ultimately travels to the moon, with. If you are looking for a book that deals with the "everyman" who was fortunate enough to be chosen to visit the Moon, then "Moonwalker" is for you.

Eugene Cernan

Gene Cernan was the 11th man to walk on the moon, and he likes to say that he was actually the last man to set foot on it as well. The Apollo 17 commander made two space flights (Gemini 9 and Apollo 10) before reaching the moon on the sixth and final lunar landing mission in December 1972. He and lunar module pilot Harrison Schmitt spend more than three days on lunar surface, and his moonprints were the last—so far.

The Last Man on the Moon: Astronaut Eugene Cernan and America's Race in Space by Eugene Cernan and Donald A. Davis

From Publishers Weekly:

Gemini and Apollo astronaut Cernan, helped by Davis (A Father's Rage, etc.), takes readers with him on one great space adventure after another, including Gemini 9's "Spacewalk from Hell," Apollo 1's fire, Snoopy's hair-raising swoop by the lunar surface. Readers experience the agony of life-or-death decision making in the Apollo 13 control room, exult with Cernan and geologist Jack Schmitt throughout the mission of Apollo 17 and meet legendary characters of the astronaut corps and the technical and political leaders who shared their glory. Cernan reveals the risk-taking, competitive personality and oversized self-confidence that drove his success as a test pilot and astronaut. He also acknowledges his failings as a husband to his first wife, Barbara, whom he presents as a quiet, strong homefront heroine who always found the right words in public despite her private difficulties.

Harrison “Jack” Schmitt

He can call himself the last man to set foot on the moon for the first time. Schmitt was a trained geologist, the only moonwalker without military experience. But he helped train all of the astronauts in geology. Apollo 17 was his only space flight, but he continued to work at NASA after the Apollo program as chief of the scientist-astronauts and then as NASA Assistant Administrator for Energy Programs. In 1975, he ran for election in the U.S. Senate in the state of New Mexico, where he won as a Republican and served a six-year term.

Return to the Moon: Exploration, Enterprise, and Energy in the Human Settlement of Space by Harrison Schmitt

From the publisher:

Former NASA Astronaut Harrison Schmitt advocates a private, investor-based approach to returning humans to the Moon—to extract Helium 3 for energy production, to use the Moon as a platform for science and manufacturing, and to establish permanent human colonies there in a kind of stepping stone community on the way to deeper space. With governments playing a supporting role—just as they have in the development of modern commercial aeronautics and agricultural production—Schmitt believes that a fundamentally private enterprise is the only type of organization capable of sustaining such an effort and, eventually, even making it pay off.

So there you have it—12 very different men (celebrities and seekers, geologists and generals) and a dozen books offering insight into the astronauts who boldly ventured where no man had gone before and where, unfortunately, no one has gone since.

In my latest American travel memoir, Turn Left at the Trojan Horse, I passed through a town called Laporte, located in the Endless Mountains of Pennsylvania. There I met a remarkable woman who called herself Mollie Sheldon Elliot. It turns out that Mollie, Sheldon, and Elliot are three of more than a dozen disparate personalities within her, the products of dissociative identity disorder stemming from childhood molestation. Each is aware of the others, a group that includes a baby, a teenager, a fellow who speaks with an Irish brogue, even an elderly Native American man. When talking about herself, she uses the pronoun “we.”

“We started out with four of us who were together all the time, and then we began to suspect—and that was part of the midlife crisis—that there were other personalities hanging around,” she told me. “We sensed that there were more, and we’ve had a series of alters—that’s the word psychologists use—show up. We kind of view it as coming in from the cold.”

She is, in fact, a warm and intelligent woman—and an author. A few years back, she wrote an autobiography about her experiences. She called the book Portrait of Q, which is what she calls the system that constitutes herself. The Trekkie in me understood the reference immediately. Q was a recurring character on “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” who possessed both an individual and communal perspective as part of the Q Continuum, an omnipotent collective of beings who seemed to guide the fortunes of mankind.

So in honor of Mollie Sheldon Elliot—really, in honor of Q, my favorite pen name—we at the Why Not 100 offer an alphabet of literary information that might someday be useful, if only to impress your friends:

A is for A.A. Milne, who first published Winnie-the-Poohin 1926. Yep, the hyphens were there at first—until Disney adopted the books into a series of features and dropped them. Did you know it was translated into Latin (Winne Ille Pu) and in 1960 was the first Latin language book ever to hit The New York Times bestseller list? Did you know that Milne had a son name Christopher Robin? Did you know that Christopher named his toy bear after “Winnie,” a Canadian black bear at the London Zoo who had in turn been named by the hunter who captured him after his adopted hometown of Winnipeg? Did you know that Pooh had been the name of a swan? Now you do.

B is for Junie B. Jones, the bestselling children’s book series by a couple of B’s—author Barbara Park (who sadly died at age 66 in 2013) and illustrator Denise Brunkus. The character’s middle initial stands for Beatrice, and Juniper Beatrice Jones has been featured in more than two-dozen books since the original (June B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus) in 1992. Among the best titles are Junie B. Jones and… Her Big Fat Mouth(1993), the Yucky Blucky Fruitcake(1995), and the Mushy Gushy Valentime(1999). In 2001, she finally graduated from kindergarten to first grade.

C is for vitamin C, which has been the subject (believe it or not) of numerous books. Among the titles are these: Vitamin C and the Common Cold; Cancer and Vitamin C; Vitamin C: The Master Nutrient; Vitamin C: The Real Story; Ascorbate: The Science of Vitamin C; The Vitamin C Controversy; Curing the Incurable: Vitamin C, Infectious Diseases, and Toxins; and Vitamin C The Future is Now. Depending on which national agency you respect most, an intake of 40-100 milligrams of Vitamin C daily is recommended.

D is for D-Day. Rave all you want about Steven Spielberg’s WWII epic film Saving Private Ryan, but it’s another Ryan—Cornelius Ryan—who wrote the definitive book about D-Day. Although there have been numerous books written about the massive Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, the best might be Ryan’s The Longest Day. It was written in the late 1950s when the participants’ memories were still vivid. Ryan, who spent three years interviewing D-Day survivors on both sides of the Atlantic, combined personal stories with a sweeping narrative, and historians generally have relied on his research to bolster their own subsequent versions of the invasion. Ryan later wrote A Bridge Too Far about the airborne invasion of Holland.

E is for the e-book. So who should get credit for inventing it? Should it be Bob Brown, who wrote an entire book in the 1930s about a theoretical invention of a reading version of the “talkie?” Should it be Roberto Busa, who prepared an annotated electronic index to the works of Thomas Aquinas in the late 1940s? Should it be Andries van Dam, who headed the Hypertext Editing System at Brown University in the 1960s and likely coined the term “electronic book?” Maybe. But we prefer to give the credit to Angela Ruiz, a teacher from Galicia, Spain, who patented the first electronic book in 1949. Why? Because she thought it was be easier for her students to carry fewer books to school.

F is for F. Scott Fitzgerald. Here are four fascinating facts about Fitzgerald: 1. Before he was a novelist, he was an ad man. In My Lost City, he later wrote, “I was a failure—mediocre at advertising work and unable to get started as a writer.” 2. Other titles that Fitzgerald considered before settling on The Great Gatsby included Incident at West Egg, The High-Bouncing Lover, Among the Ash Heaps and Millionaires, and Gold-Hatted Gatsby. 3. The original screenplay for the film adaptation of that classic was written by Truman Capote. It was rejected. Francis Ford Coppola then finished his own draft in three weeks. 4. Fitzgerald’s advance for The Great Gatsby was $3,939. He made $16,666 off the movie rights.

G is for G. Gordon Liddy, who spent nearly 52 months in prison after being revealed as the chief operative for the White House Plumbers unit during the Nixon Administration and man behind the burglaries of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate building in 1972. Eight years later, he published an autobiography titled Will, which sold more than (ugh) one million copies and was made into a TV movie. In the book, Liddy claims that he once made plans to kill investigative journalist Jack Anderson—only because he heard someone in the White House say, “We need to get rid of this Anderson guy,” and he interpreted it literally.

H is for H.G. Wells. On the one hand, Herbert George Wells was a prolific writer well beyond the science fiction genre, dabbling in everything from history and politics to contemporary novels and textbooks. Yes, he wrote The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, and The Invisible Man. But he also wrote titles like The Outline of History. On the other hand… he once married his cousin, a union that lasted four years until he left her for one of his students, whom he married, though he later fathered two children with two other women. So either way, he was more than just the father of science fiction.

I is for I, Claudius, the 1934 novelby Robert Graves, which has one of the quirkiest and most memorable openings in literature: I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) was was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as “Claudius the Idiot,” or “That Claudius,” or “Claudius the Stammerer,” or “Clau-Clau-Claudius” or at best as “Poor Uncle Claudius,” am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting with my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the “golden predicament” from which I have never since become disentangled.

J is for J.R.R. Tolkien—that’s John Ronald Reuel. At the age of 16, he met Edith Mary Bratt, and they fell in love. But Tolkien’s guardian (a strict Catholic who had raised him after Tolkien’s mother died) forbade him from even corresponding with the Protestant girl until he was 21. He reluctantly complied until his 21^stbirthday, on which he wrote to her, declaring his love. She thought he had forgotten her and told him that she had agreed to marry another man. But they met beneath a railway duct and renewed their love (Edith returned her engagement ring). They were married for nearly six decades until Edith died in 1971. Tolkien’s classic The Silmarilliontells the tale of Luthien, the most beautiful of all the Children of Illuvatar, who forsook her immortality for her love of the mortal warrior Beren. When Tolkien died 21 months after his beloved wife, he was buried in the same grave as Edith. On the tombstone are the words Berenand Luthien.

K is for Knifeball, the name of a book by Jory John and Avery Monsen—“an alphabet of TERRIBLE advice.” Poems and adorable illustrations suggesting awful decision-making.

A is for Apple. Eat one ever day.

And then wash it down with your mom’s cabernet.

B is for blender. Your daddy won’t mind

if you drop in his Rolex and set it to grind.

C is for cop with a big shiny gun.

Sneak up and tickle him. That’ll be fun.

It only gets worse (better really) from there… F is for setting Daddy’s wallet on fire (and then REALLY hearing F-words), O is for opening things with your teeth, and R is for raccoon (but definitely not rabies). Previously, the authors wrote the even more successful picture book All My Friends Are Dead.

L is for Louis L’Amour. At the time of his death in 1988, more than 100 of his books were still in print. A complete collection of his works can be found at the Louis L’Amour Writer’s Shack, which is tucked into the end of a re-created prairie town called Frontier Village in Jamestown, North Dakota. That village is surrounded by a herd of bison and the National Buffalo Museum, as well as the World’s Largest Buffalo—a sculpture 26 feet tall, 46 feet long, built in 1959 out of 60 tons of concrete.

M is for M. Night Shyamalan, the Indian-American screenwriter and film director of supernatural successes like The Sixth Sense, Signs, and The Village. Shyamalan (the M is for Manoj) grew up a Steven Spielberg fan, and by the time he was 17 he had used his Super-8 camera to produce 45 homemade movies. In 2004, the Sci-Fi Channel produced a “documentary” special called “The Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan,” in which it claimed that the writer-director had once been dead for nearly a half-hour while drowned in a frozen pond following a childhood accident before being rescued and that he had afterward communicated with the supernatural. It was all a hoax. Shyamalan was in on it. Sci-Fi’s parent company, NBC Universal, issued an apology. M is for misstep.

N is for Stephen King’s “N”. N is for novella (it appeared in his 2008 collection Just After Sunset). N is for two narratives—one about a psychiatrist treating a patient known only as “N” and the other following the psychiatrist’s sister exploring why her brother committed suicide. N is for neurotic (“N” suffers from OCD and paranoid delusions). N is for numbers. The patient is convinced that people who see seven stones in a nearby field instead of eight may allow a monster to break through into their reality. In fact any odd numbers are bad, especially prime ones. Finally, N is for a newspaper clipping revealing that (spoiler alert) after “N” kills himself and his psychiatrist follows suit, so does the shrink’s sister.

O is for O. Henry.His real name: William Sydney Porter. Actually it was William Sidney Porter, but for some reason he changed the spelling of his middle name when he was in his thirties. More quirky facts: He once started a satirical weekly called The Rolling Stone. For years, he gathered ideas for his columns and stories by loitering in hotel lobbies and observing people there. In 1896, he was arrested for embezzlement from a bank and fled to Honduras. He later spent three years in prison, publishing 14 stories under pseudonyms while under lock and key. One of the pseudonyms was “O. Henry,” which first appeared over the story “Whistling Dick’s Christmas Stocking.” He once mentioned that the “O” stood for “Olivier.” A heavy drinker, he died in 1910 of cirrhosis of the liver. There are elementary schools named for this alcoholic-embezzler-writer in North Carolina and Texas.

P is for P.G. Wodehouse. During a career that lasted more than seven decades (until his death in 1975 at the age of 93), English humorist Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse produced a diverse body of work—poems, plays, novels, short stories and song lyrics. His fans and supporters have included the likes of George Orwell, John Le Carre and J.K. Rowling. But he had his critics, including A.A. Milne (see above) of Winnie the Poohfame. Wodehouse responded by wiring a short story parody called Rodney Has a Relapse, which included an absurd character named Timothy Bobbin. Another critic, playwright Sean O’Casey, called Wodehouse “English Literature’s performing flea.” When Wodehouse produced a collection of letters to a friend, he gave it the title Performing Flea.

Q is for Q from the James Bond films, who is obliquely referenced by never actually appears in any of the Ian Fleming novels. Short for “Quartermaster,” it is actually a title, not a name, as he (or she) serves as head of the fictional research and development division of the British Secret Service. Among the best gadgets that Q has provided for Bond over the years: a wrist-mounted dart gun in Moonraker, a hydroboat fitted with a jet engine in The World is Not Enough, a stun gun/car remote control/fingerprint reading cell phone in Tomorrow Never Dies, a Lotus Esprit that could transform into a submarine in The Spy Who Loved Me, and an Aston Martin outfitted with a cloaking device in Die Another Day.

R is for R. In The World is Not Enough, Bond fans were introduced to an assistant to Q, played by the irrepressible John Cleese, who initially portrayed him as somewhat awkward and clumsy. Bond asked the elder Q, “If you’re Q, does that make him R?” And that’s how Cleese was credited in the film. After R proved himself via cool gadgets and cool-enough professionalism, Bond began referring to him as Q.

S is for “S,”published in 2013. Here’s The New Yorker’s Joshua Rothman’s take on it: “S,” the new mystery novel by J. J. Abrams and Doug Dorst, may be the best-looking book I’ve ever seen. From the outside, it looks like an old library book, called “Ship of Theseus” and published, in 1949, by V. M. Straka (a fictitious author). Open it up, though, and you see that the real story unfolds in Straka’s margins, where two readers, Eric and Jen, have left notes for each other. Between the pages, they’ve slipped postcards, photographs, newspaper clippings, letters—even a hand-drawn map written on a napkin from a coffee shop. To solve the book’s central mystery—who is V. M. Straka, really, and what does he have to do with Eric’s sinister dissertation advisor?—you have to read not just “Ship of Theseus,” but all of Jen and Eric’s handwritten notes. The book is so perfectly realized that it’s easy to fall under its spell. The other morning, I was so engrossed in a letter from Jen that I missed my subway stop.”

T is for Mr. T (born Laurence Tureaud), who wrote the colon-happy book Mr. T: The Man With the Gold: An Autobiography. Consider this commentary—how tongue-in-cheek, it’s difficult to say—by an Amazon.com reviewer known as 2nearsighted: “I have been a huge Mr. T fan ever since the A Team, and I have continued to follow his career ever since. His book not only is a surprise in terms of its literary merit, but it's an inspiration. Mr. T came from nothing, to turn himself into one of the finest American actors, and a beloved personality. My only lament is that the book is not more widely read, because, as an autobiography, it ranks with THEY CALL ME ASSASSIN by Jack Tatum, ME by Katherine Hepburn, and Kareem Abdul Jabbar's GIANT STEPS. In fact, it's better. Mr. T has a better sense of rhythm to his language; he's more psychologically insightful; and he has a voice as strong as any in modern fiction—like a cross between Bellow's Augie March and Joe Frazier. I have read the book several times, and I recommend it to anyone who likes a true story, well told.”

U is for U2 by U2, the definitive, official history (published in 2009) of one of the most famous bands in the history of rock and roll, compiled from interviews given by the four band members. The band’s origins were in Dublin in 1976. A 14-year-old drummer named Larry Mullen, Jr. posted a note on his high school bulletin board seeking musicians for a new band. The quintet that eventually formed called itself “Feedback.” It included Mullen, bass player Adam Clayton, guitarist Dave Evans (later nicknamed “The Edge”), and vocalist Paul Hewson (later nicknamed “Bono Vox” and eventually simply “Bono”). The fifth band member? That was Dave’s brother, Dick, also a guitarist. But early on, he left Feedback to join another Dublin band. Ever heard of the Virgin Prunes?

V is for V: The Original Miniseries, a two-part sci-fi event which aired in 1983. Written and directed by Kenneth Johnson. It launched a franchise about “The Visitors”—about deceptively friendly aliens trying to gain control of Earth. But everything is derivative. The film versions of the story have been said to resemble everything from a stage play (“The Private Life of the Master Race” by Bertolt Brecht), a short story (“To Serve Man” by Damon Knight, and a novel by Arthur C. Clark called Childhood’s End.

W is for W is for Wasted, the latest installment of mystery master Sue Grafton’s alphabet series. Here’s Grafton’s version of the first 22 letters of the alphabet: Alibi, Burglar, Corpse, Deadbeat, Evidence, Fugitive, Gumshoe, Homicide, Innocent, Judgment, Killer, Lawless, Malice, Noose, Outlaw, Peril, Quarry, Ricochet, Silence, Trespass, Undertow, Vengeance.

X is for The Joy of X: A Guided Tour of Math from One to Infinity. Author Steven Strogatz, expanding on his popular series for The New York Times, has been described as “the math teacher you wish you had.” He explains some of math’s oft-imposing ideas clearly and wittily in areas from law and medicine and business to philosophy, pop culture and art. Booklist described it as “a high-spirited romp through complex numbers, standard deviations, infinite sums, differential equations, and other mathematical playgrounds.” Among the subjects he expounds upon: how Google searches the internet, how to determine how many people you should date before setting down, and how often you should flip your mattress.

Y is for The End of Mr. Y, written by Scarlett Thomas and published in 2006. It is a book about a book of the same name that no one alive has read—until Ariel Manto does so. This is how the publisher described it: “Seeking answers, Ariel follows in Mr. Y’s footsteps: She swallows a tincture, stares into a black dot, and is transported into the Troposphere—a wonderland where she can travel through time and space using the thoughts of others. There she begins to understand all the mysteries surrounding the book, herself, and the universe. Or is it all just a hallucination?”

Z is for Z is for Zzz… Part of the “Mysterious You” children’s picture book series, its subtitle is: “The Most Interesting Book You’ll Ever Read About Sleep.” The author, Trudee Romanek, discusses everything from yawning to nightmares to sleepwalking to hibernation. And these three factoids: 1. Mozart was inspired by music he heard in his dreams, 2. Gorillas who have learned sign language have been known to sign in their sleep, and 3. If a person lives to be 70, they will have spent 23 years of their life sleeping.

I wish an author had visited my elementary school back in the day. I was just beginning to become enthralled by the written word—Judy Blume and Roald Dahl and J.R.R. Tolkien. The chance to see a real live author, up close and in person? I’m sure I’d still remember it.

It is that thought that drives me when I visit schools as a guest author, telling students about how I became a writer, about the fun stuff I get to do as a writer, about where my ideas come from. When the kids and I create a goofy story together, and I see their eyes light up, it sustains me. It makes up for the occasional times when the school seems to regard my visit as an afterthought. Or when the librarian hasn’t bothered to stock my books. Or when some first graders are intent on playing with the Velcro on their shoes.

Yes, an author visit is—in my humble opinion—a fantastic way to inspire young readers and writers. But not every author visit is created equal. And it is often the efforts of the host that make the difference.

With that in mind—and now that school is back in session—we at the Why Not 100 are turning this post over to an author who is to school visits what cheerleaders are to school pride. Michael Shoulders is energetic. He is fearless (you’ll see what I mean if you ever get to see him rap one of his books). And he loves his job. A former educator who has written more than a dozen picture books (including T is for Titanic, G is for Gladiator, and Say Daddy!), he is the kind of author every school librarian dreams of finding.

Take it away, Mike…

As a school administrator for fifteen years, I saw the connections authors made with the students I served. Several schools organized their annual “Young Authors Celebration” around a yearly author visit. In ten years I brought 30 authors to visit the students in my schools.

Now, in retirement, I’m a full-time children’s author and make the same connections at nearly 80 schools each year. Most of the time things go exceedingly well. Other times, not so much. When districts devote the kind of time and money it takes to bring authors to their building, the event should be highly anticipated, well planned, and creatively merged with curriculum.

Most schools invite authors to visit their campuses to share how “Real Live Authors” create the books students read. This instructional strategy connects students to books in extraordinary ways. Teachers and students become “insiders” to the writing/publishing process. Students are inspired to read and write and even begin to consider writing as a career. They also recognize that library books don’t just “drop out of the sky.”

I propose seven strategies to increase the chances to have The Best Author Visit Ever:

1. PICK THE RIGHT AUTHOR

The selection of potential authors who can visit your school is as varied as the selection of potential books that might be stocked in the school library. But remember this: It’s not the success of the author that’s most important. Rather, the question is how successfully can the author inspire the students? Parents and teachers might be excited about the notion of a famous author coming to town, and that author may charge a particularly lofty fee, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he or she has any clue about how to talk to kids. I could name names, but I won’t. Ask around. Locate references. Watch authors speak at reading conferences. All authors can write well. You want to find one who speaks well, too.

2. PRIME THE STUDENTS

Tell the children an author is coming to see them. As simple as this sounds, sometimes teachers don’t inform the students about the assembly. Students have asked me, while coming into the assembly area, “Who are you, and why are we here?” Doesn’t make much sense, does it? Teachers should prep students for an author visit as they would for a field trip. Sometimes, just as I’m strolling into a school, a student stops and says, “HEY! You’re that author guy, aren’t you?” Sure, it’s a bit nicer when they say, “You’re Michael Shoulders!” But either way, when I can see that they’re excited about my arrival, I know it’s going to be a good day. Teachers should visit the author’s web page. This is the place to find information on the author’s life, a list of books, facts about the author’s family, and more.

3. READ THE BOOKS

The school librarian or media specialist should be an integral part of the priming process. What better way to generate enthusiasm for a visiting author than by actually reading the works by that writer beforehand? Again, it sounds obvious, but not everyone does it. Display the author’s books, too—on school office counters where parents see them; on lunch line shelves where hungry students see them, and especially at library checkout desks where READERS see them.

4. CELEBRATE THE VISIT

Make the author visit a HUGE event for the students. Contact local media (good press makes schools shine in the eyes of the community). Decorate bulletin boards with the author’s photo, books, and other design elements pertaining to the subject matter. My friend Brad Herzog, the man behind this website and the author of a number of sports picture books, has arrived at schools to find all the students and teachers adorned in their favorite sports jerseys. I myself visited a school that had conceived a countdown to my visit by presenting one unusual fact about me during each of their morning television broadcasts. Thirty days: thirty interesting facts. An author visit is a special treat, so have fun with it.

5. SCHEDULE SMARTLY

Remember: AUTHORS are not TEACHERS. We don’t talk for a living; we write. So smart scheduling is vital. Before scheduling times, be sure to confer with the author, who might have insights (from experience) that you might not have considered. Make sure to provide the proper equipment for the author (a standard list of materials might include a table, a microphone, a bottle of water, an LCD project, a white screen, and a power strip). And when scheduling the day, remember that most authors will only speak three (maybe four) times at most. But you can maximize the author’s time. Some writers provide a “Lunch with the Author” for selected students. The number in attendance will vary. Personally, I’ve had lunch with two girls at a table in the library and also with an entire 8th grade class of 18 students. I’ve also had lunch with one boy and one girl from each class.

6. USE THE OPPORTUNITY

A visit by an author is a gift-wrapped educational opportunity. Authors support what teachers tell students in classrooms about writing. I mention the words “rough draft” and “rewriting” and “research” when I talk, as do most authors. If teachers are not present to hear the message, they can’t use it as reinforcement for classroom instruction. And they can’t build upon what the author has said. Sadly, some schools plan author talks during the teachers’ planning times. Yes, it’s easy to keep the school’s schedule intact, but it’s NOT a good curriculum practice. Discipline is also better when classroom teachers are present instead of “specials” teachers. What good is a visiting author if, upon returning to the classroom, the students have to provide a summary for the teachers?

7. OFFER BOOK ORDERS

Provide families the opportunity to purchase autographed books. Sometimes school contacts tell me, “Our students are mostly poor and won’t buy any books.” However, the same school probably conducts two book fairs each year to raise funds for the school’s library. Perhaps a signed book from an author whom the student met will mean more in the long run to that child. Let the family decide if an autographed book is something they desire. It can be a great gift and a lifelong keepsake.

So there you have it. There are few ways that connect students to books as powerfully as getting to meet an author. By following this handful of suggestions, your school can have a terrific experience.

A few years ago, author Judith Schalansky published a widely praised book called The Atlas of Remote Islands. She pairs full-color cartographic drawings with compelling narratives about lore and legend and science and history, the aim being to celebrate the cartographic unknown.

That’s one way of exploring uninhabited or sparsely populated blips of land amid endless seas. Another way is to read some classic fiction.

As setting goes, every island is brimming with possibilities that affect plot, character, mood. It is isolation and introspection, seclusion with no place to hide, a place that seems both manageable and unfathomably mysterious. It is new life or a slow death, terror or revelation. Or sometimes all at once—just re-read Lord of the Flies, which was published 60 years ago this month.

So it is no wonder that many renowned authors have taken their readers to remote islands for some of their most famous stories—authors like Jules Verne, Robert Louis Stevenson, H.G. Wells, Virginia Wolff, Agatha Christie, and Michael Crichton. And they’ve stranded iconic characters like Long John Silver and Robinson Crusoe, Piggy and Prospero. Island protagonists (and antagonists) have been shipwreck survivors, prison escapees, accidental adoptees, treasure hunters, exiled rulers, explorers, mad scientists, and murder suspects.

So let’s take a trip to some uncharted isles. No Hawaii here (sorry, James Michener). No United Kingdom (sorry, Bill Bryson). Jamaica is by no means overlooked and secluded, so we’ll steer wide of Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea. No Long Island (sayonara, Gatsby).For that matter, no island of Manhattan.

No, here we celebrate remote (usually) spits of land—the kind that become lead characters in the story. Agatha Christies A Caribbean Vacation doesn’t count. But Indian Island from And Then There Were None? You bet. Any good island explorer seeks out the unusual—or at least the legendary. So break open a coconut and have a seat for this installment of the Why Not 100—34 unforgettable island settings:

1. The Island of Despair

Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoeis the shipwrecked tale that inspired all others. There’s even a genre of “desert island story” known as a Robinsonade. Crusoe is stranded with two cats and a dog on what he calls the Island of Despair (probably based on the Caribbean island of Tobago). He excavates a cave, builds a canoe, hunts, grows crops, makes pottery, fends of mutineers and cannibals, and rescues a fellow whom he calls Friday. The first edition, published in 1719, actually credited the title character as the author, and many readers believed it was a travelogue.

2. Treasure Island

Robert Louis Stevenson left us with iconic characters—Long John Silver, Billy Bones, Ben Gunn. And an iconic scenario—an island bearing lost pirate treasure. Captain Flint calls it Skeleton Island. To protagonist Jim Hawkins (and to Stevenson for a book title), it’s Treasure Island. The duality symbolizes the risk and reward of the adventure.

3. The Unnamed Island

In William Golding’s classic Lord of the Flies, a group of boys is marooned on an uninhabited (and never named) coral island. The ordinary boys soon savagely discard ordinary standards of behavior, and a certain utopia becomes the ultimate dystopia.

4. Lilliput

Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travelstook the title character many places, but the most memorable locale in the novel (published in 1726) was the first—in which Gulliver is shipwrecked, washed ashore on an island country populated by a tiny race of people (the Lilliputians), each no more than six inches tall. When he later voyages to Brobdingnag, Gulliver is comparatively Lilliputian.

5. Neverland

It’s hard to figure what this stretch of imagination is, geologically and geographically. Neverlands, according to J.M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy (1911), are found in most children’s minds and “always more or less an island.” The real world is the “Mainland,” and as remote islands go, this may be the remotest—“near the stars of the Milky Way” reached by heading “second to the right, and straight on till morning.”

6. Prospero’s Island

Magic and manipulation, spirits and monsters, a prince and his princess, an exiled duke and his duplicitous brother—all on a remote island that offers revenge and redemption. That’s William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.”

7. Utopia

This one was published, in Latin, two centuries before even Robinson Crusoe. Thomas More’s Utopiadescribes an idealized island community. Violence is extinct. Religious tolerance is ubiquitous. Perfect social harmony exists. But there also hints that Utopia may be unattainable.

8. Isla Nublar

It’s a tropical island near Costa Rica. There’s a billionaire philanthropist there, and a team of genetic scientists. They’ve cloned dinosaurs and created a wildlife experience known as Jurassic Park. Michael Crichton wrote the book. Steven Spielberg made the movie. A T-Rex had an attorney for lunch.

9. Isla Sorna

Arthur Conan Doyle was the first to write The Lost World, setting his novel about dinosaurs on a plateau in the Amazon rainforest. More than 80 years later, Michael Crichton’s The Lost World was a sequel to Jurassic Park. When two groups learn of Isla Sorna, the isolated Central American location of the “production facility” where the park’s dinosaurs were hatched and grown, chaos ensues.

10. Indian Island

Agatha Christie at her best. Ten people, each with a secret, are invited to a lonely mansion on Indian Island. They are the only people there, yet they are all picked off, one by one. Hence the book’s title: And Then There Were None. The howdunit is as riveting as the whodunit.

11. San Nicolas Island

In Island of the Blue Dolphins, a 1960 Newberry Medal-winning children’s novel that remains a student-assigned staple in the 21^st century, author Scott O’Dell tells the true story of Juana Maria—the “Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island.” The girl was left behind, stranded for 18 years on the most remote of California’s Channel Islands.

12. Monte Cristo

The Count of Monte Cristo, the 1844 adventure novel by Alexandre Dumas (author of The Three Musketeers) tells of Edmond Dantes. He is wrongfully imprisoned, escapes to an island, makes his way to another island (Monte Cristo), recovers a lost treasure, then dedicates himself to vengeance.

13. The Isle of Skye

Virginia Wolff’s 1927 novel To the Lighthouse tells the story of one family, the Ramsays, living in a summer house on the Isle of Skye off the coast of Scotland. In 1998, the Modern Library chose it as No. 15 among the 100 best English-language novels of the 20^thcentury.

14. The Island of Dr. Moreau

The Island of Dr. Moreau is H.G. Wells’s most disturbing novel. A distinguished London physiologist flees a scandal by escaping to a remote island in the South Seas, where he likes to create Beast Folks—you know, human-animal hybrids like dog-men and leopard-men. Island life can be isolating…

15. Phraxos

In The Magus by John Fowles, teacher Nicholas Urfe relocates to a school on the Greek island of Phraxos, where he encounters a wealthy recluse who embroils him in dark psychological games. It was named one of Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels.

16. New Switzerland

In The Swiss Family Robinson (published in 1812), a father, mother and four sons are en route to Australia when their ship is abandoned by the crew after running aground on a reef in the East Indies. They family locates an uninhabited but idyllic tropical island where theirs is largely a happy tale of self-reliance. They even build a treehouse with a large library.

17. Hedeby Island

In Stieg Larson’s bestselling The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, this fictional island, supposedly along the coast of Sweden and mostly owned by Henrik Vanger, is a place shrouded in mystery and hiding terrible secrets.

18. Guernsey

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society is historical fiction (by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows) about a newspaper columnist’s growing relationship with the eccentrics on a real island in the English Channel, off the cost of Normandy.

19. Lincoln Island

The residents of this uncharted isle named it after President Lincoln. In Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island, five northern prisoners (and a dog) escape a Confederate jail by hijacking a balloon, eventually crash landing on the unknown, volcanic island. They survive, quite well in fact—thanks in part to a mysterious force that seems to help them when they most need it. It turns out that the island is the home port of the Nautilus, Captain Nemo’s famed submarine from a familiar Jules Verne tale.

20. Prince Edward Island

This one nearly didn’t make this list as it is by no means an uncharted isle, but it’s the setting for a classic—Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Anne is orphan Anne Shirley. Green Gables is a farm on the island. The combination, published in 1908, has sold more than 50 million copies worldwide.

21. Caspak

That’s the natives’ name for the fictional island near Antarctica teeming with creatures extinct in the rest of the world. In The Land That Time Forgot, a fantasy novel by Tarzan author Edgar Rice Burroughs, lost submariners comes upon an island ringed by cliffs, and emerges from a subterranean passage to encounter everything from Neanderthals to dinosaurs.

22. Coral Island

In 1857, Scottish author R.M. Ballantyne wrote The Coral Island, which was one of the first juvenile fiction tales to feature all juveniles. Three European boys are shipwrecked and marooned on a South Pacific Island. The message is essentially that they “civilize” the Polynesian natives through Christianity, but William Golding purposely inverted the morality when he wrote Lord of the Flies.

23. The Beach

Described as a “Lord of the Flies for Generation X,” Alex Garland’s 1996 novel The Beach tells of a young backpacker who receives word of (and a map to) what is supposed to be an idyllic beach untouched by tourism. He and some friend finally reach it (after a boat, a swim, a jungle trek, and a jump down a waterfall), and find a hierarchical community that—for a while—seems idyllic. For a while…

24. Palm Tree Island

Henry de Vere Stacpoole’s novel The Blue Lagoon strands young cousins Dicky and Emmeline (played by Brooke Shields in the 1980 film) on a remote island. For a while, a portly sailor is with them until he drinks himself to death. Then they must navigate puberty, love, sex, and childbirth all on their own. The island is essentially a metaphor for the loss of adult guidance.

25. The Nation

In Nation, a young adult novel by Terry Pratchett (of Discworldfame), Mau is the only survivor after a tsunami destroys his village—located on an island in the fictitious Great Southern Pelagic Ocean. Daphne is the sole survivor of a shipwreck. In this alternate history of the 1860s (a Russian flu pandemic has killed the king of England and the next 138 heirs to the throne), the two protagonists overcome cultural and language barriers, take in other tsunami survivors from neighboring islands, and defend a place they call “the Nation.”

26. Shutter Island

Denise Lehane’s thriller of the same name, this barren island is the home of Ashecliffe Hospital of the Criminally Insane. There’s a hurricane bearing down and a dangerous patient on the loose.

27. Janus Rock

M.L. Stedman’s The Light Between Oceans is set in 1926. Lighthouse keeper Tom Sherbourne and his wife Isabel are the only inhabitants of a remote island near Western Australia. Then one morning, a boat washes ashore carrying a dead man and a crying infant. The choice to keep little Lucy devastates one of them.

28. Generations Island

In actuality, the island in The Summer Book is unnamed, but sometimes an isolated island is connection. Written by Finnish author Tove Jansson in 1972, the book consists of 22 vignettes about an elderly artist and her six-year-old granddaughter Sophia. They spend a summer together on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland, exploring it and adoring it, which helps them explore love, life, death, and survival in the natural world.

29. Isle of Gloom

The Island of Adventure is part of Enid Blyton’s mid-20^th century Adventure series (The Castle of Adventure, The Valley of Adventure, The Circus of Adventure…). This one is about four kids on an idyllic vacation—until they realize that something sinister is taking place on the mysterious Isle of Gloom.

30. Spinalonga

The Island by Victoria Hislop is set in the small Greek seaside village of Plaka—and, just off the coast, the tiny island of Spinalonga, where a leper colony once was located. The village is where the Petrakis family lives. The island has haunted four generations of Petraskis women.

31. Pig Island

Here’s a tip—a lesson learned from Pig Island, a thriller by Mo Hayder: If you’re a journalist aiming to debunk supernatural hoaxes and you visit a secretive community on a remote Scottish island, and you have to infiltrate the territory of the group’s isolated founder by crossing electrical fencing, toxin-filled oil drums, and pig skulls… turn around and go home.

32. Island of the Aunts

In Eva Ibbotson’s children’s novel, Island of the Aunts, three peculiar women are caretakers of a secret island that includes a menagerie of fantastical creatures (including wingless dragons and unfortunate oil-slicked mermaids). Upon realizing that they’re aging, the women select (okay, kidnap) three children to be their replacements.

33. Jexium Island

In this 1957 novel of the same name, set on a North Atlantic island, a ring of kidnappers capture children between the age of 9 and 17 to hunt for the island’s deposits of Jexium (a fictitious atomic ore). It’s up to a young castaway—and the French Navy—to save them.

34. Heaven

That’s what Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan name (“as kind of a joke”) the island off the coast of New Guinea on which they crash landed in 1937. About Jane Mendelsohn’s I Was Amelia Earhart, Katherine Whittamore wrote on Salon.com: “Earhart and Noonan move from hope of rescue to bickering, hatred, and madness; to love and then to fear of rescue, against a backdrop of coconut palms.”

On this day 101 years ago – Sept. 19, 1913—an unknown amateur golfer made an 18-foot putt that transformed the sport.

My motivation for writing the children’s book FRANCIS AND EDDIE (Why Not Books, 2013) didn’t necessarily come from the fact that I think it ranks as perhaps the greatest underdog feat in championship sports—the tale of Francis Ouimet beating the best golfers in the world to win the U.S. Open. It wasn’t even because it struck me as the ultimate local-boy-makes-good story—a kid who literally lived across the street from the golf course in Brookline, Massachusetts, right near the 17^th hole. He taught himself to play be sneaking onto the course in the dark and the rain, taught himself so well that he qualified to compete in the national championship, then sank an ultra-clutch putt on that very 17^th green to shock the world and catapult golf onto the front pages for the first time.

No, that’s not why either. It’s because of Eddie Lowery.

Ouimet’s prospects were so dim that his regular caddie opted instead to carry the bag of a French pro, figuring he could share in some prize money. During a practice round, a boy named Jack Lowery had been an able replacement, but only minutes before Francis’s scheduled tee time for his Tuesday qualifying round, Jack was nowhere to be found. That’s when a tiny fellow, just four feet tall, came running up to the practice green and offered five words that would launch an iconic partnership: “I could caddie for you.”

Eddie Lowery was Jack’s little brother. He was skipping school. He was ten years old. “My bag’s as big as you are,” said Ouimet, but it could be that the golfer saw a bit of himself in the boy, an underestimated kid reaching for respectability. Or, perhaps he figured he had nothing to lose. “All right then, Eddie, let’s go,” he said. “Just please call me Francis.” And that is how, over the next several days, a child stood at the center of this extraordinary athletic saga.

There have been a great many precocious athletes. Joe Nuxhall pitched in the major leagues, for the 1944 Cincinnati Reds, at age 15. In 1976, 14-year-old Olympic gymnast Nadia Comaneci became an international sensation. In August 2013, when she was still nearly two months short of her 11^thbirthday, California native Lucy Li became the youngest person ever to quality and compete in the USGA Women’s Amateur golf championship.

But that’s not what I’m celebrating here.

There have been a good many times, too, when kids have influenced play on the courts or fields. At the 2011 French Open, for instance, a ball boy mistakenly ran onto the court during a point, thinking the point was already over. At the same time, Victor Troicki was completing an overhead smash against Andy Murray, but the point had to be replayed. And Murray won it. But Troicki still won the game. So nothing really changed.

Sometimes, however, the unexpected appearance of a kid—as a replacement, a fan, an inspiration—has made all the difference, occasionally even a historic difference. So here is a six-pack of small wonders, starting with the earliest (and youngest):

1. Anonymous gold medalist (rowing, 1900, age 7)

One of the stranger chapters in Olympic history occurred during the infancy of the modern Games at the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris. It happened during a rowing event called coxed pairs, which features boats with two rowers and one coxswain (the lightweight person who sits in the boat and directs the rowers). Before the finals of the event, the team from Holland decided that the coxswain they normally used was too heavy. So legend has it that the decision-makers opted to replace him with a young French boy that they plucked from the crowd. Naturally, it wouldn’t even be close to allowable these days. The boy, whose name has been lost to history, may have been as young as seven years old. But he and his new teammates won the gold medal.

2. Eddie Lowery (golf, 1913, age 10)

At the 1913 U.S. Open, they made for an odd-looking pair, Francis Ouimet and Eddie Lowery. The golfer was lanky and loose-limbed; the caddie was small even for his age, ruddy-cheeked, with a hint of mischief in eyes peeking out from beneath a white bucket hat. By the end of the tournament, they would be dressed almost exactly alike, walking side by side, each bolstering the other. Francis made Eddie feel important, and Eddie made Francis feel at ease amid the maelstrom of world-class competition, even when they later spotted a gaggle of dignitaries surrounding a particularly corpulent fellow in the gallery. All of the anxiety that accompanies swinging a golf club in front of former President William Howard Taft is diminished when your caddie asks, “Who’s the big fat guy? He looks kinda familiar, doesn’t he?”

As Mark Frost, author of TheGreatest Game Ever Played, put it, “It was almost as if somebody rubbed a lamp and said, ‘Give me someone who will give Francis confidence.’ And the perfect person shows up. He just happens to be half of Francis’s size.” Early in their first round together, Francis turned to Eddie and said, “I think you and I are going to be good friends.” Their friendship endured for more than half a century.

3. Johnny Sylvester (baseball, 1926, age 11)

During the 1926 World Series, 11-year-old John Dale Sylvester asked Babe Ruth to autograph a baseball. Sylvester, a fine ballplayer himself and a diehard Yankees fan asked the favor of his idol from his hospital bed (a horse had kicked him in the head, leading to life-threatening brain inflammation). On a ball signed by every Yankee, Ruth wrote, with somewhat befuddling grammar, “I’ll knock a homer for Wednesday’s game.”

He didn’t. He hit three in Game 4, an unprecedented feat. Was Ruth motivated by the promise? Who knows? The Yanks actually wound up losing the series, the last out coming when Ruth was thrown out attempting to steal second base.

As for Sylvester (who lived to the age of 74 and became a business executive), he found himself with some pretty sweet possessions, including an autographed football from Red Grange and a tennis racket from Bill Tilden (sad irony: Tilden was later revealed to be a pedophile). All three collectibles went up for auction in on February 6, 2014, which would have been—no coincidence—Babe Ruth’s 119^th birthday.

4. Joe Relford (baseball, 1952, age 12)

It used to be that when a baseball team was losing badly, frustrated fans would get a kick out of yelling, “Put in the batboy!” But on July 19, 1952, Charlie Ridgeway, the manager of the Class D Georgia State League’s Fitzgerald Pioneers, actually did it. With his team down 13-0, batboy Joe Relford stepped up to the plate as a pinch-hitter. He grounded sharply to third to end the inning, but he followed that with an excellent defensive play in centerfield. After the game, fans ran onto the field to congratulate him, stuffing his pockets with money. Sadly, however, both the umpire and the batboy lost their jobs that day, and the manager was fined and suspended—not because Relford was 12, but because he was the first African-American player in the league.

5. Jeffrey Maier (baseball, 1996, age 12)

Game 1 of the American League Championship Series—October 9, 1996, Yankee Stadium. Bottom of the eighth inning, and the Baltimore Orioles led 4-3. Young New York shortstop Derek Jeter stepped to the plate and clubbed a long fly ball to deep right field. Baltimore right fielder Tony Tarasco camped under it, ready to catch the near-miss. Except that’s when 12-year-old Jeffrey Maier reached over the outfield fence and plucked the ball into the bleachers. “And what happens here?” shouted announcer Bob Costas. “The contention by Tarasco is that the ball is descending, and the fan touches it. He’s right! He’s right!”

Replays confirmed that the ball likely would have been caught by Tarasco, but umpire Richie Garcia ruled it a game-tying home run. Maier was lifted on to the shoulders of fans in right field. “Certainly, he’s affected the course of the game,” said Costas, to which color commentator Bob Uecker added, “And maybe the Series!” Indeed, the Yankees won the game in extra innings and went on to win the World Series, the first of four New York titles in five years. Maier went on to play college baseball, becoming the all-time hits leader for the University of Connecticut. But when he was 12, one headline read: THE KID CATCHES ON AS NEW YANKEE HERO.

6. Nick Gilbert (basketball, 2011, age 13)

Nick Gilbert suffers from neurofibromatosis, a nerve order that causes tumors to sprout on a whim. But his father, Dan, is the owner of the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers, and he—along with most of the fans in Cleveland—think Nick is one of the luckiest kids on the planet. Or at least a good luck charm. In 2011 the 13-year-old stood there, his eyes wide through his thick lenses, and represented the Cavs at the NBA draft lottery. Cleveland had a 2.8 percent chance of drawing the top pick. Yet that’s exactly what happened. Two years later, with Nick again serving as the face of the franchise, they had a 15.6 percent chance of repeating the feat. Once again, as Nick’s serious look contradicted the vibe of his maroon bowtie, Cleveland again drew the top pick. Did Nick actually actively do anything to make this so? Well, no. But as one sports columnist put it, “Certainly, there’s no skill involved when it comes to hunching over a team-addled podium while waiting for your name to be called. With Nick Gilbert, it’s about presence.”

Not long ago, I was having a conversation with a friend about favorite movies, and we were talking about The Princess Bride. I don’t think I know anybody who doesn’t love that movie. It’s almost perfect. Anyway, I mentioned that William Goldman and I happened to attend the same high school and summer camp (albeit about 37 years apart).

“William Goldman,” I said. “You know, the guy who wrote the book.”

My friend replied, “It was a book?”

Yes, it seems that mainstream films sometimes erase memories of literature. So I’m going to remedy that by ranking the 84 best movies that were books first. It’s a bit of a challenge, mostly due to an embarrassment of riches. From 12 Angry Men to Apollo 13, from The Graduate to The Player to The Firm, Hollywood has been poaching literature for decades.

But it doesn’t always work. John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row is classic reading. The movie starring Nick Nolte and Debra Winger? Not classic watching. Roger Ebert wrote that it seemed “scripted out of old country songs and lonely hearts columns.” Same with 1984. One of the finest books ever written, but it doesn’t always translate to film.

Rather, this is a list of the best films that happen to be based on books or short stories. I’m not even going to select any movie series options. No Harry Potter, no Twilight, no Hunger Games, no Bourne this-and-that. Not even The Lord of the Rings trilogy, though I do love those movies.

Still, it’s a tough call—and a very personal one. In fact, here are two-dozen films I didn’tchoose: Les Miserables, Leaving Las Vegas, Mystic River, Mommie Dearest, First Blood, There Will Be Blood, Fight Club, Brokeback Mountain, Cold Mountain, Cocoon, Cape Fear, Doctor Zhivago, Total Recall, Invictus, Out of Africa, The Perfect Storm, The Help, The Outsiders, The English Patient, The Devil Wears Prada, The Father of the Bride, The Da Vinci Code, The Blind Side, and The Witches of Eastwick.

And here are the films I did select, starting with my personal choices for the best of the best:

1. Shawshank Redemption (Stephen King)

2. The Princess Bride (William Goldman)

3. Dances With Wolves (Michael Blake)

4. Goodfellas (Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family by Nicholas Pileggi)

5. Schindler’s List (Thomas Keneally)

6. 12 Angry Men (Reginald Rose)

7. The Godfather (Mario Puzo)

8. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Ken Kesey)

9. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)

10. The Untouchables (Eliot Ness)

11. Forrest Gump (Winston Groom)

12. Stand By Me (The Body by Stephen King)

13. Searching for Bobby Fischer (Fred Waitzkin)

14. The Player (Michael Tolkin)

15. The Shining (Stephen King)

16. Field of Dreams (Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella)

17. Gone with the Wind (Margaret Mitchell)

18. The Silence of the Lambs (Thomas Harris)

19. A Beautiful Mind (Sylvia Nasar)

20. Glory (One Gallant Rush by Richard Burchard)

21. The Natural (Bernard Malamud)

22. Jaws (Peter Benchley)

23. Election (Tom Perrotta)

24. Hugo (The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick)

25. The Graduate (Charles Webb)

26. The Firm (John Grisham)

27. No Way Out (Kenneth Fearing)

28. October Sky (Rocket Boys by Homer H. Hickam)

29. Apollo 13 (Lost Moon by Jim Lovell)

30. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Arthur C. Clarke)

31. Deliverance (James Dickey)

32. L.A. Confidential (James Ellroy)

33. A Midnight Clear (William Wharton)

34. A River Runs Through It (Norman MacLean)

35. Scent of a Woman (Giovanni Arpino)

36. The French Connection (Robin Moore)

37. Taps (Father Sky by Devery Freeman)

38. Fletch (Gregory McDonald)

39. Wag the Dog (American Hero by Larry Beinhart)

40. Big Fish (Daniel Wallace)

41. The Social Network (The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich)

42. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)

43. The Color Purple (Alice Walker)

44. Ordinary People (Judith Guest)

45. About Schmidt (Louis Begley)

46. Die Hard (Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorp)

47. Dead Man Walking (Helen Prejean)

48. Cool Hand Luke (Donn Pearce)

49. Awakenings (Oliver Sachs)

50. The Ice Storm (Rick Moody)

51. Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (Who Censored Roger Rabbit? by Gary Wolf)

52. Jurassic Park (Michael Chrichton)

53. 12 Years a Slave (Solomon Northup)

54. Postcards from the Edge (Carrie Fisher)

55. 3:10 to Yuma (Elmore Leonard)

56. Contact (Carl Sagan)

57. The Hunt for Red October (Tom Clancy)

58. What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (Peter Hedges)

59. Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick)

60. Get Shorty (Elmore Leonard)

61. Charly (Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes)

62. Sophie’s Choice (William Styron)

63. Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Cameron Crowe)

64. Adaptation (The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean)

65. No Country for Old Men (Cormac McCarthy)

66. Born on the Fourth of July (Ron Kovic)

67. A Christmas Story (In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash by Jean Shepherd)

68. Alive (Piers Read)

69. Terms of Endearment (Larry McMurtry)

70. The Cider House Rules (John Irving)

71. The World According to Garp (John Irving)

72. Quiz Show (Remembering America by Richard N. Goodwin)

73. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

74. Into the Wild (Jon Krakauer)

75. Full Metal Jacket (Gustav Hasford)

76. Pay it Forward (Catherine Ryan Hyde)

77. Seabiscuit (Laura Hillenbrand)

78. Reversal of Fortune (Alan Dershowitz)

79. True Grit (Charles Portis)

80. Marathon Man (William Goldman)

81. High Fidelity (Nick Hornby)

82. Romancing the Stone (Diane Thomas)

83. Shrek (William Steig)

84. Private Parts (Howard Stern)

69 AWESOME AND AWFUL AUTOBIOGRAPHY TITLES

46 SHORT AND SWEET SHEL SILVERSTEIN POEMS

51 AUTHOR PORTRAITS DRAWN BY ZAK PULLEN

29 EVOCATIVE DESCRIPTIONS OF AMERICAN PLACES

10 PATHS TO A GOOD IDEA

74 CLASSIC BOOK TITLES BORROWED FROM LITERATURE

17 MOST PROLIFIC WRITERS IN HISTORY

78 AUTHOR ALMA MATERS

25 BOOKS ABOUT FREEDOM SUMMER

5 LITERARY LANDMARKS IN THE GOLDEN STATE

15 BIZARRE FACTS ABOUT ERNEST HEMINGWAY

50 BOOKS FOR 50 STATES

68 BOOKS FOR THE MOST POPULAR GIRLS’ NAMES

67 BOOKS FOR THE MOST POPULAR BOYS’ NAMES

12 MOONWALKERS AND THEIR BOOKS

26 LITERARY FACTOIDS FROM A TO Z

7 TIPS FOR THE PERFECT AUTHOR VISIT

34 UNFORGETTABLE ISLAND SETTINGS

6 KIDS WHO UNEXPECTEDLY IMPACTED SPORTS

84 CLASSIC MOVIES THAT WERE BOOKS FIRST