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91 CLASSIC DR. SEUSS CHARACTERS
In the pages of more than four-dozen books, Dr. Suess (a.k.a. Dr. Theophrastus Seuss, a.k.a. Theo Le Sieg, a.k.a. Theodor Seuss Geisel) created scores of characters—from Horton, the Once-ler and...
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53 BETTER-THAN-FICTION ATHLETES’ NAMES
I have a confession to make. For several years, I mispronounced the name of an iconic sports figure who would become the subject of one of my books. His name is Francis Ouimet, the unknown amateur...
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61 HAPPY HOBBIT NAMES
J.R.R. Tolkien, master of Middle-Earth, was very careful about names. Malevolent creatures are duly evil-sounding: Morgoth. Azog. Grima Wormtongue. For the most part, Elves have elegant names,...
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59 WHY NOT BOOK TITLES
There was a book, published in 1970, called I Dream Things That Never Were and Say, Why Not? It is a collection of highlights from some of Bobby Kennedy’s most inspirational speeches. That particular...
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73 BEST HEADLINE FAILS
If you ever visit the Newseum in Washington, D.C.—the outstanding museum dedicated to the First Amendment—make sure to go to the bathroom. In part, that’s because you can spend days at the museum, and...
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99 HARD-HITTING BASEBALL MYSTERIES
At the start of my career, while I was briefly a sportswriter for The Ithaca Journal in upstate New York, I covered everything from football and field hockey to lacrosse and lightweight football. On...
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97 PHRASES COINED BY SHAKESPEARE
When we say that something is not for the “faint hearted” or is a “foregone conclusion” or is taking “forever and a day,” we rarely stop to consider where the phrase came from. But it had to come from...
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71 BOOKS IN ONE TRAIN OF THOUGHT
Jason Segel and Paul Rudd happen to be two of my favorite comedic actors. During a 2009 tandem interview about their film I Love You, Man, they got a bit giddy when the subject of a bromance...
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41 CLASSIC LITERARY PAIRINGS
When we at Why Not Books were musing on the title of our beautifully illustrated (by award-winner Zachary Pullen) picture book about the sport-altering 1913 U.S. Open golf championship, we realized...
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65 FICTIONAL REFERENCES TO CORNELL
When a writer is building a character, crafting a back story, or setting a scene, nothing is an accident. The character lugs around an oversized purse? Speaks with a slight lisp? Drives a VW bus? Is...
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3 LETTERS FROM AUTHORS TO THEIR KIDS
Great writing can be a slog—it may reek of natural talent, but it tends to be the product of musing and pacing and tweaking and editing and complaining and rearranging. And that’s all in one day. But...
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30 BOOKS WRITTEN BY KIDS
Eragon. The Outsiders. The Diary of a Young Girl. All three books, classics in their genres, were written by teenagers. While electronic publishing and purchasing has revolutionized the book industry,...
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90 BRILLIANT BURMA SHAVE SIGNS
Poetry can be very moving. It can also be poetry in motion—literally. The best examples of that are the old Burma-Shave signs from the mid-20th century. I’m too young to have seen any in person, but I...
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18 BEST CHILDREN’S BOOKS ABOUT GOLF
The first thing one notices upon entering Ron Muszalski’s ground-floor apartment is not necessarily the assortment of golf posters and prints covering the walls. It isn’t the myriad golf postcards and...
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95 SONGS ABOUT WRITING
Did you know that The Doors got their name from The Doors of Perceptionby Aldous Huxley? Did you know that Led Zeppelin injected J.R.R. Tolkien images into several songs? Or that The Red Hot Chili...
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44 LITERARY MOUNT RUSHMORES
A friend and I have a little game of intellectual tennis that we play, usually when we’re killing time. It’s called “The Mount Rushmore Game,” and basically it just requires us to come up with the four...
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35 BEST LINES FROM THE BEST SPEECHES
Back in 2008, on their website “The Art of Manliness,” Brett and Kate McCay wrote beautifully about oratory: “Oratory has been called the highest art for it encompasses all other disciplines. It...
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16 DEGREES OF SEPARATION—FROM HOMER TO HARRY POTTER
They say everything in literature is derivative, each creation influenced by a previous one. Perhaps, but there’s plenty of imagination still to be tapped. Most of the good stuff happens late at night,...
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23 BEST BOOKS ABOUT 23 SPORTS
I often give a talk to educators that I call “Hemingway was a Sportswriter.” It’s mostly about how teachers can utilize sports as a means of generating enthusiasm for reading and writing among...
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86 HARRY POTTER INCANTATIONS
Happy birthday, J.K. Rowling. And happy birthday, Harry Potter, too. July 31 is the big day. Here at the Why Not 100, we have our own favorite wizard. It’s Gandalf the Grey. And our favorite boy who...
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