Top ten: books with secret signs

Justin Scroggie is the author of Tic-tac Teddy Bears and Teardrop Tattoos. For the Guardian, he named a top ten list of books with secret signs.

His introduction and one title from his list:

I'm an author (and television producer) with a passion for secret signs – all the ways that people in the know privately communicate with each other. I love books where something hinges on a sign or a symbol that the protagonist has to decipher. Authors are playful people, too, so I'm always on the lookout for any hidden messages they might have included, in a character's name, for example, or even on the cover.

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Harry Potter & The Philosopher's Stone

At the start of the first book in the series, dark wizard Lord Voldemort kills Lily and James Potter, and then turns his attention to their one-year-old child, Harry. But thanks to Lily's self-sacrifice, the attack fails, leaving Voldemort's body destroyed and Harry with a lightning bolt scar on his forehead. The scar is both an indelible mark of Harry's past and a sign of how that past will catch up with him.

Read more about Scroggie's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Cornel West: most important books

Princeton professor Cornel West's latest book is Hope on a Tightrope.

For Newsweek, he named his five most important books.

One title on his list:

"In Praise of Folly" by Erasmus.

He shows how we all, particularly Christians, should try to laugh at ourselves and love others.

Read about the other four books on West's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten Halloween stories

The writer James Hynes posted his 2008 list of Halloween stories on his website.

One item on his list:

"La Grande Breteche," Honore de Balzac. I'm detecting another theme here, but I can't say why without giving away the story. This one comes from another classic anthology I practically lived in as a melancholy kid, Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural, a big fat Modern Library book I took out of the Big Rapids Library again and again and again. It's still in print, in a very handsome edition, and I have my own copy now. It's pure nostalgia, the book where I first read stories by M. R. James, Saki, Ambrose Bierce, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, and H. P. Lovecraft, not to mention the first place I ever read Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" and Hemingway's "The Killers," which the editors included in the Tales of Terror section of the book.

Read about all ten stories on Hynes' list.

Related: Five best ghost stories.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best ghost stories

Brad Leithauser, editor of The Norton Book of Ghost Stories, named a five best list of ghost tales for the Wall Street Journal.

One title from his list:

The Turn of the Screw
by Henry James
1898

Henry James (1843-1916) might have achieved his greatest fame with such works of psychological realism as the novella "Daisy Miller" and the novel "The Portrait of a Lady," but he also produced short masterpieces of supernatural fiction, including "Sir Edmund Orme," "The Friends of the Friends" and "Maud-Evelyn." These are rich, emotional stories that employ the supernatural to explore the unlit recesses of the psyche: pathological jealousy, romantic betrayal, necrophilia, etc. Fine as they are, the stories are overshadowed by a novella that may be the greatest ghost tale in the language: "The Turn of the Screw," the tragic story of an inexperienced governess and her two young and beautiful charges. Its genius lies in its bifurcated narration; a reader can embrace two equally plausible but mutually exclusive plot-lines. All is sunshine and gaiety at the story's outset, but the reader soon receives disturbing intimations. Take your choice: The governess is dangerously mad, or she is sane and the beautiful children are covertly satanic.

Read about all five books on Leithauser's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Steven Pinker's five most important books

Steven Pinker is a professor of psychology at Harvard University and the author of several books, including How the Mind Works and, most recently, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature.

Pinker told Newsweek about his five most important books. Number One:

"The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins.

A lucid explanation of natural selection and a model of elegant science writing.

Read about the other four titles on Pinker's list.

Related: Steven Pinker's "five best" list of books that explore human nature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Critic's chart: top books about Elvis

Bob Stanley, music writer and a member of the pop band St Etienne, named a "critic's chart" of top books about Elvis for the (London) Times.

Number One on his list:

Last Train to Memphis/Careless Love by Peter Guralnick

Thorough, passionate and definitive, a two-volume account of the King's rise and fall.

Read about all six books on Stanley's chart.

--Marshal Zeringue

The Civil War away from the battlefield: 5 best books

James M. McPherson, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Battle Cry of Freedom and the newly released Tried by War: Lincoln as Commander in Chief, named a five best list of "books about the Civil War away from the battlefield" for the Wall Street Journal.

One title from his list:

Southern Lady, Yankee Spy
by Elizabeth R. Varon
Oxford, 2003

Popular Civil War literature is filled with romantic and sensational stories of female spies, many of them made of whole cloth. But this story of Elizabeth Van Lew is eminently true. A member of a prominent Richmond family, she inherited her mother's antislavery convictions. She freed her own slaves before the war and purchased some of their relatives to free them. During the war Van Lew skillfully traded on her reputation for eccentricity (she was called "Crazy Bet") to get away with hiding escaped Union prisoners of war and providing Gen. Ulysses S. Grant with vital intelligence smuggled through the lines during the 1864-65 siege of Richmond.

Read more about McPherson's list.

Learn more about McPherson's Tried by War: Lincoln as Commander in Chief.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best books on jazz

John Edward Hasse, curator of American Music at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, founder of national Jazz Appreciation Month, and author of Beyond Category: The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington, named a five best list of books on jazz for the Wall Street Journal.

Number One on his list:

Jazz
by Bob Blumenthal
Collins, 2007

When I agreed to review the manuscript of music critic Bob Blumenthal's "Jazz: An Introduction to the History and Legends Behind America's Music" for the publisher, I was unsure what to expect. A book attempting an overview of a subject with nearly a century of rich history and with three- quarters of a million recordings is a daunting undertaking. But as I began reading, I soon recognized that Blumenthal had produced the single best compact introduction to jazz currently available. And he did it in fewer than 200 pages of engaging, clearly written prose, accompanied by handsome illustrations and a short but useful glossary. Blumenthal's "Jazz" is the ideal starting point for anyone drawn to the music for the first time.

Read about all five titles on Hasse's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six books on young leaders

Iain Finlayson, a biographer and a nonfiction reviewer for the (London) Times, named a critic's chart of "six books on young leaders" for his newspaper.

One title on the list:

Dreams from My Father Barack Obama

Obama's life in Jakarta and Hawaii before entering Harvard Law School.

Read the full chart.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ann Packer: 5 most important books

Ann Packer, author of The Dive from Clausen’s Pier and Songs Without Words, listed her five most important books for Newsweek.

One title on her list:

Disturbances in the Field by Lynne Sharon Schwartz.

A gorgeously harrowing novel about grief and redemption.

Read about the other titles on Packer's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best books on financial meltdowns

For the Wall Street Journal, Martin Mayer, a guest scholar in economic studies at the Brookings Institution and the author of many books about banking and finance, named a five best list of book on financial meltdowns.

Number One on his list:

Manias, Panics, and Crashes
by Charles P. Kindleberger
Basic Books, 1978

Charles P. Kindleberger's "Manias, Panics, and Crashes" is the definitive overview of financial emergencies. It was published 30 years ago but updated early in this decade (when Charlie was 90 years old!). A professor of economics at MIT and one of the designers of the Marshall Plan after World War II, Kindleberger practiced what he cheerfully called "literary economics," as distinguished from the mathematical or even statistical economics to which almost all his colleagues paid obeisance. The style of the book is conversational, but it is not merely a narrative; its many historical illustrations serve analytical purposes. In the chapter "Speculative Manias," for instance, Kindleberger considers the surge of gold prices in the 1970s, when gold spiked from less than $40 an ounce at the start of the decade to $200 by 1973. "The greater fool theory" was likely at work, Kindleberger says, as some buyers -- aware that they were buying into a bubble -- acquired gold intending to unload it before the bubble burst. The reader will find in these pages from a generation ago all the arguments being aired regarding the current economic mess. With typical grace and brevity, Kindleberger addresses a subject now much on our minds: "Given a seizure of credit in the system," he writes, "more is safer than less. The excess can be mopped up later. As for timing, it is an art. That says nothing -- and everything."

Read about all five titles.

Related: Critic's chart: books on cash crashes.

--Marshal Zeringue

Critic's chart: books on Anglo-French conflict

Robert Tombs, the co-author (with Isabelle Tombs) of That Sweet Enemy, a book "about the long and sometimes fractious relationship between England and France," named a critic's chart of books on Anglo-French conflict for the Times (London).

One title on his list:

Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke

The most important English book written about France.

Read about the other five books.

--Marshal Zeringue