Back to the '90s
Isabel Wilkinson is an assistant editor at The Daily Beast.
Tom Clancy, John Grisham, Terry McMillan-the 1990s were a beach-read paradise of movie-optioned paperbacks. Here are nine page-turners just as addictive as they were a decade ago.
Did Frank McCourt Invent James Frey?
Lee Siegel has written about culture and politics and is the author of three books: Falling Upwards: Essays in Defense of the Imagination; Not Remotely Controlled: Notes on Television; and, most recently, Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob. In 2002, he received a National Magazine Award for reviews and criticism.
Angela's Ashes was a masterpiece, but Frank McCourt's success launched a wave of half-baked, half-faked memoirs from the likes of James Frey.
My Teacher Who Brought Magic to Room 205
Susan Jane Gilman's third book, Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven, has just been published by Grand Central Publishing.
Frank McCourt's creative-writing class at Stuyvesant High School in 1981 featured "open mike" Fridays, poetry from recipes, and lots of Samuel Johnson. Susan Jane Gilman remembers the "generous renegade" who inspired her to become a writer.
We Miserable Catholics
After 30 years as teacher of high-school English in New York City, Frank McCourt retired and wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, Angela's Ashes. McCourt published two more memoirs, 'Tis and Teacher Man along with a children's book, Angela and the Baby Jesus.
Angela's Ashes author Frank McCourt on the movie Doubt-and the unique joylessness of the Catholic Church.
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
Peter Beinart, senior political writer for The Daily Beast, is a professor of journalism and political science at City University of New York and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation.
Gerald Posner is The Daily Beast's Chief Investigative Reporter. He's the award-winning author of 10 investigative nonfiction bestsellers, ranging from political assassinations, to Nazi war criminals, to 9/11, to terrorism. His latest book, Miami Babylon: Crime, Wealth and Power—A Dispatch from the Beach, was published in October. He lives in Miami Beach with his wife, the author Trisha Posner.
Martin Jacques is the cofounder of the UK think tank Demos, writes a regular column for The Guardian, and is a visiting research fellow at the London School of Economics Asia Research Centre. His new book, When China Rules the World, is available now.
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