All Blog Posts from Author Talk

"What to Expect When You're Expecting" is still an indispensable guide for many soon-to-be parents, selling an astonishing 14.5 million copies since it was first published in 1984. In the decades since, Murkoff has expanded the franchise, to include a baby's first year, and also year number two. Early Show News Anchor Jeff Glor spoke to her about her latest.

JeffGlor: What inspired you to write the book?

Heidi Murkoff: Motherhood has always been the mother of invention (and inspiration) for me - starting with my own expectant motherhood, in fact (true story: I delivered the proposal for What to Expect When You're Expecting two hours before I delivered my first baby). Since then, I've been inspired by other moms, dads, babies - and this time around, toddlers. I love to watch toddlers at work - investigating, exploring, discovering, always busy, busy, busy. As small as they are - and as unevolved as they are physically, socially, verbally, emotionally - they're absolutely larger than life. Big in their emotions, huge in their personalities, outsized in their egos - and brimming with what I like to call "joie de toddler", that bubbly, effervescent toddler essence you almost wish you could bottle (and splash behind your ears every now and then). Every age and phase of childhood has its charms - but toddlerhood is pure, unadulterated (how perfect is that word, now that I think about it?) magic.

JG: What surprised you most during the writing process?

HM: How important a little parental perspective is. Toddlerhood, for all that unchecked exuberance and unbridled joy, can be challenging for parents (think meltdown on the frozen food aisle, followed by car seat mutiny, a pre-dinner cookie coup, a bedtime sleep strike). I should know - our daughter Emma was textbook toddler, one moment achingly adorable, the next moment ... well, a headache and a half. But take a step back, take an objective look at those trying toddler behaviors, and you'll see that they're actually an essential part of your little one's evolution into a unique little person all his or her own - as inevitable (and as developmentally appropriate) as those first steps and those first words.

Now if only I'd had that perspective handy the day Emma threw one of her sneakers into the half-frozen fountain outside New York City's Natural History Museum (we retrieved it months later, after the spring thaw).

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

HM: I've been doing what I do - and loving what I do - just about my entire adult life. But if I were to quit my day job (who am I kidding - my day, night, and weekend job), I'd work full time on the mission of the What to Expect Foundation: to help every mom know what to expect, so every mom - no matter what her socioeconomic profile, no matter where in the world she lives, no matter what her literacy level - can expect a healthy pregnancy, a safe delivery, and a healthy, happy baby.

JG: What are you reading right now?

HM: I actually just finished "The Nasty Bits", by Anthony Bourdain, since - well, my husband and I really love eating everything, including (and especially) the nasty bits. We just returned from visiting our new son-in-law's amazing family in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where we enjoyed lots of nasty (and very tasty) bits.

JG: What's next for you?

HM: The next step in What to Expect: What to Expect the Preschool Years, hopefully due to arrive some time next spring or so (I try to deliver about once a year - though I definitely wouldn't try that at home!).

For more on "What to Expect the Second Year," visit the Workman Publishing Company website.

"CBS Early Show" News Anchor Jeff Glor interviews NYC police detective turned author Edward Conlon, about his new book "Red on Red."

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Edward Conlon: As a New York City detective, my job is to knock on doors until people tell me stories. Not all of them are true, to say the least, but even the worst liars can have something important to tell you. The book is about what happens to a couple of door-knockers as they get caught up in the stories, including the ones they tell each other.

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

EC: In writing fiction, my notion of the ridiculous and coincidental has been misshapen by police work. I can't refuse to take a case involving identical twins because it's over-the-top, but my editor wouldn't stand for it.

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

EC: Overtime.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

EC: Kevin Baker's "Dreamland." A big, panoramic novel of New York a hundred years ago, full of gangsters, politicians, and Coney Island freaks. A beautiful book about my kind of people.

JG: What's next for you?

EC: What I can say is that New York City and police work are the things that I know best, and I don't think either subject has been exhausted.

For more on "Red on Red," visit the Spiegel & Grau website.

"CBS Early Show" News Anchor Jeff Glor speaks with author Jessica Speart, who went undercover to research a $200 million operation: the international smuggling of rare butterflies.

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Jessica Speart: I've always written about endangered species issues. My work as an investigative journalist led to a ten book mystery series that featured a U.S. Fish & Wildlife special agent. One of my books involved an endangered California butterfly. I'd never known much about butterfly collecting and became fascinated with the topic. I wasn't sure what to do next when the mystery series ended. Then I heard about an actual butterfly smuggling case so dark and quirky that I was immediately hooked.

JG: What surprised you most during the writing process?

JS: I was amazed at how many people are obsessed with butterflies. They're released at weddings and funerals, and are among the most popular tattoos. Their image is used to promote everything from vodka to luxury cars, along with adorning tee shirts and notebooks. They're symbols of beauty and hope, rebirth and transformation. That's a lot of baggage for a tiny insect.

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

JS: I started out as an actress and found my experience to be somewhat like that in the movie Tootsie. I was either too young, too old, had too many freckles, was too short, or they weren't looking for redheads. I now work at home in my sweatpants. What's not to like about that? I can't see myself doing anything else.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

JS: I'm reading Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer. I've long admired his work. Krakauer is a master at breathing life into nonfiction.

JG: What's next for you?

JS: I'm looking for another wildlife topic to tackle for the next nonfiction book.

For more on "Winged Obsession," visit the Harper Collins website.

"CBS Early Show" News Anchor Jeff Glor speaks with author Andre Dubus on a new memoir he's written about the hardships in his violent past and a lifestyle that threatened to destroy him -- until he was saved by writing.

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Andre Dubus: For many years I've been trying to write so much of this material as fiction. (Growing up in a depressed mill town in the early 70's with a single mother in poverty, the Vietnam War limping to a close, Watergate, tough neighborhoods and no fathers, etc -) But I found I wasn't able to create fiction so closely from my own life. In fact, with fiction I like to roam far afield from my own life to become people far different from me. So, three years ago, after delivering my novel "The Garden of Last Days" to my publisher, I found myself writing a personal essay about baseball, how I knew absolutely nothing of this sport growing up and how it was my two sons, teenagers now, whose passionate interest in the sport got me interested in it, too. The question fueling the essay was this: How did I miss baseball growing up, this sport I now love so much? The answer became a 500 page, two-year meditation on what I was doing, which is my accidental memoir Townie.

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

AD: What surprised me the most was how difficult it was to write about other people in my life, mainly family. I read this quote once from a writer whose name now escapes me: "If you're going to write memoir, you should be able to sue yourself for libel." That was the kind of memoir I felt prepared to write, the kind where the writer gains the reader's trust by being brutally honest about one's own shortcomings and sometimes glaring flaws. But what I wasn't prepared for was the inherent difficulty of shining a light on my parents, my siblings, my friends, etc. Where was the line between their stories and mine? Ultimately, I decided to write only about them where their lives intersected mine directly.

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

AD: I'd like to think I'd be a family doctor out in the country somewhere, but after finishing writing Townie, it strikes me as a real possibility that I could have ended up an inmate doing time in a maximum security prison.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

AD: Right now I'm reading Nick Flynn's second memoir, "The Ticking is the Bomb," Simon Van Booy's wonderful debut novel "Everything Beautiful Began After", and "Wait", the new poetry collection by C.K. Williams.

JG: What's next for you?

AD: I'm working on an original screenplay based on an essay I wrote in 2005 about an escaped convict, a truly rehabilitated one at that. I'm also working on a new work of fiction.

For more on "Townie," visit the W.W. Norton & Company website.

"CBS Early Show" anchor Jeff Glor speaks with author Meryle Secrest on a new biography she's written about Amedeo Modigliani, an Italian artist who painted and lived a Bohemian lifestyle at the turn of the century in Paris.

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Meryle Secrest: I was inspired to write the book by reading the other biographies about Modigliani because the more I read, the more I began to think that the real story had yet to be told. The story as traditionally told is of a man who painted incredibly sophisticated canvases in a state of acute toxicity, shall we say, and I just could not reconcile the idea that he was permanently drunk with the results that we now have of his thought processes. There was such a contradiction between the concept of this out-of-control personality and the extreme elegance of his work that I thought I had a puzzle to solve.

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

MS: What surprised me most was that I could still find witnesses with stories to tell that had not been told. Usually the gap of almost a century between the death of the subject and the inquiry makes it very unlikely that there is anything new to find. But it in the case of Modigliani, there is a direct link between the son of Modigliani's first collector and Modigliani himself: Noel Alexandre, who inherited his father's archives of letters and his father's memories of Modigliani that shed new light on this complicated personality.

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

MS: I would be painting portraits! My first subject was an artist who was a portrait painter, Romaine Brooks, an American who made her reputation in Europe and now ten books later I'm still writing about people who paint portraits. I think it's because I always wanted to be a painter of portraits myself.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

MS: I'm re-reading Brideshead Revisited. I am also reading the memoir written by Elsa Schiaparelli.

JG: What's next for you?

MS: My new subject is Elsa Schiaparelli another Italian genius who came to Paris in the 1930's and worked with Salvador Dali. The dresses, the coats, the hats, the shoes, the ensembles that she created during this Surrealist movement are still some of the most extraordinary works ever produced by a dress designer. But of course, she wasn't really a dress designer, she was an artist.

For more on "Modigliani," visit the Random House Website.

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Peter Godwin: I had returned to Zimbabwe on a journalistic assignment, to witness Mugabe's election loss (despite his efforts to rig them) but instead, he refused to stand down, and he effectively declared war on his own people. Foreign journalists were expelled and most of the opposition leaders went into hiding or exile as Mugabe launched a campaign of terror against his opponents, including torture on an industrial scale. It was the astonishing bravery and heroism of those he targeted inspired me to write this book.

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

PG: I think I only realized that as I emerged on the other side of this book, the extent to which?I lost my distance from the stories I was trying to project. I found it quite traumatic living among them.

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer??

PG: Well, I've worked as a trial lawyer and a soldier, a deck hand on a Mississippi tugboat, an orderly in a mental hospital, a university professor, and a documentary maker and a screenwriter. So anyone one of those!

JG: What else are you reading right now??

PG: I'm re-reading Nicholas Shakespeare's wonderful biography of Bruce Chatwin, while reading Chatwin's letters. I'm also reading Emin Pasha's Sudan diaries. And I've just finished a Graham Greene's A Burnt Out Case.

JG: What's next for you?

PG: I'm currently working on two screenplays; the first is a movie adaptation of my last book, "When a Crocodile Eats the Sun," the other is a horror movie set in Africa, on which I'm collaborating with the screenwriter David Schwab.

For more on "The Fear," visit the Hachette Book Group website.

Joshua Foer went from covering an event - the U.S. Memory Championship - to winning it. His new book "Moonwalking With Einstein" documents that journey, and explains, often in fascinating detail, how we can train our minds to remember more (it doesn't take as long as you think).

Josh is also, by the way, the youngest member of a fascinating family. His oldest brother is Franklin, editor of The New Republic (and author of the brilliant 2004 book "How Soccer Explains the World"). The middle brother is Jonathan Safran Foer, author of "Everything is Illuminated" (and a former interviewee here on Author Talk!). Hope you enjoy.

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Joshua Foer: In 2005, I went to the U.S. Memory Championship to cover the event as a science journalist. I figured the people who competed had to be savants, or at least have photographic memories. But that wasn't the case. The competitors claimed they simply had average memories, and had trained themselves to perform these incredible mental feats. It made me realize I didn't know the first thing about how my memory worked. I decided to spent the next year not only training my memory, but also investigating it.

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

JF: I spent time with an amnesic named EP who, tragically, had possibly the worst memory in the world. He didn't even remember he had a memory problem. Meeting someone who was otherwise totally functional except for the fact that he lacked a memory was an incredible window into just how much our memories make us who we are.

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

JF: I always thought I was going to be an evolutionary biologist. That's what I studied in college. But I discovered I didn't have the talent or temperament for it. I like jumping around from subject to subject too much. It's hard to do that and be a successful scientist.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

JF: James Gleick's "The Information." I'm loving it.

JG: What's next for you?

JF: The second annual International Obscura Day [www.obscuraday.com], which I co-founded, is coming up on April 9th. All over the world, people will be going out in groups to explore the curious places in their hometowns. It's going to be a lot of fun.

For more on "Moonwalking with Einstein," visit the Penguin Group website.

I remember reading a collection of essays that David Brooks edited in 1996, when I was still in college (dating myself). A few years later, my brother told me I absolutely had to read "Bobos in Paradise," Brooks' smart and funny assessment of mid-90's yuppies. I did, I thought it was great, and I don't think Brooks has stopped producing must-read material ever since. Whether you know him from his old "Weekly Standard" work, his now twice weekly New York Times column, or his wide variety of TV appearances, it goes without saying that Brooks is one of the most influential opinion-makers in the world. If you want to know where this country stands, and where it might head next, it's never a bad idea to dip into David Brooks. "The Social Animal" is out this month.

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

David Brooks: I found myself stuck in world that encouraged a shallow view of human nature. When we raise our kids, we emphasize grades and SAT scores but when it comes to the mot important things, like character, we often have little to say. In government, we emphasize the things that can be counted and minimize all the rest. But at the same time, thousands of researchers in the worlds of neuroscience and psychology are making all sorts of incredible discoveries about who we are deep down. I wanted to take their findings and round them up into one story.

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

DB: How complicated we are down below. We marry people who have similar nose widths, who have complimentary immune systems. That's just a small example of all the many different perceptions and thoughts that are flowing through our minds unconsciously every second of the day--sleep-time included.

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

DB: I'd be an editor. I have no other skills. I could try run for office, but I can't remember names well enough. I'd probably try to be a teacher, though I'm not sure I'd be great at it.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

DB: "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," a beautiful story about people who were sucked into and abused by the world of medicine even while remaining deeply suspicious of it.

JG: What's next for you?

DB: The next column for the Times is always next. It's like being a student and having a paper due in 3 days. Except its for the rest of my life.

Watch: Washington Unplugged interview with David Brooks

From locations as diverse as the Maldives, the Australian Outback and a hotel in space, to subjects as diverse as nanotechnology, synthetic biology and philosophy, there's seemingly nothing off limits in Mark Stevenson's ambitious new book. Stevenson says "An Optimist's Tour of the Future" is for anyone who is curious about the future and how technology will change us, but it's not, he says, a book that will tell you how to think. Instead, it gives you tools to make up your own mind.

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Mark Stevenson: I wanted to write a book about the scientific horizon for everyone - because the implications of what's happening in many fields of science (and their interaction) will change the way we live and work. I think more people should know about this stuff, and I don't think it has to be hard to understand or for geeks only. Just as Freakonomics is about economics but isn't read in the main by economists An Optimist's Tour of the Future is about the scientific horizon but isn't only for scientists.

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

MS: That the tools to solve our grand challenges are already here - and ready to be put to work. I didn't set out with an optimistic mindset (the book was originally pitched without a reference to optimism in the title) but I came back with the realization we really do have a choice about how the future can be - and it could be a renaissance - and I met many people who are already committed to that path. That was surprising and invigorating. I'm not saying our future will be better, but I realised it could be - and we still have everything to play for. It was such a surprise I changed the title of the book!

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

MS: That's a tough one to answer as I already have several jobs as it is! When I'm not being a writer I run learning agency and a science communications agency, as well as dabbling in live comedy and kicking off a new project (see below). I always hope I'm doing mixture of different things because I believe innovation and inspiration comes when ideas and people collide (something that was certainly borne out in my research). I never want one job.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

MS: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein, What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly, 13 Things That Don't Make Sense by Michael Brooks and Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky

JG: What's next for you?

MS: Something called The Age of Smart. One thing I came to realize in writing the book was that while we happily innovate in science, technology, medicine and the arts we have institutions and governments that haven't changed shape for hundreds of years. As Einstein said "The significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them" - and I think we need to try new ways of organizing ourselves to address our challenges - to embrace institutional innovation. So, The Age of Smart is a kind of think-tank and action-tank for the planet that aggregates action and learning to address our grand challenges - and which we're testing out with 30 million of the world's poorest people.

For more on "An Optimist's Tour of the Future ," visit the Penguin Group website.

Pastor and author Timothy Keller has gotten added attention in the past couple years because of his 2008 book "The Reason for God," but he's been running the Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City for more than twenty years, since 1989. This is Keller's latest, "King's Cross." No matter what your beliefs, there's always room for calm, controlled voices like his.

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Timothy Keller: One reason to write the book is our cultural climate. There is a constant fascination with the person of Jesus, despite how unpopular the institutional church has become. And so there are a lot of efforts to recruit Jesus to help your particular agenda. I wanted to go back to the earliest account of Jesus life we have, the gospel of Mark, written when many of the eyewitnesses were still alive. And then I just wanted to let the text itself speak and show us the Jesus who almost literally turned the old Roman Empire on its head.

The second reason to write the book is personal. I find Jesus an astonishingly attractive and compelling figure. I wanted more people to see that attractiveness.

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

TK: Many things. Here's just one. As Jesus is going to his death, we read in text about how Peter sought to save his skin by three times denying that he even knew him. Peter comes across as a tremendous coward. In fact, we are told that the last time he was asked if he were a disciple of Christ, he "called down curses" which was meant to prove his disdain of Jesus. He actually cursed his teacher to deflect suspicion.

There are two immediate questions that this raises. If Peter was one of the main leaders of the early church, why was such a credibility-destroying story put in a text that was supposed to win people to join the church. Remember this was a shame-honor culture in which such an action would render -- in many people's minds -- a man permanently unfit for service to a movement. A second question is -- what would have been the source for the information about this incident? The answer to both questions is the same. Peter himself must have not only told this story but authorized its use. And I believe that shows how completely transformed a man he was. He no longer had a need to control what people thought about his reputation -- he no longer needed popularity or approval. His encounter with Christ had humbled him and yet affirmed him so profoundly that he no longer had an 'ego' in the same way that he had before.

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

TK: This is an easy question. I am not a writer now. I'm a Presbyterian minister with a very full-time job. My writing is essentially a way of capturing some of the preaching and teaching I have done in my congregations over the years. And I don't intend on leaving the full-time ministry to give more time to writing.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

TK: I'm an urban pastor so I'm reading Edward Glaeser's The Triumph of the City. I'm a Presbyterian minister so I'm reading a book by Robert Letham on the development of our denomination's doctrinal confession, The Westminster Confession of Faith. I'm a preacher so I'm reading two books on the Old Testament book of Exodus. And I'm also a writer, and I'm writing a book on marriage. So I have six books on marriage I am reading as well.

JG: What's next for you?

TK: Over the next few years I'm shifting my ministry responsibilities more toward the mentoring, training, and teaching of younger ministers and leaders. That's an appropriate transition, I think, for someone entering his 60s.

For more on "King's Cross," visit the Penguin Group website.