Ellen Warner,Random House

Jeff Glor talks to Nathaniel Philbrick about "Bunker Hill: A City, a Siege, a Revolution."

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Nathaniel Philbrick: Like a lot of kids, I read Edith Forbes's "Johnny Tremain" in elementary school. It had a big impact and I've always been curious about what the city of Boston was like during the Revolution. After finishing my book "Mayflower," which ends with the terrible English-Native conflict called King Philip's War in 1676, I realized I wanted to continue the story, so to speak, and tell about what happened a hundred years later in Boston.

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

NP: I was surprised to learn that most of the Founding Fathers we associate with the Revolution in New England -- John Adams, John Hancock, and Sam Adams -- were in Philadelphia at the Continental Congress when events were unfolding in Boston. A 33-year-old doctor named Joseph Warren was the one who ordered Paul Revere to alert the countryside that the British were coming. Warren was the President of the Provincial Congress and was the one leading the on-the-ground revolution until he died tragically at the Battle of Bunker Hill.

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

NP: I'd probably be a teacher of some sort -- in fact, that's what I always assumed I'd be doing until I ended up becoming a writer.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

NP: I'm in the middle of two books -- the second volume of William Manchester's biography of Winston Churchill, "The Last Lion," and F. Scott's Fitzgerald's "Tender is the Night."

JG: What's next for you?

NP: Not sure at this point, but I really found the Revolutionary War period fascinating. We'll see!

Penguin Group, Maria Yagoda

Jeff Glor talks to Ben Yagoda about, "How to Not Write Bad: The Most Common Writing Problems and the Best Ways to Avoid Them."

Ben Yagoda: The short answer is: 20 years in the classroom. When I started teaching writing and journalism at the University of Delaware, I was struck that the universe of writing mistakes students made was pretty small. There were -- and continue to be -- about 50 basic problems that account for maybe 90 percent of the marks and comments I make on their assignments. And I see a lot of the same things when I read blogs and even newspapers and magazines. I thought it would be useful to put together a short book explaining what the "fabulous 50" are, and some ways to recognize and avoid them. And that led to How to Now Write Bad.

BY: The passion and sometimes vehemence people bring to issues of writing, language, and especially grammar. As I was writing the book, I would occasionally write short posts on my blog (www.benyagoda.com) about the issues I was dealing with. And every time I did, there would be many impassioned comments. Who would have thought people cared so much about the Oxford comma, or the difference between that and which?

BY: The honest answer is, a lawyer. I think that profession would feed into my ingrained need to be pedantic and split hairs. But boy, what I wouldn't give to have the passion and dedication necessary to be a jazz guitarist!

BY: I am about four New Yorkers behind on my Kindle Fire. I just finished an awesome book called "Far From the Tree," by Andrew Solomon -- an extremely in-depth look at the American family today. And I'm in the middle of two more excellent non-fiction books: "The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov," by Andrea Pitzer, and "The House That George Built," by Wilfred Sheed.

BY: My next book project relates to the Sheed book (and, I guess, my secret wish to be a jazz sideman). Its tentative title is "The B Side: The Fall of Tin Pan Alley and the Rebirth of the Great American Song, 1950-1965." It's kind of a mystery story that will try to answer the question: what happened to the great American tradition of popular songwriting -- the tradition of Gershwin Porter, and Kern -- after 1950? The traditional answer is that rock and roll took over, but that's too simple. It's been a fascinating project, and I hope to finish within a year or so.

Random House, Daniel Addison

Jeff Glor talks to Jonathan Haidt about "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion."

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Jonathan Haidt: When I was a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania in the late 1980s, I set for myself the task of trying to figure out what morality really is. Where does it come from? Why is it so variable around the world, yet at the same time, you see the same basic elements (such as reciprocity, care, loyalty, and authority) repeated over and over again? I studied how morality varied between India, the USA, and Brazil. But after John Kerry's loss to George W. Bush in the presidential election of 2004, the Charlottesville Democratic Association asked me to give a talk on how liberals and conservatives differ. I found that the ideas I had developed to compare different countries worked quite well to compare different sides of the political spectrum. After that talk, I decided to change my research to focus on the left-right divide, which was (and still is) tearing America apart. "The Righteous Mind" is my effort to explain that divide, while at the same time answering the question I set out to answer in grad school: what is morality, and where does it come from?

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

JH: I tried so hard to see morality from everyone's point of view that I actually came to respect conservative and libertarian ideas, as much as liberal ideas. By the time I finished writing chapter eight, in which I tried to articulate conservative notions of fairness and liberty, I realized that I could no longer call myself a liberal. I am now a passionate centrist.

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

JH: I'm a social psychologist who wrote his first book "The Happiness Hypothesis" at the age of 43. I'd be perfectly happy just doing experiments and writing them up for academic journals, rather than writing books. Well, that's not quite true. Writing a book is so much more fun than the defensive writing style one must use to write an article that will get torn apart during the peer review process.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

JH: I've just moved to the NYU-Stern School of Business, so I'm trying to understand the world of business, and the various ethics of capitalism. Books such as "The Mind and the Market," by Jerry Muller, "A Capitalism for the People," by Luigi Zingales, and "The Origin of Wealth," by Eric Beinhocker.

JG: What's next for you?

JH: Business ethics. No, it's not an oxymoron, but it does seem to be the case that business and business schools promote a practical, problem-solving mindset in which moral concerns are often pushed to the background. Business ethics has traditionally been handled by philosophers. I want to see if social psychology can do a better job of it. My goal is not to teach MBA students to be ethical, but rather to apply the ideas in "The Righteous Mind" to teach future leaders how they can set up organizations that will end up producing more ethical behavior by indirect means, and will therefore be less vulnerable to the ethical meltdowns that destroyed so many companies in the last 13 years, and harmed so many millions of people around the world.

For more on "The Righteous Mind," visit the Random House website.

Hachette Book Group,Liz Stubbs

Jeff Glor talks to Robert Weintraub about "The Victory Season: The End of World War II and the Birth of Baseball's Golden Age"

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Robert Weintraub: I wanted to write about baseball related to WWII, and the more I dug in to the research, it seemed that the immediate post-war moment was most interesting. 1946 was fraught with domestic tensions and difficulties as the country transitioned from war to peace, and baseball was one of the things that eased the time for many who were otherwise put out. Also, you had the first glimmerings of the massive changes that were coming for the game -- a black man signing to play in organized baseball, unionizing attempts, and the players first taste of freedom from the odious contractual restrictions on their movement and pay. It was a fascinating, and the play on the field was pretty great too, so I felt strongly compelled to write about it.

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

RW: Probably the story of an extraordinary "World Series" that was played at the Hitler Youth Stadium in Nuremberg in 1945, contested by American soldiers based in Germany and France, right on the spot where the Nazis had paraded their power only a few years earlier. More amazingly, one of the teams in the Series was integrated with a pair of Negro Leaguers, Leon Day and Willard Brown, so this was sort of an out-of-town preview of what was coming shortly stateside with Jackie Robinson. In addition, one of the players on the losing team, Harry "The Hat" Walker, would drive in the winning run in the real World Series of 1946, just over a year later.

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

RW: Before I ever started writing, I was a television producer (ESPN, ABC Sports, Discovery, Speed, many more -- including CBS Sports as well!), and remain so to this day, so I suppose that's an easy answer for me.

G: What else are you reading right now?

RW: I'm reading "The Angel's Game" by Carlos Ruiz Zafon and "Tough Without a Gun," a biography of Humphrey Bogart, by Stefan Kanfer. Gothic mystery combined with gritty realism!

JG: What's next for you?

RW: I'd like to expand my horizons a bit and write about something other than sports, or with sports only in the background. Time to really stretch my legs and get out of my comfort zone a bit, methinks.

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

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/Leonardo Cendamo

Jeff Glor talks to A.B. Yehoshua about "The Retrospective."

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

A.B. Yehoshua: When I reached the age of 70, I felt the time had come to deal with the subject of artistic creativity and to write a novel about a creative artist. The professional identity of protagonists is of great importance in their characterization. In the nine novels I have written so far, I have devoted great attention to the occupations of my main characters -- doctor, lawyer, Middle East scholar, human resources manager, accountant, and more. But I felt that at this point in my life I could not escape delving into a character who professional identity was closest to my own -- a creative artist.

But I didn't want to write about a novelist, not only because there are so many novels whose main character is a writer, but because I wanted to examine the various forces and energies that function within literary creativity -- the dynamic tension that exists between the power of wild imagination and the powers of craft and organization: building characters, structuring visual images, and so on.

These are serious questions about artistic creation, especially at a time when literature, music, film, and the plastic arts have become accessible to all, and the practice of these arts has become more popular and democratic.

After the publication of my novel "Friendly Fire," I knew this was what I needed to do next, but the specific spark for the new novel came when my wife and I made a trip to Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain, where I was awarded a modest literary prize. The opening of the novel "The Retrospective" describes exactly what I felt when I saw, on the wall of our room at the Parador hotel, a reproduction of a painting on the classical theme of "Caritas Romana." The painting was a complete mystery to me, and to solve it, I wrote this novel.

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

ABY: What surprised me most in writing this novel was the final chapter. This ambiguous mixture of reality and pure imagination -- the encounter between the hero and Don Quixote -- came about in a manner that I never knew I could, or wanted to, achieve. I wrote this ending in a single burst of inspiration while I was in the middle of writing the novel. And at the moments of my greatest struggle while writing the book I went back and read the ending that was already complete, and it encouraged me not to give up and to keep on working.

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

ABY: If I had not become a writer I would almost certainly have become a lawyer. The world of law always fascinated me: the search for truth and justice, on the one hand, and the ability to argue with sharp intelligence and bring compelling evidence to defeat the adversary. In my novels there is no shortage of lawyers -- in "A Late Divorce" and "Mr. Mani" for example -- and in "Journey to the End of the Millennium" there are detailed descriptions of two trials that take place between Ashkenazic and "Eastern" (Sephardic) Jews. In "Five Seasons" and "The Liberated Bride" I created strong female characters who are a legal advisor and a judge. Indeed, in Israel today women are very prominent in the legal profession.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

ABY: I divide my reading time between fiction and non-fiction, and I must say that more and more I am drawn to the latter. Most recently, though, I read an amazing book by a young woman author called "The Zionist Comedy - Inferno," somewhere between a novel and a personal chronicle written entirely in biblical Hebrew. It's a strong book that gives our daily lives, politics included, a rich, deeply biblical resonance.

JG: What's next for you?

ABY: Following "The Retrospective," I wrote a play based on an encounter between David Ben-Gurion, the Labor Zionist leader who became Israel's first prime minister, and his rival Ze'ev Jabotinsky, ideological father of today's Likud party, that took place in London in 1934. The play is currently running at the municipal theatre of Tel Aviv, and has been very well received. And now a new novel is slowly taking shape in my mind -- this time with a woman protagonist.

For more on "The Retrospective," visit the website.

Malin Lauterbach, Random House

Jeff Glor talks to Alexander Soderberg about "The Andalucian Friend."

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Alexander Soderberg: I had an idea that I wanted to evolve. It started off as a TV-script. But I soon felt that the story was bigger than a script and needed some room to expand. I wanted to paint with more colors than were available for television, in a way. It was great fun to spin out the narrative full blast, building a universe around the characters, and allowing them to live their own lives.

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

AS: Time. How important time is when you write. To have the time to put away your work for a while, let the story rest and take a look at it with new fresh eyes. When I wrote "The Andalucian Friend," no one knew about the book. I had time on my side.

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

AS: I've taken up horseback riding in the last few years and actually own a horse--a gelding called Quickstep. I'd probably spend all my time with him, trying to win him over (we have a love/hate relationship: I love him, but he hates me).

JG: What else are you reading right now?

AS: At the moment I'm working on my next book, and I don't read much when I work. Just magazines, mostly. I like The Economist and, of course, Your Horse, a British equestrian magazine. The last book I read was "The Good Soldiers" by David Finkel. Laying on my bedside table, tempting me, is "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn.

JG: What's next for you?

AS: I'm working on a sequel to "The Andalucian Friend."

For more on "The Andalucian Friend," visit the Random House website.

Harper Collins, LANN

Jeff Glor talks to Charles Fernyhough about "Pieces of Light: How the New Science of Memory Illuminates the Stories We Tell About Our Pasts"

JG: What inspired you to write the book?

CF: I wanted to write a slightly different kind of science book, one that was based on real people's stories as much as it was about communicating scientific findings. I'd become interested in memory through some creative writing teaching I'd been doing, in which I was asking writing students to think about what a reader's brain has to do when it's processing a literary text. And the construction of a self-narrative through memory was a key theme of my previous nonfiction book, about my daughter's early psychological development. Memory is a perfect topic for a slightly left-field approach to science writing, because it's all about personal stories. I'd like readers to come away feeling that they've spent some time in the company of a rewarding narrative that deals with characters and emotions, as well as knowing plenty about the latest research.

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

CF: Memory is difficult! It's complicated; it has many moving parts. Our memories are actually memories of memories; they're shaped by who we are now as much as who were back then; and they're susceptible to influence, distortion and bias from many quarters. That made it a challenge to pull it all together, but thankfully there is this fairly strong consensus now about the reconstructive nature of memory, backed up by some ingenious psychological and neuroscientific research. And I was lucky enough to be able to talk to some fascinating and inspiring people -- a trauma victim, an amnesiac, my elderly grandmother -- who shared their stories with me and taught me a lot about what it's like to be a rememberer.

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

CF: I have a part-time academic post, and I conduct research on topics such as hallucinations and child development as well as memory. If I had to give up all the bookish stuff completely, I'd be trying to make it as a progressive rock guitarist. Yeah, I know.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

CF: Because I studied science rather than literature, there are big gaps in my reading. I'm currently trying to fill a Shakespeare-shaped hole by working my way through his collected works. I still tend to get some of the comedies mixed up, but I'm making progress.

JG: What's next for you?

CF: I've been working on a novel about a neuroscientist, entitled "A Box of Birds." I'm interested in how we as a society consume neuroscientific information: why we're so attracted to it, and what it might mean for us as people trying to make sense of our experience. My protagonist feels differently about who she is because of what she knows about her own nervous system. Crucially, it makes her act differently too. Fiction is a great way to explore these ideas because it essentially allows you to set up a human experiment: you can create a character with certain beliefs, emotions and secrets, put her in a predicament and see how she acts. In the right hands, the novel can teach us a huge amount about who we are as people.

For more on "Pieces of Light" visit the Harper Collins website.

Macmillan, Israel Byrds

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Frank Bill: I started writing "Donnybrook" during the downturn of the economy. I wanted to write a book that shined a bright light on the working and struggling class of the heartland, like war vets, factory workers and crystal meth cooks. But I wanted to do that with an active narrative and an attention to voice and language, by showing the masculine identities of struggling class men who do what they need to do in order to survive.

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

FB: Time and how quickly it passes when you're lost in your storyline.

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

FB: Well I still work a day job in a factory. Writing at 3:30 a.m. until 6:30 a.m. and then heading into work. I can't see myself doing anything else other than maybe teaching Chinese martial arts as the training requires the same amount of dedication if you want to be great at it.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

FB: I normally start several books at once. I'm finishing up "The Devil in Silver" by Victor LaValle and "Crapalachia" by Scott McClanahan. And I'm just starting on two new books, "Nothing Gold Can Stay" by Ron Rash" and "Detroit: An American Autopsy" by Charlie LeDuff.

JG: What's next for you?

FB: The follow up to Donnybrook, "The Salvaged and the Savage."

For more on "Donnybrook," visit the Macmillan website

Jeff Glor talks to Kristopher Jansma about "The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards"

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Kristopher Jansma: It sort of hit me out of nowhere. I had gone to see "Waiting for Godot" with a friend one weekend, and I had never seen it before. I knew the concept, basically... I knew that it's a play about two guys waiting for a third guy to show up and that he never does. But I'd never actually bothered to read it. Anyway, we went to see it and I couldn't believe how moving it was... what really struck me was the way that Vladimir and Estragon wind up clinging to one another, and holding each other back, but at the same time they seemed to truly love and care for one another. So that got in my head, and then I was at brunch at the Washington Square Hotel, and there was this jazz music playing, and the two thoughts came together. That week I wrote a short story called "The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards", about two writers who go to brunch with a beautiful actress, and the writers get in an argument about a short story that one has written about the other. Then the next week I wrote the story they were arguing about, which features two writers arguing about a novel that one has written about a beautiful actress. And then the next week I wrote a piece of that novel... pretty soon I just couldn't stop writing about these three characters and by the end of that year, I had enough that it felt like a book.

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

KJ: There were a lot of surprises... partly because it was written in pieces and I didn't always know what order they'd go in or what the larger plot would be. But I think maybe the biggest surprise was the evolution of Tina, the editor character, who comes in during the second half of the novel. I originally saw her as being a kind of stand-in for the actress, Evelyn, in the chapter when she and the narrator are in Ghana together, working on a biography of Jeffrey Oakes. But she really took on a whole life of her own, and became in many ways a foil for Evelyn. Instead of being a little cold and proper and privileged, Tina is hard-working and passionate and sarcastic. I surprised myself with how much I wound up liking her, and wanting to see her get a moment of triumph.

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

KJ: Well, I'm also a creative writing professor, and I love teaching students the craft and appreciation of great fiction, so I suppose if my ink well were to ever run dry I'd hope to continue doing that. But it's hard to imagine: lecturing on great stories and helping young people harness their creative powers, and then not being able to run home and sit down at the laptop myself? Ten or eleven years ago, when I was a student myself, I remember I went to talk to one of my professors about being a writer. I really wanted him to tell me I was good enough to pull it off... I was hoping for a little vote of confidence or an ego boost. But he told me "If you can be happy doing anything else, you should do that instead." Like a punch to the gut, basically. But he explained it wasn't any reflection on my abilities, just that this is an incredibly hard and rarely rewarding path to go down... you can pour yourself out on the page and work and work for years on end, and it hardly ever pans out. As the narrator realizes at one point in the book, the odds are so long that no gambler would ever take them... and yet people do it all the time because there's something in us that can't be happy unless we try. I thought about what he said for a long time, and then I realized that no, there was nothing else that I would be happy doing.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

KJ: Right now I'm reading a collection of beautiful short stories called "So Close" by Jessica Francis Kane. They're wonderful and feel like a collection of new Lorrie Moore stories that I've been waiting to read for years now. I'm also doing some Salinger at the moment. We're doing "The Catcher in the Rye" in my adolescent literature class and it's gotten me re-reading all of the later stuff again. Oh, and my novella class is doing "Breakfast at Tiffany's" next week, so I should probably get on that one as soon as possible.

JG: What's next for you?

KJ: In terms of writing, I'm elbow-deep in a new novel, which I can't say a whole lot about yet, except that it's coming along very well so far. Leopards is so tightly-constructed and you can read it in just one or two sittings, and so I wanted to now try and write something bigger - not just in terms of length, but in terms of the sweep of the story. It's about living in New York City in your twenties and just trying to cling to the very edge of the center of the universe. So hopefully that will continue to go well, in light of the other news, which is that my wife and I are having a baby just about a month after Leopards is published. Which we could not be happier about, but we also just cannot wrap our heads around it at all. Which people tell us is normal. I think maybe the best things in life can't be wrapped around by heads... great loves, good novels... and fatherhood, I guess. That's what's next for me.

Wiley Publishing

Jeff Glor talks to Doug Young, about The Party Line: How The Media Dictates Public Opinion in Modern China

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Doug Young: A few things inspired me to write this book, with the earliest of those dating back to my time living in China in the 1980s. I traveled around quite a bit during that time, and would see newspapers in many of the places I visited, even though I couldn't read them very well back then. I remember the one thing that really struck me about the papers was how they all seemed strangely similar, regardless of whether it was in Shanghai or a small provincial town. There were always pictures of leaders on the front page, often shaking hands and visiting other leaders. There were also lots of stories that seemed quite newsless about meetings and other official gatherings. It had a sort of Orwellian feel to it, and made me curious how such varied papers could all show such a unified front. Later when I became a reporter in China and got to meet Chinese reporters in the course of my work, I began to understand how the Chinese media machine works and found it quite intriguing how messages are crafted at the top and then trickle down throughout the system. That's when I first got the idea for this book.

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

DY: What surprised me most was the discovery that the Chinese media of today is really quite a diverse group, ranging from the old-style Communist Party newspapers to newspapers and magazines you might expect to find in the west. Likewise, the types of reporters you see are very diverse. I was surprised and encouraged by the number of those reporters who really wanted to be serious, western-style journalists who write investigative stories and news analysis. Only one or two people I met in the course of writing the book were actual state bureaucrat types that you would have expected to see more of in the era before China started opening up.

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

DY: That's a very good question! I majored in geology when I was in college because I thought I wanted to do that. But then when I realized how isolated and difficult the work was, I opted for reporting. Probably my next choice would be what I'm doing now, which is teaching journalism to young Chinese. It's been quite rewarding to be able to take some of what I've learned over the years and pass on that information to the next generation of journalists. It's also great to work with young people who are just starting out in their careers, unlike myself who is already in his mid to late career phase.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

DY: You mean what am I reading beside my own book? The answer is pretty varied. I recently finished "The Emperor of All Maladies," which is about the history of cancer and was a fascinating though somewhat depressing read. I'm also working my way through "Changing Media, Changing China", which is related to my own book. I also like to read the occasional novel, and am currently working on an old classic that I picked up at a used bookstore, "Bless Me Ultima".

JG: What's next for you?

DY: I've been lucky to get a research grant from the university where I teach that has no strings attached, so I'm going to use that for my next big project, which will combine several different forms of media. The actual project involves creating an "oral history", which is a series of long, videotaped interviews where all the people interviewed have something in their background that makes a common theme. In my case, I'm doing an oral history of western executives who worked in China for major multinational companies in the 1980s and 90s. I'll give the final series of interviews to my university, Fudan University in Shanghai, for use as a resource for future researchers. In addition, my publisher has also agreed to publish a book that I'll write based on the interviews. Then lastly, I'm also hoping my videographer will be able to do something with the interviews, most likely making a documentary. But don't hold your breath, as any book is probably still at least two years away.

For more on "The Party Line," visit the Wiley website.

Dutton, Brian Woolf

Jeff Glor talks to Amy Webb about, "Data, A Love Story: How I Gamed Online Dating to Meet My Match."

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Amy Webb: There are millions of men and women who are stuck in the cycle of bad dates. Many of them assume that they'll never find the right partner, and the longer they stay on dating sites, the more despondent they feel. I want those folks to know that it's just a matter of taking more control of their situations. Online dating sites can work very well, as long as you know how to really use them. My book is my personal journey through heartbreak, dating and love, but it also provides some concrete, practical tips on how to create your own system to find the right person and how to relaunch your own personal, digital brand online.

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

AW: I treated this book as a reported story, which meant that I spent countless hours scouring old original notes, spreadsheets and chat transcripts. I also talked at length with my dad and sister to recreate the conversations we had when the book takes place. It's always fascinating to look back at a moment in your own personal history. I caught my current self cringing numerous times at my former self, and wondering how I didn't see things more clearly then.

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

AW: Well, I wear many hats. I'm the CEO of Webbmedia Group, which is a digital strategy agency that solves complex strategic and operational problems related to disruptive technologies and emerging digital trends that are catalyzing great change across many industries. I'm also the co-founder of Spark Camp, which is an invite-only gathering of super-smart, hyper-creative people that aims to think big thoughts and solve problems around bunch of central themes. I judge a bunch of industry awards, sit on boards of directors and I'm affiliated with a few universities doing research. If I was able to add a discipline to that, like a fantasy gig, I'd love to lead a rock star analytics and digital outreach teams for the next presidential election cycle.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

AW: I have a Ben Franklin obsession, and I'm in the process of devouring Walter Isaacson's biography "Benjamin Franklin: An American Life." I cannot put it down. I spent six full hours reading it on two flights this week. Up next will be "Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain" by David Eagleman. Every week, I usually read New York magazine cover to cover, and most of the New Yorker, Time magazine and The Week. I also regularly read the MIT Technology Review. I have about 50 RSS feeds that I scan through every morning before I start my day: Mashable, ArsTechnica, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and the like. And I'll be totally honest: I have a subscription to both Us Weekly and Star.

JG: What's next for you?

AW: My team has a very big year ahead of us at work. We're in the process of growing our client portfolio and expanding our offerings, and as a result we have lots of new projects on the books. Aside from my day job, I do have another book in mind, about the myth women have been sold about working hard, starting families later and attempting to have it all.

For more on "Data, A Love Story" visit her website.

Harper Collins

Jeff Glor talks to Roseanne Montillo about "The Lady and Her Monsters: A Tale of Dissections, Real-Life Dr. Frankensteins, and the Creation of Mary Shelley's Masterpiece"

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Roseanne Montillo: I was hired by Emerson College to teach a class called Forbidden Knowledge. "Frankenstein" was on the syllabus. My students were all incoming freshmen, and although I knew that most of them were already familiar with the book and the legend behind it -- Mary Shelley having written it after her dream on Lake Geneva -- I felt that they needed to know that the text was actually heavily influenced not so much by that dream, but by the belief that you could actually bring people back to life. By the science, medicine, experimentation and religion flourishing around her.

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

RM: Although the experiments in galvanization and anatomization were mainly performed by men, what surprised me the most was that they were supported by women. Most people who attended Giovanni Aldini's so-called "performances" in galvanization, both in Italy and in England, were women. Although this seems odd to some readers, it actually made a lot of sense. This belief in reanimating the dead occurred at the tail-end of the French Revolution, a time when the loss of young men was great and many women had been left without their significant others. This loss affected them in many ways, not the least of which was financially. Of course, it made sense they would want to see with their own eyes if the dead could come back. In so doing, their husbands, fathers to their children, lover and provider, could make a return. Eventually, it wasn't surprising to find evidence of women taking center-stage during these "performances."

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

RM: Writing is the only thing I ever wanted to do. I also teach, and in a way that seems an extension of writing. Many of my students are writers themselves, so there is a wonderful connection and exchange of ideas between us that fosters creativity.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

RM: I actually just started reading "Cleopatra: A Life," by Stacy Schiff

JG: What's next for you?

RM: I'm researching and writing a new book with the Great Boston Fire of 1872 as a backdrop. A real-life murder mystery and the friendship between Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes and Herman Melville, the influence those events had on insanity cases, juvenile court system, prison reform, and of course, literature.

For more on "The Lady and Her Monsters," visit the Harper Collins website.

Jeff Glor talks to Herman Koch about, "The Dinner."

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Herman Koch: I was inspired by an actual event that happened in Barcelona about seven years ago. Two teenagers did something to a homeless person similar to what I write about in the book. But they seemed so nice. My first thought was these could have been my sons. The next thought was they could have been anybody's sons.

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

HK: That I didn't know beforehand where the novel would go. I trusted my characters in the beginning, but they proved to be not that thrust-worthy at all.

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

HK: I would have been a retired soccer player. Or an almost retired soccer coach. Or a singer in a band who should have retired years ago.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

HK: At the moment I am reading the biography of J.M. Coetzee: always nice to be confirmed in your idea that writer's lives and writing problems are more or less the same everywhere, and that you are not alone. Recently I was also very impressed by "The Yellow Birds" by Kevin Powers.

JG: What's next for you?

HK: Another book... I am finishing a new novel this year. There is no retirement for a writer, and I am happy with that.

For more on "The Dinner" visit the Random House website.

Frank Pelagatti,Harper Collins

Jeff Glor talks to John Man about, "Ninja: 1,000 Years of the Shadow Warrior."

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

John Man: My previous book was about the samurai -- actually the so-called last of the samurai, Saigo Takamori, who led a disastrous rebellion in 1877. The obvious next step was to explore the world of the ninja, who you might term the counter-samurai, because they were the opposite of the colourful, display-loving, death-seeking samurai. As spies and occasionally assassins, the ninja were covert, secretive and dedicated to surviving come what may.

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

JM: I thought before starting research that the martial arts traditions associated with the ninjas would provide a lot of good material. I was wrong. It's almost totally invented long after the true ninjas vanished when Japan was unified around 1600. To me, the real ninjutsu -- "the way of the ninjas" -- is much more interesting than any martial art. The ninjas emerged in a small area around today's towns of Iga-Ueno and KMka, where in the middle ages villages became fed up with Japan's warlords and set about forming themselves into self-defense communes. The ninjas were farmer-warriors. In some ways, the communes were incipient democracies. The final surprise was to discover that their homeland is a delightful backwater of hills, forests, rivers and rice-fields. Ninjas of course are all the rage, but the tourist industry, like the countryside, is charmingly under-developed.

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

JM: My father used to be a farmer. We had a D7 caterpillar tractor, the size and power of which made me gasp. The engine was so massive it needed a little engine to start it. In another life, I would have fulfilled my ambition as an eight-year-old and become a specialist in earth-moving machinery.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

JM: Besides the New York Review of Books, which always takes a while, I'm finishing "Is That a Fish in Your Ear?" by David Bellos. The reference is, of course, to the babel fish in "The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which, if you stick it in your ear, translates any language in the universe into your own. Bellos's book is about the joys and tribulations of translation.

For more on "Ninja" visit the Harper Collins website