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| photo: Erica Miller | |
Steve Sheinkin is the award-winning author of fast-paced, cinematic nonfiction histories for young readers. The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights was a National Book Award finalist and received the 2014 Boston Globe/Horn Book Award for Nonfiction. The Notorious Benedict Arnold: A True Story of Adventure, Heroism & Treachery won both the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award and the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults. Bomb: The Race to Build-and Steal-the World's Most Dangerous Weapon was a Newbery Honor Book, a National Book Award Finalist, and winner of the Sibert Award and YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults. Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War was a National Book Award finalist and a YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award finalist. His most recent book, Undefeated: Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team, was released by Roaring Brook Press on January 17, 2017. Sheinkin lives in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., with his wife and two children.
On your nightstand now:
When the Sea Turned to Silver by Grace Lin and Ghost by Jason Reynolds. And there are always comics: Killing and Dying by Adrian Tomine and Sonny Liew's The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye.
Favorite book when you were a child:
The Mutiny on the Bounty trilogy. I still like it, but when I picked up the first book recently, I was stung by the description of merchants in port as "sharp-faced Jews." I guess a Jewish kid reading classics learns to block out that kind of crap. But this time it depressed me.
Your top five authors:
As everyone says, impossible. But today's answer: Dostoyevsky, Kafka, Patricia Highsmith, José Saramago, Laura Hillenbrand
Book you've faked reading:
Harry Potter. I read the first one in Spanish, for practice. But my Spanish isn't that great. I sort of know what happened. 
Book you're an evangelist for:
The Martin Beck series, 10 incredibly good police/crime novels by Swedish wife-and-husband team Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö.
Book you've bought for the cover:
My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf. It was the creepy name and disturbing cover illustration that got me. And realizing that the book really is about the artist's high school friend, Jeffrey Dahmer. It's become one of my all-time favorite comics.
Book you hid from your parents:
The Bronx Zoo, Sparky Lyle's insider account of the wild and wacky 1978 Yankees. Most of the R-rated stuff went over my head, but I liked how Lyle kept pulling down his pants and sitting naked on other players' birthday cakes.
Book that changed your life:
Many have, at different times. But I'll say Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation. I'd seen writers juggle history and comedy and nonfiction before, but never so skillfully. A huge inspiration.
Favorite line from a book:
For my high school yearbook quote, I used a gag from a Woody Allen story called "My Speech to the Graduates." And I find the lines comforting in light of recent political events: "More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly."
Five books you'll never part with:
South by Ernest Shackleton
Crime Stories and Other Writings by Dashiell Hammett
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Spook by Mary Roach
The Push Man and Other Stories by Yoshihiro Tatsumi
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth. I thought about giving a more literate answer, but for me right now, there just couldn't be a more exciting book.