On your nightstand now:
61 Hours by Lee Child, Tell No One by Harlan Coben, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, and Unknown Soldiers: The Story of the Missing Men of the First World War by Neil Hanson.
Favorite Book When You Were A Child:
The Hardy Boys mystery series. After I read their Detective Handbook, I wanted to be one, and when I was seven years old, I wrote to J. Edgar Hoover about joining the F.B.I. And he wrote back--I still have the letter. Also, Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak.
Your top five authors:
Edgar Allan Poe, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Winston Churchill, Truman Capote and Walt Whitman--no matter what the modernists and post-modernists say, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" is still the great American poem.
Book you've faked reading:
I don't think I've ever lied about reading a book.
Book you're an evangelist for:
Neil Hanson's Unknown Soldiers: The Story of the Missing Men of the First World War. This is an astonishing story of thousands of lost men and a heartbreaking history of how they have been remembered. World War I was the most important event of the 20th century, and Unknown Soldiers should be compulsory reading for all military policy makers in Washington. The lesson is not that wars should never be fought, but when we do fight them, our leaders owe it to our soldiers to name the enemy. It also shows how important it is not to waste lives with ill-defined or desultory missions.
Book you've bought for the cover:
The Alienist by Caleb Carr. Nothing conjures up old Gotham better than that elegant and mysterious cover photo.
Book that changed your life:
Abraham Lincoln's Collected Works. I began reading them as a teenager, and they've led me to write the kind of books I am doing now. The best way to understand Lincoln's political genius is to read his speeches and public documents; the best way to know the man is to read his letters. He was the best writer who ever occupied the White House. President Lincoln actually wrote all of his speeches and public statements. Today's political leaders write none of theirs.
Favorite line from a book:
I love first or last paragraphs, or opening or closing sentences, that express the whole feeling of a book. I have to cheat and quote more than one. Carl Sandburg's epic, six-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln concludes with a classic understatement. Sandburg ends the book in Lincoln's tomb: "The prairie years, the war years, were over."
Vincent Bugliosi's opening to Helter Skelter always gives me the chills: "It was so quiet, one of the killers would later say, you could almost hear the sound of ice rattling in cocktail shakers in the homes way down the canyon."
But my favorite is the last passage from Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. The place is the graveyard where the Clutter family lies buried. The scene is an encounter between the lead detective and a girlfriend of teenage victim Nancy Clutter: " 'Good luck,' he called after her as she disappeared down the path, a pretty girl in a hurry, her smooth hair swinging, shining--just such a young woman as Nancy might have been. Then, starting home, he walked toward the trees, and under them, leaving behind him the big sky, the whisper of wind voices in the wind-bent wheat." It's a sad, tender and haunting end to a terrifying book of horrors.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
This is hard to answer. I have a library of more than 10,000 books, and there are a lot I'd like to read again. I suppose James Joyce's The Dead, the novella from Dubliners. At least once a year, I like to read it aloud or listen to it spoken. I love the way it sounds. It is like a poem, or a musical composition. Perfect writing.