Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
Malcolm Gladwell, 2005
Little, Brown & Co.
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316010665


Summary 
How do we make decisions—good and bad—and why are some people so much better at it than others? That's the question Malcolm Gladwell asks and answers in the follow-up to his huge bestseller, The Tipping Point. Utilizing case studies as diverse as speed dating, pop music, and the shooting of Amadou Diallo, Gladwell reveals that what we think of as decisions made in the blink of an eye are much more complicated than assumed.

Drawing on cutting-edge neuroscience and psychology, he shows how the difference between good decision-making and bad has nothing to do with how much information we can process quickly, but on the few particular details on which we focus. Leaping boldly from example to example, displaying all of the brilliance that made The Tipping Point a classic, Gladwell reveals how we can become better decision makers—in our homes, our offices, and in everyday life. The result is a book that is surprising and transforming. Never again will you think about thinking the same way. (From the publisher.)

Gladwell is also the author of The Tipping Point, Outliers, and What the Dog Saw.

Author Bio 
• Birth—September 3, 1963
• Where—Fareham, Hampshire, England, U.K.
• Raised—Elmira, Ontario, Canada
• Education—B.A., University of Toronto
• Currently—New York, New York, USA


Malcolm T. Gladwell is an English-Canadian journalist, bestselling author, and speaker. He has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996. He has written five books, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference (2000), Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005), Outliers: The Story of Success (2008), What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures (2009), and David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants (2013). The first four books were on the New York Times Best Seller list.

Gladwell's books and articles often deal with the unexpected implications of research in the social sciences and make frequent and extended use of academic work, particularly in the areas of sociology, psychology, and social psychology. Gladwell was appointed to the Order of Canada 1n 2011.

Early life
Gladwell was born in Fareham, Hampshire, England. His mother is Joyce (Nation) Gladwell, a Jamaican-born psychotherapist. His father, Graham Gladwell, is a British mathematics professor. Gladwell has said that his mother is his role model as a writer. When he was six, his family moved to Elmira, Ontario, Canada.

Gladwell's father noted that Malcolm was an unusually single-minded and ambitious boy. When Malcolm was 11, his father allowed him to wander around the offices at his university, which stoked the boy's interest in reading and libraries. During his high school years, Gladwell was an outstanding middle-distance runner and won the 1,500 meter title at the 1978 Ontario High School 14-year-old championships in Kingston, Ontario. In the spring of 1982, Gladwell interned with the National Journalism Center in Washington, D.C. He graduated with a degree in history from the University of Toronto's Trinity College in 1984.

Career
Gladwell's grades were not good enough for graduate school (as Gladwell puts it, "college was not an... intellectually fruitful time for me"), so he decided to go into advertising. After being rejected by every advertising agency he applied to, he accepted a journalism position at The American Spectator and moved to Indiana. He subsequently wrote for Insight on the News, a conservative magazine owned by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church.

In 1987, Gladwell began covering business and science for the Washington Post, where he worked until 1996. In a personal elucidation of the 10,000 hour rule he popularized in Outliers, Gladwell notes, "I was a basket case at the beginning, and I felt like an expert at the end. It took 10 years—exactly that long."

When Gladwell started at The New Yorker in 1996 he wanted to "mine current academic research for insights, theories, direction, or inspiration." His first assignment was to write a piece about fashion. Instead of writing about high-class fashion, Gladwell opted to write a piece about a man who manufactured T-shirts, saying

...it was much more interesting to write a piece about someone who made a T-shirt for $8 than it was to write about a dress that costs $100,000. I mean, you or I could make a dress for $100,000, but to make a T-shirt for $8 – that's much tougher.

Gladwell gained popularity with two New Yorker articles, both written in 1996: "The Tipping Point" and "The Coolhunt." These two pieces would become the basis for Gladwell's first book, The Tipping Point, for which he received a $1 million advance. He continues to write for The New Yorker and also serves as a contributing editor for Grantland, a sports journalism website founded by ESPN's Bill Simmons.

Works
When asked for the process behind his writing, Gladwell has said...

I have two parallel things I'm interested in. One is I'm interested in collecting interesting stories, and the other is I'm interested in collecting interesting research. What I'm looking for is cases where they overlap.

The title for his first book, The Tipping Point (2000), came from the phrase "tipping point"—the moment in an disease epidemic when the virus reaches critical mass and begins to spread at a much higher rate.

Gladwell published Blink (2005), a book explaining how the human subconscious interprets events or cues and how past experiences can lead people to make informed decisions very rapidly.

Gladwell's third book, Outliers (2008) examines the way a person's environment, in conjunction with personal drive and motivation, affects his or her possibility and opportunity for success.

What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures (2009) bundles together Gladwell's favorite articles from The New Yorker since he joined the magazine as a staff writer in 1996. The stories share a common idea, namely, the world as seen through the eyes of others, even if that other happens to be a dog.

David and Goliath (2013) explores the struggle of underdogs versus favorites. The book is partially inspired by a 2009 article Gladwell wrote for The New Yorker, "How David Beats Goliath."

Reception
The Tipping Point and Blink became international bestsellers, each selling over two million copies in the US.

David Leonhardt wrote in the New York Times Book Review: "In the vast world of nonfiction writing, Malcolm Gladwell is as close to a singular talent as exists today" and that Outliers "leaves you mulling over its inventive theories for days afterward." Ian Sample of The Guardian (UK) also wrote of Outliers that when brought together, "the pieces form a dazzling record of Gladwell's art. There is depth to his research and clarity in his arguments, but it is the breadth of subjects he applies himself to that is truly impressive."

Criticism of Gladwell tends to focus on the fact that he is a journalist and not a scientist, and as a result his work is prone to oversimplification. The New Republic called the final chapter of Outliers, "impervious to all forms of critical thinking" and said that Gladwell believes "a perfect anecdote proves a fatuous rule."

Gladwell has also been criticized for his emphasis on anecdotal evidence over research to support his conclusions. Steven Pinker, even while praising Gladwell's attractive writing style and content, sums up Gladwell as "a minor genius who unwittingly demonstrates the hazards of statistical reasoning." Pinker accuses him of using "cherry-picked anecdotes, post-hoc sophistry and false dichotomies" in Outliers.

Despite these criticisms Gladwell commands hefty speaking fees: $80,000 for one speech, according to a 2008 New York magazine article although some speeches he makes for free. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/02/2013.)

Book Reviews 
An interesting read, packed with thought-provoking information and anecdotes. At times it seems contradictory and as if Gladwell is using a bit of filler to push the covers farther apart. But that's okay because it's fun-going and, for book clubs, offers opportunities for good discussion...especially the section on diagnosing relatioships.
A LitLovers LitPick (Jul. '08)


In Blink, Malcolm Gladwell, a former science and business reporter at the Washington Post who now writes for The New Yorker, offers his account of this sort of seemingly instantaneous judgment. Readers acquainted with Gladwell's articles and his 2000 bestseller The Tipping Point will have high anticipations for this volume; those expectations will be met. The book features the fascinating case studies, skilled interweavings of psychological experiments and explanations and unexpected connections among disparate phenomenon that are Gladwell's impressive trademark.
Howard Gardner - Washington Post


Best-selling author Gladwell has a dazzling ability to find commonality in disparate fields of study. As he displays again in this entertaining and illuminating look at how we make snap judgments-about people's intentions, the authenticity of a work of art, even military strategy-he can parse for general readers the intricacies of fascinating but little-known fields like professional food tasting (why does Coke taste different from Pepsi?). Gladwell's conclusion, after studying how people make instant decisions in a wide range of fields from psychology to police work, is that we can make better instant judgments by training our mind and senses to focus on the most relevant facts-and that less input (as long as it's the right input) is better than more. Perhaps the most stunning example he gives of this counterintuitive truth is the most expensive war game ever conducted by the Pentagon, in which a wily marine officer, playing "a rogue military commander" in the Persian Gulf and unencumbered by hierarchy, bureaucracy and too much technology, humiliated American forces whose chiefs were bogged down in matrixes, systems for decision making and information overload. But if one sets aside Gladwell's dazzle, some questions and apparent inconsistencies emerge. If doctors are given an algorithm, or formula, in which only four facts are needed to determine if a patient is having a heart attack, is that really educating the doctor's decision-making ability-or is it taking the decision out of the doctor's hands altogether and handing it over to the algorithm? Still, each case study is satisfying, and Gladwell imparts his own evident pleasure in delving into a wide range of fields and seeking an underlying truth.
Publishers Weekly


Journalist Gladwell (The Tipping Point) examines the process of snap decision making. Contrary to the model of a rational process involving extensive information gathering and rational analysis, most decisions are made instantaneously and unconsciously. This works well for us much of the time because we learn to "thin-slice"-that is, to ignore extraneous input and concentrate on one or two cues. Sometimes, we don't even consciously know what these cues are, as in Gladwell's anecdote about a tennis coach who can predict when a player is going to make a rare sort of error but doesn't know how he knows. The book also explores how this process can go horribly wrong, as in the Amadou Diallo shooting. Gladwell gets the science facts right and has the journalistic skills to make them utterly engrossing. A big promo campaign is planned; for once a best seller will be more than worthy. Essential for all libraries.
Library Journal


Gladwell...brilliantly illuminates an aspect of our mental lives that we utterly rely on yet rarely analyze, namely our ability to make snap decisions or quick judgments.... But... [u]nconscious knowledge is not the proverbial light bulb, he observes, but rather a flickering candle. Gladwell's ground-breaking explication of a key aspect of human nature is enlightening, provocative, and great fun to read.
Donna Seaman - Booklist


We need to place more trust in our "thin-slicer"—our capacity to make instant judgments-but we also need to sharpen its edge more keenly with experience and education. Gladwell's second entry into the aren't-our-brains-amazing genre (The Tipping Point, 2000) has an Obi-Wan Kenobi flavor, a "trust-your-feelings-Luke" antirationalism that attempts, in some ways, to deconstruct the Force. The author's great strength lies in his stories, and here he crafts a number of engaging ones: an account of art experts fooled by a fake; a summary of how a psychologist, looking at an hourlong video of a married couple conversing, can predict with 95% accuracy if they will divorce; an unnerving narrative about the Millennium Challenge, a war game in which a maverick commander deals a devastating blow to the bean-counting rule-followers on the team that was supposed to win. There are stories of a rock star fighting the odds, of cops shooting an innocent man who looked suspicious, of Coca-Cola making a big marketing mistake. We learn about the Aeron chair, All in the Family, Lee at Chancellorsville. (Unconventional people sometimes surprise.) We ponder the odd political rise of Warren G. Harding. We have a power lunch with some professional food-tasters-the author quips that it was like cello-shopping with Yo-Yo Ma. We chat with a car-selling superstar. Gladwell also rediscovers something Poe described in "The Haunted Palace": our eyes and our faces are windows to the soul. He tells us that the autistic are unable to decode or even notice the facial information of others. All these stories are nicely written and most inform and entertain at the same time, but they don't add up to anything terribly profound, despite the author's sometimes Skywalker-ish enthusiasm. Brisk, impressively done narratives that should sell very well indeed, particularly to Gladwell's already well-established fan base.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
1. Have you ever had a feeling that a couple's future is successful or doomed just by witnessing a brief exchange between them? What do you think you're picking up on?

2. Many couples seek marriage counseling from a therapist, a priest, rabbi etc. But do you think a couple about to get married should go and see John Gottman, the psychologist who can predict with a 95% accuracy whether a couple will be together in 15 years just by watching an hour of their interaction? If you were about to be married or could go back to before you were, would you want to see Gottman and find out his prediction?

3. The central argument of the chapter is that our unconscious is able to find patterns in situations and behavior based on very narrow slices of experience. This is called 'thin-slicing.'' What kinds of phenomena, if any, do not lend themselves to 'thin-slicing?'

4. Gottman decodes a couple's relationship and predicts divorce by identifying their patterns of behavior. Can we change our natural and unconscious patterns of behavior? Would awareness of these patterns with our partner be enough to avert an inevitable break-up?

5. Do you think you could hire someone by 'thin-slicing' the candidate during a brief interview? Or do you think this would only work for certain kinds of jobs or perhaps, only certain kinds of people?

6. The psychologist, Samuel Gosling, shows how 'thin-slicing' can be used to judge people's personality when he uses the dorm room observers. Visualize your bedroom right now. What does it say about you?

7. If scrolling through someone's iPod or scanning their bookshelf can tell us more about that individual, what other kinds of 'thin-slicing' exercises could reveal aspects of their personality?

8. Art historian Bernard Berenson or billionaire George Soros are examples of practiced 'thin-slicers' who have made highly pressured snap judgments based on nothing more than a curious ringing in the ears or a back spasm. What kind of physical, inexplicable cues have you or others you know of experienced which led to successful decision-making?

9. Priming refers to when subtle triggers influence our behavior without our awareness of such changes. An example of this occurs in Spain where authorities introduced classical music on the subway and after doing so, watched vandalism and littering drastically decrease. Can you think of situations when priming occurs?

10. Should we introduce priming in schools to encourage better behavior or more diligent work patterns? What about the service industry? Could employers prime their staff to be more polite to customers?

11. If an individual's behavior is being influenced unbeknownst to them, when can priming become manipulative? How is it different from the controversy a few years back when cinemas used subliminal advertising during previews to 'encourage' people to buy from the confectionary stand?

12. The Iyengar/Fisman study revealed that what the speed-daters say they want and what they were actually attracted to in the moment didn't match when compared. What does this say for on-line dating services? Can we really predict what kind of person we will 'hit it off' with? Is it better to let friends decide who is more suited for you as opposed to scanning profiles that correspond with your notion of what you think you are looking for?

13. Does your present spouse/ partner fit the preconceived idea of whom you imagined yourself ending up with? Have you dated someone that was the antithesis of what you thought you found attractive? Is there even a point of asking someone, "what's your type?

14. The Warren Harding error reveals the dark-side of 'thin-slicing'—when our instincts betray us and our rapid cognition goes awry. Looking at the example of that 1920 presidency, can we say that this type of error is happening today in political elections? Do you think this explains why there has never been a black or female president?

15. The Implicit Association Test (IAT) shows that our unconscious attitudes may be utterly incompatible with our stated conscious values. So like car salesmen who unconsciously discriminate against certain groups of potential customers or businesses that appear to favor tall men for CEOs, do you find it plausible that we are not accountable for these actions because they are a result of social influences as opposed to personal beliefs?

16. Do you buy the argument that we are completely oblivious to our unconsciously motivated behavior (like the disturbing IAT results that show 80% of test-takers have pro-white associations?) Is this just a convenient excuse to justify our biases?

17. Riper believed that strategy and complex theory were inappropriate and futile in the midst of battle, "where the uncertainties of war and the pressure of time made it impossible to compare options carefully and calmly." What other 'work' spaces discount rational analysis and demand immediate 'battlefield' decision-making?

18. Can one ever really prepare for decisive, rapid-fire scenarios? Is planning for the unpredictable worthwhile or a waste of time and energy?

19. If improvisational comedy is governed by rules and requires practice like any other sport, could anyone be a stand-up comic or performer? Or, will some people always naturally be better at thinking on their toes and more adept at unleashing spontaneity?

20. Riper says, "When we talk about analytic versus intuitive decision-making, neither is good or bad. What is bad is if you use either of them in an inappropriate circumstance." But is decision-making all about the circumstances or more about the personality of the decision-maker i.e. do circumstances have more impact on decision-making if you are a more cerebral, logical individual versus an indecisive, instinctual one?

21. In the cases of Kenna's music and the Aeron chair we see that first impressions can often lead us astray. What we initially judge as disapproval may just be a case of confusion or mistrust for something new and different. How can we distinguish a decision motivated by fear of the unknown from the ones that stem from genuine dislike towards something? Are we better off leaving it to the experts to tell us what we should like?

22. What if we have personal investment in the new product or person? Can we or how do we separate our emotional involvement from our intuitive judgment?

23. Do you believe our unconscious reactions come out of a locked room that we can't ever truly see inside? Can we ever know ourselves wholly and understand the motivation and reason behind our every move? If an individual claims to completely know how their mind works, are they incredibly self-aware or just delusional? And if we can't totally get behind that locked door and fully 'know' why we react the way we do, is psychiatry an over-priced and limited exercise?

24. The Diallo shooting is an example of a mind-reading failure. It reveals a grey area of human cognition; the middle ground between deliberate and accidental. Do you think the shooting was more deliberate or accidental?

25. Mind-reading failures lie at the root of countless arguments, misunderstandings, and hurt feelings. Often, people make excuses for a sarcastic or hurtful remark as "just joking." But if there is no clear-cut line between deliberate and accidental do you agree, "There is always truth in jest?" Do you think when we misread others and get irritated we are in fact only recognizing something in that person that we don't like about ourselves?

26. Eckman and Friesens' work of decoding facial expressions reveals that the information on our face is not just a signal of what's going on inside our mind but it is what is going on inside our mind. But what about politicians or celebrities and other figures constantly in the public eye? Do you believe they are always feeling their expressions or are they just camera-savvy posers who defy Eckman and Friesens' expression theory? How about extremely stoic individuals? Do they have diminished emotions in keeping with their limited expressions? Have you ever been 'two-faced' or watched someone else speak badly about another individual only to then turn around and greet them with a warm, gushy hello? Is that 'friendly' expression false or an attempt to make amends?

27. Autistic patients read their environment literally. They do not, like us, seem to watch people's eyes when they are talking to pick up on all those expressive nuances that Eckman has so carefully catalogued. What do you make of individuals who avoid eye contact during conversation? How do you think this affects their ability to understand or interpret the speaker? Could this explain how lying is often signaled by averted eye-contact?

28. Have you ever experienced a 'mind-blind' moment? A moment where conditions were so stressful or confusing, your actions seemed to be the result of temporary autism? If 'mind-blindness' occurs at extreme points of arousal, could this explain why people 'lose their heads' in the heat of the moment and say something they don't mean or cheat on spouses etc?

29. We always wonder how some individuals react to situations that make them heroes like the fireman who ran into the burning building or the ER doctor who operated in the nick of time. Do you think that what separates the 'men from the ' is this ability to control or master one's reactions in moments of extreme stress and arousal?

30. Is this skill accessible? Are you intrigued to practice and believe it is something you could improve?

31. Just as the National Symphony Orchestra members were shocked to find their newly employed horn player was a female, do you think that even as far as we've come with issue of race and gender equality, we still judge with our eyes and ears rather than our instinct? Are our interpretations of events, people, issues etc filtered through our internal ideologies and beliefs? Do you agree that perception is reality? And with this in mind, could improving our powers of rapid cognition ultimately change our reality?
(Questions from the author's website.)

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Same Kind of Different As Me: A Modern Day Slave, an International Art Dealer, and the Unlikely Woman who Bound Them Together
Ron Hall, Denver Moore, Lynn Vincent, 2006
Thomas Nelson
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780849919107

Summary
Meet Denver, a man raised under plantation-style slavery in Louisiana in the 1960s; a man who escaped, hopping a train to wander, homeless, for eighteen years on the streets of Dallas, Texas.

No longer a slave, Denver's life was still hopeless—until God moved. First came a godly woman who prayed, listened, and obeyed. And then came her husband, Ron, an international arts dealer at home in a world of Armani-suited millionaires. And then they all came together.

But slavery takes many forms. Deborah discovers that she has cancer. In the face of possible death, she charges her husband to rescue Denver. Who will be saved, and who will be lost? What is the future for these unlikely three? What is God doing?

Same Kind of Different As Me is the emotional tale of their story: a telling of pain and laughter, doubt and tears, dug out between the bondages of this earth and the free possibility of heaven. No reader or listener will ever forget it. (From the publisher.)

Authors Bios
Denver Moore grew up on a plantation in Red Parish, Louisiana, where he lived in a shotgun shack as a modern-day slave until he escaped to freedom at the age of thirty. Freedom brought the uneducated and financially destitute Denver the gift of homelessness, which eventually led to ten years in the legendary Angola Prison for armed robbery. After his release, he ended up back on the streets, as a hardened criminal who frequented the Ft. Worth, Texas, Union Gospel Mission.

_________________

Ron Hall grew up in Haltom City, outside Fort Worth, Texas. He attended college, earned an MBA, got married, had kids, became an international art dealer selling million-dollar Picassos, and volunteered to help serve dinner once a week at Ft. Worth's Union Gospel Mission, with his wife Deborah. (Both bios from WittenburgDoor.com)

Book Reviews
An international art dealer and a modern-day slave from Louisiana become friends after the art dealer is roped into volunteering at a homeless shelter by his saintly wife. Sounds like it's got to be fiction, but that's the true story told in Same Kind of Different as Me by Ron Hall and Denver Moore.

"I really wrote the book to honor my wife and honor Denver, who both deserved a place in history," Hall explained. Moore told his half, and Hall wrote it and his half, rewriting the manuscript 14 times before he got up the nerve to take it to agent Lee Hough at Alive Communications.

Co-writer Lynn Vincent was brought in to help craft the story and also to vet the events of the true story. The controversy over author James Frey's embellished memoir cast a long shadow over the book during its preparation. "It made us be much more rigorous than we otherwise would have been," said Greg Daniel, v-p and associate publisher at W. "It looks like we're as clean as we can possibly be."

The authors' profits from the book will go to the Union Gospel Mission in Fort Worth, which now includes the Deborah L. Hall Memorial Chapel. —Marcia Z. Nelson, Religion BookLine
Publishers Weekly

Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Same Kind of Different As Me:

1. At the beginning of the book, what kind of person is Ron Hall? How would you describe him (how does he describe himself)? Why does he agree to volunteer at the homeless shelter, and what is his initial reaction in doing so?

2. Talk about the trajectory of Denver Moore's life. What events have landed him in the homeless shelter? Discuss the differences between his life and Ron Hall's. What is Denver's world view?

3. Talk about Deborah Hall? What inspires her life? What does she think of Denver Moore?

4. Eventually, Denver and Ron, two men who have lived vastly different lives, become close friends. What do the two see in one another? What draws them together?

5. What are the symbolic implications of the conversation about how white men fish, especially their catch-and-release method? What does that conversation say about each man, and what is the underlying message that Denver is trying to pass onto Ron?

6. What is the meaning of the book's title, "Same Kind of Difference as Me"? What does it refer to?

7. How do both men change by the end of the book? What do they learn from or teach each other?

8. This is a story about how hate and prejudice can be overcome by love and grace. How difficult is that achievement in most of our lives? What can this book teach us?

9. Does this book inspire you? If so, in what ways?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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Blue Like Jazz 
Donald Miller, 2003
Thomas Nelson, Inc.
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780785263708


Summary
Donald Miller's fresh and original voice may change the way Christians view the "status quo" faith and build a bridge to seekers who believe that organized religion doesn't meet their spiritual needs.

"I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve... I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened." In Donald Miller's early years, he was vaguely familiar with a distant God. But when he came to know Jesus Christ, he pursued the Christian life with great zeal.

Within a few years he had a successful ministry that ultimately left him feeling empty, burned out, and, once again, far away from God. In this intimate, soul-searching account, Miller describes his remarkable journey back to a culturally relevant, infinitely loving God. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1971
• Raised—Houston, Texas, USA
• Currently—lives in Portland, Oregon


Donald Miller grew up in Houston, Texas. Leaving home at the age of twenty-one, he traveled across the country until he ran out of money in Portland, Oregon, where he lives today.

Harvest House Publishers released his first book, Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance, in 2000. Two years later, after having audited classes at Portland’s Reed College, Don wrote Blue Like Jazz, which would slowly become a New York Times Bestseller.

In 2004 Don released Searching for God Knows What a book about how the Gospel of Jesus explains the human personality. Searching has become required reading at numerous colleges across the country. In 2005 he released Through Painted Deserts the story of he and a friends road trip across the country. Don’s most recent project is a book about growing up without a father called To Own a Dragon.

Don is the founder of The Belmont Foundation, a not-for-profit foundation which partners with working to recruit ten-thousand mentors through one-thousand churches as an answer to the crisis of fatherlessness in America.

A sought-after speaker, Don has delivered lectures to a wide-range of audiences including the Women of Faith Conference, the Veritas Forum at Harvard University and the Veritas Forum at Cal Poly. In 2008, Don was asked to deliver the closing prayer on Monday night at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado.

Don’s next book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years humorously and tenderly chronicles Don’s experience with filmmakers as they edit his life for the screen, hoping to make it less boring. He then shares the principles storytellers use to make a story meaningful and exciting, exploring their affect when he applies those principles to his actual life.

Of his new book, Don says: “It might be the greatest book ever written. I don’t think anybody is going to read a book again after they read my new one. I think God is proud of me. I am going to make a killing off this thing and I’m going to use the money to go to space. (From the author's website.)

Book Reviews
Miller is a young writer, speaker and campus ministry leader. An earnest evangelical who nearly lost his faith, he went on a spiritual journey, found some progressive politics and most importantly, discovered Jesus' relevance for everyday life. This book, in its own elliptical way, tells the tale of that journey. But the narrative is episodic rather than linear, Miller's style evocative rather than rational and his analysis personally revealing rather than profoundly insightful. As such, it offers a postmodern riff on the classic evangelical presentation of the Gospel, complete with a concluding call to commitment. Written as a series of short essays on vaguely theological topics (faith, grace, belief, confession, church), and disguised theological topics (magic, romance, shifts, money), it is at times plodding or simplistic (how to go to church and not get angry? "pray... and go to the church God shows you"), and sometimes falls into merely self-indulgent musing. But more often Miller is enjoyably clever, and his story is telling and beautiful, even poignant. (The story of the reverse confession booth is worth the price of the book.) The title is meant to be evocative, and the subtitle-"Non-Religious" thoughts about "Christian Spirituality"—indicates Miller's distrust of the institutional church and his desire to appeal to those experimenting with other flavors of spirituality.
Publishers Weekly


This is a book worth reading. We're the richer for reading it, because Miller has given us a living, breathing example of a follower of Jesus who has expressed his many doubts about God and revealed his many frustrations with Christianity, and not only lived through it but actually got his book published by a Christian publisher. That's empowering. Miller accomplishes all this through a series of memoirish essays arranged topically. That's an accurate description of the structure, but there's a whole lot more life in the book than in that description.
Faithful Reader.com


Can you love a God who doesn't make sense? Like Anne Lamott's Traveling Mercies, Miller's memoir-like collection of essays wrestles with the paradoxes of the Christian faith, describing his journey back to a culturally relevant, infinitely gracious Savior. A mind-changing perspective for those who believe that organized religion doesn't meet their spiritual needs.
Christianbook.com

Discussion Questions 
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started fo Blue Like Jazz:

1. In what way is Miller's understanding of his faith like jazz. How are the two related in Miller's eyes?

2. Talk about Miller's first journey of faith: how he came to his beliefs at Reed College in the confessional booth during the annual Ren Fayre. What happened when he went inside the booth "with doubts," as he says, "and came out believing so strongly in Jesus I was ready to die and be with him"? Can conversion happen that simply or easily?

3. Discuss also the way in which Miller nearly lost his faith. What brought him to the brink? How, then, did he find his path back? Have you ever experienced something similar?

4. What are his frustrations with "Christianity" or the way he sees it practiced in some quarters? Do you agree or disagree with his assessments? How does he learn to love Christians even in churches where he doesn't fit in? He refers to some of his co-religionists as "wacko Republican fundamentalists": do you find his epithet insulting? Funny? Truthful? Or...what?

5. Consider the characters who populate his book: Andrew the Protestor, Tony the Beat, Mark the Cussing Pastor. Do you have any favorites...are there some whose experiences you relate to more than others? Are their paths enlightening?

6. Miller refers to himself, somewhat ironically, as Captain Trendy Spiritual Writer. What does he mean? Do you agree?

7. Does Miller's humor enhance the message of his book? Do you find it honest? Refreshing? Glib? Irreligious?

8. In what way does Miller find Jesus is relevant to the 21st century? How does Miller interpret scripture to reflect today's culture?

9. What are the doubts that sometimes beset Miller? Here he says, for instance, "At the end of the day, when I am lying in bed and I know the chances of any of our theology being exactly right are a million to one, I need to know that God has things figured out, that if my math is wrong we are still going to be okay." Can you comment on this interesting passage? It seems contradictory—if we've got it wrong, how will we be "okay"?

10. What other passages struck you in this book—passages that you found interesting, insightful, puzzling, humorous, wrong-headed?

11. In what way does Miller's book affect your own faith...or lack of it? Does it confirm your beliefs, alter them? Does it challenge you in any way? Is this book safe for your pastor to read? How about your children!

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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A Murder in Virginia: Southern Justice on Trial
Suzanne Lebsock, 2003
W.W. Norton & Company
442 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780393326062

Summary
It is 1895 in rural Virginia and a white woman lies in her farmyard, hacked to death with a meat ax. Suspicion soon falls on a young black laborer, who tries to flee the county.

He, in turn, accuses three local black women of plotting the murder and wielding the ax.

Through vivid courtroom scenes and gripping personal stories, Bancroft Prize-winning historian Suzanne Lebsock takes us deep into this world when Reconstruction is slowly fading and Jim Crow is on the rise. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1949
• Awards—MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships;
   Bancroft Prize in History; Francis Parkman Prize
• Currently—lives in New Brunswick, New Jersey

Suzanne Lebsock is a recipient of a MacArthur fellowship and professor of history at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Her work The Free Women of Petersburg received the Bancroft Prize. She lives in New Brunswick, New Jersey. (From the publisher and Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
Suzanne Lebsock...has documented what happened in a case that rivaled O. J. Simpson's for fame in its day, but that then faded into oblivion.... Honest-to-goodness, 100 percent-genuine facts in an age of docudramas and fictionalized histories. With nearly 80 pages of footnotes, Ms. Lebsock has done an impressive job of historical re-creation. Unfortunately, what is an impressive achievement of historical reconstruction that might dazzle a dissertation committee makes for a less compelling work for the general reader. What's lacking is the sweep and analysis that would knit this unusual case to the larger historical tapestry. That doesn't mean making it up, but it does mean stepping back.
Patricia Cohen - New York Times

Lebsock—a professor of history at the University of Washington at Seattle—is right to insist that it deserves at least a footnote in history, and she has provided just that in A Murder in Virginia.
Jonathan Yardley - Washington Post

[Makes] history, with all its messiness, ugliness, and even humanity, come vividly alive.
Dallas Morning News

So much happens—and so much of it is unexpected—in Suzanne Lebsock's gripping study of the sensational ax murder of Lucy Jane Pollard...that we can only urge readers to read for themselves the acclaimed author's brilliant descriptions of racial politics (four African Americans were accused), the constant threat of lynching, the vicious court battles and how it all ended.
Dallas Morning News

In recounting a 1895 murder investigation and trial in Lunenberg County, Va., Lebsock (The Free Women of Petersburg) meticulously brings to life a lost episode of a small, segregated Southern town and frames it against the backdrop of racial strife in the country as a whole. When the wife of a prominent Lunenberg man is murdered with an ax, a black farmhand, Solomon Marable, is immediately arrested. He shocks everyone by accusing three black women of the crime, and a dramatic set of trials ensues. Lebsock recounts the improbable roles of lawyers, judges, politicians, the black community and the defendants themselves in the case, thanking "the archivists, librarians, county clerks, the clerks' clerks, and packrats of all descriptions," who allowed her to recreate the investigations and five trials in astonishing detail. Mary Abernathy (tried twice), Mary Barnes and her daughter Pokey Barnes were eventually exonerated, to the relief of many. Marable paid for the crime with his life, but Lebsock, a professor of history at the University of Washington, is not sure he did it; she presents the case from both sides, allowing readers to draw their own conclusions. Throughout, Lebsock employs a clear, precise prose, and packs the book with the sort of detail that will satisfy procedural junkies. For history buffs, the book provides a fascinating, microcosmic glimpse into the politics and law of late Reconstruction, at a moment when the U.S. was poised on the brink of the 20th century. Moreover, Lebsock perfectly captures the manner in which the town mobilized to give the women (if not Marable) a fair trial, and the ways in which individual personalities influenced that process, lending this book a human interest beyond its time and place.
Publishers Weekly

On a warm afternoon in June 1895, a 56-year-old white woman was brutally murdered in Lunenburg County, VA. Despite the absence of any truly incriminating eye-witness testimony or physical evidence, four blacks-three women and one man-were arrested and tried for the murder. Lebsock (history, Univ. of Washington, Seattle), author of the Bancroft Prize-winning The Free Women of Petersburg: Status and Culture in a Southern Town, 1784-1860), re-creates the subsequent trials, introducing the defendants, their prosecutors, and the witnesses and placing the proceedings within the context of the black and white communities and deteriorating conditions for African Americans in the post-Reconstruction South. Here historical narrative is every bit as intriguing as fictional mystery but more edifying for the information it gives its readers concerning race relations and criminal justice in the latter part of the 19th century. As readable and riveting as John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil; recommended for public and academic libraries of all sizes. —Theresa R. McDevitt, Indiana Univ. of Pennsylvania.
Library Journal

Lebsock is particularly adept at portraying the individuals and interests involved: the accused murderers, the unsympathetic widower, the crusaders, the vested interests of those who supported the lynchers, and the fierce newspaper rivalries fueled by the trial. She also explores the social and racial undercurrents in the small town, which signified the changed relationship between blacks and whites in the post-Civil War era.
Booklist

Bancroft Prize-winner Lebsock (The Free Women of Petersburg, 1984) takes us to a sweltering Dixie courtroom where African-Americans stand accused of murdering a white woman. It would be a cliché as fiction, but this case really happened. More than a century ago, in 1895, when slavery had been dead only one generation, deep in Virginia tobacco country in a place no longer on any map, a farmer’s wife was struck down with several brutal blows of an ax. The farmer, it should be noted, had a hoard of $800 in $20 bills. Soon Solomon, a black mill worker caught spending a couple of $20 bills, was arrested. He promptly implicated three black women: Mary, a mother of nine who "looked a lot more like a mammy than a murderer"; another Mary, also a mother of nine; and her quick-witted daughter Pokey. They had planned the whole thing, he claimed, but every time Solomon told the tale, it changed. His only consistency concerned a lone white man who had forcibly enlisted him in the grisly murder and robbery, but if that man existed he certainly never went on trial. The four unlettered blacks did, surrounded by an armed militia; they were quickly convicted with scarce, tainted evidence and without counsel. The inevitable verdicts were just the beginning of this narrative, which also covers the women’s eventual release, Solomon’s execution, and the bizarre journey of his remains. Retrials in a racially divided courtroom with speechifying southern lawyers waxing rhetorical as only they could, feuding sheriffs, eager reporters, and a stalwart governor all play integral roles in this deeply researched chronicle. Lebsock (History/Univ. of Washington, Seattle) reconstructs the story of an admirable African-American newspaper publisher and depicts the personalities of all the other important players with considerable understanding and intelligence. Finally, she offers a reasoned argument regarding the identity of the most likely perp. True-crime with continued resonance, given America’s troubled racial history.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for A Murder in Virginia:

1. Lebsock's book is much more than an historical recounting of a murder: it is an exploration into race and class. While white Virginians at the time were rushing to segregate "everything that wasn't already segregated," color lines in Lunenburg County, scene of the murder, were not so sharply drawn. Discuss the complicated nature of the interrelationships between black and white southerners that A Murder in Virginia reveals. What was surprising, for instance, about Mary Abernathy's relationship with Lucy Pollard? Consider, too, how Richmond Planet editor, John Mitchell, played up the mammy stereotypes for Mary's benefit.

2. Speaking of the press, talk about the role it played in this murder case. In what way did newspapers function, in Lebsock's words, as the "thirteenth juror"? Compare the press's influence then to that of the media today.

3. Discuss the court room events of the first trial and the degree to which the deck was stacked against the defendants. What was the surprising twist that allowed the accused to be granted new trials in Farmville?

4. In what ways did the second trial differ from the first—consider the jury, lawyers, and testimony. How did the testimonies of two "unlettered" black women, especially Pokey Barnes, impact the case—and how did the two overturn expectations of race, class and gender?

5. There are surprising real-life heroes in this account—those who stood up boldly for justice. Talk about the roles played by Governor O'Ferrall, John Mitchell, Jr., and Rosa Dixon Bowser. Are there others?

6. Although the mystery of Lucy Pollack's death remains unsolved, do you have any theories? Is Solomon Marable's last minute deathbed-of-sorts confession believable?

7. Talk about the practice of lynching, the subject of which—the hows and whys—is woven throughout this work. Also, what does Lebsock say about the myth that lynching was perpetrated only in the deep southern states, not Virginia?

8. At the time of Lucy Pollack's murder, the trials dominated local news—a media spectacle comparable to the attention given to the O.J. Simpson trial 100 years later. Since then the event has sunk into obscurity—almost all memory of it erased. What does Lebsock see as the reason for its erasure?

9. Extend to the present day this book's revelations about the legal system and racism at the end of the 19th century. To what degree has the situation changed in the 21st century? Is justice still race-based?

10. This is an historical work complete with footnotes. Yet Lebsock has attempted to make it as engrossing as a work of fiction. Was she successful...is her narrative compelling...did she sustain your interest? Consider the qualities that go into making a work of fiction: colorful description, evocative settings, strong characters, and page-turning suspense. Which, if any, of these qualities are present in A Murder in Virginia?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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