Ben East Books

Author: Ben East

  • A Confederacy of (Political) Dunces

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    Ben East
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    I enjoy politics. And I enjoy books. So I’ve put the two together and re-cast the 2016 presidential contenders as their literary counterparts. Today, the Republicans. Jeb Before the weekend I had  Bush playing Ignatius J. Reilly. His shuffling campaign had all the promise of a college-educated person pushing a hot dog cart around the Big Easy.…

  • “Blog Thing”

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    Ben East
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    Two years ago I published my first book review. It was for a work of non-fiction by Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Bryant Wieneke. A returned volunteer myself, I did the review to satisfy a couple of urges. First, it was a service to a comrade, albeit one I’d never met. But we had the same fire…

  • Infidelities for Valentine’s Day

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    Ben East
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    It’s just like Michael Hemmingson to be gone. Just when I wanted to thank him for his black Valentine’s Day messages. There’s a world of hurt in his collection Pictures of Houses with Water Damage (Black Lawrence Press, 2010). It’s a numbed kind of hurt, the kind of pain felt after a breakup, whether you wanted to…

  • Review: Foreign Service Fiction

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    Ben East
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    Anyone who thinks diplomacy is about choosing the right fork at the right time should think again and read James O’Callaghan’s clever satire No Circuses (Tacchino Press, 2015). Forget preconceived notions of dinner-party diplomacy: keeping one’s elbows off the table, tangoing the rival into submission, and writing it up the next day in communiqués to DC. What diplomacy’s really about, in O’Callaghan’s world,…

  • Inertia: What’s Under the Writer’s Hood?

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    Ben East
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    Writer Jason Howell hosts a weekly Q&A with writers & readers on his blog, mostly aimed at the place where writing, reading, and life intersect. This week’s question(s): What gets you back on the horse again? Keeps you trying? I was grateful for the chance to chime in this week. Stop by and see the range of responses. Post your own in…

  • True Crime Review: Ivory Tower Cop

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    Ben East
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    George Kirkham and Leonard Territo pair up to deliver an informative, fast-paced police procedural in Ivory Tower Cop, exploring a serial rape case based on actual events. The thriller digs into half a dozen savage crimes, the latest developments in forensic science, arcane Biblical studies, historical detail from The Third Reich, and Nazism’s reach into…

  • Reviewers’ resource

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    Ben East
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    If you’re looking to sink your teeth into reviewing books, Atticus Review is a good place to start. You can hear from their book review editor, Sam Slaughter, at Citizen Lit. He offers up a few thoughts on the art of the review and his approach to guiding writers in the process. Listen to the whole thing…

  • Work out! Rock out! Write on!

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    Ben East
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    Here’s an inspiration to kick off the new year. John Grisham built a reputation as a writer (love him, hate him, it’s unimportant) by turning tax lawyers into the kind of people who drive fast cars, plot murders, and enjoy lives of sinister intrigue. Tax lawyers. Whatever you do for a living, it’s got to be more…

  • Cheney: still wrong after all these years

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    Ben East
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    Former veep, elegantly cloaked in fiction Crediting Dick Cheney for his rebuke of Donald Trump’s bigotry gets no traction with me. Sorry Dick: you can’t make up for decades of reckless decisions and bad policy based on one easy moment of obvious decency. You’re still a modern architect of the very party now on the verge of nominating a racist…

  • A New Call to Arms

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    Ben East
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    Originally posted on paulisdeadblog: University Prez to Parents: Your kids aren’t safe with us In what is surely a blow to morale for Liberty University’s security staff, university president Jerry Falwell, Jr. appears to lack faith in the campus cops’ ability to protect their grounds. Following Wednesday’s mass shooting at a holiday party in San Bernardino, California, Falwell told…