Ben East Books

Citizenship | Literature

Select novels, short stories, and nonfiction on contemporary life.

PROFILES IN SERVICE

Ben East’s nonfiction debut recounts how JFK’s bold experiment shaped diplomatic careers and influenced modern American diplomacy.

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Novels

Read, Listen, Watch

  • Thinking in Tens

    The Top Ten Dumb Things Internet lists have made me do (one is a lie): 10. “Like” things that merely interest me 9. Assess the duplicity of others 8. Avoid work, especially writing 7. Scroll while driving 6. Scroll while biking 5. Groan aloud in public 4. Puzzle over others’ music interests 3. Read lists…

  • Coming Out Ahead

    I just bought a dozen Cadbury Creme Eggs at nine cents apiece. $0.09! Now, to Malta! “I don’t buy eggs from Malta,” he confessed… “I buy them in Sicily at one cent apiece and transfer them to Malta secretly at four and a half cents apiece in order to get the price of eggs up…

  • World Book Day

    On Earth Day I pollute. On World Book Day I watch movies. If I list my favorites, it becomes clear that most actually started out as novels—even Cool Hand Luke (Donn Pearce, ’65) and Midnight Cowboy (James Leo Herlihy, same year). Easy Rider (’69) is the exception.

  • Love and Protest

    Amy’s Story by Anna Lawton sets a tempestuous romance against the turbulent half-century of global change that erupted in the 1960s and flowed across the land like a modern Great Flood. The novel plants the seeds of these decades in the post-World War One migration from Europe to the United States and reveals the newest fruits—poison…

  • Earth Day for Dummies

    What I plan to do for Earth day is drive a gas guzzler up the road tossing hamburger wrappers out the window and blasting Metallica’s “Blackened” ’til Johnny Law hunts me down in his fuel sucking hot rod and hands me a ticket for speeding, littering, and noise pollution. Earth Day? What a scam! We should treat…

  • Literature Only

    Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea makes for great reading on a flight home after a trip to Key West. During this vacation Ben East introduced the novel to his oldest son and snorkeled with a shark with his youngest.

  • Miles of Fun, Miles of Files

    Paul Panepinto is bored at work. How could he not be? He’s a painter trapped by lapsed policies, cold chocolate in a Federal Funding mug, and long stints of muzak while on hold with Mortgage Depot. Also there are his smarmy daydreams of ‘better times’ with Suzanne Biedertyme to get him through the monotony. Panepinto…

  • Swimming with Sharks

    My first shark dive, over a decade ago, our group encountered half a dozen reef sharks in the Red Sea. The big monsters circled the coral an hour offshore. The sight stole my breath, my aqualung pumping furiously—not the best reaction at minus 30 ft. The white tip is a predator, though not likely to charge across open water for…

  • Poisonwood

    A nightmare tree grows in the hammock jungle along Route One of Fat Deer Key. Poisonwood. Its touch will boil the skin; its toxin, when burned, will sear the lungs; its berries, if ingested, will sour the gut. At mile 56 the Poisonwood grows alongside its antidote, the Gumbo Limbo. Folk medicine has it the remedy should be…

  • Tinfoiled Again

    Flying out early tomorrow for Papa’s haunt, Key West. A question he never considered on his many travels. My flight spans breakfast and lunch (DC-Buffalo-Ft. Lauderdale… don’t ask, it was cheapest). The airlines have decided they can hide value by disappearing a reasonable meal from the fare. If it were me alone I’d tighten the…

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