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

  • Mother Land: A Review for Mothers Day

    Stephen King reviews Paul Theroux’s new novel, Mother Land at the New York Times this week (PeaceCorpsWorldwide brought it to my attention). King gives voice to the love-hate relationship so many readers have with the Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, novelist and travel writer, whose prolific career spans nearly six decades and whose vicious pen reaches the furthest places on the…

  • Happy Book Launch Day Vikram East!

    Congrats to Vikram East today as he launches his debut novel, Fun in Ancient Greece. The book manages to do for homework what homework never did for books: make learning fun! The assignment? Convince the elementary school principal to take the third grade class to one of four civilizations: Rome, Greece, Egypt, or China. Fascinated by gods and warriors, Vikram…

  • Let Us Not Be Quiet

    Revisiting Remarque before peace eludes My copy of All Quiet on the Western Front is a tattered thing. The cover, already coming apart in brittle pieces, fell off entirely as I read. It was appropriate to the fate of narrator Paul Baumer to see that cover come away. It is the father of all modern war…

  • 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…

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