Ben East Books

Citizenship | Literature

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

PROFILES IN SERVICE

What began as a bold experiment in grassroots service produced future ambassadors to help guide U.S. diplomacy through seven decades of global upheaval.

More about this book

Novels

Read, Listen, Watch

  • The Departed–Ten Years After

    The opening column in this month’s Foreign Service Journal is a timely and moving reminder of friends and colleagues killed ten years ago in a terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia. American Foreign Service Association President Robert J. Silverman writes: The Foreign Service has taken more deaths in the line of duty, on a percentage basis, than has…

  • Review–The Blind Rooster

    Reading Preston Lang’s The Blind Rooster (Crime Wave Press) feels a lot like people-watching at the Laundromat. The major figures resemble coin-op types, people resigned to the vague indignity of paying to have their underwear tumble around in a public washer. And don’t take your eyes off them for a moment—they’d just as soon pinch a quarter…

  • My Thoughts on Uranus

    I’ll admit it—I’m a bureaucrat. A federal bureaucrat. I’m not some fancy ad-man in a pinstripe suit on Madison Avenue. Still, I know a thing or two about language. And when I see lousy wordplay in advertising, it bothers me. Take this insurance ad, targeted at the dreary, browbeaten federal workforce (it’s on a bus stop…

  • Brilliant Farce Out Tomorrow

    Highly recommended! You Can Lead a Horse to Water (But You Can’t Make It Scuba Dive) Queue the circus music when Sam, Muller, and Max join Max’s father Otis and mother Ruby in The Rec Room of Sound, Otis’s Internet radio broadcast, to consume pot-laced brownies and interview Bisquick the Mynah bird best known for biting nipples…

  • Short, Sharp Interview: Preston Lang

    I’m a big fan of Preson Lang. Really looking forward to this release!

  • Review–The Garden of Good and Evil Pancakes

    In time for Veteran’s Day (also Armistice Day), Atticus Review posted my latest look at today’s literature with David S. Atkinson‘s The Garden of Good and Evil Pancakes. What better way to suggest the futility of the human experience than with a card game called Armistice? This game is not War, it is Armistice. Because, as…

  • Dear Bleach Garglers,

    A number of you have contacted me recently with a strange offer. “I’d drink bleach,” you say, “to get you to read a sample of my book.” Gargling it, injecting it between your toes, I’m astounded at the endless uses of bleach you’ve proposed to procure a book review from me. But far from an…

  • Dundee Book Prize Winner–Amy Mason

    Writer and performer Amy Mason of Bristol, UK today was named winner of the 2014 Dundee International Book Prize for her novel The Other Ida. Congratulations, Amy! The Other Ida, which follows an angry and depressed twenty-something daughter of famous parents, will be published by Cargo Press as part of the £10,000 prize. Amy’s other accomplishments include an…

  • CURRY PATTA, JUNGLE OATS, AND PEACE CORPS

    My wife keeps a curry plant to flavor her beautiful Indian cooking. Our boys have taken to snapping off the greenest leaves and eating them raw. Their chewing fills the air with a sharp, fresh scent. Yesterday, the plant was brought indoors—frost—to spend the night on our low kitchen table. When the boys found it…

  • The Return of Preston Lang

    Stoked to learn Preston Lang will be back soon with his second crime book, The Blind Rooster, a “crude slice of American Noir, sunny side down”. Echoes of Jim Thompson and Elmore Leonard? Bring it. Preston Lang released his discreetly funny debut, The Carrier, last spring, weaving three narrative threads into one heartless tale. Drug courier Cyril and stick-up girl Willow pursue…

Join 500+ subscribers

Sign up