Archive - November 29, 2012

American Writers Museum Reveals List of Literary Works Named by Writers and Readers as Providing a Better Understanding of America The Great Gatsby, Leaves of Grass, To Kill a Mockingbird, Moby Dick, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and The Sun Also Rises Top List “Which works by American writers should world leaders read to help them gain a better understanding of America?” That is the question posed last May to 38 contemporary American writers and the reading public in the first online exhibition of the future American Writers Museum®. The exhibit, Power of the Word: Leaders, Readers and Writers, was curated to dovetail with the U.S. hosting this year of the G8 and NATO Summits, as well as the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates. According to Malcolm O’Hagan, chairman of the American Writers Museum Foundation, many readers and writers chose books that grapple with the challenges of American life. Author . . .

EDITOR’S NOTE: From the book description of The Marble Room:  “At 27 years of age, Bill Hatcher was at crossroads. Brought up in an evangelical household in the Bible Belt, his religion had provided no answers to his parents’ broken marriage, or, indeed, his own divorce. The key to his salvation would come from a most unlikely source: a Peace Corps flyer! A year later, Hatcher was in Tanzania as a geography teacher at an all-girls’ boarding school. It was here that he “challenged” himself by engaging in dangerous ascents on Mount Kenya, Kilimanjaro, and Mount Meru, and through tragedy and triumph, questioned the core of his being and he managed to escape the confines of his “marble room” and gain a new understanding of himself and God.” This memoir is the story one PCV’s self-discovery and proof that, as he says, “even the most naïve and insular American can . . .