"MacGregor Tells the World"

Elizabeth McKenzie is the author of Stop That Girl and the just-released novel, MacGregor Tells the World.

She applied the "page 69 test" to MacGregor and reported the following:

Could one page stand naked with any dignity? Or would it shrivel pulled from the shadows of pages 68 and 70? I checked it out and found pg 69 serving up, legitimately, some of the themes and tensions of the novel. The page starts in transition: Mac on one of his voyages to San Francisco, alive to everything in the way only an outsider can be, longing to escape his frumpy cousin’s life in the ‘burbs, full of desire for Carolyn Ware and everything she stands for.

“Driving out of Redwood City, past the neon martini sign and the do it yourself dog wash, past the shrill used car lots and the diesel clouds of tractor trailers idling on side streets for the night, he happily joined the crowd going north on 101. He never tired of approaching the city. Everyone complained about the summer fog but these were the complaints of proud parents apologizing with smiles for the brattish deeds of their children. Ultimately, San Francisco did no wrong in the eyes of the people who lived there, and it was true, the summer fog and chill had a charm all its own.”

My pg. 69 also introduces perhaps the most “evil” character in the novel, Charles Ware. (His nasty doings will blow up Mac’s world later on.) Though Mac’s been girding his loins to meet the guy ever since he began seeing his daughter Carolyn, the meeting is as bad, or even worse, than he expected.

Arriving at the house, Carolyn has vanished (not the first time, and not the last), thus throwing him face to face with Charles Ware, author of Tangier, iconic figure, flanked by two young sycophants, gulping down everything he says. Setting eyes on him, Mac reports a “man who looked rather like an aged boy, a pituitary case, a replica of his former self with too much skin. Puttied old cheeks crowded his small features; blue gray slugs rested beneath his eyes; thin, monkey-red hair ….” All the while, Mac feels “pimply and adolescent” coming to call like this.

Red flags are popping up all along the merry way. Why does she still live with her parents? What’s her trip anyway, with her annoying sister? Why did his mother write all those letters to this house? These questions have become the subtext of Mac’s visits and of this particular scene, and despite the thrills of being with Carolyn, continue to shadow him during the summer leading unexpectedly to his past.

McKenzie's writing has appeared in the New York Times, Best American Nonrequired Reading, Pushcart Prize XXV, Other Voices, Threepenny Review, TriQuarterly, and ZYZZYVA. Her stories have been performed at Symphony Space in New York and Stories on Stage in Chicago, and recorded for NPR's "Selected Shorts." She is a former staff editor at The Atlantic Monthly.

Visit Elizabeth McKenzie's website and read an excerpt from MacGregor Tells the World.

Check out the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"It's Kind of A Funny Story"

Ned Vizzini is the author of It's Kind of a Funny Story ("insightful and utterly authentic" --New York Times Book Review), Be More Chill, and Teen Angst? Naaah....

He applied the "page 69 test" to It's Kind of A Funny Story and reported the following:

Teen sex! Teen sex! Oh wow, it sure is exciting. (Trying to think how to write about my own work without tooting my own horn too much, can't, so here we go.)

I'm proud of a few things about my novel It's Kind of A Funny Story (2006), but one of the best was my inclusion in Nerve.com's Henry Miller Award for Best Sex Scene 2006. (Didn't win; honor to be nominated; etc.) Page 69 of the book is a little pastiche of sexual tension and lust among 14-year-olds that takes place just after the protagonist has gotten high for the first time. He (Craig Gilner), his best friend, and the beautiful girl of his dreams, Nia, are all together at his best friend's house celebrating the fact that they've been accepted into Executive Pre-Professional High School (in Manhattan).

It's representative, I'd say, of the honest sexuality that can be presented now in work for young adults. There's a more graphic scene later where a girl's nipples are described as "the highest point on her." Is this sexuality representative of the adolescent climate in the 00ze, or does it promote bad behavior? I don't know. Censors' department.

Check out Ned Vizzini's website, his MySpace page, and the It's Kind of a Funny Story MySpace page; read an excerpt from It's Kind of a Funny Story.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"No Humans Involved"

Kelley Armstrong is the author of the internationally bestselling series, The Otherworld.

She applied the "page 69 test" to her new novel, No Humans Involved, and reported the following:

Page 69 of No Humans Involved starts a new chapter, so it’s only a half page. It doesn’t reveal much about the plotline, but it’s a decent representative sample of my writing and story-telling style.

It’s an interrogation scene. That suggests a thriller/mystery plot. True, though the references to a murder are incidental to the main plot — the protagonist is only using that knowledge as leverage. There’s passing mention of “spell” and “witch,” which would indicate supernatural elements. Again true, though the witches only appear in this sequence — the narrator is a necromancer (talks to the dead.) You have three women in a “tough action”-style setting (a forced interrogation) suggesting a “kick-ass heroine” story. While this protagonist is strong, she’s definitely not “kick-ass” — here she’s just trying to salvage some dignity after being rescued by a teen witch.

So after reading page 69, you’d probably come away with the general impression that this is a supernatural thriller with a strong female protagonist, heavy on action and dialogue, written in a contemporary voice. That pretty much nails it. If you try to determine what the plot itself is about based on this sample, it doesn’t work as well. But, with any luck, reading page 69 would at least intrigue you enough to scan the jacket copy.

Page 69 of No Humans Involved:

Back in the clearing, we forced Molly to kneel. She wasn’t gagged or silenced by a spell, but she hadn’t said a word. Hadn’t tried to escape. Just watched us warily, tensed to fight, but making no move to start one.

I waved Savannah back. She hesitated -- maybe a reflection on her faith in my interrogation abilities, but more likely just an instinct to take charge -- her parents’ daughter to the core. After a moment, she backed off with a nod.

I stood over Molly. “You screwed up. You’ve been on the dark side so long, you think everybody is just as devious and dangerous as you. I was telling you the truth. All I wanted was information, and I was offering a fair deal in return. I had no idea what really happened to Mike until you got paranoid and started confessing.”

“I never admitted—”

“True. We can go that route. I take you into custody. You plead your innocence before the council.”

Molly’s eyes narrowed.

“Or we can leave the council out of this. Killing Mike wasn’t the solution I’d have come up with, but from what you’ve said, it wasn’t completely unjustified. More of an overuse of force than murder. You had a good reason—”

“I did. That bastard tried to—”

Savannah cut her off. “Heard it already.”

I glanced over at the young witch. She’d settled onto the grass,

Check out Kelley Armstrong's website and read an excerpt from No Humans Involved.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Shadow of Death"

Patricia Gussin's debut medical suspense novel, Shadow of Death, is a Best First Novel nominee for a Thriller Award, sponsored by the International Thriller Writers.

Gussin applied the "page 69 test" to her novel and reported the following:

"As before her patient was totally still except for the heave of his chest in tandem with the respirator."

Page 69 of Shadow of Death is surprisingly representative of the story. The reader would learn that a boy, Anthony, lay dying and that Laura, the medical student protagonist, is moving toward a collision course liking his fate to hers.

As Laura enters the ward, the lone chair at Anthony's bedside was empty. Laura Nelson's very first patient ever, a victim of the riots that had torn Detroit apart, lay emaciated. Her assignment today was to check his thin, dark skin for decubiti, pressure sores that could lead to gangrene. And she had one more secret objective while on the crowded medical ward. She needed to steal some penicillin from the drug cart. She needed to get up the nerve to inject herself. She'd read that rape victims had a high incidence of venereal disease and that terrified her.

Laura, a first year medical student, had not bargained for the chaos and devastation that riots had brought to Detroit. Unfathomable that she was a victim herself and that she'd …. She couldn't bear to think about what she'd done. And now she had to cover it up. Once she'd examined Anthony, Laura sought out his nurse to discuss how the blotchy sores on Anthony's skin could be better treated. As the nurse patiently explained Anthony's dismal prognosis and chatted about Anthony's family, Laura learns a shocking truth that links her fate inexorably with her patient in a manner unthinkable.

Visit Patricia Gussin's website.

Check out the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Monstering"

Tara McKelvey is a senior editor at The American Prospect and a research fellow at New York University School of Law's Center on Law and Security. Her new book is Monstering: Inside America's Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War.

McKelvey applied the "page 69 test" to the new book and reported the following:

My book, Monstering, is about what happened beyond the frames of the infamous Abu Ghraib photographs. I look at the story that the media missed – the fact that the abuse of Iraqi prisoners was widespread, systematic and often horrific – and how the vast majority (at least eighty percent) of prisoners at Abu Ghraib were, according to multiple military sources, either innocent or did not have useful information for interrogators. My work is based on interviews with former detainees from Abu Ghraib and other U.S.-run prisons in Iraq, unexpunged government documents that were given to me by sources and other exclusive material, including never-released videos of wild parties where American soldiers went Robotripping (that’s a cocktail of Robitussin and Vivarin) as they pretended to stab detainees in an Abu Ghraib cellblock.

Page 69 has a subhead, “A Scene of Carnage,” that describes the killings of two American soldiers at Abu Ghraib – as well as the fear and dread that Americans experienced while they were living and working in the prison and how that in various ways their apprehension contributed to the way Iraqis were treated at the prison. This page, and other sections of the book, provides a context for the story of the Abu Ghraib scandal. As we also learn from Page 69, the conditions of the prison were even more trying for Iraqis than Americans. The deaths of prisoners Mihdy, Spah and Mohamed are discussed – along with the fact the circumstances surrounding their deaths “will likely remain a mystery.”

Listen to McKelvey's interview about her book, terror, and torture, on "Fresh Air."

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"More Than Fiends"

Maureen Child, who has written under several pseudonyms, including Ann Carberry, Sarah Hart and Kathleen Kane, has a new novel (published under her own name) out this month, More Than Fiends.

She applied the "page 69 test" to the new book and reported the following:

The Page 69 test was a revelation for me! I immediately went through the stacks of books I own and read page 69 in a dozen or so of them. Mostly, I have to say, they passed the test. Strange though, that a couple of my favorites didn’t!

Still, it’s an interesting experiment — and I applied it to my own newest release, More Than Fiends. I think it held up. In this book, Cassidy Burke has just found out that she’s a legendary Demon Duster. She’s also faced with the reappearance of Logan Miller, father of her daughter, Thea. He’s back in town and now that he knows about his child’s existence, he wants into their lives.

Page 69 gives readers an idea of Cassidy’s personality. And a peek into her relationship with Logan. It also showcases the fact that this is a first person, sort of snarky book with plenty of attitude. So, all in all, I think it passed the test!

Pg. 69:

Thanks,” he said as he followed me into the kitchen. “It does help.”

“Look,” I told him, pulling an extra coffee cup out of the cupboard and filling it for him, “I’m willing to work this out, because I’m a fabulous human being, but I’m only going to listen to you being mad for so long.”

“About sixteen years?” he asked, a reluctant smile curving one corner of his mouth.

“Ha-ha,” I said and handed him his coffee. “One more time, Logan. I was a kid. And pregnant, okay?”

He leaned back against the counter, holding the cup between his palms. “If I’d known, it would have been different,” he said. “Cassie, you wrote to me all that year and you never even mentioned it.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, taking a huge gulp of coffee, “like you never mentioned that you were dating Skippy.”

“Misty.”

“Whatever.” I set my cup down, walked to the service porch and Logan was only a step or two behind me. While I stuffed a load of towels — Thea used two for every shower, one for her hair, one for her body and took two showers a day, you do the math — Logan leaned against the dryer, watching me.

To be honest, he gave good stare.

He made me so jumpy, I dumped enough soap in to wash five loads and hoped that wouldn’t come back to bite me in the ass. Then I slammed the lid and looked up at him. Well over six feet, it took awhile to lift my gaze all the way to his eyes, but it was worth the trip.

“What do you want from me, Logan?”

He blew out a breath, crossed his feet at the ankle and said, “Another shot.”

“At what?”

“You.”

Whoa Baby!

Check out Maureen Child's website and her blog.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Volk's Game"

Brent Ghelfi applied the "page 69 test" to his debut thriller, Volk's Game, and reported the following:

The centerpiece of Volk’s Game is a long-lost Leonardo painting called Leda and the Swan, discovered hidden behind another painting in St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum. It is a treasure so transcendent that Volk will do almost anything to possess it. Together with a small team he breaks into the Hermitage through now-submerged catacombs built in the time of Peter the Great.

Those who crack open the book on page 69 will find themselves on the edge of an ancient loading dock beneath the Hermitage. Volk and his lover, Valya, have been betrayed. They’re trapped, waiting for the cover of darkness to make their escape, with only one air tank and only one way out — through fifty meters of frigid river water in a submerged tunnel.

Is this a good place to get a sense of the story? On one level, Volk’s Game can be read as a hard, fast thriller — an art heist gone bad, with all the craziness of modern-day Russia as a backdrop. On a different level it is a story about the search for something pure and good amid tragedy and evil. The scene that begins on page 69 implies both readings, and suggests what the treasure at the heart of the story truly is.

From page 69:

When my chronometer beeps midnight the next day, I strap the nearly exhausted air tank onto Valya’s back, hoping it will offer a few metallic breaths. Without a wetsuit, exposure will quickly drive the oxygen from her body, slowing her progress.

We swim out until the ceiling touches her hair. Her lips are teeth-chattering blue already. She presses them icily against mine. She clings. Her steel grey eyes look fiercely determined behind the glass of Kamil’s too-big facemask as we take several deep breaths. She nods. We dive and kick hard through the catacombs.

The first ten meters pass too slowly. She offers the mouthpiece and I suck greedily without getting much oxygen, and then push her on. She’s ahead of me, so I can’t see her face when the air in the tank gives out, but her frantic kicks and the burning in my own lungs tell me that it has happened. She paddles madly through the chute toward the upper tunnels. But she pulls up short with a jerk. I can’t see clearly through the murk, but she’s flailing wildly. Too many hand-scrabbling, mind-screaming seconds pass before I find that her tank is caught on the edge of the chute and yank it loose.

When she’s free again, she struggles furiously beside me, but I know it is a losing battle. Her limbs slow to a ponderous crawl. I grasp a strap. Pull, yank, drag. Our progress is far too slow. My lungs are on fire. The underwater world turns chalky grey. She’s dead weight within a few meters after we finally emerge from the chute.

I kick with everything I have left. Fifteen more meters to go to the air pocket I shared with Kamil. Too far. My lungs are a roaring furnace.

I kick frantically. Ten meters left. Darkness crawls the edges of my vision.

I can’t see. I’m not going to make it. Goddammit, be strong! My kicks morph into useless flutters. The murk becomes a swirl of prismatic colors. The water is peaceful, restful, warmly embracing …

Last year, at a table in Vadim’s café littered with stacks of used shot glasses and discarded vodka bottles, when Valya was still willing to entertain such questions, Nabi asked her why she used to sell herself for money. Our little party fell silent. I choked the neck of a Gzhelka bottle and considered busting open Nabi’s skull. But then Valya answered calmly, “Because I needed to eat.” She popped a stuffed olive into her mouth and smiled white-haired radiance around it as she chewed. “And I preferred fucking strangers over fucking my father and his brothers.”

For some reason that vignette plays repeating loops in my mind. When it stops, I realize that I’m floating faceup, staring without comprehension at channeled wet stone.

I’m still alive.

I turn my head. Next to me in the water is Valya. Her slicked-back hair and big eyes make her look like a hopeful seal.

“It was my turn to pull,” she says.

Check out the Volk's Game website and read Chapter One.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Hard Man"

Allan Guthrie's first novel, Two-Way Split, was shortlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger. His second novel, Kiss Her Goodbye, was nominated for Edgar, Anthony and Gumshoe awards.

He applied the "page 69 test" to his new novel, Hard Man, and reported the following:

Unfortunately, Hard Man fails the page 69 test, that page consisting solely of the section header GHOST DOG.

So let’s take a look at page 68 instead.

It starts:

“Wallace?” he said, then asked the craziest question: “Did you just shoot me?”

A little backstory to put this into context: The man who’s possibly just been shot is Roger Baxter, a young guy who’s ill-equipped for the situation life’s thrown at him. He’s big and muscular enough, but he’s not got a lot of bottle. Unlike his brother, Flash, who has a lot of bottle, but is a scrawny wee runt. Between them and their old dad, Jacob, they’re doing their best to keep their sister’s husband, Wallace, from harming her.

Wallace, you see, has a well-documented propensity for violence. He’s already beheaded the family dog. And threatened the Baxters with similar acts of violence. All because his wife is pregnant, and he’s not the father (I guess some people react badly to that kind of thing).

So we enter the scene on page 68 with Roger waking at two in the morning thinking he’s heard a noise in the kitchen. He checks it out. Finding no sign of an intruder, he pours himself a glass of water, and gets blindsided.

And that’s where we come in.

In fact, Roger hasn’t been shot. Not yet. That happens halfway down the page.

When the pain came, it was like nothing he’d ever experienced. At the same instant, a hundred mallets slammed into his kneecap. Pulverised it.

And then when it can’t get any worse, it does.

The second explosion followed quickly. The same blinding pain. This time, the other knee. Through the pain, the thought that he’d never walk again. Not caring, if only he could stop the pain.

Hard Man is a violent book. And this sums up the approach I’ve taken to it. Throughout, the violence is written primarily from the point of view of the victim, so, yep, there’s a lot of pain. Has to be said, if you’d rather your on-page violence doesn’t hurt, this probably isn’t the book for you.

Although there’s a lot of humour. Very black. And if anything’s atypical about this page, is that there’s not a laugh in sight.

But looking ahead, I see the next page makes up for that. I should have chosen page 70. Damn.

Visit Allan Guthrie's Noir Originals Website and the Hard Man blog.

Check out the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Late Night Talking"

Leslie Schnur is the author of The Dog Walker and a new novel, Late Night Talking, to which she applied the "page 69 test" and then reported the following:

On page 69, the two most important characters in the book have interior moments, as one chapter ends and another begins. Nicholas Moss, a maverick entrepreneur, has just given a speech about personal responsibility at yet another high-ticket fundraiser and is rushing to the place he’d much prefer to be — sitting high in the canopy of a redwood tree on the Northern California Coast.

He looked out over the Pacific and breathed in deeply, his chest expanding with the cool, clean ocean air. He let it out and felt empty. Something was missing. He knew what it was, but he didn’t want to be dopey or sentimental. For crying out loud, he’d just said what he had to say at the dinner, he was buying a crack little radio station, his companies were flourishing, he had his friends, and here he was sitting in his favorite tree, his face against the wind.

But he had nobody to share it with…

And the new chapter, "The House on Allston Way," begins, this one from the point of view of my protagonist, Jeannie Sterling, host of the late-night talk show on rudeness, “Sterling Behavior”, whose surprise visit from her father brings up memories of childhood and her mother, who died many years before.

She stops a moment to look at the family photos on her wall, the ones she passes ten times a day and never really notices. And she is transported back in time to the difficult family life she had growing up in a commune in Berkeley in the 70’s.

The characters — their longings, their desires, their failings and failures — are what drive my book, and page 69 illustrates that. They tend to be a complicated, somewhat neurotic crew, with complex relationships and histories.

What page 69 doesn’t have is any dialogue, and my characters do talk … a lot. Nor does it reflect the humor of the novel, nor the wit of Jeannie’s late night talk radio show and the warmth of her friendship with her on-air cohort and best friend, Luce. This is a romantic comedy, for god’s sake! Will Jeannie make peace with her Dad? Will she find love? Will Moss find someone to share his tree-climbing life? The answers are probably evident, but for how’s and who’s, you’ll need to read the book!

Check out Leslie Schnur's website and read an excerpt from Late Night Talking.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Racial Culture"

Richard Thompson Ford is George E. Osborne Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and author of Racial Culture: A Critique.

He applied the "page 69 test" to his book and reported the following:

Page 69 is critical to the argument of the book, but the main themes of the book — race and multiculturalism — do not appear on page 69. In the book I argue against the attempt to use civil rights to protect "cultural practices" associated with racial and ethnic groups. I argue that this use of civil rights would reinforce racial stereotypes and social conformity within racial groups: I think, for instance, it's wrong to think of discouraging "black English" as a form of race discrimination because doing so reinforces the stereotype that failure to use standard diction and grammar is a natural attribute of the black race, rather than a result of poverty, poor schools, ghetto isolation, etc.

Page 69 makes a broader argument against the commonplace idea that legal rights are simple tools for liberation; there I argue that rights are actually means by which one branch of government — usually the courts — exercises power at the expense of another branch of government or at the expense of private actors, such as employers:

Any first year law student knows that First Amendment … forbids government from discriminating against either the content of expression or the teachings of a religion. Therefore, liberal constitutionalism concludes, First Amendment rights are ideologically neutral and enhance the freedom of the individual. But… [o]ne could argue that First Amendment rights serve to channel social activity, protest and unrest in a prescribed way, to institutionalize particular forms of expression (leafletting, marches, demonstrations and political advertising) at the expense of others (situationist pranks, civil disobedience, transgressive performances, shock art, obscene gestures.) We could say something similar about the religion clauses, pointing out that spirituality is protected to the exclusion of philosophy and politics — Aquinas is protected but not Thoreau — and therefore individuals and groups are encouraged, both by law and by the set of practices that law supports, to join churches and to embrace and present their commitments in a religious form.

None of this means rights are bad. But one must evaluate the use of power that occurs when rights are asserted and vindicated — it's not enough to justify them in terms of "freedom."

I build on this argument to make the more specific case against multicultural rights: this assertion of rights, if successful, wouldn’t simply leave members of minority groups free to engage in their cultural practices — it would also makes it harder for them or anyone else to resist the implication that certain cultural practices "belong" to certain racial groups; it would make it harder for people to criticize practices that are defined as "cultural" (consider the handwringing around female circumcision and how much more clarity we would bring to the issue it we simply asked whether or not the practice was child abuse — it turns out it usually is, but not always.) In these sense multicultural rights would not make anyone — not even members of minority groups — more free. Instead they would encourage some practices at the expense of others. I argue that many of the practices they would encourage are worse than those they would displace…

Learn more about Racial Culture from the Princeton University Press website and read an excerpt.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Protector"

Laurel Dewey applied the "page 69 test" to her new book, Protector, and reported the following:

My debut novel, Protector, has several interlocking themes. One of those deals with how a defining moment in one’s life shapes you for better or worse. For protagonist, Detective Jane Perry, her defining moment drives her entire life and, as the book unfolds, that violent moment makes her question whether she can fulfill her promise to protect a traumatized nine-year-old girl.

When I was invited to explore page 69 of Protector, I was stunned because that page deals with a conversation between Jane and her younger brother, Mike, about defining moments.

“Do you believe that everybody has a defining moment in their life? You know, something that alters the course of their existence? Something that turns them into a completely different person? And afterwards, nothing is ever the same. Is that possible?”

Jane felt an uncomfortable tremor in her belly. “We all have defining moments.”

“You think it’s possible to have more than one defining moment in your life?” Mike seemed to struggle with the concept but pressed on. “Like, do you think that you could have a defining moment when you were young and then have another moment that defines you all over again? Does that make sense?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. You’re giving me a headache. What’s all this about?”

Mike stared down at the napkin. “I’m not sure I can talk about it just yet.”

Jane leaned forward. “What do you mean?”

“I need to think about it some more.”

“Think about what? Come on, you always tell me everything.” Jane reached across the table and touched Mike’s hand. “Mike, talk to me. Whatever it is, I’ll fix it.”

Mike looked at his sister with a guarded eye. “I don’t think you can, Janie.”

This scene exemplifies Jane’s struggling heart. The first person Jane had to protect was Mike. Their father was a sadistic monster. Jane’s defining moment dealt with the choice she made at age 14 to deflect her father’s rage from her brother and suffer his brutality. In doing this, her life was forever changed. It was the beginning of her spiral into alcoholism and her regret that she didn’t kill her father at that moment. Now, his voice haunts her, making her question if she has the courage to pull the trigger against another abuser to save an innocent life. That defining moment is the fulcrum from which my character-driven novel builds its fire.

Visit Laurel Dewey's website and The 8th Sense blog, and read an excerpt from Protector.

Check out the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Arab Economies in a Changing World"

Marcus Noland and Howard Pack applied the "page 69 test" to their new book, The Arab Economies in a Changing World, and reported the following:

Page 69 of our book consists in part of a chart showing the narrowing gap between female and male illiteracy in the Arab countries of the Middle East since 1970. No Osama bin Laden, no rich oil sheikhs. Just rising literacy, particularly for women and girls. Implicitly many children from poor families.

The chart is a microcosm of the region’s social, political, and economic trends with which we grapple in the book. Many of us carry the notion in our heads that Arab economic performance has been weak. Not so: over the last couple generations it has been worse than East Asia, better than sub-Saharan Africa — the most comparable in terms of arbitrary borders and weak states, and about the same as Latin America and South Asia. And while economic growth has not been stellar, on many other indicators that we document — female literacy or childhood immunization or life expectancy to name a few — improvements have been spectacular.

Yet evidence suggests that these demonstrable improvements in measurable outcomes have not translated into greater happiness or satisfaction. One possible reason is an absence of “voice”: while the region’s economic performance may not be distinctive, its combination of authoritarianism and political stability is unparalleled.

And though the Arab world has suffered no major economic crisis, it now faces a major challenge: the demographic imperative to create jobs for the large cohort of young people reaching working age. The stakes are high: rapid labor force growth in many Arab countries has contributed to despair among young people about their job prospects and consequent worries about political stability. It is not difficult to envision the region caught in a downward spiral where impoverishment, discontent, militancy, and repression feed upon one another, deterring reform and impeding growth.

Yet this is not the only possible future path. If the Arab world’s daunting employment challenge can be successfully addressed, the region’s demographics could turn from a potential liability to a valuable asset. Growing prosperity, confidence, and optimism about the future could underpin movement toward greater political openness and social tolerance. The recognition that neither of these alternatives can be excluded is both an antidote to despair and a call to action.

Learn more about The Arab Economies in a Changing World at the publisher's website.

--Marshal Zeringue