IMPAC Dublin picks, spies in a fix, Periodicals prices '06

National Book Award-winning Author Nathaniel Philbrick

It was one of those things in the back of my mind. There's just so much there, and most people don't have any idea. It's always amazed me, even with In the Heart of the Sea it took me so long to figure out there was a book there. I had learned about that story years before, it was a story in whaling circles that everybody knew, an old chestnut. With Mayflower, it's a daunting topic. It's the pilgrims. We all know about the Pilgrims, they are these boring iconic figures. How could I dare mess with that? But I kind of came at it sideways, from Nantucket. I kind of came at it from a different perspective. Yes, I wanted to start on the Mayflower, but where do you take it? After that I guess the traditional thing would be to end it with the first

Thanksgiving. But that rang false to me. Not only because of what I knew about the Pilgrims, but about the country. It was then, learning about King Phillip's war that I began to see.

I was shocked reading about King Phillip's war. Did that bust your perceptions of the Pilgrims open as well?

Oh, absolutely. I grew up thinking there was the Mayflower and Thanksgiving. What got lost in there were the Indians. I never really thought much about it. But that whole Native American experience then became part of the winning of the West. Learning about King Philip's war was shocking. If we are going to revere the founding fathers then we can put this all in context, and the context is 150 years of dynamic struggle, a process that had a profound effect on where we'd go as a nation.

Furst, Alan.

The Foreign Correspondent.

Random House. Jun. 2006. c.288p. ISBN 1-4000-6019-2

[ISBN 978-1-4000-6019-1]. $24.95. F

Furst's latest provides an alternate history lesson and salute to the legions of patriotic noncombatants who fought WWII in their own ways using different weapons. Protagonist Carlo Weisz is a man pulled in many directions. As new chief of the underground anti-fascist newspaper, Liberazione, his cadre of fellow European émigrés need him to carry on the publication following the murder of its previous editor by Mussolini's henchmen. Working as a Reuters correspondent in Paris, the Trieste-born Weisz's assignment in Berlin covering the 1939 Pact of Steel signing reunites him with Christa Zameny, a former lover working with the girls' arm of the Hitler Youth—although she openly opposes the Fuhrer—and the two reignite their burning

passion (just call her Christa Von Shtupp!) as the Gestapo follow at a distance. Back in Paris, thugs posing as police are making inquiries into other Liberazione staffers, and Weisz's new neighbor seems awfully interested in him—is he an assassin or just a nosy tenant? British Intelligence also wants to use Weisz and Liberazione as tools for its own anti-fascist endeavors. Although WWII espionage thrillers aren't everyone's cup, Furst writes masterfully and the romantic element broadens its appeal (think Casablanca). Highly entertaining, The Foreign Correspondent should be another Furst bestseller. Recommended.

—Michael Rogers, LJXpress