Inside this month's issue of BookPage

May 2003
In This Issue

FIRST PERSON
May BookPage interviews:

Bill Bryson takes readers back to school

Bill Bryson often wonders "Why didn't they teach me this in school, or more to the point, why couldn't teachers make it interesting?" Little did he realize that this simple question would occupy four years of his life in the production of his new book A Short History of Nearly Everything. "I had the sense that I ought to know a bit about how the world works," Bryson says. And so it began, a mammoth work on virtually every topic you can think of (and some you can't pronounce)...

Meghan Daum: A young writer's comic first novel sends a city girl to the country

Four years ago, Gen X journalist and essayist Meghan Daum surprised just about everyone by abandoning New York for the "less literary pastures" of Lincoln, Nebraska. Lucinda Trout, winsome heroine of Daum's sparkling, comic first novel, The Quality of Life Report, surprises her friends and employer by abandoning New York for a place in the heartland called Prairie City. Daum first arrived in Nebraska to report on methamphetamine labs in the Midwest. Trout arrives in Prairie City on a similar assignment for an over-the-top TV show called New York Up Early, where she is the lifestyle reporter. You begin to wonder: Is Lucinda Trout just Meghan Daum in hoop earrings and a new kind of attitude?

Eric Schlosser: Get the dirt on America's black market

Why Robert MacNeil chose to be an American

Meet Jane Seymour

Gail Evans shares things every buisnesswoman should know

Ann Brashares: Taking the teen world by storm

Author and illustrator Jon J. Muth makes magic with his books for children

FEATURES

SPOTLIGHT: Starting out is simple with these new books for Graduation

Atwood's portrait of a scary new world in Well Read

Graphic novels: Not just for kids anymore

FICTION

Behaving Like Adults by Anna Maxted

Creation by Katherine Govier

The Wandering Hill by Larry McMurtry

Villa Incognito by Tom Robbins

Getting Mother's Body by Suzan-Lori Parks

The Dirty Girls Social Club by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez

Hell at the Breech by Tom Franklin