Poison Pill is a great reading. The novel ranges from Russian oligarchs to the American worlds of drug research and the equity markets, all of it in a mode of high suspense.

Basbanes makes you love books.

The truth of the matter is that the people who succeed in the arts most often are the people who get up again after getting knocked down. Persistence is critical.

Libraries function as crucial technology hubs, not merely for free Web access, but for those who need computer training and assistance. Library business centers help support entrepreneurship and retraining.

I really do believe that chance favours a prepared mind. Wallace Stegner, who was one of my teachers when I was at Stanford, preached that writing a novel is not something that can be done in a sprint. That it's a marathon. You have to pace yourself. He himself wrote two pages every day and gave himself a day off at Christmas. His argument was at the end of a year, no matter what, you'd got 700 pages and that there's got to be something worth keeping.

That led me to say that when push comes to shove, I'm against capital punishment.

There cannot be any greater challenge to the law than trying to adjudicate mass crimes like war crimes.