Journalist and editor Jefferson Morley grew up in the Central West End of St. Louis, on the Lower East Side of New York City and near the University of Minnesota campus in Minneapolis. He has reported for Harper's, the New Republic, the Nation and the Washington Post, and in 2007 became editorial director of the nonprofit Center for Independent Media. His first book was Our Man in Mexico, a biography of spymaster Winston Scott (2007), which illuminates the hidden history of the CIA's role in the JFK assassination story. Morley's new book, Snow-Storm in August: Washington City, Francis Scott Key, and the Forgotten Race Riot of 1835 (Nan Talese/Doubleday, July 3, 2012), examines the tumultuous multiracial history of the nation's capital.
On your nightstand now:
Blood Money by David Ignatius. This easy-to-read thriller evokes the realities of the U.S. drone war, capturing both American hubris and Pakistani rage with critical empathy and credible insider detail; The Paris Wife by Paula McLain. I want to understand marriage from a woman's point of view; needless to say, I have not finished it yet.
Favorite book when you were a child:
When I was about eight years old, I devoured all of the Encyclopedia Brown books by Donald Sobol. I wanted to be Leroy Brown, the kid who figured out what the adults could not. Not much has changed.
Your top five authors:
Gore Vidal, John le Carré, Don DeLillo, Robert Musil, Philip Roth.
Book you've faked reading:
I never fake reading a book. I just fake finishing them.
Book you're an evangelist for:
Brothers by David Talbot. This deeply researched study of what Bobby Kennedy really thought about the causes of his brother's death is the antidote to a thousand stupid JFK sound bites.
Book you've bought for the cover:
I never bought a book for its cover, only stolen them.
Book that changed your life:
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe. When I read this book in high school, the combination of exuberant writing, lavish reporting, hilarious details and unsentimental analysis sentenced me to a life of journalism.
Favorite line from a book:
"I was born nowhere/ and I live in a tree." It's the start of a poem I wrote in the fifth grade, which opens Kenneth Koch's classic book about teaching poetry, Wishes, Lies and Dreams.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
The Princess Casamassima by Henry James. About 25 years ago, I became entranced by this slow but grand political novel whose drama is encapsulated in this passage:
"The monuments and treasures of art, the great palaces and properties, the conquests of learning and taste, the general fabric of civilization as we know it, based, if you will, upon all the despotisms, the cruelties, the exclusions, the monopolies and the rapacities of the past, but thanks to which, all the same, the world is less impracticable and life more tolerable." I want to go back and see if I still find that convincing.