Live Laugh Love & Libraries

Dispatches from the ALA

When I’m asked why I became a historian, I often start with the significance of spending my senior year in high school as an exchange student in Germany. Fully immersing myself in another culture made me deeply curious about my own culture—I no longer took many things for granted about the culture I inhabited as an American.

But I think the seeds may have been planted a little earlier.

One rather (pleasantly) dull summer as a middle-schooler, I entertained myself by biking down to my local library. It wasn’t a large library, but it was one of the few places I could go independently. One day, having worked my way through the kids’ and YA books, I wandered over to the grown-up section. Nothing seemed all that interesting until I came upon an entire shelf of biographies. That summer, I read about JFK, RFK, and MLK, about Shirley Temple and the Dionne quintuplets. I don’t recall how long I kept at this, but at least through the summer, and possibly through a couple of summers.

I had forgotten this until I had occasion to think about libraries, and their role in my own writing. Earlier this spring, my publisher had asked me if I’d like to attend the American Library Association’s Annual Conference in Chicago this summer to talk about Live Laugh Love and sign books. Of course, I said. I couldn’t have written any of my books without librarians. Besides, hanging around with tens of thousands of librarians sounded like a fun way to spend a weekend.

As the date approached, however, I started to worry just a bit. When I go someplace to speak, people usually show up. But at a massive conference for librarians with actual famous writers in attendance, I couldn’t help but wonder if anyone would actually come to my book signing. I pushed away the thought of my publisher being left with boxes of galleys they’d need to bring back with them to New York and decided to trust that they knew what they were doing. They have a pretty good track record on that front.

The night before I was ready to drive out to Chicago, I saw my publisher’s IG post. It did not ease my concerns. There was my face. On a poster. A big one. If no one showed up, it would be extra humiliating.

Nothing to do but push that thought from my mind and set off for Chicago.

On my way up to the vast, sprawling universe-unto-itself that is McCormick Place, I stopped by the University of Chicago to visit my friend Dana Suskind. Dana is a brilliant surgeon, professor, and writer. (You may be familiar with her bestselling book Thirty Million Words: Building a Child’s Brain.)

Dana has a new book coming out just a couple weeks from now, Human Raised: Nurturing Connection, Curiosity & Lifelong Learning in the Age of AI. She gave me a copy and I’ve already started it. It is exactly the book so many of us need to read. She calls the relationship between child development and AI “one of the most critical and overlooked challenges of our time, one that has the potential to transform childhood, family structures, and ultimately nothing less than our future as a species.” I think this will ring true to any parent right now, and if you know Dana’s expertise, you’ll know that she is uniquely positioned to write this book.

As I was walking less than a block back from Dana’s office to my car, I happened to run into my good friend Randal Jelks.

Randal was one of the members of the Calvin history department who hired me two decades ago, and he was also in town for the ALA. His new book, My America: Langston Hughes on Democracy, just released a few weeks ago—another beautiful book perfectly timed to this moment.

As I was checking into to my hotel at McCormick Place, the lovely desk attendant saw we were from Grand Rapids where he used to work at a local television station and decided to upgrade us to a room with a gorgeous city view. (My older daughter made the trip with me.)

I then headed to the book signing. With a few minutes to spare before the doors to the exhibit hall opened to attendees, I browsed the other booths. By the time I returned to my booth, the doors had opened and there was already a long line of people clasping copies of Live Laugh Love.

It turns out, plenty of librarians have been looking forward to this book and couldn’t wait to get their hands on it. Instead of having leftover books, we quickly ran through the alotted books for the signing. I heard from librarians across the country—in Texas and Arkansas and Alabama and Indiana and Idaho and Iowa and New York City—telling me how important Jesus and John Wayne was for them and for their communities, and how much they were anticipating Live Laugh Love. Some of these stories nearly brought tears to my eyes.

The next day, I had the opportunity to speak at a panel on “page-turning nonfiction” hosted by Donna Seaman, editor-and-chief of Booklist. The panel included Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian (and wonderful human) Marcia Chatelain, Michael Rey, the brilliant investigative producer at 60 Minutes, and Gwen Mayes, someone who is equal parts smart and funny. Mayes’s book is on empowering those living with chronic illness. Rey’s book, written with Oriana Zill De Granados, is a gripping expose of the Havana Syndrome. And Chatelain’s is on the women behind the March on Washington.

I started off my talk with my story about my local library planting those seeds for my love of history. Reys then followed, going back to his own childhood, and remembering the hours he spent at his local library reading Encyclopedia Brown—planting the seeds for his own career as an investigative reporter. Chatelein, too, recalled how her mom would drop her off at the library and she’d spend hours there during the summer while her mom worked. Now she’s a Pulizter prize-winning historian. (Her prize-winning book, Franchise, a civil rights history of McDonalds, was published with Liveright.)

Each of their brief talks were riveting, and it’s also worth noting that Donna’s introduction of each of us and our books was so generous and so beautifully crafted that our talks almost seemed superfluous. As people were lining up for the booksigning after the sesion, we surreptitiously swapped books because we all wanted to read each other’s. (Turns out swapping was allowed and encouraged but we weren’t leaving anything to chance.)

One added perk of the weekend was that I was able to meet several members of Norton’s team. I publish with Liveright, an imprint of Norton (but my editor, who was at Liveright, is now at Norton, but I’m still at Liveright…it’s complicated, but it works). I met sales reps who get paid to travel the country talking up books they love (I wish someone had told me this was a job when I was growing up) and several other people who work behind the scenes to make books like mine happen—all wonderful people in addition to the wonderful things they do, it turns out.

I spend most of my time on the road talking politics and religion and I love the opportunity to do so. But for a weekend, it was refreshing to have a chance to be in the midst of avid readers simply as a writer, with the sole purpose of talking about books.