No, my name didn't appear in the table of contents of the virtually "all dude" April 29th issue of the New Yorker, but my novel, Falling to Earth, was reviewed in the "In Brief" section, along with Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout's The Burgess Boys.

I know,...

The main target of Friday's twin attacks in Norway were the young people, average age 16, on the island of Utøya. I say this not because the fatalities on Utøya far exceed those in Oslo, but because of the timing -- because of the day chosen to launch the attacks....

President Obama's Nobel speech was eloquent, lucid, humble in its thanks, and compelling in its delivery. It was also surprisingly bellicose in its defense of America's present wars and, in the President's many references to previous American Nobel laureates, Jimmy Carter's and Ralph Bunche's names were conspicuously absent.

He...

I am an American citizen without health insurance. I don't have a dental plan, either. I am, however, very familiar with the inside of my doctor's office as well as that of my municipal emergency room. Not to mention the operating rooms at two city hospitals and my children's pediatric...

Is Barack Obama the new Franklin Delano Roosevelt? Sure, why not? It's tempting -- and probably inevitable -- to rack up the similarities: Roosevelt was also a Democrat who followed a Republican with a bad record, and he had to mop up a financial crisis he inherited from his predecessor...

"Happy birthday," my Norwegian friend said. He gave me an enameled lapel pin with side-by-side Norwegian and American flags. It was November 3, 2008, and I was waiting for Obama to win.

I can wear this now, I thought. I wouldn't have dared before. I've lived in Oslo for...