The following set of words has the capacity to annoy and intrigue me: sin, salvation, grace, damnation, repentance, revival, judgment, forgiveness, soul-winning, heaven and hell. This is the vocabulary I learned in the church of my youth. These were the signature words for a thousand sermons I heard preached by my Baptist preacher father, my grandfather, and half a dozen uncles whose task it was to save souls and instruct me in how to win more souls for Jesus throughout my own life. The words themselves continue to exert a raw power over my deepest emotions.
In 2005 I produced a documentary film, 
In the summer of 1973, I was the director of the Selma Inter-religious Project in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The Selma Project was a support organization for civil rights activists working in small towns located in the rural Black Belt across central and southern Alabama, southern Mississippi, and the Florida panhandle. Most of our board members were black Baptist preachers, and I was a skinny 23-year-old white kid in charge of running the project and raising money. 
Pat Kervran had a secret life that manifested itself at an inconvenient time in the shape of an infant iguana. I had never before met an iguana. I knew nothing about iguanas other than that they were lizards and they were green.
When I found that I was about to become a father in 1977, I embraced fatherhood. I read books about babies, mothers and fathers, and I attended a series of Lamaze classes with my wife designed to help me be an active and equal partner in the process. When Chris started having contractions on September 3, 1977, I was there with her throughout the twelve hours of labor.
Billy Graham was the skinniest kid Mary Lloys Rice had ever seen, and his hair was 
In the early 1990s, I worked at Microsoft with a woman named Jan who had a gift for remembering silly jokes and making people laugh when they were trying very hard to be serious and business-like. Jan was also my mentor as I became a manager of people and teams.
Julian Barnes astounds. Just what sort of book is this, anyway? A literary biography of 19th century French novelist, radical, and intellectual impresario Gustave Flaubert? A meditation on the uses and misuses of language? A novel of obsession, denial, irritation, and underhanded connivery? A thriller complete with disguises, sleuthing, mysterious meetings, and unknowing targets?
