NIGHT-TABLE Reading

FANFAIR

THE PRODUCERS

MATTHEW WEINEREXECUTIVE PRODUCER, MAD MEN

The Glory and the Dream, by William Manchester (Bantam).

"It's an amazing and completely entertaining social history of the United States, written with a smile and one eye trained on pop culture. It's filled with victories, outrages, and absurdities you can't believe have been forgotten. I started reading it for the show and then realized it was all about the writers' strike and nothing has changed."

TOM FONTANAEXECUTIVE PRODUCER, OZ, HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREET

ComeBe My Light, by Mother Teresa (Doubleday).

"Though I admired her work with the poor, I never 'bought' her public persona. Now I understand why. She had as many doubts about God and existence as I have. Her reflections gave me hope."

DAVID SIMONEXECUTIVE PRODUCER, THE WIRE

Lush Life, by Richard Price (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)."'I'll take Manhattan,' goes the tune. And Price has, finally bringing his great gifts of dialogue and place across the Hudson River from mythical Dempsey, New Jersey, and letting them run wild in the ancient maze of the Lower East Side. While the streets of the legendary melting pot are becoming moneyed and being redeveloped all around them, human beings—vibrant and flawed and real—stumble over regret and ghosts and the shards of tribal memory. This is among his best."