Philadelphia Inquirer Gives Rave Review to Christina Thompson’s Debut Memoir

A recent Philadelphia Inquirer review has offered high praise to Christina Thompson’s new book, Come On Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All: A New Zealand Story, which explores how the author, an American scholar and now Harvard Review editor, met, married and made a family with a Maori foundryman named Tauwhitu.

“If it were nothing more than a memoir, Thompson's first book would make fascinating reading as the story of a mismatched but loving pair making their way in a world where they can never really be at home,” notes the July 20 review by award-winning memoirist Floyd Skloot. “But Come On Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All is more than a memoir. It incorporates Thompson's extensive research into New Zealand and Maori history, and the early European exploration of the Pacific islands. It explores sociological considerations of the culture clash between colonizer and colonized, and the ways that such myths as the Maori's savage ferocity are perpetuated.”

The review concludes: “At heart a love story, Come On Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All is a moving examination of exploration — both inner and outer — and the way our travels into remote places on Earth can become travels into the remote places in our hearts and souls.”

Thompson will discuss her debut book on Thursday, September 25, in Dewberry Hall on George Mason University’s Fairfax campus.

Honor Moore’s New Memoir Earns Praise, Raises Questions

Just over a month after its publication, poet Honor Moore’s new book, The Bishop’s Daughter: A Memoir, continues to earn headlines for its frank portrayal of her father, the late Episcopal Bishop Paul Moore. A civil rights leader, anti-war spokesman and advocate for the poor, Moore was a bishop in Washington during Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency and later served for two decades as the bishop of New York. But during this time and throughout two marriages, he also led a secret life, including a 30-year relationship with another man.

“The connection between sexual identity and Judeo-Christian values is fraught with complexities, which are explored in detail in The Bishop’s Daughter,” writes Washington Blade book critic Kathi Wolfe in a recent review, which goes on to praise Moore’s “erudite and lyrical” writing and the memoir’s exploration of “the impact that homophobia had on a major 20th-century religious figure.”

As The Bishop’s Daughter speaks to the difficult intersection of religion and homosexuality in the 20th-century, so too does the book confront head-on the questions of risk and responsibility faced by the memoir as a genre in 21st-century America.

Honor Moore will speak about her new book, about her father’s struggles with his sexuality and about the challenges of each of her chosen genres — memoir and poetry — on the Fall for the Book Festival’s opening day, Sunday, September 21, at Old Town Hall in downtown Fairfax.

Festival Welcomes Nation’s Leading Lincoln Scholars

In anticipation of the upcoming bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, Fall for the Book is pleased to a host a gathering of some of the country’s most notable Lincoln historians for a full day of discussions on Tuesday, September 23.


A morning session will feature award-winning biographer Daniel Mark Epstein, author of both Lincoln and Whitman: Parallel Lives in Civil War Washington and The Lincolns: Portrait of a Marriage, which the New York Times recently praised as a “fascinating interweaving of the crisis-filled, mercurial career of Abraham Lincoln with an equally rocky tale of man and wife.” Andrew Ferguson, a senior editor at The Weekly Standard, will also discuss his recent book Land of Lincoln: Adventures in Abe’s America, which “embarks on a journey to the heart of contemporary Lincoln Nation” to discover our 16th president’s place in today’s U.S.A.


Three members of the advisory committee for the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission will headline the afternoon session. Michael Beschloss, named “the nation's leading presidential historian” by Newsweek, has written nine books on American presidents, including the national bestseller Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America 1789-1989. Joshua Wolf Shenk is the author of Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness, and James L. Swanson wrote Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer.

Each session will be moderated by presidential historian Richard Norton Smith, scholar-in-residence in George Mason University’s School of Public Policy and Department of History and Art History.

Many of the facts of Abraham Lincoln’s life may be well-known: his birth in a log cabin in Kentucky on February 12, 1809; his leadership during the Civil War; his issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation and delivery of the Gettysburg Address; and his assassination at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. less than a week after Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. But as the Bicentennial Commission stresses, there is still much to learn about the man and his legacy: "Surmounting race and assuring equal rights for all are Lincoln’s two major challenges still on the nation’s agenda. As the embodiment of the highest ideals and values of our nation, Abraham Lincoln can still help us meet those challenges. Through education programs, public forums, and arts projects, the Bicentennial provides an opportunity to re-examine what it means to be American in the 21st century."

The program at this year’s Fall for the Book hopes to serve as a cornerstone of that re-examination, as a looking back at a pivotal time in our shared history and as an assessment of both our nation’s present and its future.