The road to Robert Schenkkan’s Tony win last Sunday – for his play “All the Way,” starring Bryan Cranston as LBJ – may have started in his father’s car: “Growing up, we’d take these long rides from Austin, Texas, to West Palm Beach – four boys in an un-air-conditioned station wagon, and the only thing that kept us from killing each other was when my father told us a story. I think that’s when I fell in love with storytelling and knew that’s what I wanted to do with my life.”
He’s done well so far – his “Kentucky Cycle” plays won a Pulitzer, and his second LBJ play, “The Great Society,” opens next month at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. And yes, Schenkkan says, he’d be thrilled to work with Cranston again. Here’s what’s in his library.
The Tiger’s Wife
by Tea Obreht
Few debut novels have created such a stir as Tea’s amazing book. A young doctor, Natalia, returns to the Balkans and begins to unravel the family secrets around her beloved grandfather whose fantastical stories of the tiger who stalked his village in WWII and the Man Who Never Died have always haunted her.
Bring Up the Bodies
by Hilary Mantel
I love history and politics and in this second volume of Ms. Mantel’s delicious retelling of the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell in the court of King Henry VIII (the first was “Wolf Hall”), Cromwell must help the king divest himself of his current wife, Anne Boleyn, even as he exacts his own personal revenge. And you thought LBJ was a hard master.
Vampires in the Lemon Grove
by Karen Russell
This collection of beautiful, macabre and startling short stories is like a box of the best chocolates you ever had — designed by Edward Gorey, Flannery O’Connor and Stephen King. Japanese women become silkworms, werewolves are raised as proper young ladies and, of course, there’s that vampire.
The Triumph and Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson
by Joseph Califano Jr.
One of the great pleasures of my research into Lyndon Johnson was getting to know Joe, Johnson’s top domestic advisor from 1965-69. His highly entertaining, thoughtful memoir is the best description of the Johnson White House I’ve ever read. LBJ becomes alive, and we’re given a ringside seat for his amazing success and dizzying descent.