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LESLIE SILBERT
HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF
AT THE ANNUAL MEETING IN SAN DIEGO, LESLIE SILBERT, AUTHOR OF THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING HISTORICAL NOV- THE INTELLIGENCER, IMPARTED TWO POINTS OF PARTICULAR NOTE IN HER HEARTFELT REMINISCENCES REGARDING HER
“INTERNATIONAL BEST SELLER” IS, PARADOXICALLY, AMONG THE LOWEST RUNGS ON THE LITTLE-UNDERSTOOD BESTSELLER LADDER; AND, SECOND, THAT THE UNITED STATES IS NOW CONFRONTED WITH HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF IN AN ENLIGHT- ENING, ALBEIT UNSETTLING, WAY.
Those of us who have never written a book that has vied for a position on the New York Times bestseller list, but who routinely select our leisure reading on that basis, have likely paid little heed to the breadth and variety of titles that achieve the coveted “best- seller” accolade. Nor is there any particular need for us to do so.
Leslie informed us that to earn “international best seller” the book simply has to make a list of best sellers in two or more countries, which the Intelligencer managed in Germany and one much smaller country.
Leslie graduated from Harvard in 1998 with a degree in the His- tory of Science. She’d spent the spring of her junior year abroad, reading Elizabethan drama at Oxford, and was so taken with the subject - particularly the playwright and spy, Christopher Mar- lowe - that she enrolled in Harvard’s graduate program to further immerse herself in the Renaissance. Taking a blend of history, history of science and literature courses, she focused on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century ideas about curiosity and the pursuit of forbidden knowledge. Following school, Leslie worked as a private investigator.
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