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First Sentences

“On the morning of April 20,2001, George Tenet gazed out the glass wall of his seventh-floor suite at the Central Intelligence Agency, looking upon a vision of serenity, tall green trees reaching as far as the eye could see.” Tim Weiner, The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century.

“Behold. Forty-four-year-old him. A low-budget, Black Jack London shivering in the frozen north called Minnesota.” Jason Mott, People Like Us.

“The Bronx is a hand reaching down to pull the other boroughs of New York City out of the harbor and the sea.” Ian Frazier, Paradise Bronx: The Life and Times of New York’s Greatest Borough.

“A prim girl stood still as a fencepost on Rhys Kinnick’s front porch.” Jess Walter, So Far Gone.

“History shows us how to behave.” David McCullough, History Matters (ed. Dorie McCullough Lawson & Michael Hill.)

“The seventeenth century was a tough time to be alive.” Jonathan Healey, The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England, 1603-1689.

“The body floats downstream.” Ariel Lawhon, The Frozen River.

“In 1991, a generational tale of parking’s role in American life began in Solana Beach, California.” Henry Grabar, Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World.

“At least it gives me an excuse for sweating, thought Peter Pascoe, as he scuttled toward the shelter of the first of the two cars parked across the road from number 3.” Reginald Hill, Death Comes for the Fat Man.

“Robert Langdon awoke peacefully, enjoyed the gentle strains of classical music from his phone’s alarm on the bedside table.” Dan Brown, The Secret of Secrets.

“After a hasty exit, I patted myself down, checking my pockets to see whether I had stashed anything useful.” Hannah Carlson, Pockets: An Intimate History of How We Keep Things Close.

“In 1959 Florence Green occasionally passed a night when she was not absolutely sure whether she had slept or not.” Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop.

“On the southern slopes of Mount Zion, alongside the ruins of biblical Jerusalem, lies a small Protestant cemetery.” Tom Segev, One Palestine Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate (translated by Haim Watzman).

“In conversation play, the important thing is to get in early and stay there.” Stephen Potter, Lifemanship: Some Notes on Lifemanship with a Summary of Recent Research in Gamesmanship.

“Every Wednesday afternoon in the laboratory where I used to work, we had an event called journal club.” Chris v. Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: The Science Behind Food that Isn’t Food.

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First Sentences

“In my defense, it was not my intent to write this book.” Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World.

“Before Mazer invented himself as Mazer, he was Samson Mazer, and before he was Samson Mazer, he was Samson Masur—a change of two letters that transformed him from a nice, ostensibly Jewish boy to a Professional Builder of Worlds—and for most of his youth, he was Sam, S.A.M. on the hall of fame of his grandfather’s Donkey Kong machine, but mostly Sam.” Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.

“Millions of people have formulated the wish, often unexpressed, that the lessons learnt from the philosophy of Gamesmanship should be extended to include the simple problems of everyday life.” Stephen Potter, Lifemanship: Some Notes on Lifemanship with a Summary of Recent Research in Gamesmanship.

“Some years ago, there was a boomlet of books about how the Greeks or the Jews or the Scots ‘saved’ or ‘invented’ the world.” Fareed Zakaria, Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present.

“My name is Serena Frome (rhymes with plume) and almost forty years ago I was sent on a secret mission for the British Security Service.” Ian McEwan, Sweet Tooth.

“It was the start of a very important year—1776—and James Cook had become a very important figure, a celebrity, a champion, a hero.” Hampton Sides, The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain Cook.

“On our wedding day I was forty-six, she was eighteen.” George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo.

“The first weekend of my 80 per cent [ultra-processed food] diet was one of those freakish autumn days when summer briefly returns.” Chris v. Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: The Science Behind Food that Isn’t Food.

“There were children, and then there were the children of Indians, because the merciless savage inhabitants of these American lands did not make children but nits, and nits make lice, or so it was said by the man who meant to make a massacre feel like killing bugs at Sand Creek, when 700 drunken men came at dawn with cannons, and then again four years later almost to the day the same way at the Washita River, where afterward, seven hundred Indian horses were rounded up and shot in the head.” Tommy Orange, Wandering Stars

“The reedy and excitable twenty-six-year-old recent Harvard Graduate, full of anticipation, was motoring out to an open field in Potsdam, Germany, to attend a Nazi youth rally.” Rachel Maddow, Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism.

“Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians.” Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.

“When writing about the deep ocean, the first question that arises is: What is it? At what point does the ocean become the deep ocean?” Susan Casey, The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean.