Jonathan F. Putnam
Aside from the opportunity to hawk my books that the outdoor market at Manalapan has afforded me, it has been it has been a thoroughly enriching experience for the fascinating, and sometimes illustrious, people I have met.
On Sunday, I met several authors, including a Lake Worth woman who holds a doctorate in history.
Two of the authors, who visited Plaza del Mar with family members, were distinguished individuals to whom I had the pleasure of narrating a synopsis, and background for, my current novel, Murder in Palm Beach: The Homicide That Never Died. They were Jonathan F. Putnam and his father, Robert D. Putnam, a renowned social scientist. The entire Putnam entourage couldn’t have been more congenial and affable.
Jonathan writes historical fiction and has been named one of the nation’s top 50 trial lawyers under age 45, which followed his magna cum laude graduation from Harvard University Law School.
Jonathan is an Abraham Lincoln aficionado, and his two latest novels center on the great American president. These Honored Dead was published in August 2016, and received an accolade from Doris Kearns Goodwin, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian: “Splendid … one of the most enjoyable works of fiction I have read in a long time.” In July, Perish From the Earth: A Lincoln & Speed Mystery, was released. Both books have garnered strong reviews.
Robert D. Putnam
Robert D. Putnam, President Obama
His father, Robert, is professor of public policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and the author of 11 notable books on socio-political issues. His most famous work is Bowling Alone, published in 2000. It described a wholesale collapse in civic, social, political and other aspects of American life since the 1960s. (An article he co-published in 2010 observed that the trend had reversed.) Similarly, his first book on social capital, the 1993 Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy, argues that social cohesion among populations fosters democracy and institutional strength.
His 2016 book, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, explores the inequality of opportunity in the United States. Those and his other books have received considerable acclaim.
Dr. Putnam has been a consultant to the last four U.S. presidents, and has been honored in numerous ways. Wikipedia devotes reams of information about him.
History carried the day at the plaza. The two aforementioned authors focus on subjects related to our country’s history, and Murder in Palm Beach delves into a sensational murder that occurred in the posh town in 1976. Another author with a background in history, Dr. Madeleine H. Burnside, stopped by to chat and buy a copy of Murder.
U.S. Senator John McCain
Orginally from England, the Lake Worth woman taught at the college level in the United States for some years, and worked in various museums. Her nonfiction book Spirits of the Passage, an account of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, was published 20 years ago, and is now out of print, she said. Burnside writes a weekly blog, The Sanity Papers (sanitypapers.com), which deals mainly with left-wing politics. A recent one lauded Sen. John McCain as a hero not just from the Vietnam War, but for his courageous opposition to President Trump’s deplorable ways of governing (or nongoverning).
The artisanal market at the plaza in Manalapan is in transition as construction of a new Publix supermarket proceeds. The market is expected to resume shortly.