The Solomon Scandals A Washington newspaper novel by David Rothman

Bio

David Roth­man grew up in the D.C. area, went to the Uni­ver­sity of North Car­olina and worked as a reporter for the Jour­nal in Lorain, Ohio, where he cov­ered poverty and pub­lic hous­ing and was a fea­ture writer. Among other sto­ries, Roth­man chron­i­cled the after­math of the Kent State mas­sacre, which actu­ally comes up in The Solomon Scan­dals, even though this is by far a Wash­ing­ton novel.

Related dis­tantly to the late Hol­ly­wood scriptwriter Arnold Bel­gard, Roth­man is the author of six non­fic­tion books on technology-related top­ics and lives with his wife, Carly, in Alexan­dria, Vir­ginia. He founded Tel­eRead, a pop­u­lar site devoted to libraries and technology.

See The Jonathan Stone-David Roth­man Q. & A. for more about his real-life adven­tures inves­ti­gat­ing the Gen­eral Ser­vices Admin­is­tra­tion and Sen. Abra­ham Ribicoff’s secret invest­ment in a GSA-leased build­ing hous­ing some CIA activ­i­ties. Ribi­coff was a close friend of Charles E. Smith, a major GSA contractor.

In Scan­dals as a North­ern Vir­ginia Jew­ish novel, you can read Rothman’s reflec­tions on grow­ing up Cho­sen in the Old Domin­ion. And in Scan­dals’ ori­gins, you can learn how Scan­dals came to be writ­ten as fiction.

Jonathan Stone, Scan­dals’ not-so-shy pro­tag­o­nist, has requested that the spot­light be on him for now, so we’ll stop.

Update, Sept. 2, 2009: Psst! Don’t tell Stone, but a UK Web site recently ran a 3,000-word inter­view with Roth­man cov­er­ing top­ics rang­ing from lit­er­ary influ­ences to his thoughts on Scan­dals as  movie fod­der, which a Golden Globe judge believes it should be.

Update, April 18, 2010: On learn­ing that Scan­dals would be required read­ing in a his­tory course at George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­sity, Stone relented some­what and actu­ally did a sec­ond Q & A with Roth­man: Henry Adams and the Edu­ca­tion of David Roth­man.

Con­tact infor­ma­tion: Here.

• Robert H. Smith dead: Son of the builder who helped inspire the Solomon character
• Google neighbors: A few words on David Bruce Smith and me
• The Solomon Scandals: A BRIEF video introduction
• ‘David Rothman’ namesakes: Egosurfers, here’s what the rest of us are up to
• Good-bye, Sen. Kennedy