Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed,

or you are the only animal, who can think, who can reason, who can read.

From KCRW, Santa Monica, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today my guest is Nick Tosh's.

He's the author most recently of In the Hand of Dante.

It's a novel from Little Brown. He's the author most recently of In the Hand of Dante. It's a novel from Little Brown.

He's the author as well of some truly remarkable books, my favorite of which is where dead voices gather,

which is purportedly a life of the minstrel Emmett Miller, but is a book about the origins of creativity and how it emerges.

This is a subject that Tosh's has specialized in from his book, Country,

The Twisted Roots of Rock and Roll.

He wrote Hellfire, which was a biography of Jerry Lee Lewis, a biography of Dean Martin.

His essays and poetry and all kinds of invective

are included in the Nick Tosh's reader. He's the author of two previous novels,

Trinities, and Cut Numbers. Now, in this new book in the Hand of Dante, it is discovered that the lost and never-seen manuscript of Dante's Comedia,

the Divine Comedy, has been found in the Vatican Library, stolen by a priest handed to the mafia,

and Tosh's appears in the book to help authenticate

this manuscript whose very value, page by page, is in the millions. It's a sacred and profane

book. When I've had friends pick it up and open it, they look at the first

page and say, this is not the kind of book you do on bookworm. On the other hand, when I eat

in my favorite Italian restaurant, Angelini, the waiters see it, and they say, Dante. Now, it is such a startling range of tones. And I was surprised

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