John Thornton is a literary agent with The Spieler Agency. John has been with the Spieler Agency since 1994, after a thirty-year career as an editor, publishing executive and editorial director of the Book-of-the-Month Club. Though he does not handle fiction projects, his nonfiction tastes are eclectic. They fall along two axes: excellent writing and high-quality subject matter. Of late his clients have written on topics such as memoir (Richard Lischer, Stations of the Heart, recollections of losing a beloved adult child), biography (Phillip Schewe, Maverick Genius, a life of Freeman Dyson), natural history (Richard Conniff, The Species Seekers, a history of manÕs searches to record life on Earth; a history of YaleÕs Peabody Museum of Natural History, forthcoming), social issues (Ira Rosofsky, Nasty, Brutish, and Long, a psychologistÕs memoir of life in the eldercare business), consumer guidebooks (Carol Levine, Long-Term Care for DummiesÑsheÕs a MacArthur Fellow), history (Thomas Madden, Venice: A New History; a history of Istanbul, forthcoming), belles lettres (Susan Cahill, The Hidden Gardens of Paris), spirituality (Heidi Neumark, Breathing Space, her two decades of pastoring in the South Bronx; a memoir of her newly discovered German-Jewish heritage, Googling Moses, forthcoming), cultural history (George Cotkin, Dive Deeper: Journeys with Moby-Dick), among various others.