Win a Chicago Weekend Get-Away

I can personally vouch that the book's author, Deborah Blum, is someone you actually want to hang out with all weekend. She's a smart, warm, funny woman who happens to be my cousin once removed by marriage. I think that's what you call it. She's also a very accomplished science writer and journalism professor who won't lord her Pulitzer Prize over you at all. In fact, she hardly ever brings it with when giving people tours of Chicago.

Seriously, Deborah is very down to earth and you would not guess she has so many awards and titles to her name when you are chatting with her at a family picnic about raising kids and dogs and the other totally normal stuff she does when she's not writing about poison, ghosts, monkey torture and sex. I also consider her and her husband Peter Haugen mentors and inspirations to me since they were the only writers I knew growing up.

So, you know, I highly advise you go out and win this Chicago weekend package, and if you don't like Deborah as much as I do, hey -- at least you'll still have five hundred bucks.