Multitalented Author Al Mifflin Lowe ’70 Recommends His Favorite Books

Courtesy of Al Mifflin Lowe ’70

By James Swinehart ’27

Published March 24, 2026

2 min read

When Al Mifflin Lowe ’70 was in seventh grade, he was accused of having his mother write his school assignments for him. But he had, in fact, written the assignment himself, and the false accusation made him wonder if maybe he should consider a future in writing.

Since then, Lowe’s writing career has exhibited all the qualities of a renaissance man. He’s written 15 books, from I Hate Fun, full of tongue-in-cheek adult humor, to The True West, a children’s book highlighting the diverse, hidden figures that shaped the American West. He specializes in picture books, including Dad: the Man, the Myth, the Legend and Art: An Interactive Guide, which can be found in the Princeton University Art Museum Store.

His latest project is developing an animated movie called The Awesome, Amazing, Occasionally Astonishing Adventures of Cowboy Howie. In the film, a biracial boy from New York aspires to be a cowboy and uses his imagination to turn the city’s skyscrapers into the Grand Canyon and dogs into fearsome wolves. Lowe currently lives in Sarasota, Florida and is currently writing Immigrant Nation, about the many cultures in America.

When asked to recommend three books for PAW readers, Lowe recommended these favorites:

Fever dream illustrations of a clown with an 8-ball, a woman with a giant cigarette, and a wolf with its green tongue hanging out.

Money: A Suicide Note

My favorite (favourite?) book. A lot of people are unquestionably going to hate the protagonist’s cynical outlook and loathsome behavior (behaviour?) I don’t care. It makes me laugh. An evil little cackle, I suppose. (Something like “hee hee, snicker, sneer, haw.”) The protagonist and narrator is John Self, whom the book calls a “successful but dissolute London-based director of television commercials.” Self is an overweight, vulgar, and hedonistic character obsessed with pornography, alcohol, fast food, and money. My man!

Illustration of a large monster sleeping under palm trees by water.

Where the Wild Things Are

I was going to pick P.G. Wodehouse as my second favorite. There was a time in my life when I refused to read anything other than Wodehouse — book after book and story after story. It was a somewhat dark, depressed time for me, and I could always count on P.G. to take my trembling little hand and lead me out of the darkness and back into the light with one silly chuckle after another. Who cares if his plots are always the same? The writing is always a hoot.

By the way: P.G. is short for Pelham Grenville. But I can’t really say any one of his books is different from the multitude of others, so I’m going with Where the Wild Things Are. Way back when, I sent Maurice Sendak a story I wrote, Stanley the Bad and he actually wrote back — a terrific letter (handwritten, and I still have it) about how much he liked the story. He encouraged me to keep on writing. In short, Maurice was a wonderful person and Wild Things is a great, unforgettable book to read and, most importantly, to share with the kids in your life.

In A Sunburned Country

Bill Bryson is truly an astonishment. How does he keep writing these virtual encyclopedias that are full of facts (page after page) that still managed to be down to earth, easy to read, engaging and amusing? While he’s written other books like A Short History of Nearly Everything, The Body, Shakespeare, The World as Stage, etc., Sunburned Country is my favorite. Who knew that Australia was home to so many of the world’s most venomous creatures, for instance? Much better than A Walk In The Woods, in my opinion.