The Eighties and Nineties saw a frenzy of prosecutions across the country of day care center operators accused of sexually abusing children in their care, the most infamous being the McMartin family of Manhattan Beach, California. In a 2003 book I just ran across in a thrift store, No Crueler …
In recent years, I’m drawn to stories of self-sacrifice and grace under pressure (as the author whose name inspired this site defined courage), most markedly when revealed in time of war. The military nurses whose story is now preserved for the ages in We Band of Angels by Elizabeth Norman …
Firing off first impressions: the manifesto succeeds only in creating more details to quibble and argue over, rather than allow reasonable law abiding people to form a consensus on any underlying motive: the shooter was a communist, then he was an anarchist, later on even a libertarian (!), now he’s …
Matthew Algeo’s entertaining and irresistible account of the Trumans’ 19-day road trip just after leaving the presidency in 1953 triggered a unique combination of reactions as soon as I put it down: tears at the elegiac ending and an almost uncontrollable urge to rent an RV and hit the road, …
Big news in the publishing world the last month has been rumblings about the “imminent” (now confirmed) demise of the conser… — scratch that — neoconservative “flagship” (ingrained chutzpah would tolerate nothing less) known as The Weekly Standard. It sprang to life 23 years ago, in near lockstep with its …
Col. Kurtz’s dying words “the horror, the horror” resonated with me time after time while reading this mesmerizing and (at times) emotionally overpowering work on the French Revolution (which most history books date from 1789-1799). The period that captured my imagination as a child and has always held the most …
Reading this article brought on an epiphany, or else confirmed something I had long held subconsciously but never acknowledged. People who thrive in national politics are a different species of animal who think, breath and do nothing else 24/7/365, who can, as F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said, hold 2 opposing …
