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, …
I recently reconnected with a friend after 30+ years of separation. While catching up on the lost decades, he eventually revealed his current situation: homebound and dying of non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. His one pleasure left in life, though, is reading: 4-5 books a week, sometimes as many as one a day. …
“Hello, my name is….and I’m a Stones-a-holic.” Since age 11, in the month of June 1965 when I was sentenced to 2 weeks’ purgatory at summer camp, I’ve been an unabashed and unashamed Stones groupie and fan. It was while living in an army-style dormitory with, say, 20 other kids …
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 …
Interior of MacLeod’s Books, Vancouver, B.C. Two weekends ago I visited a retired antiquarian book dealer at his home in North Atlanta, where he continues to sell them via the world wide web. Like a true biblio-holic, books are everywhere: in the basement, living room, kitchen, den, the front foyer, …
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 …
While completing Methland by Nick Reding in record time (unaided by any chemical boosts stronger than caffeine), the crank epidemic/phenomenon/scourge/what-have-you, quickly crystallized for me: meth is the same cheap, potent and highly addictive drug of choice for blue-collar rural whites that crack cocaine is for the ghetto-ized black population. Meth, …
“Harrowing” and “horrific” are poor substitutes to describe the truncated life & times of jazz legend Chet Baker. Like the book’s subject, James Gavin’s probably-definitive biography is addictive and left me ~ during those times when I had to put it down for more mundane pursuits like work or a doctor’s …
