A multiple book review essay on: Iron and Silk (1987), Mark Salzman Twilight In the Forbidden City (Revised 4th Edition, 2009) Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston River Town: Two Years on…
Back around the late 1800s, when swords were still were still the sidearm choice of “open-carry” and not mere decorations, when soldiers (officer class) hung out with their regiments in…
In the final scene of Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Sheltering Sky (1990), Paul Bowles, the author of the original story is seated in a Tangier café where he greets Kit Moresby…
The algorithm at Amazon.com that knows me better, it seems sometimes, than I know myself, must be a little befuddled these days. Like a shadow it tracks my purchases for…
It’s perhaps a lame verbal pun. But at least it gives you a heads-up on where I might be going with this piece and you can jump off the bus…
Best to lead of with a basic premise: our bodies are like very complex versions of those chemistry sets kids used to get as Christmas or birthday presents when I…
Dear Bill, how’s does it feel to have been the butt of a joke for nine years? FOX News big mouth and bigger ego, Bill O’Reilly, likes to write (well…
Where do you begin when the injustice and hypocrisy of America is so blatant that you want to puke? What’s new or original to be said about a country that…
Preamble: Michael Tomasky recently wrote that “Republicans profit from Americans’ childish hatred of government – and Democrats lose every time by staying silent. [Democrats] need to follow Chuck Schumer’s example…
I probably come off as a bit of a pest with my insistence to my grandchildren that they need to read more books (and write more, but that’s a subject…