As I recall, the wacky premise of the famous movie “The Terminator” was that the robots, that is, the mechanical creations of mankind, had assumed a will of their own and were bent on destroying their creators. That may come to pass in due time, but I doubt it for […]
I guess anyone who reads makes literary and historical friends: people you like, whose stories are interesting to you and kind of reach out and grab you. Sometimes you get a sense of someone from reading what they wrote or what others wrote about them, so your mind can kind […]
All winter I’ve been caught up in The Five of Hearts by Patricia O’Toole, a chronicle of the life and friendship of Henry Adams, Marian “Clover” Adams, John Hay, Clara Hay, and the enigmatic “fifth heart” Clarence King. Their lives are fascinating, their friendships are inspiring, and their circle of […]
Here are some passages from a Chinese play that my friend Edward and I have been laughing about for many years. It’s called ‘Autumn in the Palace of Han’ by Ma Chih-yuan. We found it in an anthology of Chinese literature edited by Cyril Birch. The funniest character is a […]
I’m having a great time rereading The Proud Tower, Barbara Tuchman’s book about Europe and America at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. What we used to call the turn of the century. Two world wars and an industrial revolution have changed the landscape […]
I’m nearly finished with a fascinating work about Nat Turner’s 1831 slave rebellion: The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner’s Fierce Rebellion by Stephen B. Oates. I’d like to leave aside the controversy over William Styron’s fictional account of the rebellion, The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967) which was very […]
I called my friend Edward tonight, and we laughed and laughed. We laughed about his girlfriend Helene, who died of cancer, about her writing people into her will in her last days and then writing them out. Helene cheated Edward out of thousands of dollars and took possession of the […]
In his book ‘The Face of Battle,’ Howard Keegan quotes an account by Lieutenant W.P. Joynt, which was included in The Official Australian History of the Great War (that would be World War I). Lieutenant Joynt, during the Battle of Ypre, came upon a circle of Australian soliders surrounding a […]
I was deeply moved by the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of John Kennedy’s assassination. The films and reminiscences of his administration transported me back to a world of childhood innocence, evoking all kinds of wonderful memories. And then we came to the shock and grief of his death and […]
I’ve been having great fun reading ‘The Course of Honor’ by Lindsey Davis about the Roman Emperor Vespasian and his girlfriend Antonia Caenis. Davis is the author of the murder mystery series set in Rome that features Marcus Didius Falco. ‘The Course of Honor’ is not a mystery, but rather […]