I took up Armand de Caulaincourt’s With Napoleon in Russia last year and cited a few passages. It’s a day-by-day account of the Russian campaign by a guy who was with Napoleon every day and who rode with him in the famous Berlin coach when Napoleon deserted the army and […]

A while ago I wrote a series about authors who do not disappoint and through sheer negligence I forgot to include Jimmy Breslin. My introduction to Breslin’s work was a column in a New Tork paper where some police officers on New Year’s Day were totalling up the number of […]

When Martin Luther King was blasting white moderates in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, he mentioned five authors who had written about the evils of racial segregation “in eloquent and prophetic terms.” One was Harry Golden, a Jewish writer from New York’s Lower East Side who moved to North Carolina […]

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 originally looked up MLK’s Letter From Birmingham Jail because I wanted to introduce Harry Golden. He’s mentioned by name in that most stirring political document. King is in jail and his fellow clergymen of every denomination, including the local rabbi, are urging people not to support his cause. He […]

In April of 1963, Martin Luther King was in the Birmingham jail for organizing demonstrations when he read a joint statement issued by the clergymen of Birmingham – Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, Epsicopal, you name it – saying the demonstrations were “unwise and untimely” and urging local black people not to […]

How does an ugly rag doll become an elderly barrister’s wife? Well it’s simple, really. First she is used by a nursemaid to frighten a young Englishman, who later writes an epic adventure novel about a mythical sorceress who ahieves immortality and rules over a primitive race of cannibals. When […]

If you see Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond at a rummage sale — grab it. In fact this is one book that’s worth buying from a bookstore. (Don’t tell anyone I said that.) Diamond has an encyclopedic knowledge of biology, archaeology, anthropology and […]

Benvenuto Cellini, while in France, had a model named Caterina “whom I maintain principally for the service of my profession, since I could not do without her,” he explained to his young steward “and whom I also, since I am a man, have employed for my carnal satisfaction.” Benvenuto further […]

While Benvenuvto Cellini was in France, King Francis gave him this big block of apartments to use for his workshops, but Benvenuto had to kick out the nobles who were already living there, some of whom were pretty well conected. He went to the king and said he might have […]