I think this excerpt from Charles Dickens’ American Notes shows the lighter side of this sometimes ponderous writer. Because of his reputation as a social reformer, he was given tours of all the prisons, workhouses and insane asylums. This anecdote comes from a visit to an insane asylum in Hartford, […]

One of the chief selling points of my blog has always been that it’s not about me; it’s about the books. But today it has to be because I’ve been tagged by my friend Mridula and the conditions of the tag, as I understand them, are that you have to […]

I mentioned in an earlier entry that when Charles Dickens, back in 1842, asked a chief of the Choctaw who had recently been in Washington what he thought of Congress, the chief replied politely, “It wanted [lacked] dignity in an Indian’s eyes.” Let’s take a look at Dickens’ own observations: […]

I have before me a most remarkable book which was one of a bunch I got for a dollar. It’s a little green book with gilt on the spine. It was published in 1877, according to the title page, which is stamped “Southbridge Public Library – Discarded.” It doesn’t say […]

I’m going to send this passage from Charles Dickens American Notes to the Cairo, Illinois Tourism Bureau; they may want to use it in some of their promotional material: “The scenery as we approached the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, was not at all inspiring in its influence. […]

On his way from Cincinnati to St. Louis in 1842 aboard a steamboat, Charles Dickens met a chief of the Choctaw tribe named Pitchlynn, who was well versed in English and American literature, a fan of Sir Walter Scott and yes! James Fenimore Cooper. Pitchlynn had been visiting Washington “on […]

We had an historic moment at the GoNOMAD Cafe last week when I finally got to meet Sony Stark in person. Sony and I have become good buddies over the last two years working on more than twenty stories on our website. Max and I are both incredibly proud that […]

During the lull in fighting before the invasion of Sicily, Ernie Pyle wrote a series of articles about the WACs (Women’s Army Corps) in Algiers. In The Story of Ernie Pyle, his buddy Lee G. Miller writes about Ernie’s visit to a WAC barracks: The WAC officer who showed him […]

Here’s another selection from Charles Dickens American Notes about his first visit to the US in 1842. He’s in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. In the passage Dickens makes reference to “The Parish Register” by George Crabbe (1807) a poem in which a country clergyman is looking through his registers, and utters the […]

My mom just sent me a book from my grandfather’s library; that would be Charles K. Dickson, a guy who, as I have mentioned, really knew how to be a grandfather. It’s an incredibly interesting book (The Wordly Philosophers by Robert L. Heilbronner) about — economics. I know, I know, […]