“You see, officer, it was like this…” Ma Joong and Lan Tao-kuei bust a soldier for the old Badger Game. The illustration is from “The Chinese Nail Murders” by Robert van Gulik.

In “The Chinese Nail Murders” by Robert van Gulik, Judge Dee is assigned as magistrate to the Province of Pei-chow, newly liberated from the Mongols by China’s Northern Army, and his two lieutenants, Ma Joong and Chiao Tai, meet and became pals with a national martial arts champion named Lan […]

In today’s busy world, not too many people have the time to read “War and Peace.” It’s a great work about the epic struggle of the Russian people against the invading forces of Napoleon. Ironically, many Russian aristocrats had to take Russian lessons because they were so used to speaking […]

Here are a couple of Bill Mauldin cartoons. Bill was a friend of Ernie Pyle’s.

In early April, 1945, things were going great for Ike and the allies. The Ruhr industrial area of Germany had been surrounded and taken, along with more than 250,000 prisoners. As Winston Churchil put it gleefully, “My dear General, the German is whipped. We’ve got him. He is all through.” […]

When I mentioned that passage in “Slaughterhouse Five” by Kurt Vonnegut the other day, I realized I have not written any entries about Vonnegut. I guess it never occurred to me that there could be anyone who hasn’t read all of Kurt Vonnegut’s books. If you haven’t, you’re lucky, because […]

In my first Armchair Travel entry I noted wistfully that the books of the generation that fought World War II are showing up at rummage sales as they pass away. For example, there’s an edition of “War and Peace” published in 1942 with a map of Russia inside the front […]

I think I talked about the best six bucks I ever spent – for Mary Phylinda Dole’s autobiography “A Doctor in Homespun.” The best five bucks I ever spent was for a set of 24 audio tapes called “The History of Ancient Rome” by Professor Garrett G. Fagan of Pennsylvania […]

Here’s a sample from a book I found for a dollar called “The Oxford Book of Military Anecdotes.” I was actually looking for another interesting anecdote, but every time I do that, I find another one. This one is by someone named Captain Gronow — probably a British soldier. “After […]

The author’s daughter Sarah Banks Hartshorne, when she was 13, found a passage in James Aswell’s book (published in 1951) that Grace Metalious lifted nearly verbatim in her bestseller — nay, blockbuster — “Peyton Place” (published in 1956). Quite the young literary scholar.