Category: Books
Movie Night: An American Tragedy
“Basically, amoral social climber from poor background seduces poor factory girl, gets her pregnant, wants to marry a rich socialite and so kills poor factory girl by smashing her in the head with his tennis racket and dumping her body in a lake, fakes a canoe accident, trips self up by being basically an idiot, dies in electric chair after mercy is refused by Governor Charles Evans Hughes.”
Movie Night: Desk Set
“Not only is it hilarious, it has fabulous midcentury (ugh, that word) interiors, jokes only librarian/book/research nerds understand, an awesome supporting cast including EMERAC and Kate gets to get blotto and talk about the “Mexican Avenue Bus” (the Lexington Avenue Bus, that is).”
On Crime and Punishment This Fourth of July
“It’s well worth a challenging read-and-think on everyone’s part at this particular moment in the country and society.”
Pocket Guide to France, or, Onward to Parisian Mademoiselles
“You are a member of the best dressed, best fed, best equipped liberating Army now on earth. You are going in among the people of a former Ally of your country. They are still your kind of people who happen to speak democracy in a different language.”
Corporate Power
“Many states whose sovereignty is threatened are now finally waking up to the danger. But is it perhaps already too late to do anything about the seemingly over-mighty corporations?”
Where Are the Bodies? We Have an App for That.
“The information presented is stark and perhaps unsettling.”
No Slope, No False Equivalency. Just the Same. Damn. Thing.
Immoral, indecent, inhumane. … We are running concentration camps and human beings are dying.
The Wages of Sin, America, is …
“It is impossible to engage in intellectual discourse with National Socialist Philosophy. For if there were such an entity, one would have to try by means of analysis and discussion either to prove its validity or to combat it. …”
Random American Notes
“An American gentleman . . . likewise stuck his hands deep into his pockets, and walked the deck with his nostrils dilated, as already inhaling the air of Freedom which carries death to all tyrants, and can never (under any circumstances worth mentioning) be breathed by slaves.”
Finally Entering the Public Domain
We’re finally getting some « spectacular stuff » released into the public domain on New Year’s Day (screw you Disney!).
End of Year Retrospectives: 75 Book Covers
“There are some gems among the 75 Best Book Covers of 2018.”
Robicheaux by James Lee Burke
It’s absorbing, it sometimes makes you flinch, and it’s always about the bottom feeders and sharks of the dark underbelly of the American aquarium, and it always makes for fun reading.
Atomic Poetry
On 1-Jun-1945, six weeks after the death of Franklin Roosevelt, new U.S. President Harry Truman convened a meeting to update
Remembering the Past
Remembering Bill Schock on his 100th birthday … and the 52nd anniversary of Braniff 250 in Falls City. Also …
A Final “Hangin’ Out the Warsh”
«This is Bill’s final column» out of countless ones he wrote over 71 years for the Falls City Journal. With
More Grief
This is kind of like how I feel about my (possibly four) upcoming surgeries: I don’t want to do this,
History as Prophecy
I have been attempting to read «Michael Burleigh’s The Third Reich: A New History» since it came out in 2000. Instead, I’ve read «William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich» twice. Nothing wrong with anything I’ve read of Burleigh’s work; quite the contrary. In fact, it has to do with how big the book is; the first edition is 950-plus pages and weighs a ton and I’ve had hand/wrist problems since, well, 2000. And I have Rise and Fall on Kindle.
Braniff 250 Book Housecleaning
Just some housekeeping: For those of you I met in Falls City, I'm posting this link in case I've missed
Books Arriving Soon
Just a note to any of your wonderful Falls City people who were so gracious to order the book, it's