Vladimir Bukovsky passed away this past weekend at the age of 76. Before he was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1976, Bukovsky spent 12 years in prisons, psychiatric hospitals, and labor camps. Vladimir Nabokov said of Bukovsky, “Bukovsky’s heroic speech to the court in defense of freedom, and his five years of martyrdom in […]
Month: 4 years ago
We’re caught in this round of power outages in California. Posting will resume when we have power again.
The documentary film Rosenwald tells the inspiring story of Julius Rosenwald, an immigrant’s son who became CEO of Sears, Roebuck & Company and used his wealth to support equal rights for African Americans during the Jim Crow era. His support of education, the arts, and housing for middle-class African Americans left a legacy that influenced […]
In 1864 during the American Civil War, Union General William T. Sherman began his famous march to the sea. With an army of 60,000 men he swept into the South, destroying Atlanta, Georgia, Columbia, South Carolina, and dozens of smaller towns. His troops plundered homes, destroyed livestock, burned buildings, and left a path of destruction […]
As I’ve noted in several posts, I love seeing books used as props in movies or shows, especially when it’s clear some thought went into what book was going to be in the frame. Here’s an interesting story on how an unpublished book was used as a prop in Avengers: Endgame. When the man who […]
Another semi-recent article I should mention is Address Unknown: the great, forgotten anti-Nazi book everyone must read at The Guardian. There has been numerous blog reviews on the book over the years, and despite positive notes on the book I had never read it. The article title may be a bit overblown, but it did […]
A grab bag of articles I’ve recently enjoyed: “The Puzzles of Thermopylae” by Chris Carey The story is well known and easily told. But the battle throws up a number of lasting puzzles. We have no contemporary account. Our earliest source, Herodotus, began his research perhaps 30 years or more after the event. He had […]
Thanks to Arts & Letters Daily for linking to a review of Ernst Jünger’s recently translated World War II diary A German Officer in Occupied Paris. The article is titled “A Dandy Goes to War”, authored by Michael Lewis. I’ve been interested in Jünger since reading On the Marble Cliffs, probably the strangest book I’ve […]