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Being There by Jerzy Kosinski Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.: 1970 A few months ago I watched one of my favorite movies, Being There (1979), and realized I had never read Kosinski’s novel on which he based his screenplay. If you’re unfamiliar with the storyline, Chance is a simple-minded man living at the townhouse of a […]
To Know a Fly by Vincent G. Dethier Foreword by N. Tinbergen Illustrated by Bill Clark and Vincent Dethier Oakland, California: Holden-Day, Inc., 1962 Although small children have taboos against stepping on ants because such actions are said to bring on rain, there has never seemed to be a taboo against pulling off the legs […]
Brutus: The Noble Conspirator by Kathryn TempestYale University Press, 2017 To a considerable extent this book will examine how Brutus’ life has been recorded and transmitted from antiquity to today: a central contention is that, to appreciate Brutus the man, we must really probe the sources we use, to understand who is speaking and shy. […]
On the Marble Cliffs by Ernst Jünger Translated from the German by Stuart Hood New Directions, 1947 Original publication in German in 1939 From The American Scholar, July 20, 2015: In 1970, the Scholar’s editors polled the literary lights of the day for their opinion on that book published in the past quarter of a […]
Nemesis: Alcibiades and the Fall of Ancient Athens by David StuttardHarvard University Press: April 2018Hardcover, 400 pages From the inside book flap: Alcibiades was one of the most dazzling figures of the Golden Age of Athens. A ward of Pericles and a friend of Socrates, he was spectacularly rich, bewitchingly handsome and charismatic, a skilled […]
Carpenter’s Gothic by William Gaddis Narrated by Nick Sullivan Published by Tantor Audio Running time 9 hrs 34 minsA few years back I posted a brief note on Nick Sullivan’s narration of two of William Gaddis’ novels. Mr. Sullivan was kind enough to email me that his narration of Gaddis’ Carpenter’s Gothic had just been […]
On Grand Strategy by John Lewis GaddisNew York: Penguin Press, 2018 John Lewis Gaddis is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military & Naval History at Yale University. He is best known as an author specializing in the Cold War and grand strategy (six of the ten books shown at his faculty page have “Cold […]
I finally got to see this version of Hamlet, the 2015 filming of National Theatre Live‘s production starring Benedict Cumberbatch in the title role. I had intended to see it twice before, but I had been unable to attend either time (even after buying tickets to one of them). I had a strong sense of […]
A few years ago, the boys and I read Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Eagle of the Ninth, a historical fiction book that looks at the “disappearance” of the Roman Ninth Legion (Legio IX Hispana) from Britain in the second century AD. While we enjoyed the book (and the 2011 movie version, The Eagle), we also looked […]
I received word that David Womack, a true mentor and influence on my life, passed away on July 11, 2018. For someone that had such a huge, giving heart, it’s a sad irony that it was that physical organ that failed him. For a few semesters when I was in college, I lived at his […]