David McCullough’s 1776 is a masterpiece of writing and historical study. 1776 continues McCullough’s string of excellent books. The book generally covers the time period from when King George III addressed Parliament on the rebellion (October 1775) to the Continental Army’s victories at Princeton, New Jersey (January 1777). McCullough does not provide a blow-by-blow account [...]
Franklin Foer is set to take over as top editor of The New Republic magazine according to this New York Times article: For a small outfit, The New Republic has always gone long on drama. Its changes in leadership have usually arrived in the form of rolling coups or lightning bolts from above. So it [...]
Last week we were talking about futuristic novels that posit “what if” type scenarios and then allow the reader to watch them play out. I noted that this is tricky business. If you push things too far you may lose the reader, but if you don’t push things the resulting plot won’t raise interesting questions [...]
One of the more influential members of the conservative movement in America has died and most Americans likely have never heard his name. Michael S. Joyce, who passed away Friday at the age of 63, was one of the most important philanthropic leaders in America and as such, a crucial leader in the conservative movement. [...]
Before she was a blogger and author Joanne Jacobs was a journalist and columnist. She covered the education beat for over twenty years. In 2001 she began to volunteer at Downtown College Prep (DCP) a San Jose charter school just getting off the ground. DCP’s mission was to take failing area students, predominantly poor Mexican-American [...]
try, try again. This may be a cliche but it is nevertheless good advice. If there are any regrets about the last four years of blogging, and there are some, one is that I haven’t honed my writing skills as much as I would have liked. Periodically I would assert that I was going to [...]
- Robert Birnbaum has a fascinating interview with Andrew Delbanco over the Morning News. Here is a snippet I found thought provoking: RB: You say that the world that Melville came into was close to a medieval world and the world that he left was a world that more closely resembled a modern world. AD: [...]
“What if” or futuristic scenarios are often difficult things to pull off. Plausibility can be tricky thing. I would imagine that deciding how much you can trust the reader to suspend their disbelief is challenge for authors. In order to make people think, and to entertain them at the same time, you have to push [...]
One of the reasons I haven’t posted reviews lately, besides a nagging cold, is I was working on an article for Sports Central. It has now been posted so I can share it with you. It looks back on Super Bowl XL and the debates afterward. Here are a few snippets: If you had told [...]
Interesting comments from Jonah Goldberg over in The Corner on free speech. Worth thinking about. As one of the few defenders of censorship under the age of forty, I think free speech discussions in this country are bass-ackwards. As a culture we defend the most depraved displays as “free speech” but we treat political speech [...]