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Blog postIn the spring of 1776, a secret plot by British Loyalists was uncovered by American rebel patriots. The primary target was the leader of the Continental Army and the personal embodiment of the uprising against the British: General George Washington.
Among the accused were several of Washington's personal bodyguards called the Life Guards, an early version of today's Secret Service. The plot, as we know, was thwarted before anyone could harm Washington, but what may be surpris -
Blog postRobert Hanssen was one of the most damaging spies in the history of the United States. Apparently, he had read Kim Philby’s autobiography at a young age and had been thinking of this “career path” for a long time.
Eventually he was hired by the FBI and was given access to all sorts of secrets Russia would just love to discover—such as the names of Russians who were secretly working for the CIA. Hanssen delivered—for a price. He gave them names and information in exchange for a total of abo -
Blog postA Great Strategy If All Are Willing to Fight For It
By Stephen Leary
Despite all odds, political outsider Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016. But now he faces hostility from both Democrats and the GOP Establishment alike. How to push forward with his agenda when he faces enemies all around him in the Washington DC Swamp?
David Horowitz, in his book, Big Agenda: President Trump's Plan to Save America, tells us that Republicans aren’t interested in winning. They aren’t even -
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Blog postPresident Trump faces an army of enemies on the political Left and Right, all warring against a democratically-elected president they feel is unworthy of the office. Edward Klein’s book draws on interviews with many players who provide new enlightening information on the unprecedented war waged against a President of the United States. But Trump is no easy opponent to defeat. As Klein says, his enemies always underestimate his ability to bounce back after a beating.
Trump’s v -
Blog postThe Message Is Like a SciFi B Movie
I was drawn to "The Message" by the intriguing subject matter, which crops up in the news periodically. A purported message to Earth from intelligent aliens living on a planet light years away from us.
I listened to all the episodes despite some shortcomings. The problem is the script, not the voice actors. I felt like I was listening to the audio version of a science fiction B movie. The IT and science talk is nonsense, but -
Blog postProspero’s Party
This is a short story but somehow it seems like a novel, since Poe packed so much into just a few words.
A plague is devastating the country and half the population is dead. So how does Prince Prospero respond? He gathers 1,000 of his friends and secludes them in his abbey, which he believes will protect them all from the Red Death. His friends willingly go there, accepting Prospero as their guardian.
But Prospero has no intention of waiting fearfully for the R -
Blog postThe Wild West in the 1860s. And it was getting pretty wild in Confusion, the brand new town that sprouted up real quick when some promising gold mines were discovered nearby and everybody wanted a piece of the action. Confusion was somewhere between Ely, Nevada and Delta, Utah. Still open country today, long after L’Amour (1908-1988) wrote The Empty Land in 1969.The three miners who founded the town were good men. “We want a church and school. We want law and order.”
What would they -
Blog postMy book review of Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire on Amazon:
Pale Fire is a novel in the guise of an academic commentary on a 999-line poem by the same name. The poem was ostensibly written by John Shade and the commentary written by his neighbor and colleague Charles Kinbote after Shade’s death.
But as with most Nabokov novels, things aren’t as simple as that. Kinbote may not be the ex-king of Zembla as he claims but the alter ego of Shade’s insane colleague Professor Botkin. But did e -
Blog postHere is my review of John Updike's book More Matter: Essays and Criticism. On Amazon:
More Matter is a collection of essays and criticism from the 1990s. The bulk of the text addresses literature, but Updike touches other topics, such as art, movies, and politics.
This doorstop of a book reaches 900 pages with several to spare, but nowhere in this entire tome do I ever feel that Updike is padding his writing, or going through the motions, or falling from his horse Pegasus, losing in -
Blog postHere is my review of John Cheever's book The Enormous Radio and Other Stories.
On Amazon:
In this collection are 14 short stories from the late 1940s to the early 1950s which had appeared separately in New Yorker magazine, which became a showcase of Cheever’s rare talent. In these stories, Cheever is seen abandoning his early realism in favor of introducing an element of fantasy into his narratives.
His characters seem unprepared and unsatisfied with life in the b -
Blog postMy book review of Magic and Mystery: The Incredible Psychic Investigations of Houdini and Dunninger.
On Amazon:
Harry Houdini (1874-1926) is remembered as the world’s greatest escape artist. Joseph Dunninger (1892-1975) was a mentalist largely forgotten now but who was extremely famous in the 1930s and 1940s. He was a precursor of The Amazing Kreskin. Both were debunkers of fake spirit mediums.
The first half of the book contains articles and letters to and from H -
Blog postPresident Obama is off for another vacation in Martha's Vineyard, and his "summer reading list" has just been announced. My immediate reaction is:Who picked out these books for Obama?What kind of books did Obama indicate he wanted?What's the real point of releasing this list to the public?Will Obama actually read these books?Does Obama have a secret reading list hidden from the public?What books should be on Obama's list?Here is the list:All That Is by James SalterAll the Light We Cann
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Blog postDartmouth University has announced a "Turing Test in Creativity" wherein a panel of judges will attempt to determine if a short story or poem was written by a robot or a human.
Computers are already better than humans at many things, such as chess. But in the realm of creativity, humans still reign supreme. The typical human reaction of robot supremacy over humans in any field is one of fear rather than happiness or relief.
Apparently robots are already writin -
Blog postMuch ink has been spilled lately over the blood of Cecil the Lion, killed by an American safari hunter/dentist in Zimbabwe.
In 1935, Ernest Hemingway wrote The Green Hills of Africa, a nonfiction novel published 30 years before Truman Capote kindled a literary genre with In Cold Blood.
Hemingway recounted a safari trip to Africa and his killing of a lion. It wasn't named Cecil, but what's in a name anyway. A lion by any other name is just as dangerous. What's it like to -
Blog postA "long lost" short story written by F. Scott Fitzerald has been found. The story is called "Temperature" and was written in 1939, long after Fitzgerald's star had faded.
He had mailed it himself to the Saturday Evening Post, but it was rejected. Is it any good? Readers of The Strand can read it now; it will appear online in 3 months. The Strand specializes in mystery stories, but apparently this isn't one.
How was this lost story found? The managing -
Blog postImpossible Cafes #1
I write at several different cafes in my area, most of them Starbucks. I have a favorite table at one of them, right next to a large window and the parking lot. Lately I've been writing my upcoming novel "Drone Fever" and a short story called "Daybreak" while there. I'm often there in the mornings. But I had gone elsewhere one day.
So when I returned the day after, I was surprised to see a large piece of cardboard where a wi -
Blog postAmazon sold its first book in July 1995, Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies by Douglas Hofstadter. They have now posted a list of their bestselling books for every year from 2015 (so far) going back to 1995. Here are the top books for each year:2015 Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee2014 StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath2013 StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath2012 Fifty Shades of Grey: Book One of the Fifty Shades Trilogy by E L James2011 Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson2010 The Girl Who Kicked the Horn
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Blog postThe New York Times isn't the newspaper it was in the old days. Today, its editorial and news outlook is something like a far-left blog. The radicals have taken over. It's not independent but is part of the Democrat Party. It almost seems illegitimate that it should have the same name as it did in days gone by.
The latest example of so many: Ted Cruz is a conservative running for the Republican Party presidential nomination. He has written a new book called "A Time for Truth.&qu -
Blog postIt's strange how so many bestselling novelists of the 20th century have been almost completely forgotten.
I was reminded of this truth today after looking through Daniel Immerwahr's webpage "The Books of the Century: 1900-1999."
Winston Churchill hasn't been forgotten, but how many would remember him as a writer of several bestselling novels from 1900-1915.
Harold Bell Wright was the first American to sell 1 million copies of a novel and the first -
Blog postI'm pretty sure I admired Nelson Shanks' portrait of President Bill Clinton at the National Portrait Gallery several years ago, not long after the museum first displayed it to the public. It stood nearby paintings of his contemporaries: George HW Bush, Reagan, and Carter.
It's rare for a painting to make news headlines, except when sold for record prices, but this one did when the artist announced he had included the shadow of Monica Lewinsky's dress on the mantel.
What -
Blog postUPDATE 3/2/15: The BBC reports: 2nd Book of 'Lost' Sherlock Holmes Story Found, Signed By Conan Doyle.
With Conan Doyle's signature on one of the books containing the 'lost' story, it seems likely he wrote it, despite the reservations of Sherlockians.
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Last week I wrote about an unknown Sherlock Holmes story that has been found after all these years ("Unknown Sherlock Holmes Story from 1903 Found").
The authorship of the story -
Blog postSir Arthur Conan Doyle apparently wrote a short story clocking in at only 1,300 words, starring Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in 1903 on the occasion of raising money for a bridge near Scotland that was washed away by a great flood in 1902.
The story is titled "Discovering the Border Burghs, and By Deduction, the Brig Bazaar." The full-text can be found here.
The short, somewhat self-parodic story has Sherlock Holmes explaining how it is he knows Dr. Watson i -
Blog postFamous authors counsel aspiring writers to "find a quiet place to write."
I've been searching for this proverbial quiet place my entire adult life and haven't found it. That's why I stopped looking for it.
Most people, like myself, live in big cities, and therefore so do most writers. Noise is a common feature of modern city living. Many people live in apartments and condos. People live in close proximity to others. Noise is a common feature no matter where -
Blog postGareth Williams was a British spy who worked for MI6. He was found dead in his London apartment on August 23, 2010. Williams’ body was discovered naked inside a locked North Face bag placed in his bathtub. Many news stories have speculated on how he died, and the exact cause is still hotly debated. 3 plausible explanations:
Killed Himself AccidentallyKilled by a Personal FriendKilled by a Foreign Intelligence Agency
Theory 1: Killed Himself Accidentally
It has been prov -
Blog postUpdated 5/7/12
Here is a selection of noteworthy spy novels published in 2012:
Caplan, Thomas M. The Spy Who Jumped Off the Screen.
Ty Hunter is a former military intelligence officer who becomes Hollywood’s top leading man (bet there haven’t been many of those). The president recruits him to save the world from nuclear disaster. Reviews have been positive; Library Journal compares Caplan to Ian Fleming, wow! The WaPo highlights Bill Clinton’s intro, as you would
