An author reflects on his past, his place, and his craft

Russo, Richard.  Life and Art: Essays.  New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2025.  ISBN:

        9780593802168

 

Are you interested in what makes a writer write?  What demons or angels perch on his or her shoulders and whisper in their ears words of encouragement or discouragement?  Some authors are willing to take the reader behind that curtain where the sausage is made and discuss their process.  Other authors are more willing to talk about what inspired them to write a particular story or novel.  Richard Russo is more of the latter in this volume of essays.

 

Part 1 of this collection  - Life - has essays dealing with his life, his parental relationships and how those shaped his life and his writing.  He warns folks to be wary of writers since they are often guilty of taking events that they witness and using them as fodder for their stories.  He pleads guilty to that fact in regard to a number of his books.  He also reveals family events and interactions during the essays to make a point with the reader.  

 

Then in Part - Art - Russo discusses both the craft and the storytelling aspects of  writing.  He elucidates on using other folks lives in his stories, how the order of words affects the message being delivered, and then has fun discussing books, movies, and the art of turning one into the other.

 

So if you are looking for one author's perspective on a varied number of topics, feel free to pick up and peruse Richard Russo's Life and Art!  

 

Do you belong to a cult?

Borden, Jane.  Cults Like Us: Why Doomsday Thinking Drives America.  New York: Atria/One 

         Signal Publishers, 2025.  ISBN: 9781668007808  

 

Do you self identify as American? Do you hold to the so-called "American Dream" however you define it?  Mind you the "American Dream" is aspirational, not reality.  Do you hold that following particular rules will lead to wealth and prosperity?   Or do you believe that only the "chosen" will succeed and be blessed with wealth?  In Cults Like Us, Jane Borden takes these concepts and more in a deep dive into a variety of organizations and movements to try and make the case for all Americans being infected with cult-like thinking with specifics being provided..

 

Jane Borden opens the book with an alternative view of Columbus's reasons for discovering the New World then segueing into the Separatists/Pilgrim's voyage in 1620.  She conflates the Separatists and later Puritan settlers beliefs and practices into the Protestant work ethic that some claim infects the core American values.  She then uses various aspects of group psychology as placeholders to examine various cults.

 

The meat of the book is Jane Borden's dive into various cults and cult adjacent groups of various flavors.  There is the Church Universal and Triumphant, Christian Nationalism, the Oneida Community and related communes of the 1800s, the manifest destiny myth, the various "hidden rulers" conspiracy theorists (think Deep State these days), anti-intellectualism, rural/urban identity clashes, personal growth scams such as Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness (M.S.I.A) and NXIVM which had roots with Phineas P. Quimby and Mary Baker Eddy are covered in several chapters..  Amway and other multilevel marketing organizations have their own chapter.  Then there is the chapter populated with us-vs-them cults such as the Nuwaubians, the Moonies, Scientology, and Heaven's Gate.  The final chapter looks at compensatory control groups through the lens of Love Has Won, the American monomyth, and the Internet.  

 

If you are looking for examples of how cults have shaped and are still shaping American culture, pick up Jane Borden's Cults Like US, but don't expect step-by-step solutions.  Those you need to figure out for yourself.  

 

June 1944 and the 82nd Airborne!

Donovan, James.  Nothing But Courage: The 82nd Airborne's Daring D-Day Mission and Their 

        Heroic Charge Across the La Fiere Bridge.  New York: Caliber, 2025.  ISBN: 9780593184875 

D-Day 1944 France.  Before the soldiers landed on the Normandy beaches, soldiers of the U.S. 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions and the British 6th Airborne Division dropped in from the skies.  Nothing But Courage covers the 82nd Airborne's fight during the first few days of the Normandy Campaign.  

James Donovan structured Nothing But Courage in four parts.  Part I: The Plan discusses the  original mission and the last-minute change that likely saved a number of paratrooper's lives. Part I also introduces the paratroopers and locations that were key to victory.  

 

Part II: The Drop looks at how the paratrooper's experience differed depending upon what drop they were in.  Some landed in swampland, some right on top of a target and only one group landed pretty much exactly where they had planned on.  Weather, speed, and pilot skills played a major role in the scattering of the troopers.  Mind you, this scattering really confused the Germans as shown by the slowness of their reaction.

 

Part III: The Battle concentrates on the different conflicts the 82nd Airborne were conducting.  There was the fight for Sainte-Mere-Eglise, the battle for Le Manoir La Fiere, the initial fight for the Cauquigny causeway and bridge, and the attempted rescue of various isolated paratroopers. 

Part IV: The Bridge and Beyond concentrated on the charge by various groups across the Cauquigny causeway that finally pushed the Germans back and allowed the forces from Utah Beach to stream out and cut off the Germans in the Cherbourg.

 

In Nothing But Courage, James Donovan brings the reader down into the action with the judicious use of first person perspective along with narrative that ties everything together.  He also provides limited insight from German first person accounts that provides perspectives.  If the reader is interested in small unit actions, D-Day, or airborne operations, they should pick up Nothing But Courage!

Axe Murders Through the Ages!

James, Rachel McCarthy.  Whack Job: A History of Axe Murder.  New York: St. Martin's Press, 

         2025.  ISBN: 9781250276735

 

Axe murders are murders done by an axe, right?  Simple definition, one would think, but as Rachel James makes clear over the course of Whack Job, nothing is simple.  Axe murder entered the headlines in the late 1800s, but the phrase still catches attention today.  So if you are interested in examples of axe murders through the ages, read on!

 

James opens with an explanation of the hat brim rule of skull damage and uses that with Cranium 17 from La Sima de los Huesos which had holes in its skull that indicated it had likely been murdered by a hand axe 43,000 years ago.  Chapter 2 skipped ahead to Seqwnenre Tao who worked on liberating Egypt from the Hyksos invaders but met his fate under an axe blade.  Chapter 3 skips over to China with the burial of Quen Fu Hao of the Shang dynesty and her four axes and ritual deaths.  Chapter 4 discusses Croesus's threats to the city of Lampsacus, the role of tyrants in the past and an axe used to strike down a son a generation later.  Chapter 5 ships over to North America with the tale of Freydis Eriksdottir killing fellow Norsemen.  Chapter 6 narrates England's HenryVIII and the role axes played in the execution of traitors.  Chapter 7 brings in George Washington, the beginning of the French and Indian War,  and the roles played by hatchets and tomahawks in settling North America.  Chapter 8 tells the story of William Tillman, a black cook, who took back a ship captured by Confederate  pirates during the American Civil War.  Chapter 9 relates infamous tale of Lizzie Bordon who songwriters claim "gave her father forty whacks."  Chapter 10 discusses the murders of Frank Lloyd Wright's family at Taliesin near Spring Green (IL).  Chapter 11 supplies the story behind the murder of 6-year-old Linda Glucoft by the grandfather of her playmate.  Chapter 12 has a sordid tale of how Betty Gore was killed in Dallas (TX) by the mistress of her husband.  James ends the book with a final case - Mario Markworth who killed 2 men in 2019 in Kansas City (MO) with an axe.

 

If you are interested in examples of how axes have been used in killings over the centuries, Whack Job will whet your desire to find out more about these cases.  Rachel James gives you plenty of examples in Whack Job along with her sources so that you can check out the details for yourself.  So go forth and read!

 

Was there a real Miss Moneypenny?

Hubbard-Hall, Claire.  Secret Servants of the Crown: The Forgotten Women of British 

          Intelligence.  New York: Citadel Press, 2025.  ISBN: 9780806543710

 You know the scene from the James Bond movies - Bond enters or leaves M's office and interacts with Miss Moneypenny.  But was Miss Moneypenny based on a real person?  That is what Secret Servants of the Crown seeks to answer along with a number of other questions regarding the role of women in MI5 and MI6 during World War I and II.

 

Hubbard-Hall opens the book with Kathleen Pettigrew who was most likely the inspiration for Miss Moneypenny.  She was the secretary for three heads of MI6 before she retired in 1958.  She had witnessed the apprehension of Mata Hari during World War I, World War II, and the unmasking of Kim Philby.  

Hubbard-Hall then spends several chapters dealing with the roles played by women during World Wat I and the birth of MI5 and MI6 as separate entities.  There were the Lunn Sisters who spied for England in Russia and then one spied for Russia in England after the war.  Then there was the case of Olga Gray who went undercover to prevent Soviet agents from obtaining plans for a top secret weapon.  During World War II, women served in both MI5 and MI6 in England and overseas.  They were part of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) with various female agents dying during operations in occupied territories.  Then there were Rita Winsor and Ena Molesworth who traveled from Geneva across France during the German invasion to the Spanish border and then on to their new post in Lisbon.  After the war the pair set up a travel agency - International Services -  that would take high-end tourists to a variety of countries especially Soviet Union, and China.  Besides the exploits of individual members of MI5 and MI6, Hubbard-Hall outlines the behind-the-scenes work played by many in running the various indexing systems crucial to the organizations, the code-braking and the training of agents.  

So if the reader is interested in a behinds the screen look at British intelligence during the first half of the Twentieth Century, he or she should pick up Secret Servants of the Crown and find out what was actually happening!

 

The Decisive Year - Spring 1864-Spring 1865

Ellsworth, Scott.  Midnight on the Potomac: The Last Year of the Civil War, The Lincoln 

        Assassination, and The Rebirth of America.  New York: Penguin Random House, 2025.  

        ISBN: 9780593475614

 

Are you interested in American history, especially American Civil War history?  Can you name in detail what all happened during the the last 12 months of that war?  How much do you know about all the conspiracies, plots, and personalities involved on both sides?  If you do not, Scott Ellsworth has a deal for you with his book Midnight on the Potomac!

 

Scott Ellsworth organized Midnight on the Potomac in the style of a play with three acts, two intermissions, and an afterword.  Act One covered Grant's move south to The Wilderness and on to Spotsylvania and then Petersburg, the Jubal Early invasion that almost took Washington, a look at President Lincoln, the growing number of contrabands around Washington, and the nadir of Lincoln's chances for reelection.  The First Intermission was a visit to Richmond (VA) with a look at the morale and fighting spirit of the South.  Act Two opens with conspiracies and plots being hatched around Lake Erie and in Canada and the introduction of the Booth family with their conflicted loyalties.  Atlanta falls to Sherman and he heads east to the sea.  Plots are hatched and activated to kidnapped President Lincoln before Election Day (November 8, 1865) and to to burn down New York City.  The Second Intermission was a look at Christmastime in Washington and Richmond.  Act Three opens with Lewis Powell who hailed from Florida in Washington trying for a shot at Lincoln while blacks joined the Union army and others pushed for basic civil rights such as education.  Booth was still trying to kidnap Lincoln when Lincoln gave his 2nd Inaugural Address on a rainy March day.  Then there was the visit by Lincoln to City Point  (VA) to confer with General Grant which led to April 2, 1865 with the final assault on Petersburg followed quickly by the fall of Richmond and the chase of  the Army of Virginia that ended at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865.  Then Booth got his shot at eternal infamy when he assassinated Lincoln on April 14, 1865.The Third Act ends with a summary of the end of the Civil War and the chase for Booth and his co-conspirators. The Aftermath opens with an interview of D. W. Griffith and Walter Huston on the making of The Birth of a Nation  and then goes on to highlight the twisting of historical events in the service of The Lost Cause, the legacies  of John Wilkes Booth and Abraham Lincoln along with all who served and died to preserve the Union and set the country free.

 

So if you want to learn about the end of the American Civil War with all its warts and triumphs, pick up Scott Ellswoth's Midnight on the Potomac and dive in! 

Blame Texas, and Maybe the South!

Burrough, Bryan.  The Gunfighters: How Texas Made the West Wild.  New York: Penguin Press, 

        2025.  ISBN: 9781984878908

 

 

Do the names Wild Bill Hickok, Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, and Luke Short ring a bell with you?  Or maybe the Shootout at the O.K. Corral?  Or just about any western novel or movie which has a gunfight (High Noon) or gunslinger as a hero (Louis L'Amour's The First Fast Draw).  Well Bryan Burrough makes a case for blaming Texas and its exports of shootists, gunmen, and "range detectives" for the violence that swept the West after the Civil War.  

Burrough opens The Gunfighters with a chapter on why he is focusing on Texas.  He then delves into the history of the first gunfighters with the Texas Rangers in the 1840s and California in the 1850s before the 1865 fight between Wild Bill Hickok and Davis Tutt that many claim was the "first Western gunfight."  Mark Twain in Roughing It discussed the mystic of the gunfighter.  Burrough in the next seventeen chapters covers the gamut of the West from 1865 Texas to Kansas in the 1870s, Dodge City, a detour to the Midwest with Jesse James, the Texas invasion of New Mexico (think Billy the Kid), Tombstone (AZ) with the feud between the Cowboys and the Earps, the range wars in Wyoming and Montana (Tom Horn & "Deacon" Jim Miller), Oklahoma in the 1890s, and finishing with Butch Cassidy.  The final chapter - From Headlines to History - provides the endings to various of the gunfighters in the 20th century.  

If a reader is interested in the truth behind the legends of the West, they would do well to pick up and perusing Bryan Burrough's The Gunfighters!

What are you playing?

Clare, Tim.  Across the Board: How Games Make Us Human.  New York: Abrams Press, 2025.

       ISBN: 9781419780561

 

 

Do you play games?  In a different time did you play games?  If so, then this book is for you!  In Across the Board, Tim Clare talks about what makes board games or table games so universal and yet so unique.  

Tim Clare starts off by defining what a game is.  He then sets out a list of the sort of games he will discuss -chess, Monopoly, Game of Life, card games such as poker or Uno, and role-playing games such as dungeons & Dragons.  And yes, he does delve into philosophy at times.  

In fourteen chapters, Clare covers a wide swath of game types.  "Dicing with Death" opens with several cases of folks in Sweden rolling dice to see who would live and who would die.  The rest of the chapter talks about the long history of dice games.  Another chapter - "To Ur is Human" - deals with the various games Sir Leonard Woolley found when excavating a tomb at Ur in Iraq in the 1920s.  The rules for the game were discovered in the 1980s by Dr. Irving Finkel.  Buddha and his ant-gaming sermon gets mentioned in regard to dice games.  In the "Goose Gets Stuffed" Clare discusses how games seem to go in cycles through out history when the comparison of medieval Stuff the Goose being very similar in concept to the ancient Egyptian Mehen game.  There is an obligatory chapter on Monopoly which delves into the sordid history of the game and chapters on card games of all types.  One of those card games has the players hunting for lines of Japanese poetry.  Then there is Magic: The Gathering and Pokemon card games.  There is a chapter on Mancala - the bean game which is played in Africa and across the Pacific Ocean.  Of course chess, checkers, and the like are covered.  Then there are the role-playing chapters, both those done with a board and the live action variety.  In the final chapter, Clare lets the reader in on his secret - he wrote Across the Board to figure out why he loves playing and collecting games.  

So if you enjoy games, or just enjoy finding out the history of something, pick up Across the Board and find find out what makes you human!   You will enjoy the trip!

Why all the questions?

Parasram, Ajay, and Alex Khasnabish.  Frequently Asked White Questions.  Halifax, Nova Scotia, 

        Canada: Fernwood Publishing, 2022.  ISBN: 9781773635576

 

 

So what questions do you have about race or race relations that you would like answered?  Ajay Parasram and Alex Khasnabish, two mixed raced Canadians, have distilled the questions they have frequently encountered during their online forums (Safe Space for White Questions) on race relations into this title along with what answers they have to the questions.  Since these sessions were held in Canada, a number of the specific examples are Canadian, but the answers are broadly applicable.

 

The book has ten chapters.  Some chapter looks at a particular topic - "Can you be Racist Against White People," "How Does Racism Relate to Other Forms of Oppression?," and "Can Members of an Oppressed Group be Oppressors?"  Other chapters focus more on personal involvement - "How Do We Fix Past Wrongs Without Creating New Ones?, "How Can I Talk About Social Justice Without Turning People off?, " or "What's the Difference Between Cultural Appreciation and Cultural Appropriation?"  There are also chapters on how to be antiracist and what exactly the "Race Card" is.  The authors finish with a list of principals for thinking about racial politics as a white person.

 

So if you are trying to figure out how to navigate this maelstrom of race and culture, take the time to read or listen to Frequently Asked White Questions.  The time will be well spent. 

Racism and Science

West, Keon.  The Science of Racism: Everything You Need to Know But Probably Don't - Yet.  

        New York: Abrams, 2025.  ISBN: 9781419774379  

So what is racism?  How many folks are racist?  Could you be racist?  Just some of the questions that get swirled around a lot on the news and social media.  But these are questions that need to be answered.   Keon West, a researcher from England, has spent his time in the trenches of this research and aims to share with the reader his scientific findings, not just anecdotes.  

Keon West breaks the book into four parts.  Part I deals with how do we know that racism is real and what evidence does science have on this topic with chapters discussing definitions of terms, how science comes to a consensus on a topic, and how pervasive racism might be and its relationship to power.  Part II looks at unconscious bias, outright deception/lying, and games people play on themselves to hide their own racism.  Part III gets down into the weeds to examine the complexities of racism - how it is not all black and white, but rather very nuanced.  Part IV provides various approaches to dealing with racism scientifically.  Some of these approaches include colour-blind approach, diversity initiatives, and what really does work.  West finishes the book with a call-out to other related issues of bias beyond race - i.e. gender, class, status, and a multitude of other issues that all interplay with racism.  

So, if you are interested in learning what science has on this topic, The Science of Racism will be a great place to start.  Keon West documents his points and provides plenty of references for the reader to explore.  A recommended read for anyone interested in racism. 

Actual science or fictional science?

Ritchie, Stuart.  Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search 

          for Truth.  New York: Metropolitan Books, 2020.  ISBN: 9781250222695

 

What do you know of the scientific method?  Now that you talked about how science is supposed to be done, what do you know of the publishing process for scientific research?  Well Stuart Ritchie, a social scientist, presents you with plenty of evidence that all is not well in the world of science, whether social or physical science!

 

Ritchie opens with some examples in  the Preface, then has a chapter on how science works or at least is supposed to work.  He then discusses the replication crisis that is still gripping science (people duplicating experiments but getting very different results than the original experiment).  He follows this up with chapters on fraud in science, how bias of various sorts infect science, how negligence leads to worthless and/or bad science, and how hyping results lead to over-blown expectations that do not pan out.  Ritchie follows up these chapters with an examination on the perverse incentives that scientists have when doing and publishing science (need for funding, need for publications, need to positive vs negative results, etc.  But he finishes the book with some steps that may help turn the tide on the scientific fictions being published.  And a s a final gift to the reader, he has an appendix entitled "How to Read a Scientific Paper" - in other words how to evaluate for yourself whether an article is actually science or just pretending!

Science Fictions is not for those who want a story, but will richly reward those who are interested in seeing actual, credible science being produced.

Is Math a language?

Orlin, Ben.  Math for English Majors: A Human Take on the Universal Language.  New York: Black 

        Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2024. 

So, when you think of mathematics, do you come up with images of a dry subject that you were forced to study in school, but no longer remember much of the content?  Or do you think of mathematics as the elegant description of everything?  Maybe you are somewhere in between these polar opposites.   But no matter where you fall on this sliding scale, Ben Orlin wants you to think of math as more than a game of "meaningless marks on paper" (David  Hilbert).  

Ben Orlin lays out his premise in the introduction and then dives the reader into it.  He discusses the syntax of Algebra, looking at numbers and treating numbers as nouns in that syntax.  After he has gone through symbols, equations, graphs, errors, and rules, he takes a break and provides a phrase book - A Local's Guide to  Mathematical Vocabulary.  Orlin then drags the reader into the actions of mathematics - what he calls the Verbs.  Verbs for Orlin include the standards - addition, subtraction, multiplication, division plus squaring/cubing, exponents, logic and proofs, infinity and a host of others.  Orlin finishes off the book with famous names and mathematical folklore followed by citations and where a reader could learn more.

If the reader is looking at a different approach to mathematics, Ben Orlin's Math for English Majors will aid in that quest.He accompanies the text with bad drawings (he has written another book called Math with Bad Drawings) to illustrate his points.  Give it a try and maybe you will retain more math knowledge then when you started!