Answers, Questions, and the Big Dream
For decades, game shows have been the TikTok of television. Regular old you and I were never going to appear on I Love Lucy or Lost in Space or Breaking …..
Posts tagged: book reviews
Alex Trebek’s Memoir Hits the Highlights
“I don’t have a lot of ghosts. I don’t have any bad memories that affect my life. It’s all good. Sure, I think of Mom and Dad and [sister] Barbara …..
Book Review: The Enthusiast
Book review: The Enthusiast By Josh Fruhlinger 312 pages If Jane Austen sat down to write a Philip K. Dick novel, the result might look a little like The Enthusiast, the …..
Ike’s Bluff: How a Canny President Kept the Cold War Cold
Wily Dwight Eisenhower used a combination of brains and befuddlement to keep nukes out of action in the 1950s.
Four Men, Five Stars: The Admirals Who Won the Sea in World War II
A new biography of four of the old salts who led the U.S. Navy into battle in the Big One.
Donald Rumsfeld’s New Book is Not Exactly Filled With Regrets
“The tedious, self-serving volume is filled with efforts
to blame others… It is a book that
suffers from many of the same flaws that led the administration into
what George Packer of The New Yorker has called “a needlessly deadly”
undertaking — that is, cherry-picked data, unexamined assumptions and an
unwillingness to re-examine past decisions.”
‘Operation Mincemeat’: Book Review as Brady Bunch Theme Song
Book review: “Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory”By Ben Macintyre401 pages
The Wicked, Wicked Ways of Errol Flynn
I particularly detest books that begin something like, “Ah, there was joy and happiness in the quaint Tasmanian home of Professor Flynn when the first bellowings of lusty little Errol were heard…” So if you are interested, let’s get down to the meat of the matter.So begins My Wicked, Wicked Ways, the jaw-dropping 1959 autobiography by Errol Flynn. Posthumous autobiography, it turned out: Flynn died at age 50 on a bedroom floor in Canada before his finished book could be published.
The Ten Greatest Novels of All Time (1948 Edition)
I am holding in my hand (courtesy of Cincinnati’s Mercantile Library) a first edition of Great Novelists and Their Novels, in which author W. Somerset Maugham names his 10 greatest novels of all time.
Thanks for Nothing, Ted Sorensen
Here’s a belated book review of my most frustrating read of 2009: Ted Sorensen’s book Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History.The book came out in 2008 and it’s billed as Ted Sorensen’s frank personal memoir of his 11 years as John Kennedy’s speechwriter and right-hand advisor.
Book Review: ‘Road Dogs’ by Elmore Leonard
Here’s a funny moment from Road Dogs, the latest novel by veteran crime writer Elmore Leonard.The setup: Road Dogs brings back Jack Foley, the charming bank robber from Leonard’s 1996 book Out of Sight. This time Foley is on Venice Beach, hanging out in the mansion of a former prison buddy. Page 233:
Book Review: “The Silent Spirit”
“She’s a master.” -Tony HillermanAnyone writing a Native American mystery has to wrassle with the presence of the genre’s 500-pound gorilla: the late Tony Hillerman. Margaret Coel dispatches the issue with a Hillerman blurb right on the front cover of her new novel, The Silent Spirit. (Could that be Hillerman’s Last Blurb? He died last October.)