One mistake, a blunder, can sink an otherwise excellent documentary.The documentary was Athens Birth of Democracy, which I watched the premier when it was broadcast on PBS Nova, on Wednesday, April 29, 2026. ( Video geoblocked on the website) The blunder was this sentence which refers to the Athenian navy and how citizen rowers helped […]
Hunting the Archangel convoy in 1813 (Long read) Just before midnight on July 19, 1813, at about 71 degrees north latitude, in the Barents Sea, north of Norway’s Cape North, above the Arctic Circle, the midnight sun was low and near the horizon as the United States Navy frigate, USS President, 44 guns, Commodore John Rodgers, set […]
A dark and stormy night 1813 edition (I don’t usually full post excerpts from my work in progress, I often put far too much into first drafts and then have to drastically cut. This episode of “a dark and stormy night” I discovered is too good to pass up. I am working on stories about […]
Fifty years ago, in 1970, two books, one written and edited in the United States, the second in Canada, both gathered prominent writers to predict what the year 2020 would be like. As one might expect, no one got it entirely right. There were hints of things to come. Now it’s 2020. The world is […]
Earlier this summer I saw a prepublication notice for Sarah Kovner’s book Prisoners of the Empire Inside Japanese POW Camps, where the Harvard University Press promotion called the book “A pathbreaking account of World War II POW camps, challenging the longstanding belief that the Japanese Empire systematically mistreated Allied prisoners.” I eagerly pre-ordered the book. […]
In the year AD 2100, an evil Dictator rules the United States. He maintains power through the clever use of advanced science and pyschology. And he is backed by a dedicated military clique…. From Robert A. Heinlein, the dean of space-age fiction, comes this thrilling novel of a soldier who dare to defy Authority who […]
Ronald Searle died Friday, Dec. 30, 2011 at his home in Draguignan, in southeastern France. He was 91. When the news of Searle’s death was released today, Jan. 3, 2012, most of the world’s media paid tribute to Searle as one of Great Britain’s best contemporary cartoonists, the creator of the nasty girls at St. […]