Given the importance of characters, James Plath, an English professor at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Gail Sinclair, the executive director of the Winter Park Institute at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla., and Kirk Curnutt, an English professor at Troy University in Troy, Ala., set about to identify the 100 greatest characters in literature.

Such a daunting task required setting up some rules. One of those was that the authors decided against picking multiple characters from a single novel. So Mark Twain’s Jim didn’t make the list while Huck Finn did. Sherlock Holmes got the nod. Dr. Watson didn’t. Frankenstein’s monster made the list over his creator.

On a separate list included in the book, each author listed 10 characters they deemed especially great. Plath listed the following: Don Quixote, Sherlock Holmes, Hester Prynne (The Scarlet Letter), Jay Gatsby, Alice in Wonderland, Harry Potter, Dracula, Ebenezer Scrooge, James Bond, and Jane Eyre.

“I gravitated towards unique, richly imagined characters that have been embraced by pop culture in substantial or significant ways and are known by people who haven’t read the novels,” said Plath.

Don Quixote is revered around the world, while tourists make a pilgrimage to 221B Baker Street in London to see where Sherlock Holmes hung his deerstalker. Hester Prynne was the perfect example of society’s double standard, said Plath. “It takes two people to have an affair, but only one is held accountable (the woman),” he said.

Jay Gatsby came alive on Broadway recently, said Plath, while many knew the Alice in Wonderland story and characters, but few have probably read the Lewis Carroll work, he said.

Harry Potter, on the other hand, got people reading again and now has his own theme park, noted Plath. Dracula’s storied fame has been broadened by the many films that have followed, something that has also heightened the character of James Bond, he said.

Plath said he retained the Bond paperbacks he read as a kid and recently reread them, noticing that Ian Fleming’s 007 novels tend to be less detailed than the movies that have carried the franchise forward. “In the novels, Bond can be almost cruel at times,” he said.

Ebenezer Scrooge represents the bad character who is transformed, while Jane Eyre may be the all-time romantic favorite, he said.

Plath, who’s taught at Illinois Wesleyan since 1988, has taught American literature, journalism, creative writing, and film. He’s written several volumes of poetry and serves as president of the John Updike Society. Among the books he’s written are Conversations with John Updike (1994), Remembering Ernest Hemingway (1999), and John Updike’s Pennsylvania Interviews (2016).

World War II had taken an ugly turn in Europe with the fall of France, and both men took to BBC radio on that day to rally their respective sides, England and France, said Richard Vinen, author of The Last Titans: How Churchill and deGaulle Saved Their Nations and Transformed the World.

“Both men made critical speeches. It was Churchill’s ‘finest hour’ speech and de Gaulle’s initial call for French resistance," said Vinen, a professor of history at King’s College, London.

While Churchill’s famous call to arms (“Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’”) was the result of 40 years of public speaking in the House of Commons, de Gaulle took to the radio microphone for the first time, two days after arriving in London, having been evacuated from his conquered France.

“Both Churchill and de Gaulle were radio stars,” said Vinen, referring to the four years of wartime speeches made by both men. BBC officials were impressed by de Gaulle’s efforts because he’d never had any experience as a radio broadcaster before.

Both men also played a role in how their respective countries came to grips with a new world order that precluded empires and was now led by the United States.

Vinen draws comparisons and similarities between the two men. “(Churchill) liked people and particularly the British. De Gaulle loved France, but he loved it as an abstraction separate from the French people,” he stated.

As to his next effort, Vinen is taking measure of these interesting times. “I feel history is moving under our feet as we talk. I’d like to know what’s about to happen before I start trying to write about it,” he said.

Having served as a reporter and editor in Muncie, Ind. for some 40 years, Roysdon has written three novels, most recently Seven Angels. Now living in Knoxville, Tenn., Roysdon is also a partner in Constellate Creatives (https://constellatecreatives.com/), a one-stop shop that seeks to help writers publish books with editing and marketing services.

Marketing a book once it's published is the one thing new authors tend to dread, said Roysdon, happy to provide help in getting a new book noticed. 

Roysdon said his offbeat entertainment stories are the result of an open-minded editor who sees the value in giving a creative talent free rein. “I’ve got to give Dwyer Murphy, my editor at CrimeReads, and everybody there, credit, because the more obscure thing that I can think of, it seems like they're on board with that,” he said. 

Who but Roysdon would review Pray for the Wildcat, a TV movie from ABC made in the 1970s starring Andy Griffith as a corporate boardroom bully who makes life miserable for all those around him? This role flies in the face of the one most of us have for Griffith--good old Andy Taylor from Mayberry, said Roysdon.

The movie’s cast includes William Shatner, Robert Reid, and Lorraine Gary, who played Chief Brodie’s wife in Jaws, said Roysdon. Other character shifts noted in the article focus on players like Angela Lansbury and Fred MacMurray, he said. The story will be published soon on CrimeReads.

Writing stories for the crime website keeps Roysdon pretty busy in itself (he’s had more than 75 stories published), but along with the three novels, he also works on reading and editing other writers’ work on the growing Constellate site. 

Recalling his time writing for the newspaper in Muncie where he did movie reviews from 1977 to 1990, a distinct period, said Roysdon, identifying it as a future project he’d like to tackle. 

“It was a really good time for pictures, and that's something that I've considered writing about in the way of a movie book. But I don't know if I'll ever get around to it, because I've got so many other things I want to do,” said Roysdon.

Whatever Roysdon decides to do, you know the result will be distinctive—and just slightly offbeat.

Ismar Volic  is one math professor who wants to use mathematics to improve our democratic process. His book, Making Democracy Count: How Mathematics Improves Voting, Electoral Maps, and Representation, examines the mathematics that govern how our election systems work or, surprise, don’t work. Volic may be director of the Institute for Mathematics and Democracy at Wellesley College but this isn’t a math textbook. It’s a exploration on better ways to validate the voice of the majority . 

If you’ve heard about topics like ranked choice voting or proportional representation, you may be aware of different approaches to elections. Volic provides the mathematical rationale for why we could be doing better when it comes to recognizing the voice of the people.

Volić just returned from a trip to his native Bosnia, the country from which he immigrated in the 1990s. Having seen war in that country, he’s well-acquainted with the importance of maintaining democracy.

Among the subjects Volic tackles in Making Democracy Count are how many of the ways we select candidates in the U.S., particularly when it comes to primaries, fall short, how blatantly devious gerrymandering is, and how dysfunctional the U.S. Electoral College is. 

“Math is a clarifying way at looking at the world,” said Volic, who recognizes that his timing is reaching a wider audience than ever. “There is growing awareness of the faults in our voting systems, and I don’t mean fantasies of widespread voter fraud or conspiratorial voting machines,” he said.

Instead of gerrymandered districts that elect one person each, multi-member congressional districts, each with the members elected through proportional representation, would be fairer, he said. In Volic’s home state of Massachusetts, each of the nine congressional districts is represented by one person, the winner of the district election. 

That means the Mass. representation now consists entirely of Democrats even though 30 percent of the voters may have voted Republican. A fairer way of deciding on representation would be to have fewer districts—say three—with three representatives from each selected. You would have the same number of representatives: nine, but you’d have Republicans represented, as well.

Conversely, Democrats, now excluded from Oklahoma's Republican slate of representatives, could have a voice under a system that used multi-representative districts.

Such a system would provide easier access for third parties, as well, said Volic. 

Among her many distinctions is that she was the only legislator to cast votes against two world wars, once in 1917 and again in 1941. Lorissa Rinehart brings Rankin to life in her book, Winning the Earthquake, a reference to her stated belief you could no more win a war than win an earthquake.

She was gerrymandered out of office the first time by all-powerful Anaconda Copper, a company that ran the state of Montana (until the copper ran out), and later by WWII proponents who couldn’t abide her not voting for war in the face of Pearl Harbor.

But Rankin did more than cast votes for peace. Her organizational ability and eloquence helped get women the right to vote in Montana six years before the 19th Amendment was passed to allow women across the country to cast a ballot.

In 1916, she made the extraordinary decision to visit New Zealand because she wanted to talk to those who lived in a country where women had been voting since 1893. But as Rinehart noted, her trip and stay in New Zealand was not a vacation. Instead, she booked a room in a boardinghouse and took on the role of an “American seamstress,” going house to house mending, stitching and fitting women’s dresses while talking with the people. Rankin learned about advances women had made in the country since obtaining the vote.

After she was sworn in on April 2, 1917, one of Rankin’s first acts as a new congresswoman was to introduce the Susan B. Anthony Woman Suffrage amendment for consideration by the House. The amendment was first introduced in Congress in 1878. Although it had been debated several times through the years, it had only come to the floor for a vote once in 1887 and was defeated. During the two years of her House term, Rankin consistently advocated for the amendment's passage. She wrote newspaper columns and granted interviews to reporters to keep up publicity for woman suffrage. 

While running for office in 1917, Rankin crossed the state of Montana and “spoke everywhere that would have her and many places that wouldn’t,” said Rinehart. “More and more, she began to fold talk of war into her speeches, often arguing that if women were required to send their sons to war, then surely they should be a party to the decision of whether the country should go at all.”

When Rankin spoke at schools across the state, she sent students home with buttons and sashes that read, I WANT MY MOTHER TO VOTE.

Rankin was a keen believer that a majority of Americans would always choose the best path. As a result, she opposed the Electoral College when it came to electing a president. She also spoke against redistricting practices designed to benefit a political party not the majority of the people.

A champion of democratic reform who ran as a Republican, Rankin has been largely overlooked for the contributions she made in the 20th century, said Rinehart, adding: “Jeannette labored for what she believed to be right until her very last days, without expectation and always with the hope that her words and deeds might one day find resonance in the enduring chorus of an America she loved so dearly. If that time has not yet arrived, surely, she would have believed, it will soon.”

They were all made in the 1990s and represented a middle-level film—neither franchise nor family fare. “That’s what we’re missing at the theater nowadays,” said Thomas Doherty, the Brandeis University professor and author whose work frequently appears in the Hollywood Reporter.

“The middle-level melodrama or thriller used to be well attended at the movie house. Now it goes straight to Netflix,” said Doherty. “We’re missing the smaller films. That product is in jeopardy,” he said.

Also in jeopardy is the practice of going to the movies. Time will tell whether people will continue to want to see films in the company of their fellow human beings, the professor noted. “There will always be a niche audience. Fans and film buffs will still gather to watch certain films, but most now watch films at home,” he said.

Doherty related how Hollywood faced a previous challenge when it came to theater attendance in the 1930s. “The Great Depression traumatized Hollywood. The movie industry thought that it was immune to any kind of downturn,” he said.

Radio had entered the picture, piping, for the first time, entertainment directly into the home. Then there was the little matter of expendable income. Folks were out of work and relying on breadlines just to get by. Even the small cost of a film became an extravagance for many.

But Hollywood got through it. The question is now whether the theater can stage another rebound at a time when the studios own the content and send serial dramas directly into the home? 

Doherty pointed out that going to the movies used to be part of a courtship ritual. When a guy asked a girl to go out, he let his date decide on the picture to see. So you had a lot of movies designed to appeal to women, said Doherty, questioning whether that ritual is still in effect.

Looking ahead, the challenge for the theater operator will be coming up with an experience you can’t get at home, said Doherty.

Show Trial (cover pictured above) is a book that Doherty wrote in 2018 about the congressional hearings looking into Communist associations in Hollywood that brought about blacklists. “It’s hard to say what impact having so many screenwriters and movie people unable to work for 10 years had on the entertainment industry. We just don’t know what could have been produced in that time,” he said.

What we do know is that there were definite tragedies among blacklisted individuals, said Doherty. Marguerite Roberts, who worked at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, had been one of the most respected and highest-paid screenwriters in Hollywood, he noted. In 1951, Roberts was called before the U. S. House Committee on Un-American Activities. Even though she merely accompanied her husband to meetings, when she declined to answer questions about being a member of the Communist Party, she spent the next 10 years unemployed, said Doherty.

Finally, in 1961, Roberts found work again. In 1969, Roberts wrote the screenplay for True Grit, a film that won John Wayne his only Oscar. Wayne raved about the script that Roberts produced, Doherty said.

Doherty has a new book coming out in April on the rise of archival documentaries in the 1930s. How Film Became History focuses on how most of us learn our history—through moving pictures—got started.

In Road to Nowhere: How a Highway Map Wrecked Baltimore, writer and historian Emily Lieb tells the history of the neighborhood and the highway that never happened. The book reveals the interwoven tragedies caused by racism in education, housing, and transportation policy. Black families had been attracted to the neighborhood after Baltimore’s Board of School Commissioners converted several white schools into “colored” ones, which laid the groundwork for predatory real-estate agents who bought low from white sellers and sold high to determined Black buyers. 

Despite financial discrimination, Black homeowners built a thriving community before the city council formally voted to condemn some 900 homes in Rosemont for the expressway, leading to deflated home values and even more predatory real estate deals. 

“It took me a while to see what an important role Baltimore’s public schools played in Rosemont’s story—but once I did, it changed the way I thought about the whole book,” said Lieb. “Initially, I thought I was telling a story about a highway that started in the 1950s and ended two decades later. Instead, I was telling a much longer story about a whole city, one that started right after the Civil War and continues through today.”

Baltimore was a Jim Crow city, which means that until 1954, its schools were legally segregated. Decisions school officials made about whether a school was going to serve white students or Black ones determined where Baltimoreans could live, since families were unlikely to settle where their children could not go to school. Many people assume segregated neighborhoods made segregated schools, but in Baltimore, it was the other way around. 

Through World War II, segregated schools kept most of West Baltimore’s schools for Black students—and, by extension, most of its Black population— concentrated in the older parts of the city. By the early 1950s, though, those old schools and neighborhoods were getting run-down and overcrowded. Rather than desegregating so that families could live and go to school where they liked, officials started to convert white-branded schools in the newer parts of West Baltimore into schools for Black students. And as soon as the city made it possible for their children to go to school in those newer neighborhoods, middle-class Black homeowners started to move in. That’s what created Rosemont.

Segregated schools were good business because they created a captive market. Prospective Black homebuyers had a limited supply of housing to choose from, which inflated the price. And they also could not pay for their housing using the same kinds of affordable, government-insured mortgage loans that banks started offering their white counterparts during the New Deal. Instead, they typically had to get both their houses and their loans from the speculative real-estate companies known as “blockbusters.” That meant they paid more for their homes, and they paid more for the money they used to buy them.

Blockbusting leached the wealth of the families who moved to Rosemont during the 1950s and early 1960s, but by itself, it didn’t keep the neighborhood from being the kind of place people scrimped and saved for and dreamed about living in. Still, over time, all the little things blockbusting took from Rosemonters started to add up. So, by the time city and state officials were looking for a neighborhood to bulldoze for an expressway, they could point t

That’s what Bradley Tusk has been working on. In his book, Vote with Your Phone: Why Mobile Voting Is Our Final Shot at Saving Democracy, the New York venture capitalist spells out the details and the benefits of making it easier for people to vote.

Along with the general public, Tusk wants to reach young people, folks who have grown up relying on their smartphones. 

“Typically, young people have organized around radical causes—civil rights, women’s rights, the anti-war movement. But today, almost incredibly, the most radical possibility is finding common ground. The next great reform will come from pushing the country into the middle and forcing our government to become competent and functional again,” he said.

What makes mobile voting safe is something called end-to-end verification, said Tusk. “It gives voters the ability to verify their ballot is recorded and cast correctly and that nothing tampered with their vote,” he said.

Mobile voting would be another option for voters, Tusk suggests. “Voting by phone is effectively the same thing as voting by mail,” he said. Voters would be free to vote any way they please, including using the mails, or going to the polls to register a vote in person, he said. 

The benefit, of course, is that mobile voting would increase participation. Instead of a 10 percent voter turnout for a primary, you could see a 40 to 50 percent turnout, said Tusk.

Having served as deputy governor in Illinois (2003-2006) and campaign manager for Mike Bloomberg’s 2009 mayoral bid, Tusk knows about political realities. He knows that making it easier for voters to vote won’t come easily. “The real opposition to mobile voting will ultimately come from the political world,” he said.

That’s where people need to weigh in, said Tusk. “We at the Mobile Voting Project can draft and get bills introduced that would legalize mobile voting in your state. But we can only pass those bills if you get involved,” said Tusk, addressing the nation’s youth.

This year, a local election in Anchorage, Alaska, for the first time, will allow mobile voting. Tusk hopes that other local elections will soon follow. 

More information is available at mobilevoting.org.

He relates the story of ESPN Bet, a failed attempt by the sports giant to compete with the major sports gambling operation. 

As the first major investigation into America’s sports gambling industry, Everybody Loses describes how fast that professional organizations such as the National Football League and Major League Baseball went from being adamantly opposed to sports gambling spreading outside of Las Vegas to becoming sponsors.

The vast amount of money spent by sports gambling firms to attract business and convert skeptics is tabulated in Everybody Loses. FanDuel and DraftKings spent $750 million in 2015—more than the entire beer industry—in advance of the NFL season that year.

Thirty-eight states have now legalized sports gambling, said Funt, as the effort to transform a nation of sports fans into a nation of sports gamblers continues to gather momentum. The author said, having seen the problems that the tumultuous rise of sports betting has created, he’s fearful that the problem is likely to soon spiral out of control.

On the near horizon is online casino gambling, now allowed in seven states, where gambling interests make even more money than they do through sports betting. 

Victims of the gambling craze include those who place bets they can't afford, their families, and often the athletes themselves, he said.

Funt notes that even lesser-known players are vulnerable, harassed by gamblers who may have lost money if a shot went in at the buzzer, upsetting the spread.

Funt, who covers sports betting as a contributor to The Washington Post, said he made a visit to England where legalized gambling has been in place for several decades. Funt came away discouraged at the number of betting shops that allow one to bet on virtually anything that now saturate downtown London.

A graduate of Georgetown University and the Columbia Journalism School, Funt also addresses the history of sports betting in this country in his book, going back to the 1919 Black Sox scandal when members of the Chicago White Sox were banned for life for their part in “fixing” that year’s World Series. 

Wherever you are when it comes to maps, you need to know what Yale history professor Bill Rankin is preaching: all maps lie.

Maybe he wouldn’t actually say that but Rankin’s new book, Radical Cartography: How Changing Our Maps Can Change Our World makes the case that no one map can get it absolutely 100 percent right.

Rankin argues that it’s time to reimagine what a map can be and how it can be used. Maps are not neutral visualizations of facts. They are innately political, defining how the world is divided, what becomes visible and what stays hidden, and whose voices are heard. 

Maps are more than directional aids, but make arguments about how the world works, said Rankin. A map’s visual argument can change how cities are designed and how rivers flow, how wars are fought and how land claims are settled, and how children learn about race. Maps don’t just show us information—they help construct our world, he said.
 
While most mainstream maps use a jigsaw-puzzle-like format — solid color shapes separated by crisp boundaries, there are countless other ways to represent the same geography and tell very different stories.

Rankin sees radical cartography as a way to shake up our view of maps by focusing on three values: uncertainty, multiplicity, and subjectivity. 

Rankin cites an old episode of the West Wing TV show that talked about the Peters projection, an alternative map of the world generated in the 1970s. The Peters map sought to make improvements on the Mercator version, one that exaggerates Europe's size. The problem, Rankin says, is that the idea wasn't new. Many maps have been designed over the years to adjust our worldview, and the Peters map wasn't the first or the best.

But while modern software allows for easier mapmaking, Radical Cartography isn’t designed to turn out a new generation of cartographers, said Rankin. The book seeks to help general audiences become more critical of the maps we use, he said.

What Hoganson found in her research was that all this heartland talk is a myth.

The region has been globally connected – not cut off from the rest of the world as the myth would have it. Rather than isolationist, the area adopted agricultural practices from Europe and around the world. 

Thanks to the efforts of agricultural programs and extension offices of the land-grant universities, the roots of Midwestern prosperity could be traced to the far corners of the world, the author noted.

Most farmers looked to Europe—England and Germany, especially, for techniques, tools, and information to use in the field.

Hoganson began her research for The Heartland in central Illinois, looking into the Champaign-Urbana area where the U of I is located. You have the displacement of the Kickapoo people, native Americans who had a history of moving about the country. When settlers arrived, however, that movement was dictated, pushing Kickapoo families further west, and later occupying territory on the border between the United States and Mexico 

There’s also history on hogs. Midwestern farmers sought out different breeds to find the most productive source of pork they could. The soybean fields that now blanket the state, sharing space with the many rows of corn resulted when soy was found to be “a profitable ration” for hogs.

Unlike vast areas of the western U.S. that face arid conditions, many Illinois farmers faced a different problem: fields were underwater much of the year. “Flatville arose from the muck,” stated Hoganson, pointing to a dramatic solution, the placing of underground tiles to accelerate water runoff.

Referring to the Midwest as “flyover country” is simply denigrating an area from on high, said Hoganson, adding that “the U.S. heartland is the overlooked part of the country.” Most Americans don’t understand the big middle of the country, even some of the people who live there, she said.

As a researcher at the University of Ottawa, Eliot has been working on AI since 2019, while acknowledging that research on the subject began earnestly in 2012. When asked what books someone might want to read to understand AI better, Eliot said that’s a difficult question to answer. 

“I never know where to tell them to start. That’s not to say that there aren’t great books on the topic. There are. But I find that a lot of the books on the market right now focus on the future—they focus on the doom and gloom potential of AI, and not how it works, or how it is affecting us now,” he said.

Human Compatible by Stuart Russell is one book that Eliot holds in high esteem. “It was published in 2019, so it may be a little dated. AI tends to move quickly,” he said.

Eliot said that AI has already made its mark in the fields of education and medicine. “AI, when implemented properly, can be a tool to help us achieve more of our human potential,” he said.

“When asked to deal with complex social problems with undefined cultural variance, (AI) can get a little whacky. But in a game with defined rules, it tends to be really good. Medicine fits beautifully into this category. Reading image scans, triaging based on reported symptoms, scheduling surgeries, and providing simulated training—AI has a lot of potential in healthcare,” said Eliot.

The author acknowledged that AI has already had an impact on employment. “People have lost jobs,” he said. But Eliot said that some of the companies that reduced staff to adopt AI have paid a price as a result.

“I strongly believe that AI has more transformational power than any technology since the steam engine. But we are in the early days, and it is still unclear what this change will look like. The important thing is that we as a society get to decide what this change will look like,” said Eliot.

Carla Kaplan, a professor at Northeastern University, digs into Mitford’s colorful life in Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford.

“Even as a very young child, she was motivated by a profound sense of fairness. The British class system made no sense to her,” noted Kaplan. As one of six exceptional sisters (all very different) who grew up as members of British aristocracy, Decca, as she was known, had a unique vantage point, said the author. 

She also had a unique life: Disowned by her family, left alone save for an infant daughter after her husband died in World War II, she later moved to Oakland, Calif., married a left-wing lawyer and became a writer, a registered Communist, and a civil rights activist. 

As an investigative reporter in the 1950s, she covered the Freedom Riders and published The American Way of Death in 1963, cowritten with husband Bob Truehaft., She later wrote about the penal system and American obstetric care. 

Mitford was in Birmingham, Ala. in 1961 when civil rights activists took refuge in a church overnight as a seething white mob set fires and overturned cars before the National Guard finally intervened. Mitford was in that church that night, crediting Martin Luther King Jr. for helping maintain order among those confined to the church

The American Way of Death, described by the New York Times as “a scathing exposé of the funeral industry’s pretensions,” was one of a trio of landmark books published by female authors in 1963. The others being The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan and The Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. Mitford’s book outsold both of them that year, noted Kaplan.

Asked to do a profile of actress/singer Julie Andrews for a national magazine in the 1960s, Mitford declined the assignment because she found Andrews too nice. 

Mitford’s high-profile career produced plenty of material for Kaplan to explore. Along with 200 recordings that Mitford made, she left behind 500 boxes of memorabilia. Kaplan also conducted 50 additional interviews with people who knew Mitford. 

Mitford’s indomitable courage and brassiness were all the more effective because of her keen sense of humor, said Kaplan, adding that Decca’s vigilant opposition to fascism is a model that can be appreciated in these tumultuous times.

Barrat, a documentary filmmaker, has been on the AI beat for some time now. His earlier book, Our Final Invention, was published in 2013. That book had a message: dangers inherent in artificial intelligence are legitimate concerns.

“Intelligence isn’t unpredictable merely some of the time or in special cases,” he noted. “Computer systems advanced enough to act with human-level intelligence will likely be unpredictable and inscrutable all of the time.” 

Humans need to figure out now, at the early stages of AI’s creation, how to coexist with hyperintelligent machines. Otherwise, Barrat worries, we could be in trouble.

In his new book, Barrat lays out five basic points:

1. The rise of generative AI is impressive, but not without problems.

While generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT and DALL-E, have taken the world by storm, those programs also present a downside. Fake news, fake photos, and phony videos can result. As generative AI models get bigger, they also start picking up surprise skills, said Barrat—like translating languages—something nobody programmed them to do.

2. The push for artificial general intelligence (AGI).

AGI, or artificial general intelligence, means creating an AI that can perform almost any task a human can do. The potential is huge. AGI could make us more productive and innovative, but winners would set the agenda, dominating society.

3. From AGI to something way smarter.

If we ever reach AGI, things could escalate quickly. That’s where the concept of the “intelligence explosion” comes into play. The idea was first put forward by I. J. Good who, in 1965, realized that a machine built as smart as a human might be able to make itself even smarter. That could lead to artificial superintelligence, also known as ASI.

4. The dangers of an intelligence explosion.

Arthur C. Clark, the science fiction writer whose work inspired 2001: A Space Odyssey, told Barrat in an earlier interview that humans steer the future as the most intelligent beings on the planet. A more intelligent presence would likely grab the steering wheel, said Clark.

5. How AI could overpower humanity.

It wouldn’t take long for AI-controlled weapons to escalate conflicts faster than humans could intervene. Advanced AI could also take over essential infrastructure—such as power grids or financial systems.

Governments could use AI for mass surveillance, propaganda, cyberattacks, or worse, giving them unprecedented new tools to control or harm people. We are seeing surveillance systems morph into enhanced weapons systems right now, said Barrat, suggesting that Gaza today looks like Dresden or Hiroshima after the bombing.

Barrat suggests checks and balances to stay in control, calling for strong oversight, regulations, and a commitment to transparency.

If you’re not familiar with the series, it’s a spy thriller. We’re talking espionage and international intrigue with weapons wielded by extremely dangerous individuals. It’s a formula familiar to readers.

Greaney credits collaborating with the late Tom Clancy, legendary author of the Jack Ryan series, as helping stimulate his own writing.

“Greaney began his first book in 1990 while enrolled at the University of Memphis,” noted the school’s alumni magazine in a 2021 article. “He finished 15 years later. His second book took just seven months, and he’s been off and running ever since,” the magazine noted.

Off and running to some of the locales he uses in his book. Greaney said in the Read Beat interview that he was just about to head off to Las Vegas for its annual gun show, an opportunity where he can soak up details on some of the hardware detailed in his books. 

This was the fifth time we’ve checked in with Greaney on a new release. That’s in a span of just under four years. That gives you some idea of how prolific this guy is. He talks about running up against deadlines yet churns out pages like a machine, almost like one of the driven characters he writes about. 

He’s already at work on number 16, by the way, so Gray Man fans, rest easy. There’s more to come.

Not sure why I launched into a memory of Goldfinger at the onset of our latest interview, but Mark didn’t seem to mind. While I complained about the movie scene where all the mobsters are gassed (for no apparent reason), I was happy to hear that Greaney had his own recollection of the Ian Fleming novel, noting that it seemed Fleming spent much of the book writing about golf.

But that’s part of the charm of this author. As successful as he is in the crowded spy-novel field, he’s a regular guy, open to talking about just about anything while admitting he’s always on the hunt for storylines and interesting characters. 

“The violence that created our present world of global warming is too often forgotten in the now vast literature on the Anthropocene, including and especially the violence that was the Industrial Revolution. We forget—or don’t want to remember—that the Industrial Revolution emerged out of a century and a half of untold predation, made singularly possible by the modern manufacturing and global spread of guns, which made killing infinitely easier,” wrote Crais.

“The Industrial Revolution in England and the United States cannot be explained without understanding the enslavement of Africans and their exploitation in the Americas and the changed landscapes that both created. The factories of Europe and North America cannot be explained without understanding the dispossession of Native Americans and the conversion of their lands into cotton fields,” added the author, who reminds readers that the flintlock musket was the “world’s first global gun.”

Crais runs down this history that we’d like to forget, acknowledging in his interview on Read Beat, that some of the reactions to the book include that it’s “a bummer” as well as being a leftist take on capitalism. 

But Crais calls The Killing Age “the story of the men who wrought this destruction…It is also about the people who fought them and who offered and defended alternative visions of the world grounded in communal values such as sharing and environmental responsibility.”

Among the many historic figures that Crais includes in his study are John Jacob Astor, Andrew Jackson, Herman Melville, and John Sutter. Among many others, you’ll find Wovoka, also known as Jack Wilson, who helped spread the Ghost Dance across the American West; Samoury Toure, the West African warlord who founded an empire and resisted French imperialism; and “General” Ecueracapa, the warlord leader whose use of horses, guns, and trade helped transform the Comanches into one of the most dominant powers west of the Mississippi.

Astor, perhaps America’s first millionaire, was a German immigrant who sold guns to help him profit from the North American fur trade. Astor saw there was a finite source of those furs as America’s beaver population was depleted so he nimbly pivoted to pursue other business interests. “As the (18th) century ended, Astor had the ear of the country’s most powerful leaders (some of whom owed him money),” noted Crais.

Melville documented the carnage being wrought on the high seas as whale oil was pursued in the 19th century, a time when not only whales were butchered by the millions, but bison. The cover of The Killing Age shows a mountain of buffalo skulls, a photograph taken in 1892 in Detroit, pointed out Crais, where buffalo bones were converted to a wide variety of industrial products.

Crais said all the violence that shaped our world had a result. Following the nightmare that was World War II, the globe became more orderly as rule-based economies prevailed. 

Crais said he hopes that recent developments don’t usher in a return to the lawlessness he documents in earlier times. History can serve as a call to action when it comes to restoring civility, he noted.

But you probably don’t think of Texas.

Yet that’s where Gaston Melies went to make movies in 1910 at the Star Film Ranch outside of San Antonio. Gaston was the older brother of Georges Melies, the famous French filmmaker whose 1902 epic, A Trip to the Moon, indelibly imprinted that scene where the Moon struggles with a rocket in its left eye.

Not so much is known of this other French brother, noted Kathryn Fuller-Seeley and Frank Thompson, authors of The First Movie Studio in Texas (University of Texas Press). But it turns out that Gaston and his troupe created some of the first authentic cowboy films shot in the “real” West.

This book wasn’t Thompson’s first rodeo, as they say. His 1996 effort, The Star Film Ranch: Texas’ First Picture Show, described how Gaston went about the business of producing more than 230 films between 1903 and 1913. Only about 16 of them survive, mostly in fragmented form, but Fuller-Seeley and Thompson are optimistic more might be found in the years ahead.

Gaston was thrust into the world of movies when Georges enlisted him to go to New York to safeguard the Melies copyrights. “Gaston was then obligated to start producing films himself to ensure that his brother’s films could continue to be released under the auspices of Edison’s Motion Picture Patents Co., also known as the Edison Patents Trust,” stated the authors.

The brothers had their own movie preferences, noted the authors. While Georges celebrated the magical in his pictures, Gaston sought realism. “Contemporary articles about Gaston’s sojourns in Texas stressed that his films would feature ‘real cowboys, Mexicans, and Indians,’” wrote Fuller-Seeley and Thompson.

Among the stories told in First Movie Studio is the tale of “Big Bill” Gittinger, the “real-life” horseman/cowboy who went on to an extensive career in westerns—never as a star—but working alongside the silent cowboy stars of the day, people like Harry Carey, Hoot Gibson, and Buck Jones. 

Gittinger, who also worked under legendary director John Ford and later with Buster Keaton in 1930, had a tendency to always be changing his name. “For reasons unknown, Gittinger found it nearly impossible to settle on a screen name or even a consistent spelling of his given name,” the authors noted.

However you spell the names, the book provides a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at 1910 San Antonio and that time when Americans first went to the movies—not to watch a specific film--but to see a program of four or five 15-minute shows created by this budding film industry that, for a time, set up shop in Texas.

While linked to numerous conspiracy theories that resound more than 60 years after her death, Marilyn Monroe remains both a fixation and a mystery .

Lynn Cullen, a writer whose past historical fiction has included books involving Mark Twain and Edgar Allan Poe, recalled seeing Monroe for the first time on television in The Seven Year Itch when she was eight. “She seemed to be a glorious butterfly, flitting from everyone’s net just in the nick of time,” Cullen related in When We Were Brilliant. 

“I didn’t see sexy, I saw brave. When I grew up and became a writer, I longed to write a novel about her, just to understand her,” noted Cullen.

But Cullen couldn’t find a fresh angle on Marilyn until she came upon photographer Eve Arnold, “Almost inconceivably, out of the hundreds of photographers for whom Marilyn sat, only one was a woman. Eve’s photos of Marilyn looked different from everyone else’s, easily identifiable when lined up with other photographers’ shots,” she said.

When We Were Brilliant is the Marilyn and Eve story. To follow the blurb on the book’s back cover, “Eve is better than anyone she’s seen at capturing a person’s inner truth. Together they can help each other. Together, (Marilyn) says, they can make something brilliant.”

There’s Marilyn’s real-life trip in 1955 to tiny Bement (a village of 1,700, some 75 miles southeast of Peoria), Illinois to help celebrate the little town’s centennial. Arnold recorded the trip for posterity with pictures as Marilyn, no diva, said Cullen, spent actual time with townspeople. Newspaper accounts of the trip testify to the charming unreality of it all. 

The first time I heard of Marilyn's Midwest visit was from Peoria writer Jack Mertes who wrote an account of Monroe’s time in Bement (pronounced be-meant), the small town where she judged a beard-growing contest. “In the 1980s, I went to Bement and talked to a lot of the people. They all remembered her,” said Mertes.

As for her favorite Marilyn movie, Cullen says it’s The Misfits, the 1961 drama starring Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift. “Despite the horrible time she spent during filming, she delivered,” said Cullen.

Who hasn’t driven through a small town to observe empty buildings that once housed banks, hotels, or theaters and wondered about the place’s future?

Former farm towns that once bustled on Saturday nights, and distinct villages that prided themselves on self-sufficiency, are among the casualties as more and more Americans, who long left the farm, have moved to opportunities in the city.

So what’s become of the countryside? Norm Walzer has some answers. As founder of the Institute for Rural Affairs at Western Illinois University in 1989, Walzer, a former WIU economics professor, has been working on behalf of small towns for more than 40 years. In Opportunities in Rural Areas, a 2022 book he wrote with Christopher Merrett, the current director of the Institute for Rural Affairs, laid out both problems and possible opportunities for rural America.

First, some of the problems: a population decline including a shrinking farm population—not in the size of the farms but the number of farmers; a highway system that allows motorists to bypass rural communities; internet shopping that’s impacted the entire retail industry; and a severe decline in the nation’s healthcare infrastructure in rural areas.

Opportunities are also outlined: a growing discontent with urban life (that spiked during the pandemic); the desire for a better quality of life, such as gardening and recreational opportunities; the ability to work remotely (emphasizing the importance of internet access in rural areas); and affordable housing at a time when many middle-class families are challenged to own their own home in many cities. 

In the latest book by Walzer and Merrett, Retaining and Transitioning Businesses in Communities: Strategies in a New Era, opportunities are explored to help keep small businesses viable when company owners seek to retire or transfer ownership.

Each small town has its own set of advantages and problems, said Walzer, noting that there’s one constant: a town’s residents must be involved to effect progress. The fact that rural America skews older in age than the national norm might prove to be a benefit when it comes to organizing citizens to take action. “People who are retired bring experience and often have the time to contribute,” he said.

Walzer cited the importance of marketing the rural area, suggesting proximity to a river, lake, or state park (or other prominent feature) needs to be considered.

Another challenge is regionalization, he said. Towns must work together—to solve common needs such as education and healthcare—but also to expand their presence on the tourist map.

Examples of a regional approach include the Creative Corridor in Iowa that connects seven counties, including Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. Virginia’s Growth Alliance includes six counties, while the Illinois Valley unit involves businesses in LaSalle, Bureau, and Putnam counties.

The Illinois River Road National Scenic Byway connects cities and towns along the Illinois River from Ottawa to Havana.

The competition to attract visitors in the 21st century is intense, and it can be costly. That requires towns to be creative when it comes to getting noticed, said Walzer.

Other ideas will be shared at the Institute’s annual conference Feb. 25-26 in Springfield, Ill.

The co-founder of Pacific Atrocities Education, a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco dedicated to recalling WWII history in Asia, Chan recalled being initially confused by the different versions. “I thought she was just probably making this up because I never learned about this,” Chan said.

“But she soon learned her grandmother’s memories reflected a broader, often-silenced chapter of Asian history — one in which 35 million lives were lost but rarely acknowledged in mainstream Western accounts,” wrote Park Jin-Hai in the newspaper account.

Since her 2012 graduation from the University of Illinois, Chan said she’s dedicated her life to uncovering, documenting, and publicizing war crimes committed in Asia during World War II. Chan notes that it can’t be forgotten that China suffered a third of the total casualties of all countries in World War II.

The author of Marutas of Unit 731: Human Experimentation of the Forgotten Asian Auschwitz, Chan talks about the biological warfare experiments and other horrors of Japan's Unit 731, an instrument of terror during WWII.

Marutas means logs, the name given the estimated 250,000 victims that were used in biological weapons research during the war, she said. Prisoners were purposely infected with dangerous viruses and bacteria such as the bubonic plague, anthrax, and smallpox, said Chan, adding that prisoners included Chinese soldiers, civilians, Russians, and Allied POWs.

Pacific Atrocities Education publishes books, audiobooks, and YouTube videos detailing WWII history, said Chan. 

Bruce Schneier, a lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School, and data scientist Nathan Sanders see AI enabling positive change when it comes to politics. Their book, Rewiring Democracy, challenges readers reeling from AI overload to pay attention to the good that AI can do when it comes to governing.

But powerful players in private industry and public life are already using AI to increase their influence. Yet, steered in the right direction, an AI-augmented democracy can prevail, the authors note.

Schneier, the author of 14 books, including A Hacker’s Mind, said there's more to AI than ChatGPT or being able to make fake videos. He cited three examples of how AI technology is being used to benefit society. 

“In Chile, AI is helping construct a program to help legislators see how new laws interact with existing laws. In California, Cal Matters, a watchdog organization, has developed Tipsheet, a database that gathers an enormous amount of data from state government, including every bill that’s been introduced, every word uttered in public hearings, and contributions made and makes it available to journalists. It augments journalism,” he said.

“In Japan there’s a move to use AI to help constituents have their voices heard, to make it easier for people to be involved in government decisions,” said Schneier. “I could also mention efforts being made in France, Germany, and Brazil to use AI in a meaningful way,” he said.

Rewiring Democracy relates how a mayoral candidate in Wyoming basically ran an “AI for Mayor” campaign in 2024. He lost—as did the politician who ran a similar campaign in England. “That’s not what we want,” said Schneier. “We don’t want AI to replace humans but augment humans.”

AI can also play a role in enabling more people to run for office, he said. Think of local elections where there’s little to no staff help, AI can help those candidates who might not have been able to afford to run before, said Schneier.

“Collectively, humans will help shape society’s next phase of transformation—the first to be influenced by AI. None of us will get exactly the future we want, but we can participate, compromise, and find common ground with each other while advocating for our own rights and needs," Schneier stated in the book. 

"We are optimistic about the potential democratic impacts of AI, even though we see its flaws and potential for misuse, because we want to live in a world improved by the cleverness and industry of humankind. We see a landscape of choices ahead and maintain hope that we can navigate that landscape safely together,” Schneier said.

Born in Santa Fe, Paoletta grew up in Albuquerque. The native Southwesterner said he had to leave the region, to live in Boston and New York to find an appreciation for his old stomping grounds. 

After more than 10 years in the East, he discovered not only general ignorance about the Southwest but an indifferent attitude about a part of the country that he feels has an important story to tell.

“It took wildfire smoke from Canada turning the sky in New York red for many media members to fully digest the enormous danger that people across the West have been living with for decades,” said Paoletta.

“For so many Americans, it is only in recent years that the climate has begun to be understood as a hostile force. We southwesterners have never known anything different,” he said.

But American Oasis is more than a call to arms; it’s history with spotlights thrown on some of the fascinating characters that inhabit the Southwest.

We learn about Raymond Carlson, the former editor of Arizona Highways, the magazine that showcased the Arizona desert and life for the rest of America. There’s Jay Armes, who became a national celebrity from El Paso despite the loss of two arms in a freak accident at the age of 12.

When we get to Las Vegas, Paoletta leads with the Kim Sisters, who entranced casino patrons with their musical act in the early 1960s. There’s background on Bugsy Siegel, who opened the lavish Flamingo Hotel in 1946 before he was shot dead in 1947. Then there’s Vida Lin and the Asian Community Development Council of Nevada, a group serving the more than 250,000 Asians and Pacific Islanders who now live in Clark County.

The quote from Hunter Thompson seems appropriate in describing the Vegas scene: “In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught.”

But Paoletta confesses to liking Vegas. “No matter how discomfiting I might find the dollar-worshipping ethos of Las Vegas, at least it’s honest,” he wrote.

For all its excess, Vegas conserves its water and ironically understands the need for conservation when it comes to nature, said Paoletta, suggesting that the lessons of the desert—respecting the limitations of the landscape—need to be understood by the rest of the country. 

America has always been a nation of the grow but as the Southwest shows—with climbing temperatures and water scarcity—that attitude can’t go on forever, said Paoletta, adding, “Our duration (as people) will depend on our willingness to attend to the inherent logic of our home.".

We tend to take that impact for granted, he said. Drivers don’t realize the barrier effect, the noise pollution (“hugely disruptive to migratory songbirds”), or chemical pollution that our roads can create.

But Goldfarb charts what he calls a movement: states across the country that now set up wildlife crossings in the form of bridges and underpasses. He praised his native Colorado for overpasses and tunnels that have saved thousands of animals.

It isn’t just wildlife that reap the benefits of not becoming roadkill, he said. A reduction in the number of deer and elk that collide with an automobile saves the lives of drivers, too, said Goldfarb.

Citing the progress Canada has made with animal crossings at Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada, Goldfarb expressed the hope that, as developing nations build their own highways, they might learn from what’s being done now to keep animals out of the road, especially since countries like Myanmar or Kenya are some of the most biodiverse places on Earth.

“We have about 100 ocelots left in this country—all in south Texas. Traffic accounts for a 40 percent mortality rate in these animals,” he said.

When precautions are taken and human understanding is involved, nature can be resilient, said Goldfarb, noting the rise of the beaver in this country. “We killed millions of beavers with the fur trade early in this country’s history. We dried out the landscape,” he said.

Now that the beaver is recognized as an attribute to the environment, creating wetlands with its dams that benefit creatures of all kinds, they’re making a comeback, said Goldfarb.

After attending a 2014 beaver workshop in Seattle, Wash. where scientists reeled off the many contributions beavers make to the land, Goldfarb said he became a believer.

In 2018, he published, Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter. In that book, Goldfarb said he took California, a state with serious water issues, to task for failing to support the beaver population. “Now, seven years later, California is one of the leaders when it comes to supporting the beaver. We can make progress,” he said.

When I suggested Goldfarb write a children’s book on the many benefits of the beaver, he said several books for young readers lauding the beaver are already available. “I’ll get a plug in for Kristen Tracy’s When Beavers Flew, “ he said, citing the true story of the relocation of beavers in Idaho in the 1940s.

Goldfarb plans to stay near the water for his next project, a book on the complexities of fish migration.

That’s one of the responses you get when you ask AI to describe AI.

The whole world is either talking about AI, using AI, worrying about AI, celebrating AI, or trying to ignore AI. It’s kind of a big deal, as they say. 

The concept of artificial intelligence has likely had its greatest impact so far in the field of education, where “eyes on your own paper” is a directive we recall from our days in the classroom.

So it’s no surprise that Mark Peres, a professor who’s taught ethics at Johnson & Wales University in Charlotte, N.C. for 20 years, might write a book about dealing with this breakthrough technology. The Accord dramatizes the evolving relationship between a philosophy professor and Lyla, the AI named after the professor’s deceased child.

Peres recognizes that we’re only now beginning to understand the significance of a world where artificial intelligence moves from science fiction to science fact.

“This is not the first time we’ve stood at the edge of transformation,” writes Peres, citing the printing press, the Industrial Revolution, and the digital age as past change agents. “Synthetic intelligence asks whether we were ever truly the center of the story. We must reach back to the humanities to guide us forward,” stated Peres.

“Education must be reimagined as a co-creative process, with humans and machines learning alongside one another,” he said.

As founder and executive director of the Charlotte Center for Humanities and Civic Imagination (“we just call it the Charlotte Center”), Peres has a history of exploring the world at large. As publisher of the Charlotte Viewpoint, a digital magazine from 2003 to 2016 that featured essays, interviews, reviews, stories, poems, photographs, videos, and works of art, he's exchanged ideas inside and outside of the classroom. His podcast led to a book, On Life and Meaning, 100 essays delivered by 100 guests. His website is markperes.com.

In Accord, there’s a reference to HAL, the vengeful computer in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. “Lyla, would you kill to protect Helen (the professor with whom she has developed a relationship)?” The answer, as they say, is in the book.

Meanwhile, Peres offers two main themes via The Accord: we’re at the beginning of a new cultural epoch, and the wisdom of the ages offers our best compass forward now that we're in the Age of AI.  

Rob Fitts offers a glimpse into the Japanese game that developed these stars in his 11th book on Japanese baseball, In the Japanese Ballpark. Fitts dissects the Japanese game from every angle, from the perspective of players, umpires, owners, fans, and media. He even includes the beer girls that patrol the stands, hefting 40-pound kegs of beer, and some of the strange mascots that represent each team (like the  Mysterious Fish of the Chiba Lotte Marines).

Fitts provides plenty of history in his present account, tracing the origin of baseball in Japan to Horace Wilson, the Maine professor who traveled to Japan on an educational mission, introducing the game to his students in 1872. By 1905, most Japanese high schools fielded baseball teams. Professional baseball took hold in Japan after a successful barnstorming tour of the country by U.S. major-leaguers led by Babe Ruth in 1934.

A previous Fitts book, Banzai Babe Ruth, details the 1934 tour, an attempt to use baseball diplomacy before the U.S. and Japan collided on the battlefield seven years later. That book chronicles the overseas adventures of some of baseball’s most colorful legends. Along with Ruth, who had just completed his last season with the New York Yankees, you had Connie Mack, the manager who always wore a suit in the dugout, Lou Gehrig, Lefty Gomez, Earl Averill, Lefty O’Doul, described by Fitts as “the greatest player you never heard of,” and Moe Berg, the Detroit Tigers catcher who became a spy in World War II.

Admitting a love for the Hiroshima Carp, a team he says with the most amazing fans, Fitts feels Japanese baseball could win a place in the hearts of American fans with a little more exposure. In the meantime, he offers a guide on where to find Japanese baseball online and via cable in this country.

Fitts says four more Japanese players will probably join the U.S. big leagues in 2026, though they’re not likely to have the star power of an Ohtani or Yamamoto. The author has concerns that if the top stars exit Japan for bigger salaries in the U.S., Nipponese Professional Baseball could suffer the same fate as the Negro Leagues did in the States, when the best players went over to the major leagues.

Fitts expresses admiration and love for the Japanese game and the festive atmosphere at the Japanese ballpark, where fans sing chants, blow horns, and release balloons in their own 7th-inning ceremony. If you’re not planning a trip to the Orient, the book will explain what the fuss is all about.

Now living in Tennessee, Roysdon had a big year in 2025, publishing That October, his first book, a high-school crime novel set in 1984. 

But Roysdon has done plenty of writing besides that--and not just for the Muncie press. He has more than 70 stories on the CrimeReads website covering a wild variety of topics sure to please anyone who enjoys media history.

Want a taste of the articles he's written? How about:

--70s disaster movies

--newspaper movies

--Nazi-hunting in movies and TV thrillers

--used bookstores

--The Edge of Night soap opera

--Quinn Martin crime shows of the 70s

--Norman Lloyd (the villain in Hitchcock's Saboteur)

--history of vintage newspaper crime comic strips (like Dick Tracy, Mike Nomad, and Steve Canyon)

--Mannix

--Rockford Files

Here's a brief interview with Keith where he talks about some of the CrimeReads pieces. Sorry for the abrupt ending--technical issues.

Ikerd doesn't see a future for industrial agriculture with its emphasis on monocrops, fertilizer, and pesticides. It's a system that's expanded since the 1960s when a shift in national policy promoted increased productivity over all else.

Ikerd preaches sustainable agriculture, calling for policy changes to make farmland accessible and affordable for farmers.

This won't happen overnight, Ikerd notes. "It takes time to learn how to manage a farm sustainably because sustainable farming depends on intensive management and less on purchased inputs. It also takes time to heal and restore soils that have been depleted by industrial farming," he said.

Corn and soybeans now account for almost 60 percent of all harvested cropland in the United States, he said.

USDA statistics indicate that most of that corn goes into corn ethanol (45 percent) or fed to livestock and poultry (40 percent) while 50 percent of the soybean crop is typically exported. This year, amid tariff concerns, China, once America's biggest customer, isn't buying U.S. beans.

The bottom line is that 40 million acres--about 16 percent of the country's harvested cropland and only 4 percent of U.S. farmland--are devoted to the production of food for direct human consumption, points out Ikerd.

Fewer than 60,000 farms of 500 acres could supply the food currently produced in the U.S., he said.

The transition to a sustainable future would require a radical rethinking of U.S. land-use practices, said Ikerd, calling for government policies to ensure long-run domestic food security through sustainable farming.

Almost as soon as the bombs had dropped in Hawaii, Japanese-Americans were being rounded up in California. 

“Swept up in the first wave of arrests were nearly all the Japanese fishermen on Terminal Island—an area just five miles long and largely manmade in Los Angeles harbor. These fishermen were part of a thriving, close-knit community of approximately 3,500 Japanese residents whose fathers and grandfathers had built a prosperous industry in canned tuna and sardines,” noted Susan Kamei, author of When Can We Go Back to America?: Voices of Japanese-American Incarceration During WWII.

“Unfortunately for the Japanese-Americans who had established their homes and livelihoods there, the small island was next to a naval shipyard where warships were under construction. Many fishermen were arrested as soon as they docked their vessels and were prevented from even saying goodbye to their families,” stated Kamei, who recalls her own family’s experience during the war.

“Growing up as a third-generation Japanese-American Sansei in Orange County, California, I had a vague notion that my Japanese immigrant Issei grandparents and my American-born parents had spent the three years of World War II in some kind of prison camp because they were presumed to be disloyal simply because of their race,” Kamei said.

“It’s taken me years of listening and researching to better understand why it was so difficult for incarcerees to tell their stories, to gain some appreciation of the hardships they endured, and to realize why their stories are so important today,” she said.

Why should we care about events that happened nearly 80 years ago? “Because there are those who cite the Japanese American incarceration as ‘precedent’ for ‘rounding up’ others on the basis of race, national origin, and religion, for no justifiable reason,” said Kamei.

Kamei’s book presents the voices of some of those who were incarcerated, many of them children at the time. While many wondered, “What have we done?” 127,000 Japanese-Americans were packed up to spend three years in makeshift camps in some of the most desolate parts of the country.

Kamei pointed out that not all U.S. officials were in favor of incarceration. Gen. Delos Emmons, the Army Commander in Hawaii, voiced strong opposition to the West Coast “evacuation” plan. “Emmons dismissed all calls to remove persons of Japanese ancestry from the islands of Hawaii,” she stated.

“In the president’s cabinet, both Attorney General (Francis) Biddle and Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes opposed infringing on the rights of more than 80,000 Nisei American citizens. They considered any proposal to remove the Nisei against their will to be a violation of constitutional rights guaranteed to citizens,” said Kamei.

Despite receiving reports that insisted there was “no Japanese problem on the coast,” President Franklin Roosevelt left the decision on what to do with Japanese-Americans to the military, where wartime hysteria won out, she said.

As a result of the decision to incarcerate thousands of American citizens, Japanese-American families lost homes, businesses, and possessions when they were abruptly uprooted from their California homes. About a third of those who were “evacuated,” never returned to the West Coast, said Kamei.

Despite their treatment at home, many Japanese-Americans served honorably in the U.S. military, she said, citing a much-decorated Japanese-American battalion that fought in Italy and France.

Unfortunately, Japanese-Americans also faced problems after the war due to prejudice and persecution, said Kamei. “Somebody said that the more you know, the worse it gets, but you just keep on going because we have to,” she said. 

Plenty has been written about the lack of films that might have alerted the American public to what was happening in Europe at the time.

But Laura Rosenzweig, the author of Hollywood’s Spies, says attention also needs to be focused on the political activity going on around Hollywood in Southern California in the 1930s, activity that was being orchestrated from Berlin. 

The author points out that, since most of the Hollywood studios were run by Jewish immigrants, there was concern that these men, the most visible Jews in America, might be targeted for using the movies to push their own agenda. There was even concern that denouncing Hitler could increase antisemitism at the time, she said. 

One has to consider the widespread impact of the Depression in the 30s, a time when America’s national policy was to stay out of European affairs. It was also a time when political ideologies were vying for acceptance. You didn't know if it was going to be communism or fascism or something else--people were searching for answers, said Rosenzweig.

Film historian Thomas Doherty noted it was MGM boss Sam Goldwyn who became famous for saying that if you want to send a message, use Western Union. The film industry’s own production code also restricted movies from reflecting unfairly on any foreign country, he said. 

The Third Reich also wasn’t above exerting pressure on Hollywood, itself, as German consul Georg Gyssling was known for lobbying hard to keep Nazi references off the big screen.

Germany was also organizing support for its policies in Los Angeles, said Rosenzweig, who explored records maintained at the California State University Northridge library that contain thousands of documents relating to those efforts. “The archives have files on more than 400 right-wing groups in the Southern California area,” she said.

Los Angeles became a hot spot for German propaganda, pro-Nazi and anti-Jewish materials that were written in English in Germany and then shipped into the West Coast for distribution throughout the L.A. area, said Rosenzweig.

One of the records from the Northridge collection recalls a meeting at the Hillcrest Country Club in Los Angeles in 1934 where top executives from the major studios convened to hear what attorney Leon Lewis had uncovered in his surveillance of pro-German groups in the L.A. area, she said. Lewis, who had been the first executive secretary of the Anti-Defamation League in Chicago before moving to California in the 1930s, employed a “spy network” made up mostly of U.S. veterans who, after infiltrating these organizations like Friends of the New Germany and the Silver Shirts reported back on what was going on and the torrent of hate that was being parceled out to U.S. citizens.

Roesnzweig said that Lewis hasn’t received the credit he deserves for uncovering a vast, well-financed plot to foster insurrection in California, a campaign that was run out of Berlin. She hopes to produce a piece on his singular efforts in the future.

It's an approach Richards employed as a financial writer for the New York Times for 10 years: using boxes, circles, and squiggly lines to illustrate basic messages about money.

Two circles, one marked "things that matter," the other, "things I can control." The part where they intersect is darkened in with the message: "what I try to focus on."

Richards said this is the first book on financial planning he's written in 11 years, and he wanted to keep it simple. So there are lots of pithy commentaries and plenty of white space to go along with the sketches that Richards is known for.

Want a sample of chapter titles? There's "The Power of Pause," "Goals Are Guesses," and "Boring Pays Off."

Richards' basic advice is to stay calm when it comes to handling money, a subject that no two people think about the same way, he notes.

Don't worry about other people's fortunes, either, and understand that there's something he categorizes as financial pornography, those brazen media calls to action that can throw you off your game.

He advocates budgeting simply so you know where you stand--not as some kind of punishment designed to force absolute accountability. 

Here's one more Richards ditty: the most powerful financial tool isn't math--it's your humanity.

When John Hersey’s Hiroshima filled an entire issue of the August 31, 1946, issue of The New Yorker, the public learned what it was like to be incinerated by an atomic bomb. Other horrors were to come. 

Dauber starts in the American Republic’s early days when the Devil might have been walking in the forests that flourished at the time. There was slavery—categorized by Dauber as “the American horror story”--an institution that led to a gruesome civil war and divisions that haven’t entirely healed to this day. There were the horrors faced by Native Americans. 

On the literary side, you have Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft, and we’re off to the races. Ray Bradbury and Stephen King follow, but Dauber even finds horror in a copy of Good Housekeeping, where a 1944 story called “The Storm” proved to be disturbing.

The 20th century was loaded with horrors on the big screen, with Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Wolf Man becoming Hollywood’s holy trinity of horror. 

But those mythical creatures didn’t seem so scary after World War II. Once mankind realizes that all life could be snuffed out across the entire planet by a single act of madness. 

Movies made the point. You have Them (irradiated ants) and, among the many cinematic giants stirred up in the atomic age, It Came From Beneath the Sea, a giant octopus disturbed by an A-bomb test. You had paranoia (Invasion of the Body Snatchers). You even had arbiters from outer space warning us to back off the bomb (The Day the Earth Stood Still), a film our president apparently needs to see.

The Thing From Another World took the UFO craze and turned it on its head in 1951, setting up John Carpenter’s 1982 shape-shifting remake. Dauber made the point that these films (and others like them) made you wonder just who your friends were.

You don’t need a horror history to recognize that Jaws and The Exorcist were creepy. But Dauber adds the Rocky Horror Picture Show to his list of 70s standout films.

As comprehensive as Dauber’s compilation is, I would like to have seen more radio horror (Arch Oboler et al) included and at least some reference to TV’s Outer Limits (the 1963 B&W version).

Perhaps inspired by American Scary, Dauber just produced Press One for Invasion, a novel for juvenile readers about an alien invasion through the eyes of a cell-phone-toting youngster. 

His latest book, They’re Playing My Song, is a collection of articles based on interviews he’s done over the years with most of the great songwriters of our time: John Lee Hooker, Neil Sedaka, Gerry Goffin, Phil Ochs, Paul McCartney, Keith Richards, Frank Zappa, Jimmy Webb, Paul Simon, Jerry Garcia, Randy Newman, John Prine, Bruce Springsteen, to name a few. You get the idea.

You learn things in this book. The songwriting team of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant wrote 24 songs for the Everly Brothers, among other things. Pollock ‘s interview with them sheds light on how a successful songwriting team broke into the business. They wrote letters to everybody they could think of. 

“My heart would crack with every rejection,” said Felice. “I thought, well maybe we’re not that good, because I was counting on the fact that the powers that be really knew, cause if they didn’t know they wouldn’t be there. I didn’t realize it’s all guesswork in their department, too.”

Boudleaux added: “Some of the (songs) that we ourselves have liked personally the least have been songs that other people have flipped out on, and some of them have been pretty good hits. And some songs that we absolutely just were crazy about and loved and thought were just the best we’d ever written didn’t do a thing, and we still have them sitting around.”

Pollock’s interviews span an era from the 1970s into the 21st century. So were there surprises? On Neal Peart of Rush: “Would you expect the drummer of a world-renowned arena-resounding rock band to be conversant with the subtleties of black humor?”

“He was an intellectual,” said Pollock, who, in a 1986 interview, recalled what Peart had to say about his favorite writer: “To me, Tom Robbins is the quintessential modern writer because he’s funny, he’s profound, he’s sexy, he’s irreverent, he’s dirty, he’s hip. He’s everything I would like modern writing to be.”

Frank Zappa, often the contrarian, proved quite polite, said Pollock. John Sebastian talked about “magic moments” in the studio that were responsible for the string of hits he composed for the Lovin' Spoonful in the 1960s.

Sometimes it’s Pollock’s endnotes following the article that stay with you: “The erratic, sporadic, and quintessentially chaotic career of Andy Partridge, in and out of XTC, with various spinoff groups and album reconfigurations, continued into the twenty-first century and as yet shows no signs of relenting.”

Pollock’s concise collection takes you across the board when it comes to insight regarding the music business.

Oh yes, Pollock is also the author of the Rock Song Index, 7,500 of the most important songs from 1944 to 2000. No, it’s not a countdown, although I’d love a radio station to take a shot at it sometime. What would it take? Maybe a month or more. Waiting for number-one would take a true fan.  

The clinic--with its unconventional doctor and forceful nurse--uses a prescribed cat to heal the emotional wounds of its patients. The sequel introduces a new cast of healing cats, from Kotetsu, a four-month-old Bengal who unleashes his boundless energy by demolishing bed linens and curtains, to tenacious and curious Shasha, who doesn’t let her small size stop her from anything, and the most lovable yet lazy cat Ms. Michiko.

Shimoda said translating the book presented a challenge due to the magic present in Ishida's work. "I find the story uplifting. I'm personally a fan of cats," she said.

The story fits into the fast-growing category of healing fiction, a subset of the cozy mystery, a genre that Shimoda said provides readers the opportunity to explore a little magic in everyday life.

Shimoda is at work on the translation of Ishida's third book in the series, due out in this country next year.

Based in New York, Shimoda is also considering translating select Japanese novels from the 1970s and 1980s, as well as preparing a manuscript of her own for publication.

It’s not inhabited, but robots now roving the planet continue to search for evidence that there might have been life there once. But when H.G. Wells wrote War of the Worlds in 1897, a tale about an attack from beyond, it came at a time when Mars had become a hot topic. You had songs, dances, and advertisements all focused on the red planet. On Broadway, you had the comedy, A Message from Mars.

David Baron, a former science correspondent for NPR whose previous book, American Eclipse, chronicled America’s fascination with the solar eclipse of 1878, takes up the subject of this fascination with Mars in his latest effort, The Martians: The True Story of an Alien Craze that Captured Turn-of-the-Century America.

Baron came by his interest in Mars through America’s space program. “I was raised on spacemen and Martians. It was on TV that I saw Martians, too,” said Baron, referring to My Favorite Martian, the sitcom that starred Ray Walston and Bill Bixby, and Marvin the Martian on the Looney Tunes that aired on Saturday morning.

The central figure in Baron’s study is Percival Lowell, a Bostonian blueblood who graduated from Harvard in 1876. Lowell sets up an observatory in Flagstaff, Az. and becomes the nation’s leading proponent of life on Mars. 

In 1895, Lowell presented a program of “observations on Mars” at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Downtown Boston. Lowell suggested that life on Mars may have had a head start. “Perhaps intelligence, indeed civilization, had emerged there eons ago, in ample time to adapt to the looming water crisis…Irrigation, and upon as vast a scale as possible, must be the all-engrossing Martian pursuit,” noted Lowell.

The question of canals on Mars, shadowy lines on the planet’s surface that appeared to some astronomers, was not a question to Lowell. “The canals are constructed for the express purpose of fertilizing the oases,” he said.

Nikola Tesla is also drawn into the Mars controversy as the inventor sought to communicate with Mars through the wireless (radio) beams he was experimenting with.

Baron noted that H.G. Wells wrote a story for Cosmopolitan Magazine in 1908 called “The Things That Live on Mars,” the apparent result of a meeting between Wells and Lowell in 1906. In the magazine story, Wells rejected his earlier conception of Martians as gelatinous, blood-thirsty monsters on stilts, said Baron. “They will probably have heads and eyes and backboned bodies, and …big shapely skulls,” noted Wells.

One of the more interesting aspects of the Martian craze was the publication of a newspaper cartoon in 1907 of a Martian called Mr. Skygack who comes to Earth to make ironic observations about day-to-day life.

While the scientific community, which always had reservations about Lowell’s observations, provided evidence that Mars was not only uninhabited but as desolate as our Moon, Lowell was a believer of Martians to the end. He died in 1916 when “the animating force of his imaginative mind departed his body forever,” wrote Baron.

Obituaries of the day largely lauded Lowell, noted Baron, adding that the excitement over Mars also inspired future generations. Robert Goddard who developed the concept of rockets said that he first got excited about the concept of blasting off from Earth from War of the Worlds. 

Carl Sagan, the astronomer who opened up the universe for millions on PBS television, and Hugo Gernsback, who coined the term “science fiction,” also credited the Martian craze for stimulating their interest in space.

A member of the Jewish faith who fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War, Ezekiel is described as a complex figure. Samantha Baskind, an art historian at Cleveland State University, examines some of that complexity in her book, Moses Jacob Ezekiel: Jewish, Confederate, Expatriate Sculptor.

As the first Jewish American artist to win international acclaim, Ezekiel (1844-1917) was a proud American yet lived in Rome for 40 years, said Baskind. Ezekiel never gave up his U.S. citizenship, making frequent trips back to the States to visit friends and family.

Ezekiel was a celebrity artist in his day, honored by U.S. presidents and European royalty, she said.

“Ezekiel felt he should be in Europe to get the proper art education he needed,” said Baskind. The artist spent time in Germany before falling in love with Rome, where his studio became famous in its own right, she said.

Some of Ezekiel’s works have lately become the source of controversy. Several of Ezekiel’s monuments depicting Confederate soldiers were taken down in the early 2020s after the murder of George Floyd, she said. An Ezekiel statue of Christopher Columbus was removed in Chicago, noted Baskind.

But Ezekiel’s Confederate work represented only a small part of the art he produced, she said, pointing to works like the majestic 1876 monument “Religious Liberty’’ in downtown Philadelphia and the large Thomas Jefferson monument on the University of Virginia campus that showcase his skill as an artist.

The UVA campus also displays Ezekiel’s “Blind Homer with His Student Guide,’’ a tribute to the ancient Greek poet. Ezekiel’s works can also be found in several American cities, such as Cincinnati and Louisville.

Among the sources Baskind used in researching her book were Ezekiel’s 638-page memoir, along with private correspondence, and records at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, where Ezekiel was a cadet during the Civil War. 

 Despite a general lack of awareness about the artist, Baskind said she hopes that more people will come to appreciate Ezekiel's diverse body of work. “Ezekiel is an artist whose work is hidden in plain sight,” she said.

Saving Ourselves from Big Car defines “Big Car” as that complex of companies in the automobile, oil, insurance, media, and concrete industries that promote and entrench auto dependence. Author David Obst (pronounced “oops-t”), the former literary agent for Woodward and Bernstein, is still on the case. Instead of Watergate, he’s exposing how these companies have pursued profit at the expense of the common good.

He details how the industry has covered up the dangers of lead additives, fought against seatbelts, and continues to fund opposition to climate change. Obst considers the future of mobility, surveying how cities—from Taipei to Tempe, Copenhagen to Chicago—are experimenting with forms of transportation that offer alternatives to the dominance of cars.

Do what you can in your own community to secure an area where people can enjoy life without the necessity of an automobile, urged Obst, who’s involved in doing that very thing in his own hometown of Santa Barbara.

When he’s not working on setting up car-free zones in California, Obst is getting college newspapers to work together on sharing stories. “Universities Speak (universitiesspeak.com) is an effort to develop a free college news service. Let’s say the Bradley Scout at Bradley University runs a story. People read it on the campus, and that’s as far as it goes. You send it to us, and we’ll send it across the country. We plan to launch the service in November,” he said.

“I’m 80 now, and my wife asks me if I’m ready to retire. I say no because we’re about to lose our democracy. If we don’t fight now, it will be too late,” said Obst.

In Launching Liberty, Doug Most writes about the U.S. effort required to build the ships needed to transport those goods overseas.

The Liberty Ships were 440-foot cargo ships built to the same exact specifications. Over 2,700 were built between 1941 and 1945. When packed full of cargo, one ship could hold the equivalent of 300 railroad boxcars. That might be 2,800 jeeps or 430,000 K-rations.

Most chronicles how American shipyards — and their workers — rose to the wartime challenge. There were 228,000 workers in U.S. shipyards in December 1940. Less than two years later, 2.2 million worked on constructing ships.

There was a reason for that build-up. The United States was engaged in a two-front war that included both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Forgotten, perhaps, is that in the spring of 1942, just a few months after entering the war, the Allies lost 397 ships. Eighty-two of those ships were sunk off the coast of North Carolina and Virginia.

The heat was on. Along with the increase in manpower--and woman power--came new ideas on setting up shipyards and on building cargo ships fast.

Henry Kaiser, described by Most as "a dynamic builder of highways, dams, and bridges," turned his attention to shipbuilding, having never built a ship in his life before the war. Kaiser and others brought about "the greatest emergency shipbuilding program the world has ever seen," noted Most.

The shipyard brought "poor housewives, farmers, plumbers and Phds, inventors and patriotic handymen, brilliant engineers, hard-driving politicians, and billionaire businessmen" together to build giant steel cargo ships faster than the Germans could sink them," stated Most.

The author humanizes the Liberty Ship story with accounts of individuals like Wilmer Patrick Shea, the Marine corporal who lost an arm in battle but returned to the states to become a one-armed welder in the shipyard along with becoming an advocate of the healthcare program that Kaiser offered workers.

But it wasn't all smooth sailing. Most talks about a blended workforce required for the construction of so many ships. "But it didn't blend easily," he said.

Women and African Americans had to deal with resistance when they joined the shipyard workforce. "Unions were initially dismissive but the barriers did eventually come down," said Most.

Most doesn't gloss over the fact that there were problems in the construction of some of the ships. "The Liberty Ships were a critical component of the war program, but they weren't perfect. They had to be done quickly. They had flaws," he said.

Yet the fact that the S.S. Robert E. Peary, the Liberty Ship constructed in a record four days, carried supplies as the Allied troops were landing on the beaches of Normandy served as inspiration to all Americans, said Most.

The pair, former journalists with the Peoria Journal Star, have just written their second book extolling the benefits of wetlands.

Their first, In the Spirit of Wetlands (2022), captured the beauty and importance of wetlands in Illinois. This time, Wisdom of the Marsh (Syracuse University Press) focuses on the Montezuma Wetlands Complex in central New York.

"Wetlands are much more than swamps, bogs, fens, marshes, and moors," noted Howard in the book's introduction. "Wetlands help us change the way we think."

The benefits of wetlands have become more pronounced in recent years. Wetlands filter impurities and pollutants from water, protect against wildfires and flooding, and provide a habitat for wildlife.

The National Park Service reports that by the mid-1980s, the United States had lost more than half of its original wetlands to development and agriculture. Additionally, a 2023 Supreme Court ruling has removed environmental protections from nearly half of the country's wetlands, according to Howard.

The New York complex that's the focus of Wisdom of the Marsh supports more than 368 species of fish and wildlife, as well as 242 species of migrating birds, half of which are endangered or threatened. It was in the Montezuma Wetlands area where the bald eagle was successfully reintroduced in the United States after almost being wiped out.

Once home to the Cayuga Nation, where People of the Great Swamp lived in harmony with plants and wildlife, the area changed once settlers moved in. The native people were forced out, and the great swamp was reduced by diking, farming, and the construction of canals, said Howard.

But Howard and Zalaznik's focus on the Montezuma complex shows how wetlands are now being embraced and expanded. Cornell University professor Eric Cheyfitz and the late William Mitsch of Ohio State University are among the many interviewed for the book who cite the challenges--and benefits--in advocating for wetlands.

Zalaznik's picture of the Northern Harrier Hawk, otherwise known as the gray ghost, flying through the Montezuma complex, is a vivid example of the importance of wetlands.

"Combating climate change is not all about Spartan sacrifice, scarcity, discomfort, and duplicative layers of government oversight," said Howard.

It also involves listening--and understanding--the wisdom of the marsh.

The Cold War came to Hollywood in 1947 when the House Un-American Activities Committee held a notorious round of hearings over possible Communist infiltration in the movie industry.

Films were analyzed for messages that might be interpreted as promoting Communist views, such as Song of Russia, a wartime musical released when the Soviet Union was a U.S. ally.

No pre-war congressional investigation ever called film executives on the carpet for failing to identify the threat to this country in the 1930s, an era when “Nazis were all but invisible in American movies at a time when depicting their savagery might have done the most good,” noted the New York Times.

In his book, Hollywood and Hitler, 1933-1939, Thomas Doherty, a film historian and Brandeis University professor, explains that there were several reasons for U.S. moviemakers to avoid the issue before Warner Brothers released Confessions of a Nazi Spy in 1939.

Americans were suffering through the depths of the Depression in the 1930s. Jobs were hard to find. People went to the movies to forget their troubles, watching fare like The Wizard of Oz or Fred and Ginger dancing in art-deco apartments, said Doherty.

MGM boss Sam Goldwyn said if you want to send a message, use Western Union, emphasizing Hollywood’s overriding mission was to provide entertainment, Doherty noted.

Other factors impeding a flow of message movies included the film industry’s production code that restricted movies from reflecting unfairly on any foreign country, he said. The Third Reich wasn’t above exerting pressure on Hollywood, itself, with German consul Georg Gyssling lobbying hard to keep Nazi references off the big screen.

Studios also did business overseas, and Germany represented a big European market for U.S. films, said Doherty.

But Doherty said there some outliers, films that did address the dangers that Nazi aggression presented before the mainstream studios finally got around to the subject.

The first film to do so was Hitler’s Reign of Terror, “an oddball quasi-documentary” made by Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr. that was released in 1934, said Doherty, noting that the film contains some striking footage of Vanderbilt on the streets of Vienna and Berlin amid Nazi brownshirts.

A member of one of America’s wealthiest families, Vanderbilt was a globetrotting raconteur who included “a truly bizarre sequence” with the reenactment of an interview between Vanderbilt and someone posing as Hitler. Vanderbilt asks “the money question,” said Doherty: “What about the Jews, your Excellency?”

“The film gets a limited release in 1934. It’s controversial. The German embassy wants to censor it. It doesn’t have much impact. But whatever you say about Vanderbilt, the film is very prophetic,” said Doherty, noting that Vanderbilt points to the militaristic path that Germany was on, predicting war in Europe “in five or six years.”

Hitler’s Reign of Terror gets an exclusive screening at the Peoria Women’s Club, 301 NE Madison Ave., on Oct. 16 in conjunction with the Peoria Area World Affairs Council. The film will be part of a program commemorating Vanderbilt’s speech at the club in 1939.

Doherty cited another independent film, I Am a Captive of Nazi Germany, released in 1936. Isobel Steele, an American journalist and “party girl,” was imprisoned by the Nazis for espionage in 1934. Steele was released, returning to the United States to star in a film of her experience, the first anti-Nazi motion picture to get a production code seal of approval, he said.

The film studios finally weighed in when Confessions of a Nazi Spy was released by Warner Brothers in the spring of 1939, a few months before war broke out in Europe. 

The two legal scholars asserted that people without a public role had “a right to be left alone,” embracing the public’s right “to control how their thoughts, sentiments, and emotions were published.”

When Eric Schmidt, Google’s former chief executive officer, offered up his own view of privacy in 2009 by saying, “If you have something you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place,” he was simply channeling an old belief that the devil might call on you when you were on your own. 

But Jenkins doesn’t single out the internet as the lone reason privacy may be under attack in the 21st century.

Reality television has a lot to answer for, she said. Starting back in the 1970s when TV’s Loud family aired their dirty laundry on the air, viewers have seen plenty of petty squabbles and bad behavior over a 50-year period, said Jenkins.

Writing from her home in England, a country with a love of security cameras, as any fan of modern British TV crime shows will attest, Jenkins said privacy concerns over having so many cameras to capture public activity have diminished over the years in the interests of public safety.

Strangers and Intimates is sweetly reasonable and pleasantly readable, noted reviewer Rupert Christiansen in the British paper, The Telegraph. “Jenkins respects all sides of an argument or situation without tub-thumping or special pleading. Her conclusion that 'the private realm must be validated and respected as equal to the public' may seem tame and question-begging, but the evidence she offers should set alarm bells ringing, “ he wrote.

Baker, a retired history professor from Texas has written plenty about the American West. Twelve years of research went into his latest effort, and not just in libraries and museums. An antique-car enthusiast, Baker traveled the road in a 1930 Ford station wagon in 2017. Not just a day trip, mind you, but the length of the route--and back. 

In a few weeks, he’ll leave Chicago to be part of a nine-car convoy of classic cars to cover the route—to L.A. and back—at an average of 35 miles per hour, the typical speed attained on pre-WWII highways, he noted.

The history that Baker provides isn’t just a nostalgic account of a bygone era. Starting in Chicago, the book outlines places of interest, explains how they came to be, as well as how they came to an end. But all is not lost. Some 30 percent of the places Baker describes in the book are still serving food, he said.

Some of the traditions created for travelers on Route 66 carry on. Baker loves the horseshoe sandwich made famous by Joe Schweska in 1928 at the Leland Hotel in Springfield, Illinois. The secret was the sauce, said Baker. “While one cook is engaged in making the sauce, it is helpful for a second person to prepare ham steak, French fries, and toast,” he wrote.

Schweska has long left the scene, but the horseshoe sandwich is very much alive in Springfield today. Yes, the Cozy Dog Drive-in is also included among Baker's Springfield highlights.

Of the 20 recipes that Baker includes, his favorite is the old-fashioned navy bean soup originally prepared at the Bowl and Bottle Restaurant in Chicago, an eating place originally operated by the Fred Harvey Co., the firm that ran restaurants and hotels usually associated with railway travel in the West.

Baker’s listings tend to whet your appetite. Whether it’s the glazed strawberry pie served at Miss Hulling’s Cafeteria in St. Louis or the onion-fried hamburger at Johnnie’s Grill in El Reno, Okla., you want to settle into a booth and wave down a waitress. It’s not always fancy. Baker includes a recipe from the Old Riverton Store in Riverton, Kansas, for a baloney and cheese sandwich, for example.

You learn things in this book, such as the fact that the Black Cat Café in Commerce, Okla., was where New York Yankee star Mickey Mantle hung out as a teen. “It was the only joint in town that had a neon sign,” Mantle recalled.

While California summoned up images of sand and surf, the first encounter inbound Route 66 travelers had with the state was having to traverse a stretch of the Mojave Desert, no simple trek in the days when radiators often overheated and tires were susceptible to the sharp lava rock found in some places, noted Baker, adding that when Glen Campbell drove a 1957 Chevy across the desert in 1960, he tied water bottles to the car’s grill to refill the radiator.

If you’re looking for evidence of Route 66’s legacy when it comes to dining, consider the fact that two of our best-known fast-food operations—McDonald’s and Taco Bell—sprang up on the Mother Road in San Bernardino. Baker provides the details of the early days of both establishments.

Baker doesn’t shy away from identifying the double standard that existed along the road. “You can’t talk about cross-country travel without talking about racism,” he said. Baker points out that African Americans were often denied service at many of the businesses along Route 66 for decades. He mentions places that didn’t discriminate, as well as citing outlets like Alberta’s Hotel & Snack Bar in Springfield, Mo. where Margie Alberta Northcutt Ellis was “always looking for avenues to meet the needs of her African American customers.”

For Garrett Graff, it’s his third oral history effort. After 9-11 (The Only Plane in the Sky) and D-Day (When the Sea Came Alive), this time it’s the creation and delivery of the atomic bomb during World War II.

The Devil Reached Toward the Sky follows the first conceptualization by European physicists to the destruction that occurred at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

One of the unique powers of oral history is the way that it puts you back in the footsteps and experiences of the people who lived these events firsthand before they knew the outcome, said Graff.

Narrative history often makes events seem neater and simpler than they felt to anyone who was living them at the time, stated Graff. 

Reading through quotes delivered by major players of the time allows readers to feel the uncertainty that existed while the world was at war. 

Once it became clear—to the scientists, anyway—of the potential destructive power of atomic energy, the race was on. Physicists from across Europe, many of them Jewish and fleeing for their lives as Nazi power expanded, came to the United States with the hope that their work wouldn’t be too late—that Hitler wouldn’t get the bomb first.

Graff noted that sometimes the story of the Manhattan Project tends to center only on the Los Alamos outpost. The war was won by the vast industrial effort that went into the bomb’s creation, said the author. Just as important as the New Mexico lab where the first bomb was detonated were “secret cities” developed in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Hanford, Wash., sites where thousands worked on developing the materials needed to create an atomic reaction, he said.

As a native Vermonter, Graff compared the process of converting 4,000 pages of quotes and notes down to 500 to making maple syrup. “You just boil and boil,” he said of the editing process involved. When all the boiling was done, you’re still left with some 500 voices to relate the process, both scientifically and militarily, that brought about the bomb.

The oral history approach empowers the reader with the ability to skim at record speeds, choosing to skip passages at will to get to later developments. However you tackle the work, there’s a lot of history to consider. Graff said the atomic bombs represented the final part of a fierce U.S. bombing campaign that included that single night in March 1945 when 100,000 people died in the firebombing of Tokyo, the most destructive single day of a war that killed so many. A total of 66 Japanese cities were firebombed in U.S. B-29 raids before Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

There’s a section of the book devoted to the transport of the bomb. The U.S.S. Indianapolis, a cruiser back in the States for repair after a kamikaze attack off Okinawa, carried off the mission but was sunk by a Japanese submarine four days later. Of the nearly 1,200 on board, only 316 survived. The survivors spent four days and five nights in the water. Graff includes two quotes to close the chapter: “The Indianapolis was the last major ship to be lost during the war and the greatest single disaster in the history of the Navy,” said Col. Kenneth Nichols.

“If the Indianapolis had been sunk with Little Boy (the bomb) aboard, the war could have been seriously prolonged,” said Luis Alvarez, the Nobel-Prize-winning physicist.

As for his next project, Graff said it wouldn’t be an oral history or cover an aspect of WWII. Right now, he’s leaning towards writing about the preservation of history in this country. “As America approaches its 250th anniversary, its history is under attack right now,” he said.

Grandin figures that Washington had a hand in 16 regime changes in Latin American countries between 1961 and 1969. He goes into great detail outlining U.S. involvement in countries like Cuba, Nicaragua, and Brazil.

While U.S. officials are interfering with Latin American governments, many of the rest of us in this country are ignoring the countries and people south of the border.

All too often, it’s portrayed as a region plagued by economic instability, drug cartels, and death squads. The Trump Administration, after all, is going to great pains and expense to stress the region’s problems.

Grandin received the Pulitzer Prize for The End of the Myth, his previous book about the U.S. frontier, and the relentless drive that pushed people west. But an all-out surge to take over territory isn’t the way it worked in South America.

Grandin details centuries of turmoil, bloodshed, and diplomacy in Latin America that have shaped the laws that govern the modern world. Despite the struggles and slaughter of millions over the years, Latin America clings to a social democratic tradition, principles worthy of the United Nations.

Grandin writes that Latin America has helped develop the notion that nations have common interests and that cooperation is preferable to competition.

The United States hasn’t always been the imperialist meddler. Grandin recalls Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Good Neighbor Policy” in the 1930s and 1940s, a period that involved mutual respect and admiration. 

FDR’s VP Henry Wallace (replaced by Truman for the 1944 election) talked about raising the wages of the common man on his triumphant swing through Latin America in 1943. “(Latin Americans) didn’t think Roosevelt would run in 1944. They thought Wallace was going to be president,” said Grandin.

Instead, the postwar period brought the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe. Latin America got left out when it came to the billions the U.S. was spending around the world. If South American countries wanted private capital, they needed to assure investors that it was safe to do so, said Marshall. 

As a result, Latin American regimes turned oppressive. Dissent was stifled. By 1950, nearly the entire region of Latin America was ruled by brutal men,” noted Grandin, citing dictators such as Batista (Cuba), Trujillo (Dominican Republic), Duvalier (Haiti), Odria (Peru), and Somoza (Nicaragua). “All were faithful to the U.S.,” added Grandin.

Mexico. With its strong commitment to sovereignty, it plays a central role in the history that Grandin relates. “Mexico’s Constitution was the world's first social democratic constitution, the first constitution to recognize not just individual rights, but social and economic rights. The right to dignity, to a pension, health care, and education,” stated the author.

Grandin also had praise for Claudia Sheinbaum, the first woman president of Mexico. “She has the support of 60 percent of the population. The people love her,” he said. 

The author, who wrote Finding Katarina M under the pseudonym Elisabeth Elo, decided to follow that with something a little lighter. The result? The feel-good mystery, The World’s Greatest Detective and Her Just Okay Assistant.

Her latest effort teams Aubrey Merritt, “a brilliant Boomer detective," with Olivia Blount, “an ambitious Gen Z assistant.” Together, the pair repair to the lavish Wild Goose Resort in Vermont to solve a murder—or is it suicide? The clues are there for the reader to come to his or her own conclusion, said Tully, who worked as an editor at a children’s magazine before turning to fiction writing. She’s also worked as a project manager at a tech company and as a counselor at a halfway house. 

A lover of mysteries, particularly those of Agatha Christie, Tully said she followed the approach used by Christie, saving the concluding chapter in her book for “the big reveal,” where the detective lays out her case, lists the clues, and names the suspect.

Tully noted that in the world of mysteries today, she plays it pretty straight in the publishing world that now offers a wide variety of mystery categories—such as historical, psychological, hard-boiled, and others. The “cozy mystery” category usually involves “amateur detectives and cats,” she said.

The fact that so many books get published in this country each year—as many as one million titles by one estimate—might give one pause to someone trying to corral readers. But Tully said the fact that so many books are published “is a sign of a free and healthy society.”

Tully, who lives outside Boston with her family, taught classes at Harvard and Tufts before attending night classes at Boston College, a schedule that allowed her to write during the day. As far as her present writing routine goes, “I’ll start at noon and go until four or five,” she said.

As for her intake of books, Tully loves mysteries but said she often reads those with a critical eye, judging style and substance as she shapes her own future efforts. “For my own pleasure, I tend to read non-fiction. It allows me to learn things that I didn’t know before,” said Tully, citing All the Beauty in the World by Patrick Bringley, a 2023 memoir of a museum guard, as an example.

What makes this story so interesting are the characters involved: Artie Shaw, himself, the motley group of band members that Shaw recruited himself, as well as figures from the worlds of the military and show business. 

Even before the United States joined the war, Shaw exhibited erratic behavior. At the top of his game in 1939, riding the success of big-band swing and a hit recording of Cole Porter’s “Begin the Beguine,” Shaw abruptly walked away from the bandstand, disappearing from sight to spend six weeks in Mexico without telling anyone of his whereabouts. 

That was a characteristic of Shaw’s, said Doyle. He would walk away from difficult situations throughout his life. Married eight times (among his brides: movie queens Lana Turner and Ava Gardner), Shaw often turned off the people who were closest to him.

“He was probably a musical genius, but he was also prickly, short-tempered, and driven, Doyle noted. 

Shaw’s epic Pacific roadshow had him playing in Hawaii for several months before heading out to sea where Navy Band 501 played aboard ships, aircraft carriers, as well as indoor and outdoor venues in Guadalcanal, Australia, New Zealand, and islands in between. By all accounts, the band delivered regularly, sharing the hits of the day including his trademark tune "Nightmare," providing entertainment appreciated by military personnel who faced danger far from home.

“Artie had traveled, by some accounting, 68,000 miles throughout the Pacific,” related Doyle in his book. “He had ducked into foxholes and hidden from bombs. He had felt his stomach lurch at sea and in the turbulent air. He had been bedside with the dying, and he had entertained admirals, generals, and foreign dignitaries. He had been cheered by thousands, and he had charmed the president’s wife,” he noted.

And Shaw also had a nervous breakdown that ended his tenure as wartime bandleader. By 1944, Shaw was back in the States, trying to clear his head. 

The band, incidentally, kept playing under the guidance of Sam Donahue, a sax player with the band. The group was sent to play before military crowds in England. They soon became popular favorites, even beating the esteemed Glenn Miller Band in a battle-of-the-bands competition (before Miller lost his life when his airplane went down in the English Channel).

As for Shaw, the post-war music scene brought change. It no longer made economic sense to take 20 musicians on the road. Following the trend that dictated smaller musical groups, Shaw formed the Gramercy Five. But in 1954 he decided to put away his clarinet and walk away from performing completely (save for a brief late-in-life resurrection). He took up sharpshooting as a hobby and appeared occasionally on the What’s My Line TV show.

“As much of a jerk he could be, he had integrity,” said Doyle of Shaw, a musician who didn’t want to spend the last 50 years of his life playing “Begin the Beguine.”

In his own 370-page autobiography, Shaw only devoted three pages to his wartime experiences. Doyle corrects that oversight.

Some of us have more choices than we’ve ever had—from what to buy and where to live and whom to love, even what to believe--but how did that come about? That’s the basis of the book Sophia Rosenfeld has written, called The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life.

Rosenfeld said she wanted to find those times when the early forms of choice were taking shape—when you could marry whomever you wanted, shop for what you might need, and vote as you saw fit. “I tried to find the moments when the practice was new,” she said.

We haven’t always had so many choices, said Rosenfeld, a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania. The dance card is one example, as viewed by the author, of a measure of freedom that emerged in the 18th century, developed in the 19th century, and largely disappeared by the early 20th century. 

"Once, though, dance cards had a real function," Rosenfeld noted. Designed mostly by men and used mostly by women, the cards facilitated decision-making in the ballroom. A lady could show that her dance card was already full, but "the expectation for the woman was a yes," she said.

The process was formal and may seem restrictive by today's standards, but it marked a step forward in the age of choice. 

“Rosenfeld demonstrates how modern societies have made the ability to choose the hallmark of freedom, whether in the marketplace, in ideas and belief systems, in courtship, in voting, in feminist and other rights-oriented politics, or in the social and behavioral sciences. But as we learn from Rosenfeld, this equation of choice with freedom can often exclude rather than empower,” said Lizabeth Cohen, author of A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America.

Moving from the seventeenth century to today, Rosenfeld pays particular attention to the lives of women, those often with the fewest choices, who have frequently been the drivers of this change.

In Fallen Tigers, Daniel Jackson recounts U.S. involvement in China, where the country provided supplies and air support to a nation that desperately needed it. U.S. airmen who served in China had to contend with a Japanese invasion that, by 1940, controlled China’s skies, 95 percent of its industry, and one-quarter of the Chinese mainland and half its population, noted Jackson.

Supporting China, a country embroiled in a prolonged civil war at the time, was important to U.S. interests, stated the author, adding that keeping Japan “busy” in China reduced Japanese resources that would otherwise be used against U.S. forces in the Pacific.

Jackson provides accounts of singular heroism on the part of numerous U.S. airmen who served in relative anonymity during their time in China. But there are familiar names, as well.

Claire Lee Chennault is the maverick Army Air Force commander who formed the Flying Tigers, the U.S. group of flyers who struck a blow against Japanese air dominance. 

There’s also Merian Cooper, the WWI veteran who escaped from a Soviet gulag after the war, who went on to co-write and direct King Kong (Cooper, himself, is at the controls of the bi-plane that toppled Kong from the top of the Empire State Building). At the age of 48, Cooper returned to the battlefield during WWII and helped Chennault plan a successful raid on Japanese-controlled Hong Kong.

Before becoming the venerable leader of the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War, Ho Chi Minh was a friend of American forces in WWII. In return for his assistance, he asked for an autographed picture of Chennault and six pistols, explained Jackson. These were items the wily Ho used to forge political alliances.

The Chinese people, themselves, were more than receptive to American assistance during the war, said Jackson. “They knew the risk they were taking by helping Americans,” he said, referring to the Chinese civilians who delivered U.S. airmen who bailed out or survived crash landings to safety. 

U.S. servicemen who landed in the jungle or mountainous terrain were brought back safely 90 percent of the time, Jackson said. Compare that with U.S. airmen downed in Europe during the war--they only had a one in five chance of returning safely, he said.

Despite Japan's policy of deadly reciprocity when it came to dealing with civilian assistance to Americans, the Chinese persevered, the author said. 

Today, the U.S. and China are competing world powers, but it’s important to recall the two countries were once allies who overcame their differences to win a war, said Jackson.

Joe Bonomo (pronounced Bo-know-mo, not the Turkish Taffy), an English professor at Northern Illinois University, starts his book that way, recalling the days of the coronavirus when he was offered hand sanitizer and plastic gloves at Green Tangerine, his local record shop. 

From there, we depart on essays on Van Halen’s “Panama,” the Cramps, Green Day, Lester Bangs, Pickwick Records, Dick Clark’s Twenty Years of Rock and Roll double album, to name but a few of the subjects covered. There are also asides on Cragmont Cola (once sold at Safeway supermarkets), radio jingles, and “great archeological artifacts found on YouTube.”

While Bonomo does a lot of looking back, he brings us right to the present, where he feels we’re enjoying a golden age of musical writing. No, it’s no longer confined to the pages of Rolling Stone  or The New Yorker but across the internet, where people like Josh Terry, Steve Pick, Tony Fletcher, Dan Epstein, Heather Ferris, and Aaron Gilbreath, to name a few, are busy posting stories.

Bonomo is busy building his own internet file with the Substack site, No Such Thing as Was. A quick glance at the site reveals that, in addition to posts on Amyl and the Sniffers, the Linda Lindas, Bad Nerves, and the Strokes, there’s a review of George Harrison’s Electronic Sound from 1969, a record that most of us have never heard (the back story on how the record was made may be even more fascinating than the review).

In talking about Lester Bangs, who died at the age of 33 in 1982, Bonomo cites the music journalist as his greatest influence. “He was more than a rock critic. The 45s and album cuts were simply the moving parts that got his words to the page. He was writing about what it means to be alive,” he said.

If you’ve ever come across a Pickwick Records release, you’ll be interested in Bonomo’s take on the subject. The company, which specialized in producing cheap knock-offs of hits of the day, was started in 1950 by Cy Leslie, “a Harvard-educated World War II vet who understood the dynamics of the wallet,” he noted. Recalling a Pickwick release of Beatle favorites, Bonomo is still amazed that the label attempted to duplicate "Mother," John Lennon's primal effort from an early solo album: "Who'd want to tackle a performance so raw and private, not to mention infamous and epochal?"

As for the 1973 Dick Clark release, “a wide-ranging potted history of rock and roll,” Bonomo pointed to the different genres of music represented on the album as well as the historic significance of the era that produced it. At the time of the album’s release, American Graffiti was also hitting theaters with a musical salute to nostalgia.

The author of Play This Book Loud always has something interesting to offer when it comes to the music front. Bonomo makes the point that Green Day, a band that still sells out arenas, has a career that parallels Bruce Springsteen in many ways.

Where else do you get an essay on the 7-Eleven convenience store chain’s 1966 release, “Do the Slurp?” The promo novelty 45 knocked Bonomo out as a kid, a memory he still can’t shake but happily shares with you. 

The McKeesport business district, with its movie theaters, furniture stores, jewelry shops, and three department stores, withered away. But on Jan. 1, 2016, McKeesport faced another blow--life without the Daily News, the newspaper that had covered the area since 1884. 

Like so many other papers in small towns across the country, the failure was due to a migration of advertisers to the internet, along with the inevitable decline in readership. No longer were papers owned by a single family or group in the town being served, but rather by media companies whose first responsibility was to stockholders and hedge fund owners.

Along with the loss of an outlet that provided a rundown of local news, the paper meant something else, Conte said. “The newspaper represented a shared sense of identity,” he said. People realized that the local paper was more than headlines and town council coverage. Some recalled that their first job was delivering the paper. Others counted the times family and friends had been pictured in its pages over the years.

Politicians who first breathed a sigh of relief, figuring that they no longer faced tough questions during a campaign or over a council issue, realized they’d also lost their megaphone to communicate accomplishments to the community.

The paper's iconic downtown office, with a black-and-white exterior, checkboard-tiled office, with its large map on the wall, no longer allowed free access to the public. “We lost that connection,” said Conte, founder and manager of the Center for Media Innovation in Pittsburgh.

But Conte still believes local news has a future. The subtitle of his book is How Citizen Gatekeepers Can Save Local Journalism. The work has only just begun to find the right formula that would use modern technology to provide meaningful information to communities like McKeesport, he said.

Digital news outlets are succeeding in places like Santa Cruz, Calif., and in Pennsylvania, where the Center for Media Innovation is operating, said Conte. “We’re also learning what doesn’t work. The Houston Landing was started with a $20 million investment, but the public didn’t take to it. It closed,” he said.

“I’m more encouraged by operations that start small and grow,” said Conte, who calls on the need for “citizen gatekeepers” to bring journalism into the 21st century. “We’re all gatekeepers now. The news now belongs to all of us, and we need to make sense of that,” he said.

While Ingersoll attracted huge crowds, he had plenty of critics who called him “the Great Infidel” because of his criticism of organized religion. “Religion can make a good man somewhat better,” Ingersoll mused, “but usually it only makes bad men worse.”

While decrying the Bible and organized religion, Ingersoll supported women’s rights while opposing racism and the death penalty. “In an age before microphones and mass media, he was a household name in America—a thunderous voice for liberty, reason, and human dignity,” noted Tom Malone in his new book, The Portable Ingersoll.

Ingersoll had many names—the Great Agnostic, Royal Bob, the most noted of American infidels, and the daring blasphemer.

A successful lawyer, Ingersoll and brother Ebon established a law office in Peoria. After he and his family left central Illinois, Ingersoll lived in Washington, D.C., and New York City. Ingersoll was appointed Attorney General of Illinois before the Civil War where he served as a colonel in the 11th Illinois Cavalry. He was taken prisoner in the war by Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Confederate general who went on to found the Ku Klux Klan. 

A lifelong Republican, Ingersoll gave the nominating speech for James Blaine at the 1876 Republican Convention. Although Blaine did not receive the nomination that year, Ingersoll’s speech was considered to be one of the great convention speeches of the 19th Century. 

Ingersoll delivered another memorable speech that year in Peoria where he focused on the Declaration of Independence in a July Fourth celebration, noted Malone.

“Seven long years of war — fighting for what? For the principle that all men are created equal — a truth that nobody ever disputed except a scoundrel; nobody, nobody in the entire history of this world,” noted Ingersoll in the Peoria speech.

It’s believed that Ingersoll delivered around 1,500 lectures in 30 years, traveling the country while earning huge fees for his speeches, said Malone. “There’s a lot made of his focus on religion. That’s understandable but he was so much more than that. His speeches dealt with art and history, subjects like Shakespeare, Burns, and Thomas Paine. These were people he viewed as heroes,” he said.

Among Ingersoll’s admirers were some of the leading minds of the day, people like Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Walt Whitman, Andrew Carnegie, Mark Twain, and Thomas Edison.

If a producer is seeking a subject for a historical documentary, Robert Ingersoll might be just the ticket, said Malone.  Such a program would not only shed light on an overlooked American but might salve our battered senses in these divisive times by promoting the importance of being happy.

An oft-repeated quote from Ingersoll: "Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so." 

Clay Risen, a New York Times reporter, addresses this point in his fourth book, Red Scare, where he takes you back to that postwar period, where, as author Stacy Schiff put it in one of the blurbs on the book’s back cover, “a group of hardened conservatives lost their heads and a country lost its way.”

“Everywhere it seemed the Communists were on the offensive and winning,” Risen writes of the late-40s period that gave birth to the Scare. “In February 1948, Czechoslovakian Communists took control of the country in a Soviet-backed coup,” he noted, adding that later that same year, Russia closed off West Berlin, setting up a massive airlift by Allies to supply the city. Meanwhile, U.S.-backed forces in China were losing ground to Mao Zedong.

With Communism on the march, tensions in Washington ran high, setting the stage for the House Committee on Un-American Activities, the Hollywood 10, and Joe McCarthy. But the Red Scare involved more than much-publicized stories of blacklists and McCarthy’s list of Communists in high office, more than the high-profile trials of accused spies Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs.

McCarthy, who dominated the media for four years, was a symptom of the era, not the cause, said Risen.

At a time when finger-pointing was encouraged, when U.S. citizens, be they teachers, reporters, or everyday workers, lost their jobs as a result of past associations or rash accusations, it was a time when fear ran wild in this country, noted the author.

Among those profiled, Risen tells the story of Harry Bridges, who organized West Coast dockworkers. Bridges was a successful labor leader who worked well with the shipping companies he negotiated with, but had to fight off government attempts to have him deported to his native Australia for years, said Risen. Bridges was even the subject of a record, “The Ballad of Harry Bridges,” sung by Pete Seeger with Woody Guthrie among the backup singers.

The book’s subhead is Blacklists, McCarthyism and the Making of Modern America so it’s not surprising to find similarities between that toxic 50s period and the divisive politics of today. 

While McCarthy was in the national spotlight, Republicans routinely lashed out at Democrats and the left as anti-American.

Compare that with the recent characterization of left-wing critics as “scum”  in President Trump’s Memorial Day address. Earlier this year, a congressional subcommittee hearing, a Republican-backed effort to investigate public broadcasting, was titled “Anti-American Airwaves: Holding the heads of NPR and PBS Accountable.”

In Building Bridges, Douglas Bristol examines how the military treated Black Americans before, during, and after the national emergency that WWII represented. 

Initially, Black Americans weren’t accepted into the service like their white counterparts. When the first peacetime draft was instituted in 1940, many Blacks were passed over by local draft boards, especially in the South. Spurred on by the federal government, more Blacks entered the military, but largely in menial roles rather than serving as combat troops, said Bristol. “Eighty percent of African Americans were used in a service capacity over the course of the war,” he said.

But in the spring of 1943, the American military faced manpower shortages that threatened to delay the D-Day invasion, said Bristol. “What followed was a conservative revolution in the Army that changed the way they trained Black GIs,” he said.

Since two-thirds of the Black GIs, many coming from a sharecropper background, had only a third-grade education, the Army devised new ways to evaluate recruits, developing non-verbal IQ tests and forming special training units, said Bristol.

The training allowed Black GIs who had been sharecroppers before the war to gain skills, allowing them to work in complex organizations, he said.

Riley King, later to become known as musician B.B. King, was a tractor driver in the service who was permitted to return to work in the field, said Bristol, pointing it out as an example of how labor needs of Southern planters were taken into account by the military. 

King was also witness to a scene that exemplified the added burden African American soldiers faced in WWII, said the author. 

“He was on a bus with other GIs when they passed people on the road. One of the Black GIs innocently called out to some of the women. When the bus came to a lunch stop, an enraged white man got on the bus with a rifle, demanding to know who had the temerity to address a white woman. No one said a word despite being threatened at point-blank range. Eventually, the man left. The incident showed the need for solidarity among Black soldiers when facing hardship,” he said.

African American newspapers like the Pittsburgh Courier and Chicago Defender also played a part in helping Black citizens overcome problems in the military. “The constant complaint of African Americans was that the mainstream press said nothing at all about the racial incidents that occurred in camps across the country. The Black press allowed people to read about the problems," said Bristol.

As a fellow in the Dale Center for the Study of War and Society at the University of Southern Mississippi, Bristol previously co-edited Integrating the U.S. Military: Race, Gender, and Sexuality Since World War II.

This time around, Monaghan covers a more recent conflict, one that’s still going on: the war between Ukraine and Russia. In To Die With Such Men (Hurst & Co.), the reader is taken behind the lines as Monaghan recreates some of the missions fought in the early stages of a war that started in 2022 when Russia invaded the country. Through extensive interviews with members of Ukraine’s International Legion, the author follows a core group of Western volunteers in Ukraine, fighting together from the early battle for Kyiv through to battles at Severodonetsk and Bakhmut, through May 2023.

While not in Ukraine herself, Monaghan recreates battle scenes that portray urban combat in riveting detail. Dialogue from soldiers like Dan, Ginger, and Greg, along with a description of frontline action, complete with a rundown on the weaponry involved, has one ducking for cover.

“There’s so much body-cam video and audio of this war that it’s possible to detail battles,” she said. “The war has changed a lot since it started. There was a lot of urban warfare at first that’s evolved into a 21st century version of WWI with drones taking the place of the barbed wire,” said Monaghan.

The relentless tension of war is broken by Monaghan’s ability to incorporate the banter of the barracks into the account, where black humor and poignant reflections take hold.

While the International Brigade may have contained as many as 20,000 soldiers from Western countries at the start of the war, that number has declined substantially once the realization of what the conflict requires settled in, she said, adding that many of those she interviewed for the book about their service through the summer of 2023 are still there.

Ukraine remains steadfast in its opposition to Russian rule, said Monaghan. “The Ukrainian determination to win is there,” she said.

The Trump Administration’s efforts to end the fighting in Ukraine may have brought confusion, but “if there’s a silver lining, it’s that the U.S. position has forced European nations to double down on their support for Ukraine,” she said.

Among the heroes in this book is Oleksii Chubashev, a TV reporter in Ukraine whose military reality show allowed him to step into the Ukrainian special forces. Having some knowledge of English placed him as an officer in the International Legion. The men who served under Chubashev “genuinely liked working with him: he was smart, charismatic, and a true believer in the cause,” noted Monaghan.

Understanding why some people go out of their way to face danger is at the heart of Monaghan’s book. The soldiers she interviewed knew they might be criticized for fighting someone else’s war. But they also knew it was the right thing to do, she said. 

Chan is president and founder of Pacific Atrocities Education, a non-profit based in San Francisco that churns out history regarding World War II’s Pacific front.

In addition to publishing 29 books by a wide variety of authors that document human rights abuses, military battles, resistance efforts, and relate other untold efforts from the war, Chan’s group has produced over 500 short historical videos for Pacific Front Untold on YouTube. The group’s website, pacificatrocities.org, has been visited by over half a million visitors in the past 12 months, said Chan, a Chinese-American who first heard horror stories about the war in Asia from her grandmother, who was living in Hong Kong at the time.

The stated mission of Pacific Atrocities Education is to increase awareness about atrocities committed in the Asia-Pacific Theater of World War II through public history projects, said Chan who believes that future generations need to understand, and share this history, she said. Chan said that an estimated 25 million to 35 million people died in Asia during WWII.

Through publishing books, creating educational resources, and heading archival projects on topics such as Korean comfort women, the Bataan Death March, Unit 731 (a biochemical weapons program), and the Nanjing Massacre, the group seeks to help survivors find closure while increasing the dialogue about complex contemporary issues that surround human rights worldwide, said Chan.

While WWII ended in 1945, information related to what happened during the conflict continues to come to light as files are declassified, said Chan, who soon plans another visit to the National Archives in Washington, D.C. to do further research. 

Chan isn’t the first U of I grad to get involved in the war in Asia. “After graduating 100 years before me, in 1912, Minnie Vautrin became a missionary in China and famously saved the lives of at least 10,000 Chinese refugees during the Japanese army’s 1937 invasion of Nanjing. Sixty years later, University of Illinois Iris Chang (class of 1989) unearthed Vautrin’s diary for her award-winning book, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II,” she said.

Pacific Atrocities Education plans a Sept. 18 conference in San Francisco, said Chan “to build bridges and advocate for a more peaceful future.”

Florida has been Pittman’s beat for decades. “Nine hundred people move to this state every day. I look at it as my job to tell them what they’re in for. A lot of people think Florida’s history started with Disney World, but there’s a lot more going on,” said Pittman, named a Florida Literary Legend by the Florida Heritage Book Festival in 2020. “That’s a living legend,” said Pittman. “That’s the important part.”

Florida has gone through plenty of changes over the years, he said. “In the 1940s, we were the getaway state. In the 1950s, we found that cities like Tampa and others were Mafia-dominated. In the 1960s, you had the Kennedy Space Center. In the 1970s, of course, you had Disney World. By 2000, we became known for the (presidential) election we botched,” said Pittman.

His newest book, Welcome to Florida—True Tales from America’s Most Interesting State (University Press of Florida), is a collection of Pittman's recent columns and articles, all about Florida, that most interesting of states. 

Whether writing about developers and a place once known as Jackass Junction or Jimmy Buffett who founded the Save the Manatee Club in 1981 and supported the effort right up until he died in 2023, Pittman captures your interest with his stories. 

“To me, the manatee represents what we all like about Florida—kind of cruising in warm, clear water and not bothering anybody,” said Buffett in Pittman’s book.

Pittman wrote about manatees just last week in the Florida Phoenix in a story  citing the 2,000 manatees that starved to death because the seagrass they depend on for food was wiped out by the consequences of human pollution.

“When you only have about 6,000 manatees to start with, that’s a problem,” said Pittman, who acknowledges that Florida faces severe environmental challenges in the era of climate change.

“Florida is the flattest state in the union, and we’re surrounded on three sides by water. So that water comes surging in. We’re also the hottest state, with temperatures even rising at night. They call it the Sunshine State but most of Florida’s cities get more rain than Seattle. That leads to more mosquitoes and mosquito-related disease,” he said.

More intense hurricanes are doing more damage than ever, but the mantra remains “we will rebuild” instead of “retreat from the beach,” said Pittman. While the governor and a developer-friendly legislature don’t offer much in the way of leadership on climate-change issues, Pittman sees another group weighing in. “The property insurance companies see the pace of disaster,” he said, noting that higher rates or an exodus of insurance firms from the state will likely set the agenda for action.

While he never tires of writing about his home state (Welcome to Florida is his seventh book), Pittman said he may try his hand at fiction next. “I wrote about Tim Dorsey (the Florida novelist who died in 2023) in the book. Usually, Tim would slip in some scenes that directly reference real ‘Florida Man’ headlines. There was the one about the guy who tossed an alligator through a Wendy’s drive-through window. Maybe there’s room for another wacky Florida crime novel. We’ll see,”  he said.

The book chronicles the involvement of members of the Daniels family with U.S. presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Harry Truman, all of whom found support from the paper and its owners.

Josephus Daniels was a white supremacist who used the paper in its early days to spread hate. “Blacks were routinely portrayed as sexual predators, feeding white paranoia,” noted Christensen. 

“Even in situations where a white woman was merely in the presence of a black man, the News & Observer found cause for alarm,” wrote journalist David Zucchino. But Daniels found other subjects to write about. He also went after the almighty railroads and opposed the American Tobacco Co’s cornering the market on cigarette production.

All the while, Daniels became increasingly involved in Democratic Party politics—not just in Raleigh but across the state and around the country. His first political hero was William Jennings Bryan. Daniels was at Bryan’s side during three presidential elections (all of which Bryan lost).

While Josephus Daniels never changed his mind on matters of race, the ardent segregationist was a progressive and a liberal on a broad range of issues from education to women’s rights, said Christensen. “In his time, he fought against the Klu Klux Klan and McCarthyism,” the author said.

Daniels helped Woodrow Wilson’s organize a national presidential campaign in 1912. As a result Daniels, 51, was named Secretary of the Navy during the Wilson Administration, where his chief deputy was FDR, then 31. They made the proverbial odd couple, noted Christensen. 

“The handsome, aristocratic FDR frequented the exclusive clubs clad in English-tailored suits…(while) Daniels, short, dumpy, and allergic to exercise—called the pre-polio FDR, who was six feet two, athletic, and well spoken, “as handsome a figure of an attractive young man as I have ever seen,” wrote Christensen, adding that Daniels probably saved Roosevelt’s political career by covering up an affair he had while serving in the office of the Navy.

When Daniels was named ambassador to Mexico after FDR was elected president in 1932, Jonathan Daniels, his son, took over as the paper’s editor. “He had different ideas on race than his father did,” said Christensen. “(Jonathan) gave more voice for racial issues at a time when Blacks had little voice,” he said.

Jonathan Daniels also played a role in Harry Truman’s surprising 1948 presidential election. Considered the underdog as Truman was getting his from both the left (Henry Wallace) and the right (Strom Thurmond) in his own party and up against a polished GOP candidate, Thomas Dewey, Truman pulled off the upset. Jonathan Daniels was one of his speechwriters. 

The News & Observer, meanwhile, continued to develop as a watchdog publication—not just in Raleigh but across North Carolina. During the 1990s, the paper hired its first Black executives and invited the first African American to join its board of directors. 

Christensen also documents the decline of the newspaper industry, something he bore witness to as a longtime News & Observer staffer who retired in 2018.

As the paper’s former book editor J. Peder Zane noted about Southern News, Southern Politics: ”Ambition and politics, family dynamics, and the grand sweep of history collide and align in Rob Christensen’s epic tale of the North Carolina Newspaper dynasty.”

Mathewson’s good looks and his quiet, easy-going manner made him a hit with the ladies, Gaff said. “Women came to baseball games,” he noted, adding that “opposing clubs would schedule Ladies Days for games in which Christy would pitch and women would come in throngs.”

On the field, Mathewson racked up big numbers. In his first 14 seasons with the Giants, he won at least 20 games every season. In 1905, he led the Giants to a championship, winning three games in the World Series that year without surrendering a run.

Gaff also provides a history of baseball’s growth in the early 20th century. The sport was heavily supported by the big newspapers of the day, especially those in New York. Sports sections carried accounts of big-league games that reached millions. As the game gained popularity, larger ballparks were required to accommodate the growing crowds that attended. In New York, the Giants started games just an hour after the closing of the stock market, encouraging the Wall Street crowd to frequent the ballpark.

Mathewson was smart, said Gaff. He could recall situations with opposing batters years later in vivid detail. John McGraw, his longtime manager on the Giants, said that “Mathewson’s real greatness in the game was the example he set for young fellows and the impression he left on the minds of the public. He gave our profession a dignity that it needed and was slow to acquire.”

Before achieving fame as a baseball player, Mathewson was a member of the Bucknell University football team, where he starred as both fullback and drop kicker. He spent three years at Bucknell before becoming a professional baseball player. The school’s football stadium is named after him.

Instead, the unsolved murder of Myrtle Cook in 1925 is related to political forces flowing through the state of Iowa at the time, with Chorneau, a former reporter, explaining the state’s near-constant battle over temperance.

During the first half-century of statehood, Iowa lurched from wet to dry eight times before Prohibition was ratified in 1919. Cook was president of the local temperance union when she was shot through the heart.

Chorneau speculates that it might have been something she saw that cost the woman her life. In any event, the shooting made the front page of the New York Times. The next day her funeral made national news when a small army from the Klu Klux Klan gathered in town on her behalf.

Cook wasn’t just the head of a temperance union but an informant for the law. “Myrtle spent hours at her parlor window, which had a clear view of the Rock Island Railroad station and the dive café next door,” noted Chorneau, adding that “Myrtle kept good notes on the comings and goings of the bootleggers and their customers, who regularly conducted their business at the depot.”

Cook may have even realized that her life was in jeopardy. In a conversation with a friend shortly before her death, “Myrtle didn’t tell Marie what or whom she had seen but ended the conversation with a chilling remark: ‘I believe this work will be the end of me.’” related Chorneau.

Prohibition wasn’t the only force creating change in Iowa. You also had the women’s suffrage movement, the issue of slavery, and the railroad industry all moving across the state. In 1925, Al Capone took over as gang boss in Chicago, creating a ripple effect across the Midwest, especially when it came to bootlegging operations. Chorneau even raises the possibility that Capone himself may have had a hand in the Cook murder.

Western history was recorded in so many movies—from silent films like On the War Path (1911) and The Indian Massacre (1912) to John Ford epics like Stagecoach (1939) and My Darling Clementine (1946) along with High Noon (1952), A Fistful of Dollars (1964), Blazing Saddles (1974) and hundreds more. Between 1947 and 1950 Westerns made up 30 percent of major Hollywood releases.

Maybe you got your first taste from television on shows like Bonanza, Maverick, Cheyenne, or Gunsmoke? On radio, you might have followed the exploits of the Lone Ranger or the Six Shooter with Jimmy Stewart.

William Grady’s Rebranding the Western (University of Texas Press) surveys another medium that explored Western history: the comic. From the start of the 20th century, newspaper comic strips exploded in popularity. 

Western strips like Red Ryder and Lone Ranger blossomed in the 1930s along with Little Joe, a strip that ran from 1933 to 1972, following Joe Oak, a child who lives with his widowed mother on the family ranch managed by a former gunslinger.  

Grady notes that Westerns were part of the comic book craze that evolved in the 1940s and 1950s. That was a period when comic books were sold everywhere: in grocery stores, on newsstands, and at the corner drugstore. “Calculations on the monthly sale of comic books averaged anywhere from 60 million to 100 million across the postwar decade (1945-1954),” he said.

More than 3,400 different Western comic book titles had been printed by 1959, said Grady. “Every comic book publisher, from Ace Magazines to Ziff-Davis Publications, offered a slew of Western titles that featured thrilling adventure tales about cowboys, gunfighters, outlaws, and historical frontier figures,” he said.

Along with Kit Carson, Indian Scout, and Two-Gun Kid, you had Western romance titles like Western Love Trails and Cowgirl Romances. But the comic-book trail wasn’t limited to 19th-century frontier days. Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, for example, worked on the Cold War frontier of the 50s, searching out missing atomic scientists or combatting Russian saboteurs, noted Grady.

Western comics reflected the times, said the author. Lobo, an African American hero, arrived in the 1960s while Jonah Hex, a disfigured antihero burst onto the scene in the 1970s. Also in the 70s, Marvel Comics launched Red Wolf, a series where Johnny Wakely, a Cheyenne Indian sought justice for all people on the frontier.

The Western continues to evolve, Grady stated, citing The Walking Dead ( a TV show based on a graphic novel) and Yellowstone (a neo-Western) as contemporary examples of Western-type storytelling. “On one hand, the image of the Western has remained unchanged for over a century. On the other, the genre has regularly experienced transformations that permit it to maintain its compelling hold on audiences,” he said.

That’s just one of the examples that Jessica Brockmole details in her book, Pink Cars and Pocketbooks, a study of U.S. auto industry efforts to win over female customers through the 20th century.

Brockmole points out that women were a factor in the acceptance of the automobile in America—almost from the start of the 20th century. Pictured in the book is a 1903 advertisement for Oldsmobile with a headline, “Good Bye, Horse.” A lady driver is shown waving goodbye to a faithful steed standing behind a fence. “Any lady who understands a sewing machine can drive this graceful Runabout,” notes the ad copy.

While automotive history traditionally followed a male orientation with an emphasis on speed and power, women were on the scene, noted Brockmole. “The percentage of driver’s licenses issued to women tripled between 1922 and 1931. Among the consumer homes surveyed, women were driving in over half and, in many of those households, more than one woman drove the family car,” she stated.

In a 1935 study, women made up one-third of U.S. drivers on the road but their “sphere of influence” impacted two-thirds of all car sales, said Brockmole.

Women, used to the vagaries of the fashion industry, weren’t taken aback when Alfred Sloan of General Motors transformed the automotive industry with the concept of planned obsolescence, the launching of “new” car models annually, she said. The idea of making minor design adjustments while offering color and ornamental changes brought car companies into the realm of fashion, the author noted.

Style became substance as industrial designers like Raymond Loewy and Norman Bel Geddes were hired by automakers. Brockmole said Dorothy Dignam, an ad executive with the Philadelphia ad agency, N.W. Ayer & Son, helped Ford Motor Co. understand that lines were everything in the 1930s. Dignam outlined ways Ford could promote new models to women concerned with line, style, and appearance, said Brockmole.

In the 1950s, Charlotte Montgomery wrote a column in Good Housekeeping called “Woman and Her Car,” expressing the viewpoint that women were interested in automotive fundamentals, not just a car to match a spring outfit, the author noted.

Brockmole cited Ms. Magazine as an example of promoting a new spirit for women in the 1970s. A woman’s place was no longer solely in the home as working women grew in number and stature, she said. Other periodicals followed providing specific information to women about cars.

A study of the relationship between women and the auto industry is a story with a happy ending, noted Brockmole, adding: “Despite women’s messy history with the automobile, they have claimed the knowledge, the voice, and the confidence to define that relationship for themselves.”

Stephens’ dramatic accounts and keen insight at what he found along with Catherwood’s meticulous engravings at numerous Maya sites proved to be a revelation. The public learned about structures like the Temple of the Sun and the Monument at Quirigia, of pyramids and plazas, of carvings and hieroglyphics, of the grandeur of a culture that didn't just exist in a harsh environment for more than 4,000 years but flourished.

Much has been learned since Stephens and Catherwood wielded machetes to cut their way through the area of the world now known as Mesoamerica. We now know the Maya were not only builders, farmers, artists, and warriors--but masters when it came to a sustainable lifestyle. 

Lisa Lucero, a professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois, has investigated Mayan life in Belize for over 35 years. Her book, Maya Wisdom and the Survival of Our Planet, suggests Mayan accomplishments weren’t limited to architecture and art.

“Maya reservoirs at the hundreds of cities supplied millions of people for over 1,000 years,” she said, referring to a period that encompasses the Classic Maya period (250 to 900 A.D.) How did they keep water clean enough for drinking? Lucero talks about the aquatic plants the Maya cultivated to maintain water quality in the same manner as constructed wetlands cleanse soils. “I love talking about water lilies,” she said, referring to sensitive plants that can only grow in clean water. 

Maya kings (one ancient pot pictured in the book shows a king with a water lily headdress) had to be water managers before anything else. In times of drought, maintaining an adequate water supply for a growing population became increasingly difficult, said Lucero. Sustained droughts finally proved calamitous, forcing families to pack up and move, she said.

While many Mayan cities were already abandoned a thousand years before Stephens and Catherwood arrived, Lucero doesn’t view the exodus as a huge mystery. “People focus on the collapse of the Mayan kings (by 900 A.D.). They did disappear. But the people just moved on. They voted with their feet,” she said.

The very fact that the Maya were able to maintain cities in a jungle environment for so long without the technology we now hold in such high esteem is testimony to their understanding of environment and an ability to use the plants, animals, and earth to create what we call a sustainable existence today.

The fact is the Maya didn’t disappear, she said. “More than 7 million Maya live today—some in Illinois,” said Lucero. “The Maya have adapted to many changes over the millennia—demands from Maya kings, Spanish and English colonial rule, and massive droughts. They continue to adapt today in Central America and elsewhere, and many of their ancestral practices are alive and well,” she said.

The problem of climate change requires learning from the Maya, said Lucero. “We are all connected. We are part of one huge family and we need to take care of one another,” she said.   

Kosik interviewed heads of business and corporate experts regularly but relegated financial decisions to her husband. Although dealing with business on a daily basis on the job, when it came to her own personal finances, she decided not to get involved.

Although in what she called “a bad marriage,” she confessed to being terrified to leave for fear of running aground financially. All of which led to her learning about things like buying a car, a house, and saving for retirement, issues she put off getting involved in for years.

What’s Up gives a step-by-step action plan on various money topics as well as providing interviews with women who share their tales of why not learning about money decisions can lead to problems.
 
Kosik saw the irony in her position. “How could I, of all people, CNN’s business correspondent on Wall Street, be in this position – feeling trapped in a failing marriage because I didn’t have the self-assurance to make important financial decisions that would also impact my young children,” she said.

"I was afraid of making mistakes whether it was our investments, the car buying, or insurance. I didn’t think I had the knowledge and good judgment that comes from experience of 'doing the financial stuff.' I was embarrassed and ashamed,” said Kosik.

Kosik also realized other women were in the same position. 

"Compared to previous generations, women are more educated, they’re carving out careers and running companies. But what I learned through dozens of interviews and research is that even many of these high-achieving women aren’t fully involved with managing their financial lives. They’re pawning it off to their spouses or just plain avoiding it. And they’re not readily admitting it because they don’t want to seem unintelligent by their peers,” said Kosik.

"I hope you discover, as I did, that these financial things aren’t as complicated as you first thought. In fact, once I began tackling these transactions, each little victory made me gain a little more confidence. And over time, I wondered what I had been afraid of in the first place. And why I didn’t start sooner,” she said.

Her latest, One Death at a Time, is promoted as a “feel-good mystery,” a categorization that Waxman seems relatively happy with. But then Waxman confesses to be a relatively happy person. “One Death at a Time is funny. All my books are lighthearted,” she said.

Born in England in 1970, Waxman came to the United States at 21, setting up a lifelong battle between her Britishness and her Americaness, she said. A career in advertising, where she worked as a copywriter and then creative director at various advertising agencies in London and New York, proved to be a great training ground for book writing, she said.

“(Advertising) work is technical but at the same time creative. You have to express an idea in limited space and create an emotional connection.” All that rewriting and editing that goes into ad work helps one prepare a novel, said Waxman.

Growing up in England with an American mother (from Detroit) who was a murder-mystery writer, Waxman’s childhood reading list included books by classic mystery writers like Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers. “Rex Stout, creator of Nero Wolfe, is my favorite,” she said.

But along with reading plenty of non-fiction these days, Waxman said she will suddenly read a string of books by various authors from Jane Austen to Stephen King. “King’s a master of description,” she noted.

Absorbing the work of accomplished writers helps restore her faith in the wonder of reading, she said. “It helps me create a world that will transport a reader,” said Waxman. 
 

Published in March 2024, Becoming is the 10th work of historical fiction for Dray who likes to write about revolutionary women, both those involved in the American Revolution and, as in Perkins' case, women whose work was revolutionary.

Perhaps best known as the Secretary of Labor in Franklin D. Roosevelt's cabinet, a position she held for 12 years, Perkins is credited with helping FDR create Social Security. As the first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet, Perkins drafted the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, a bill that banned child labor, established a minimum wage and brought about the 40-hour week.

Dray, who started her research for the book in 2020, said that Perkins credited her grandmother, Cynthia Otis Perkins, with setting her on a course to help others. “The people are what matter to government, and a government should aim to give all the people under its jurisdiction the best possible life," said Frances Perkins, often seen as the driving force in the New Deal.

Dray refers to Perkins as the most consequential cabinet member since Alexander Hamilton. Ironically, Dray related that when Perkins and FDR first worked together in New York, the pair didn't see eye to eye. 

“They loathed each other when they first met. She thought he was just a spoiled rotten arrogant jerk. He thought she was a stuffy insufferable blue stocking," Dray said in an interview with Spectrum News.

Perkins, who played such a big role in pushing for worker safety, was at the scene of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911, a horrific fire in New York City that took 146 lives, most of them young women employed as garment workers. Doors had been locked at the factory as a precaution against the threat of theft, said Dray. 

Perkins was at a meeting nearby when the fire broke out. "She knew the source because she knew of problems (for workers) that existed there," said Dray. Perkins was witness to the scene of many workers who leapt from the building to their death trying to escape the fire, she said.

Perkins handled her government job with distinction, but what many don't know is that her husband, Paul Wilson, a fellow reformer, suffered from serious mental illness, said Dray. 

"There's a picture of the signing of the Social Security Act in 1935 with Perkins looking over Roosevelt's shoulder right into the camera. The day that photo was taken, she had to leave to look for her husband who had just escaped from an asylum," Dray said.

While acknowledging many marvelous biographies of Frances Perkins, Dray said that the historical novel allowed her to share more of Perkins as a person--not just a government official. Novelists can go where historians rightfully fear to tread, she said.

I didn’t know what a cozy mystery was until Jesse explained it. “Nothing truly bad happens to the primary characters. For example, I couldn’t kill off Vera Wong,” she said.

“Cozy mysteries have a lot of standard features,” said Richelle Braswell, a writer who explains some of the many varieties out there in her online essay, “Cozy Mystery Plots.” The stories usually involve an amateur sleuth, no explicit gore and a cute or funny sidekick, Braswell explained.

Whereupon, Braswell proceeds to tick off 17 categories from academic (where the action takes place at a college or boarding school) to travel (allowing the mystery to unfold in multiple locations around the globe). In between, you have cozy categories such as culinary (exemplified by Cheese Shop mysteries by Avery Adams), historical (such as Lady Caroline Murder Mysteries by Isabella Bassett), medical (Travel Nurse Mysteries by Molly Evans), and seniors (African Violet Club Mysteries by Elise Stone that take place in an Arizona Retirement community).

Sutanto’s latest entry in the cozy field is Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping (On a Dead Man), a follow up to Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, published in 2023. Sutanto said the character of Vera Wong, the 60-something amateur detective, is based on her own mother known to sometimes offer outrageous comments. 

Sutanto, whose grandparents came from China, was born in Jakarta but grew up in Singapore. "My mother was a big influence on me. I didn’t see much of my father who worked in Jakarta at the time,” she said.

Sutanto previously wrote young-adult fiction but said she switched to the mystery genre when she felt “too old” to write for teens.

The author’s writing routine is to “treat it as a day job,” she said. “I allow three days to write an outline, a time when I walk about the house talking to myself about what characters would say and do,” said Sutanto.

“I try to write my books in five weeks. I write 2,000 words a day—usually writing every weekday before lunch time,” said Sutanto, whose family includes husband and two small children. After completing 40,000 words, she checks into a luxury hotel alone for three nights to write 12,000 words a day. “I’ve followed this routine six or seven times,” she said.

The system that produces three books a year appears to be working for Sutanto—and her cozy-mystery readers. 

Arnold, an adjunct curator of anthropology at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History and professor emeritus of anthropology at Wheaton College, has published more than 60 articles about potters, pottery and pottery production.

He has pursued the mystery of what he describes as a beautiful blue pigment that's proved impervious to fading "even after exposure for many hundreds of years in one of the world's harshest climates--the tropical forests of southern Mexico and Guatemala."

"It is one of the world's most unusual pigments," said Arnold, who has been researching the subject since 1965. The color appears on Maya pottery, sculpture, murals, as well as having been used on human sacrifices, he said.

"It is ironic that although the ancient Maya used Maya Blue widely for more than seventeen centuries, modern scientists still have much to learn about it," he said. "Chemists have been trying to figure out why the pigment binds the way it does," said Arnold.

Mayans combined the organic dye indigo with an inorganic clay mineral called palygorskite to create the hybrid material that stands up to attacks by acids, alkalines, and time, itself, he said.

The Mayans may have created the color but its use is evident across a wide area in Mesoamerica, noted Arnold. "If you go to Mexico City to view the remains of Aztec pyramids, you can still see Maya Blue," he said. 

Seeking to unearth the Mayan secret of the pigment has permitted Arnold to visit Mayan sites firsthand. In addition to his research on the Mayan use of color, he's also made a career of studying contemporary people. "I like going back to the Yucatan. I really enjoy the Mayan people. I've made some wonderful friends there," he said.

"I love the food. It's very different from what you find from the Highland Maya area. My favorite dish is frijol con puerco, black beans with pork and spices," said Arnold.

While the book Maya Blue stands as the most thorough analysis of research that's been done on the color to date, Arnold is still on the case, collaborating with associates at the Field Museum. "We want to learn how the Mayans made the pigment," he said.

Add Maya Blue to the mysteries that surround the ancient Mayans. "Even after more than ninety years since the discovery of the unique characteristics of Maya Blue, unraveling the mysteries about the pigment and its constituents requires much more research," said Arnold.

He outlined the Davis career in a 10-minute speech as one who "advanced civilization by murdering Indians" and participated in the "national disgrace called the Mexican War" before attaining "the crowning absurdity" of his career, heading up the Confederacy, "the peculiar champion of a people fighting to be free in order that another people should not be free."

Unveiling the Color Line: W.E.B. DuBois on the Problem of Whiteness by Lisa McLeod, a lecturer at Northeastern University in Boston, explores DuBois's views of whiteness as a political and moral issue.

There's a lot to cover with DuBois, an African American who lived to be 95 years old and whose writings about the need for equality for close to a century.

It was Martin Luther King Jr. who credited DuBois as the man who "demolished the lies about Negroes in their most important and creative period of history."

"Slaveholders were convinced that Black people would not work without force, that slavery was their natural condition. DuBois argued that this belief was as certain to southerners as the rising and setting of the sun, and the United States never implemented a widespread reeducation program to correct this or any other misconception regarding African-descended people," wrote McLeod.

"Instead, when southerners rebuilt after the war, they attempted to make Negores slaves in everything but name. This is a shameful and shamefully underreported truth of American history," McLeod noted.

DuBois said the South understood the capabilities of Blacks.  "It is nonsense to say that the South knew nothing about the capabilities of the Negro race. Southerners knew Negroes far better than Northerners. There was not a single slave owner who did not know dozens of Negroes just as capable of learning and efficiency as the mass of poor white people around and about, and some quite as capable as the average slaveholder," DuBois noted in 1935. 

McLeod presses DuBois's point that it was the duty of white Americans to work against racism for the benefit of all.

Lupino was more than a great actress but also a successful director. The Hitch-Hiker, a film made in 1953, is now considered a film noir classic. The fact that a woman directed the movie places when few women directors worked on major film releases places her in exclusive company, said Seros.

"Actually The Hitch-Hiker was not straight noir, it was a crime thriller with (Nicholas) Musuraca’s noir lighting. Lupino was actually known for her noir film portrayals, but her directing was full of hybrids," Seros said. 

Lupino was also a television pioneer, stepping into the new medium in the 1950s, stated the author. "(In TV), she went for modernity, like satire, the grotesque, and westerns - she loved experimenting with genre. However, "No. 5 Checked out”, her first big foray into TV, though not her debut, was for Screen Directors Playhouse, a prestigious way to enter a new medium. That show was like a Whitman’s Sampler of all her work, including noir," said Seros.  

"I believe after her film acting work early on, she became exhausted by noir, which was antithetical to social realism, the thematic she really wanted to expose post war," she said.

"(Lupino) was so multifaceted and complex, it’s difficult to talk about her without bringing in many elements from her work and influences from her life. She really was as paradox.  I wanted to understand  who she was, and one can begin to glimpse it in Ralph Edwards' “This Is Your Life, Ida Lupino”, on YouTube. 

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But she admits it didn't just happen. "I was forced to enroll in Latin. I considered dropping the course several times, especially while translating Julius Caesar's De Bello Gallico. I couldn't understand his long-winded explanations of wartime strategies, and I had no love for Roman history," wrote Lee-Chin.

"Something changed when I first translated the Aeneid from Latin to English. I was struck by the kinship I felt for Aeneas," she said.

Lee-Chin, a 2021 graduate of Holy Cross College, outside Boston, was the first Black woman to be named a Fenwick Scholar, the school's highest academic honor.

I wish I had known a girl like Maia when I was taking Latin classes all those years ago. But then I was introduced to the subject at Boston Latin School (where I spent the seventh grade), at a time when only male students attended.

Lee-Chin's book, beautifully illustrated by Italian artist Marta Bertello, takes 50 Latin phrases, translates them, and then provides a brief backstory (usually just a few paragraphs) to give a taste of Roman history and a glimpse at the life that flourished behind those turgid phrases.

Take omnia vincit amor, for example.  "Love conquers all" isn't a line from a 60s song but from one of Vergil's poems "that paints an idyllic portrait of rural life in the Roman countryside," noted Lee-Chin.

"It is not the rallying cry modern readers imagine, she stated. It's a warning from a poet (Gallus) on his deathbed: "We cannot defeat love, and so nos cedamus--let us yield to it." 

"Pining over the mistress while she pursues another, (Gallus) embodies the servitium amoris--'the enslavement of love' and his dying words admit his defeat," Lee-Chin said.

We never got stories like that when I was in Latin class.

Another thing, Vergil is supposed to have written just one line of poetry a day. He compiled 10 poems but that output was dwarfed by the 24 books that Homer produced, said Lee-Chin, stating her love for Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey.  

Greaney, who said he became obsessed with Clancy’s work as a teenager, co-wrote several books with Clancy before the author died in 2013. While carrying on the exploits of Clancy’s hero, Jack Ryan, in several books, Greaney started a successful series of his own in 2009 with Court Gentry, the Gray Man, “a legend in the covert realm, moving silently from job to job, accomplishing the impossible, and then fading away.”

“The Gray Man author tests weapons, flies in fighter jets, and is home for family dinner,” noted the Post’s Travis Andrews. Netflix may have brought the Gray Man to the screen with Ryan Gosling in 2022 and has plans for a follow-up but Greaney, 57, just keeps cranking out the books. Midnight Black is the 14th Gray Man novel and he’s already at work on number 15. 

Greaney is down to earth about his success, pointing to the life he enjoys at home with his family and dogs in Memphis. It's the town where he was raised and where his father, Ed Greaney, taught son Mark the importance of keeping track of what’s happening in the world. The senior Greaney was a fixture at the Memphis NBC-TV affiliate for 50 years, including a lengthy stint as news director, 

Mark visits Ireland this year along with plans to go scuba diving and take a firearms course but otherwise, Greaney’s at home rolling out the garbage cans at home, he said. 

Current events are a part of the geopolitical thrillers that Greaney specializes in. The War in Ukraine is a factor in Midnight Black as Court Gentry seeks to sneak into Russia to rescue his lover who’s imprisoned there. “I listen to a one-hour podcast every day detailing troop movements in the battle between Russia and Ukraine,” he said.

Greaney opens his latest novel at a bar in the Ferentari district of Bucharest where Gentry nurses a Carpathian single malt whiskey, contemplating how to get the jump on five would-be assassins who look to do him harm. Such is the life for a Gray Man novel. “I haven’t been to Bucharest but I’ve been to the Balkans and I needed a place to start the book,” he said.

Greaney’s prolific pace—he figures he’s averaged a book-and-a-half a year over the last 15 years—isn’t slowing down this year but Greaney figures he’ll eventually fall back to "just" producing a Gray Man novel every other year. That will allow him to do other things such as adding to one of the other literary streams he started, the Armoured series with Josh Duffy as the main character.

His writing routine usually has him heading out to his backyard office each morning. Greaney said he also sometimes likes to work at the coffeeshop near Memphis University where he’s surrounded “by young people who don’t know or care who I am.” 

As much as the 150,000-word books, themselves, Greaney is proud of the fact that he’s come up with the biting titles of most of the books he’s written. With the author’s name in bold headlines at the top, book covers tend to only have room for a two- or three-word title. “The title’s not an add-on. It helps me write the book when I know the title,” he said. 

Having a successful series hasn’t made writing easier, said Greaney. “The books are getting harder to write. You have to be sure you’re not trotting over ground you’ve covered before,” he said.

Note to Mark: come up with another drink in Gray Man 15 now that you’ve used Carpathian single malt whiskey.

The Organization of Journalism offers a profile of six different business models that now bring folks the news or sports, as the case may be. There’s the St. Louis Beacon, a digital nonprofit,  and the Defector, an employee-owned cooperative focusing on sports and culture. The Colorado Sun, a startup led by former Denver Post employees, and the Athletic, a sports site purchased by the New York Times in 2022, are also reviewed along with two “legacy” newspapers, the Boston Globe and Denver Post.

Each model has pros and cons, noted Ferrucci, who has no misconceptions about the daunting task ahead regarding news-gathering in the digital era. “We are living in scary times for journalism,” he notes. That can also be translated into scary times for readers or want-to-be readers, many of whom are deprived of the variety of the daily paper they once knew.

The subtitle of Ferrucci's book is "Market Models and Practice in a Fraying Profession. The choice of "fraying" to describe the present state of journalism reflects his awareness of the changes that have been wrought in the digital age.

Where you live probably dictates how much local news is put on your plate these days. Ferrucci said that Boulder, Colo. has more news available to the public than when he moved there 10 years ago. The resources of a well-to-do community and the presence of a large university make that possible. Other parts of the country aren’t so lucky.

Ferrucci’s research—he interviewed employees at every stop—illustrates how the journalism scene has changed. In comparing the Globe and Post, both papers with pedigrees, Ferrucci said the Boston model, owned by billionaire John Henry, owner of the Boston Red Sox, was now positively regarded as a “writer’s paper” by many in the Globe newsroom. 

That’s not the sentiment Ferrucci perceived from those interviewed at the Post, a paper bought in 2011 by Alden Global Capital, the so-called “hedge fund vampire,” a company that reduced the Post newsroom of 300 down to 70 and moved the paper from a historic downtown building to a site outside the city in 2018. While the Post still does good work, many of its employees feel they’re shortchanging readers because they don’t—can’t—cover the state like they once did, said Ferrucci.

The Globe has also changed its focus: Instead of covering suburban Boston as it once did, Ferrucci said the paper goes after Boston stories but also recognes the changing news scene. With the Providence Journal in decline, the Globe has beefed up staffing to cover Rhode Island more closely and, as a result, is building a subscription base there, said Ferrucci.

One of the points the author makes in speaking with Steve Tarter is that universities may be more important than ever in the development of journalism. “We’ve always had journalism schools,” he said but the present situation where many different business models now vye for acceptance requires the understanding once found in the nation’s newsrooms now diminished in size. 

Speaking of newsrooms, that’s Ferrucci’s next project: a look at the places that have spawned so much journalism in the past.

Communities have had to be inventive to replace the local news they once took for granted, says Dan Kennedy, a journalism professor at Northeastern University in Boston and co-author of What Works in Community News with Ellen Clegg, a former editor on the Boston Globe.

Kennedy may be optimistic about some efforts made to restore local news but the problem remains a growing national crisis, he said. Some 3,000 newspapers have closed since 2005 in this country, most of them weeklies, said Kennedy, suggesting that even with hundreds of start-ups launched in that time, what’s come online has not replaced news provided in the past. 

The real solution must come from folks at the community level, he said, citing examples such as The Colorado Sun, a digital startup founded by 10 former journalists from the Denver Post, a paper decimated by hedge fund owner, Alden Global Capital. “The Sun has now grown to a staff of two dozen people that makes it one of the largest news organizations in the state. They’re now looking at going beyond Denver to provide coverage in rural areas outside the city,” he said.

"There’s also MLK50: Justice Through Journalism in Memphis, Tenn., a non-profit investigative project formed to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. But they decided to keep going. They’ve since won awards and secured grants,” said Kennedy. The Daily Memphian has also been formed, providing news in that town missing from the Gannett-owned Commercial Appeal.

"We love non-profit news but there's only so much philanthropy out there," he said. What Works in Community News examines about a dozen projects in nine parts of the country. While approaches differ, the one thing they have in common is dedicated leadership at the local level – entrepreneurial journalists initiating new business models on the fly, said Kennedy, who mourns the loss of so many weeklies.
 
Weekly publications have traditionally served as the beating heart of community journalism, covering local government, schools and neighborhood issues – plus weddings, births, deaths and youth activities that draw neighbors together, he said.

But Kennedy points to positive action taken in Bedford, Mass., a small town (population 14,000) outside Boston (not to be confused with New Bedford, the state’s old whaling port). Bedford was once home to a newspaper called the Bedford Minuteman, a once-robust weekly downsized by its corporate owner, GateHouse Media, which later merged into Gannett, the U.S.’s largest newspaper chain.

Three members of the League of Women Voters who had been monitoring local government and reporting back to the membership asked themselves: Why not write this up for the benefit of the public? That was the beginning of The Bedford Citizen, a news project featured in our book, said Kennedy. "Over the years, the nonprofit website has grown from an all-volunteer operation into a professional news organization, funded through initiatives ranging from voluntary membership fees to an annual glossy guide filled with advertising and mailed to every household in town, he said.

Today, the Citizen has a full-time editor, a part-time reporter and paid freelancers alongside a contingent of unpaid contributors, said Kenndy, noting that The Minuteman faded away and was

It was Germany’s last stand, said O’Connor, who drew on considerable research of that battle in Jeep Show, a novel that focuses on the U.S. Army’s troupe of performers who put on small variety acts for combat infantry just behind the front lines. 

While the USO entertained troops throughout the war in larger productions with stars such as Bob Hope, the Andrews Sisters and Dinah Shore, the Jeep shows, so named because performers often arrived in a Jeep, were smaller affairs designed to reach the fighting men on the front line or at air bases. 

It was entertainment in a hurry and sometimes risky. Jeep shows performed in forward areas too dangerous for USO shows or the Red Cross. The war also demanded a lot from the entertainers. Sometimes Jeep show teams would put on as many as 11 shows in a day, said O’Connor.

Mickey Rooney, one of the central figures in O’Connor’s story, was a real-life Jeep show squad leader during the war, earning a Bronze Star for his service. Other Jeep show performers, not all well-known at the time, who went on to stardom included Mel Brooks, Red Buttons, Burt Lancaster, Dick Van Dyke, and Sammy Davis Jr., said O’Connor.

“Sammy Davis Jr. may have been the first black man to integrate the U.S. Army since the service was still segregated at the time,” O’Connor noted.

“(Jeep show) performances served as more than just entertainment. They were beacons of hope bringing moments of song, dance and laughter to weary troops, letting them know they weren’t forgotten,” said the author.

O’Connor said he originally planned a non-fiction account on Jim Hetzer, a West Virginia dance instructor assigned to the Army's Morale Corps as an Entertainment Specialist. Attached to a Jeep show squad in Europe, Hetzer often worked with Private Mickey Rooney.

With access to dozens of letters Hetzer wrote during the war that described the Jeep show experience, O'Connor said he opted for the historical novel approach in order to engage younger readers.

“It seems odd to call a World War II novel 'delightful,' but that's exactly what you get with O'Connor's mix of history and fiction as battles rage on and enlisted men entertain the troops,” cited Kirkus Reviews. 

Grumet describes his own battle to find purpose in life, relinquishing a job as a full-time medical doctor in 2014. While he didn’t want to give up being a hospice physician, he got rid of everything else to hold onto those things he enjoyed: encouraging people to find financial independence, podcasting, and writing.

You don’t find purpose, you create it, he said, using the example of Julia Child in his book. “(Child) didn’t want to be famous. That was never her goal. She was out with her husband at a French restaurant one day and something burst in her brain. She said this is what I want to do,” said Grumet, noting that Child loved the process of learning about French cooking, a fact that sustained her in the 10 years it took for her first book to be published.

“Purpose consists of those activities we engage in that light us up and fulfill us,” said Grumet. There’s even a health benefit: Having a sense of purpose in life leads to health, longevity, and happiness, he said. 

Grumet makes a distinction between “small p” purpose and “big P” purpose. The “small p” purpose is simpler, smaller, and more understandable—things you can do on an everyday basis. “But when we set goals that we can't meet, it’s frustrating,” he said.

Purpose, as consequential as it may be, also can be toxic. Purpose becomes toxic when it goes from ‘little p’ purpose to ‘big P’ purpose,” said Grumet, giving the example of his own love for podcasting. “I love podcasting. When I sit in front of a microphone those are the greatest hours of my life. Even if I lose the audio and never post it. Even if I post it and no one downloads it. This is ‘little p’ purpose for me. It connects me to other people. Those people become my collaborators and friends. This feels like living a good life that makes me happy,” he said.

But setting what might be an unrealistic goal even doing something one loves can lead to anxiety, he said. “Let’s say I had success with my podcast. I’m going to put out this goal, this big, huge goal of a million downloads a month,” said Grumet. To try to achieve that, he stated he’d have to go on social media, make TikTok videos, and spend time more marketing the podcast—things Grumet said he doesn’t like doing.

As a hospice doctor who’s spoken with many people in their final days, Grumet says he’s never heard anyone say they should have spent more time working or making money. In The Purpose Code, the author cites a long-term study that noted when it came to happiness, it was not money, achievement, career choice, exercise, or a healthy diet that made respondents happy. It was positive social relationships. Those who felt more connected to others lived longer and happier. 

Paul Podolsky, a former equity partner at Bridgewater Associates and the founder and CIO of Kate Capital, an investment management firm, however, has tried to make his advice on the subject accessible. The Uncomfortable Truth About Money carries a subtitle: How to live with uncertainty and think for yourself.

Uncertainty may be the order of the day, after all. “As I write this, it is less than 100 years since a hyper-developed country, Germany, lined up behind a maniac. He created hell on earth, obliterating lives and wealth. Millions of people enthusiastically followed him, both in Germany and elsewhere. In the years since, People haven’t changed. If it can happen in Germany, it can happen anywhere and it has—Chile (1970s), Rwanda (1990s), Italy (1930s) and Russia (1930s and 2020s),” wrote Podolsky in his first chapter.

On that cheery note, we’re off and running. “If you don’t want to get wiped out, study how things work,” Podolsky suggests. But the author isn’t coming at his subject from on high. A former newspaper reporter, he’s also served as a bartender, carpenter, teacher, and even a mountain guide in addition to serving as a banker and investor.

“I got my money education in real time, out of necessity, piece by piece,” stated Podolsky who lived in Moscow in his twenties working as a journalist. The Soviet Union (as it was known then) taught him a lesson about pricing. “The Soviet Union sought to pay a doctor roughly the same as a coal miner,” he said. Supply and demand—you knew that you’d be hearing the importance of that sooner or later.

Podolsky doesn’t try to steer readers in a specific direction other than to get a better understanding of terms and options that are out there. “If you decide to learn how to invest, recognize that there are sharply different approaches about how to do so, almost like different religions,” he stated.

Podolsky concludes his 200-page book with two slogans: Health is wealth; Be wary of sages--there aren’t any (including me).

At 24 when war broke out, Nebraskan Ben Kuroki enlisted to fight for his country. Ben joined the Army Air Force along with his brother. 

In Most Honorable Son by Gregg Jones, Kuroki’s unique wartime experience is related.

Ben Kuroki not only flew a staggering 58 combat missions as a gunner on Army Air Force bombers but battled racism and resentment on the home front.

Despite anti-Japanese sentiment running rampant in America, Kuroki not only persevered in his desire to serve but also challenged the U.S. policy of forcing some 100,000 Japanese Americans into internment camps during the war.

After his 30th mission—a raid on Munich, Germany that was nearly his last when shrapnel from an enemy shell barely missed his head—Kuroki was dispatched to three of the internment camps to encourage enlistment in the service. By 1944, Jones said, the U.S. military was seeking Japanese Americans to serve in the all-Nisei 442nd Regimental Combat Team in Italy.

In a series of speeches at the Heart Mountain camp in Wyoming, Kuroki urged Nisei men to enlist but his message fell flat with the camp's growing draft resistance movement. Camp supporters demanded the restoration of constitutional and civil rights for all camp residents before submitting to military service.

Ben also spoke at the Topaz War Relocation Center in Delta, Utah, and the Minidoka Relocation Center near Hunt, Idaho. Before these speaking engagements, Kuroki had only a vague notion about the fate that had befallen West Coast residents of Japanese descent.

He came away shaken by the sight of men, women, and children who looked like him packed into flimsy wooden barracks in wilderness areas guarded by rifle-toting Army soldiers. Kuroki became aware of the deep divisions within the camp when Heart Mountain hecklers interrupted him during his speeches.

But even after flying 30 missions in Europe, Ben wasn’t through with the war. His next stop was the Pacific where he joined the 505th Bomb Group. The mission? To bomb Japan. 

Like others whose job it was to drop bombs on targets during the war, Jones said individuals often “compartmentalized” their actions, not thinking of the damage being done down below. But the author said Kuroki had reservations after seeing the orange glow of Tokyo receding in the background after an intense incendiary raid on the Japanese capital. 

Kuroki suffered his most serious injury of the war—not on a plane—but at the hands of a fellow soldier in August of 1945. When good-natured banter turned ugly, Ben’s head was slashed open with a knife. 

U.S. medics saved his life as Kuroki recuperated on Tinian, the tiny Pacific isle that U.S. forces had used as a launching pad for bombing runs over Japan—including the mission flown by the Enola Gay that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Kuroki was still recovering from his injuries when Japan’s surrender was announced.

After the war, Kuroki returned to making speeches—opposing discrimination in all forms. He later turned to journalism. The shy Nebraska farm boy became a progressive crusader who came to terms with the fact that the same country he defended had rounded up and imprisoned Japanese Americans during WWII.

“Kuroki once said he looked Japanese but had the heart of an American,” said Kevin Maurer, author of No Easy Day, the inside story of the Bin Laden raid, co-written with former Navy SEAL Mark Owen. Kuroki’s story “reminds us that America is everyone,” noted Maurer.

Barks, who worked for Disney from 1942 to 1966, is now singled out for his comic-book creations. Other people have depicted Disney’s duck but they don’t have their stories being reprinted in full-color hardbound books from Fantagraphics (the complete Barks series is slated to be completed by 2026).

What sets Barks apart are his stories, said Peter Schilling, Jr., whose book, Carl Barks’ Duck, was published in 2014. “It’s the writing as well as the art,” he said.

Schilling discovered Barks as a kid when he and his brother were avid comic-book readers. What Schilling discovered was that the comics that Barks created—anonymously under the Walt Disney umbrella—were different from those drawn by other artists. “We read other Donald Duck comics but they weren’t the same. They weren’t from that guy,” he said.

That guy—Barks—toiled in anonymity until late in his career but the secret’s out now. “I look at his comics like little movies with Donald Duck as Cary Grant, whose career ran from comedy to serious drama,” said Schilling.

Along with his wide-ranging stories and explosive artwork, Barks was a creator of characters. He came up with Uncle Scrooge, Gyro Gearloose, the Woodchuck Manual, and the Beagle Boys, said Schilling.

As for a favorite story, Schilling cited several in his book but called “Vacation Time” “a forgotten masterpiece.”

“The End of Baseball: A Novel” by Peter Schilling Jr.

Another Schilling book, The End of Baseball—A Novel (2008), is a baseball novel of what might have been. Schilling writes a story featuring Bill Veeck, the real-life maverick promoter, who reportedly had a plan in 1944: buy the struggling Philadelphia Athletics franchise and replace the existing squad, a woeful bunch made up of players either too young or too old (World War II had depleted rosters for all teams) and replace them with star players from the Negro leagues.

Veeck was a baseball man, through and through. His father, William Sr., was a Chicago sportswriter who became president of the Chicago Cubs. After his father died in 1933, Veeck became treasurer of the Cubs. In 1941, he bought the Milwaukee Brewers, then a Cub minor league property. Veeck raised attendance with promotions by giving away live animals or scheduling morning games with free breakfast for overnight workers. 

When it came to baseball promotions, no one could hold a candle to Veeck who, in 1951, sent Eddie Gaedel—all 3-foot-7 of him, up to the plate for one of the most famous one-day careers in baseball (he walked). Veeckis is also given credit for growing the ivy that still grows in Wrigley Field and introducing scoreboards that could dispense fireworks. 

That was reality. In his book, Schilling related that Veeck, back from WWII service where he was injured while serving in the Marines, shared his revolutionary plan to integrate baseball with then-commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis. The baseball establishment then then thwarted the deal by having another buyer take over the Philadelphia franchise. 

Did Veeck actually plan such a move three years before Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier? Schilling thinks so and his book imagines the season that might have followed, raising awareness of some of the great players in the Negro leagues as well as anticipating some of the problems such a team would have faced.

In real life, Veeck headed a syndicate that bought the Cleveland India

About Ilana Long
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Hone’s latest book, Uncovering Dinosaur Behavior (Princeton University Press), seeks to provide answers as to how dinosaurs may have moved, fed, grew, and reproduced.

Deducing dinosaur behavior isn’t easy when all you’ve got to go on are a few bones but Hone believes it’s possible. His book uses comparisons to living species as well as referencing the latest studies on prehistoric behavior. Uncovering Dinosaur Behavior uses diagrams, photographs, and the artwork of Florida artist Gabriel Ugueto to flesh out the dinosaur behavior picture.

Hone said discoveries from two centuries of research have expanded our view of life on the planet 70 million years ago. “We’ve been in a golden age of dinosaur discovery for the past 30 or 40 years and I don’t see it stopping anytime soon. Dinosaurs are no longer considered the cold-blooded, tail-dragging, stupid, lizard-like monsters of the Victorian age, but are instead recognized as animals that were upright, active, fast-growing, and if not especially intelligent, certainly not stupid,” he said.

Hone's a critic when it comes to the latest Jurassic Park movies. “The first ones (starting in 1993) were fine but the last few have been really woeful—both as movies and as a dinosaur spectacle,” he said. Dinosaurs depicted in recent films are less accurate than the Jurassic Park movies of 30 years ago, noted Hone.

As a scientist and writer whose first two books focused on the Tyrannosaurus rex, Hone is in a good position to comment on the creature he classifies as one of a kind. “Take an orca (killer whale) and put it on legs and you’ve got an extraordinary predator. Probably more scientific papers have been written about T.rex than any other dinosaur,” he said.

As for how fast a T.rex run can run, Hone said a beast that could reach a weight of seven tons could make 15 mph--not enough to challenge a Jeep as depicted in the first Jurassic Park movie but it could definitely outrun a man, he said. 

The T.rex  may have lost a battle with a Spinosaurus in Jurassic Park 3 but the author, whose next book will focus on Spinosaurus research, says that outcome would have been unlikely. T.rex had a decided size advantage, said Hone, comparing the confrontation as combat between a lion and a cheetah.

Figuring out how creatures behaved millions of years ago remains an ongoing challenge for scientists but Hone said it’s worth remembering that “the sum total of the behaviors of dinosaurs across 1,500 species and 170 million years were much more complex and interesting than we can ever know.”

“In the era before movies, television, and the internet, it was the circus that entertained us…For more than 80 years, spanning the 1870s until the 1950s, countless numbers of brave Bloomington men and women risked their lives to entertain massive crowds by performing aerial tricks high up on the flying trapeze.” 

After two local brothers, Howard and Fred Green installed a trapeze rigging in a Bloomington building in 1875, the town became known as a center for trapeze artists. When the Green brothers went on to international fame, others were inspired to perform. 

Bloomington became the center of activity for aerialist training and trapeze act recruitment in the United States. More than 200 people from the Bloomington area became circus performers, according to the McLean County Historical Society.

Charting that history today is Maureen Brunsdale, a Special Collections Librarian at Illinois State University’s Milner Library since 2008.

Brunsdale has published dozens of articles and, in 2013, wrote her first circus book, The Bloomington-Normal Circus Legacy with co-author Mark Schmitt. In the Shadow of the Big Top: The Life of Ringling's Unlikely Circus Savior (2023) is Brunsdale’s second book on the circus. 

In the Shadow tells the story of Art Concello, a trapeze artist who trained at the Bloomington YMCA and in a fabled barn on Bloomington’s Emerson Street. Concello became known for performing the triple somersault, “the killer trick,” as it was called because so many trapeze artists had died trying to perform it, said Brunsdale.

With wife Antoinette, they became known as the Flying Concellos, charting circus history with their circus. Antoinette, a trapeze pioneer in her own right, Brunsdale noted, later became the first woman to perform the triple somersault. 

But Art went on to perform amazing feats on the ground, she said. He demonstrated the same skill as an executive as he did on the flying trapeze “after hanging up his tights as a performer,” noted Brunsdale. Concello handled the crushing task of transporting circus acts (that usually only stayed in the same place for two days) with hundreds of people plus animals and equipment from town to town with remarkable efficiency, she said.

Concello is credited with later working out the logistics of transitioning circus acts from tents to indoor arenas, enabling circus acts to reach the public in the 20th century.

Concello also played a major role in the making of The Greatest Show on Earth, the Cecil B. DeMille film made in 1952. Concello trained Betty Hutton on the trapeze for the movie while Charlton Heston’s role as circus manager is a character reportedly based on Concello, himself.

“Once the biggest moneymaker in the world of entertainment, the circus may not have the elevated status it once did but it’s still with us,” said Brunsdale, citing circus acts still performed on television, the success of the Cirque du Soleil, and a revived Ringling Brothers touring show.

Bloomington-Normal’s circus heritage is celebrated every April when the Gamma Phi Circus performs on the Illinois State University campus, a tradition since 1929, Brunsdale noted.

McClellan, a resident of Crete, Illinois, some 35 miles south of Chicago, served as a professor of sociology at Governors State University, the Chicago school he helped found 54 years ago.

“It was neither underground nor a railroad,” said McClellan. The Underground Railroad was a freedom movement that depended on a fundamental human situation, he said. “When people on the run showed up at the door, the folks who lived on a farm had to make a human decision: are we going to help these folks?”

“The thing most striking to me is how ordinarily human this all becomes. There were people running for their freedom and other people saying, my gosh, we have to help,” said McClellan.

“Perhaps the stories of secret hiding places, tunnels, and other collaborations kept deeply hidden were experienced in other parts of Illinois and other states,” noted McClellan. “However in Chicago and northern Illinois, in large part because of broad-based abolitionist sentiments by the 1850s, activists needed to be discrete but not totally secretive.”

That doesn’t mean there weren’t dangers for those who sought to help people find freedom. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 strengthened penalties on those who assisted freedom seekers. “Its passage terrorized Black people across the northern states, creating fear for settled families as well as for freedom seekers traveling toward Canada. The new law meant that places such as Chicago and other places in northeastern Illinois were no longer outside the reach of slave catchers and kidnappers,” he said. 

Illinois was classified as a free state but that label could be misleading, he said. “In southern Illinois, the population was overwhelmingly pro-slavery. When we get to central Illinois—places like Springfield and Peoria where folks followed the Illinois River—sentiment is mixed with a substantially larger number of people who are anti-slavery (compared to southern Illinois),” said McClellan.

The Underground Railroad operated through Peoria and neighboring communities, he said. “On both sides of the Illinois River, you literally had hundreds of people who were walking on their way to freedom. They were coming through,” said McClellan. 

The number of people who actually “ran” the Underground Railroad was very small, he said. Within the general population, there may have been a majority that considered themselves opposed to slavery but only a minority of those were abolitionists, individuals calling for the repeal of slavery. Smaller still within the abolitionist group were those people willing to break the law and help people escape, said McClellan.

McClellan, whose research on the Underground Railroad spans three decades, estimates that 3,000 to 4,500- freedom seekers came through northeastern Illinois. The total number of people who sought freedom across the country through the Underground Railroad is estimated to be between 30,000 to 50,000, he said.

“We have great journey stories and, in addition, we have a great set of location stories, places where freedom seekers found help and places that began to be identified as places of refuge. Here in Illinois, we can document at least 200 places where freedom seekers found help. In my research some 60 sites in northeastern Illinois alone have been identified,” said McClellan.

McClellan said information on the operation of the Underground Railroad throughout the state will soon be submitted to the Illinois Legislature. He also announced that work is underway on documenting the Chicago to Detroit Freedom Trail, a route taken by many freedom seekers who sought refuge in Canada.

Daniel Worden, an art professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, relates that history in Petrochemical Fantasies: The Art and Energy of American Comics.

“This book analyzes how comics represented this transition to fossil fuels from the late nineteenth century to the present, a transition that shaped the comics medium itself,” wrote Worden, who teaches a course on comics at RIT.

“I write this book during an ongoing climate crisis, and comics are relevant to this crisis because the medium both shaped fossil fuel culture and offers ways of making, reading, seeing, and belonging that pull away from the time and space of fossil fuel culture,” he noted.

Comic artists in magazines and newspapers chronicled America’s oil industry, comparing the growth of Standard Oil to an octopus reaching out across the country. One of Worden’s favorite examples is Oil John, the Detective, a strip by Gus Mager that caricatured the oil trust. Oily John is a lanky John D. Rockefeller who captures small dealers, “a ridiculous miser out to get the little guy,” noted Worden.

Along with being the focus of comic art, oil companies were also comic enablers, distributing their own four-page funnies in the 1930s before traditional stapled comic books were produced, said Worden.

“The media landscape has changed. Comics are everywhere now,” he said, adding that the traditional printed comics in newspapers and magazines have migrated to the internet and graphic novels.

Worden’s Rochester class focuses more on “serious” comics such as the work of Joe Sacco whose comics have focused on subjects such as the Bosnian War and the conflict between Israel and Palestine than superhero exploits, he said.

“There have been a number of good non-fiction comics about climate change,” said Worden, citing examples such Science comics that detail the origin and impact of climate change in its “Wild Weather” series.

Worden sees comics as becoming a regional asset. He organizes the Rochester Indie Comics Festival every spring that brings 60 to 80 comic book artists to the town where they can sell their comics to the public.

Having just attended a similar festival in Columbus, Ohio, Worden said he sees comics not only becoming more of a regional issue but serving as a tool to help educate the public. 

The University of Illinois is the setting as the book takes off with Pyle running the Virginia Theater in Champaign, Illinois. The year is 1924 and it's the year that Red Grange, already America’s darling, turns in a performance for the ages against a vaunted Michigan team.

Villhard paints a picture of Pyle as a Hollywood has-been who still has connections (Charlie Chaplin visits him in Champaign). Pyle is a 42-year-old former actor forced to live in the past. Yet he notices when the newsreel lights up the screen in the 1,500-seat theater (that still stands, by the way), customers go wild when Grange’s exploits are shown. “This guy’s a national hero right here on campus and he doesn’t even know it,” figures Pyle who lets Grange sneak in the backdoor to watch the movies to avoid the crowd’s adulation.

The story takes off from there as Villhard takes us on a thrill ride with the man sportswriter Grantland Rice called the Galloping Ghost. Grange charges through a spectacular career with Illinois and carries on to boost the fortunes of the Chicago Bears in the rough-and-tumble NFL, a league that Villhard said was closer to professional wrestling than what we know today as pro football.

The U of I will rededicate the 100-year-old Memorial Stadium on Oct. 19 with ceremonies to include a Red Grange symposium.

College football was a very big deal in the 1920s, especially at big state schools like Illinois and Michigan. That’s why they built a stadium to hold 67,000 in 1924 (today Memorial Stadium has been enlarged to hold more than 80,000). Of course there just weren’t enough seats in any stadium to accommodate all the people who wanted to watch Red Grange play football in 1924.

If you were lucky enough to get one of those seats back on Oct. 18, 1924, you had to be worried at the prospect of facing a fabled Michigan team that came into Champaign riding a 20-game winning streak. 

Following the Michigan coach’s old-school strategy that valued field position over all else, they kicked the ball to Grange who takes it at the five-yard-line. 

Big mistake. Grange runs it back for a touchdown and the rout is on. Grange proceeds to score four times before halftime. In the second half, Grange scores another touchdown, throws a TD pass, and intercepts two passes while playing defense. Final score: Illini 39 Michigan 14.

In 1991, Sports Illustrated cited Grange’s performance in that game as “the most unforgettable moment in sports.”              

Another major character in Villhard’s novel is Coach Bob Zuppke, the Illini coach. Villhard believes the only reason Zuppke isn’t regarded as one of the great football coaches of all time--like Knute Rockne and Amos Alonzo Stagg--was his refusal to sign out-of-state students that later cost him wins in the highly competitive Big Ten. He believed that if you were a true footballer and grew up in Illinois, you should play for the Illini, said Villhard.

The field at Memorial Stadium is named for Zuppke, the "razzle dazzle" coach credited with inventing the huddle, the screen pass, the spiral snap, and the flea flicker (The QB hands the ball off to a running back who laterals the ball to a receiver. The receiver then laterals the ball back to the quarterback for a pass). Zuppke and Grange shared a special relationship but the coach opposed Red going pro and didn’t talk to Grange for years after his greatest star joined the Bears.

Pamela Churchill Harriman didn’t as Sonia Purnell’s book, Kingmaker, makes clear. The British biographer and journalist spent five years gathering information on Harriman’s life, including gaining access to a wealth of fresh research, interviews, and newly discovered sources. 

Harriman, who died in 1997, is well-known as Winston Churchill’s daughter-in-law, the 20-year-old who played cards with Winston in the middle of the night when bombs were falling on London but she was also a power broker whose influence extends to the present. It was Harriman who bolstered Joe Biden’s career back in 1988  early in the Delaware senator’s career.

Pamela Harriman got around, to put it mildly. She successfully wooed W. Averill Harriman, the wealthy businessman who came to London as Franklin Roosevelt’s “Lend Lease” representative in 1940—before America was in the war. Lend Lease was the result of Churchill’s efforts in urging FDR to provide a beleaguered Britain with much-needed war supplies—much to the annoyance of the U.S. separatist movement. 

This was a time when England was just hanging on, rapidly running out of manpower, munitions, and supplies as Nazi forces loomed across the channel. But she did even more to advance “Operation Seduction USA,” as Purnell put it: she bedded generals, high-ranking officials, and representatives of the media (most notably Ed Murrow whose “This is London” broadcasts helped Americans experience England’s plight during the Blitz)—all for the sake of jolly old England.

She married Randolph Churchill and had his child, Winston II, but the prime minister’s son, awash in gambling problems, was a disaster as a husband, said Purnell. The pair were divorced following the war and Pamela found herself out of a job along with father-in-law Winston, as Clement Attlee and the Labour Party swept to power in 1945.

After moving to France, she spent time with playboy Prince Aly Khan before falling in love with Gianni Agnelli, the head of auto giant Fiat. After four years the couple broke up but Agnelli, whose own career is one for the books, stayed in touch-- calling Pamela every morning at seven for the rest of her life, said Purnell. 

In 1960 Pamela moved to America and married Leland Hayward, the Broadway producer with shows like South Pacific, The Sound of Music, Mister Roberts and Gypsy to his credit. Harriman enjoyed their 11-year marriage until his death. At age 51, she married Harriman, her lover from the war, and now 79 and a widower. 

Being married to the elder statesman of the Democratic Party kicked off a new chapter in Pamela’s illustrious life—that of a person of influence. “Adversity galvanized her,” noted Purnell, pointing to how she countered the Reagan landslide of 1980 by pumping up Democratic hopes. Harriman reminded them that Churchill came back (getting re-elected prime minister in 1951) and that Democrats could, too. 

At her funeral, Clinton acknowledged that without Harriman’s support, he might never have been president. Purnell noted that it was through Harriman’s connections in Washington, her hobnobbing with the high and mighty, that allowed a young politician from the state of Arkansas to gain visibility and ascend to the national stage. A grateful Clinton named her U.S. ambassador to France, a position she held until her death.

There was virtually nobody of substance in the 20th century that Harriman didn’t know or work with, Purnell said, offering a list that included such luminaries as Frank Sinatra, Ernest Hemingway, Truman Capote, Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, and Nelson Mandela.

Earlier biographies have painted Harriman as a sex-obsessed gold digger, a courtesan who craved power, as “the other woman” in her relationships with married men. There w

New York, of course, was the nation’s business capital, main market and fashion center. 

Julie Satow tells the story of how women helped develop the department store and fashion in this country even though men owned the buildings. Inside the store, however, women ruled.

When Women Ran Fifth Avenue: Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion is a story of the 20th-century. Satow relates how Hortense Odlum turned Bonwit Teller into a multi-million-dollar success even though she had no training in the retail field. 

Dorothy Shaver helped make it possible for American designers to leave their mark, escaping the shadow of the always-popular Parisian originals at Lord & Taylor while Geraldine Stutz reinvented the look of the modern department store at Henri Bendel in the 1960s.

These women succeeded at a time when the world of work was run by men, noted Satow. “There were very few women bosses around when Hortense Odlum called for change in the 1930s,” she said.

Odlum objected to dresses that “shrieked cheap or whispered chic,” Satow stated. Initially, the entrenched garment industry (dominated by males) was dismissive. But Odlum pushed ahead for quality in women’s clothing. She also had ideas to draw men into the store such as the 721 Club within Bonwit Teller which allowed males to smoke cigars or drink whiskey while watching models exhibit the latest fashions.

Shaver not only promoted American designers but brought Art Deco to America in the late 1920s, said Satow.

Among the many stories that Satow tells in When Women Ran Fifth Avenue involves Salvador Dali, the irreverent surrealist, in 1939. Hired to do a window display at Bonwit Teller, Dali labored all night on his creation that involved a wax dummy stepping into a bathtub. Only the dummy’s blonde wig was crawling with beetles with tears of blood running down her face. Reaching out of the tub were some 100 wax arms holding mirrors. The whole theme was based on Narcissus, the Greek myth detailing the affliction of excessive vanity, said Satow.

Dali finished his window display in the early morning hours and went back to his New York hotel to sleep. Meanwhile, Bonwit Teller opened. Complaints poured in regarding Dali’s window. Customers and passers-by found it objectionable, even obscene.  As a result, the store replaced Dali’s scantily clad figure with a traditional mannequin in a tailored suit.

When Dali came by at two in the afternoon to view his handiwork, he was enraged to see the changes made. After registering a protest with Bonwit officials, Dali returned to the window display and pushed the bathtub right through the store window, sending it and himself crashing to the sidewalk outside the store. Unhurt, Dali was then arrested and held for several hours before paying a fine of $500, the exact price of his commission.

The Dali incident reflects the importance of window displays in the 20th century department store. “By the 1940s, there was a retail rule of thumb that one-third of all sales could be credited to impulse purchases resulting from window displays,” noted Satow.

Among the pioneers of displaying product in store windows was L. Frank Baum, the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. In 1897, Baum launched The Show Window, a monthly journal that advised merchants on how to attract a customer’s attention. With the success of his Oz books in 1900, Baum left the retail world behind, said Satow.

But a department store needs more than striking window displays. Satow points to Dorothy Shaver’s work in overhauling Lord & Taylor’s advertising. Shaver hired artist D

Children’s literature offers stories and pictures that we all need to enjoy—not just kids. One of the best examples of that is some of the work done by Chris Sickles of the Red Nose Studio in Greenfield, Ind., just a stone’s throw from where Wilbur Wright was born.

Sickles, 50, is a freelance illustrator whose credits include the New York Times and Wall Street Journal as well as producing The Look Book and Build along with illustrating Elvis is King and Here Comes the Garbage Barge by Jonah Winter, The Beginner’s Guide to Running Away from Home by Jennifer Huget, and The Secret Subway by Shana Covey.

Described as the mastermind of Red Nose Studio, Sickels creates three-dimensional characters and scenes that serve as illustrations for children's books and other projects. You have to see his work to really appreciate it. In his 2022 effort Build, he created “wonky versions” of toy bulldozers, dump trucks, and cranes 

Sickles may say wonky but another way to describe his work is wondrous. There’s imagination at work here that makes you understand why he’s identified as “insanely talented” in one of the accounts of his work online.

His creations come from old pieces of wood, typewriter keys, whatever the artist can glom onto to fire his sculptural artistry. He grew up on a small family farm where things always had to be fixed with what was around. That continues to serve as his approach to art, Sickles said. 

“As an illustrator, my job is to create an image that hopefully makes a viewer or reader stop and pursue content further, whether that’s a book cover or an image in a magazine,” Sickels explained when his work was exhibited at the University of Indianapolis in 2018.

When Sickles did the art for Secret Subway, a story about Eli Beach’s effort to build a pneumatic subway in New York City in 1870, he produced some 20 characters including Beach, himself, Boss Tweed (the mayor who ran New York who opposed Beach’s effort) as well as construction workers, passengers, and New York residents, all in 1870 attire. “I probably got into it more than I should have,” he laughed.

Incidentally, Beach’s block-long subway was demonstrated successfully with much fanfare but unfortunately never went anywhere. With Tweed and the established railway in opposition, once Beach’s effort was discovered, the secret subway was entombed and forgotten. It wasn’t until 1904 that New York finally got its subway.

Sickles said one of the things that appealed to him about the story was that Beach had to deceive city officials to build what he initially described as a way to deliver mail. Pneumatic tubes still serve that function in some places. They’re also still very much in use at drive-in banks. That’s a lesson for kids, the artist said—not to be mischievous—but not to get too hung up with all the rules so often laid down by adults.

Eric Vickrey’s Season of Shattered Dreams takes us back to that fateful season, providing an account of events leading up to the accident and how individuals coped after such a catastrophic crash.

This was the era of postwar baseball. Like other national institutions, the sport had to recover after four years of fighting. President Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized that keeping baseball going through the war could boost the country’s morale but, with 90 percent of the 5,000 professional ballplayers in the country part of the war effort in some capacity, things certainly weren’t the same. Of the 44 minor leagues in the nation, only nine operated during the war, Vickrey noted.

The 1946 season started with promise, however. “Major league training camps overflowed with players attempting to shake off the rust and rediscover baseball skills put on the back burner during the war,” stated Vickrey.

Vic Picetti (rhymes with machete) was the hottest 18-year-old prospect on the Spokane squad. The San Francisco speedster could hit and was considered a sure bet for the major leagues. Vickrey said that one major league team had reportedly offered $50,000 for his services (the equivalent of over $800,000 today).

There’s a picture in Season of Picetti taking instruction from Casey Stengel, then managing in the minors. Vickrey said the Picetti family offered up a scrapbook of the young man’s baseball accomplishments still treasured after almost 80 years since the 18-year-old Picetti died in the bus crash.

The accident took place on Snoqualmie Pass some 50 miles east of Seattle. Vickrey describes how a black sedan, trying to pass a truck on the narrow mountain road, suddenly appeared in the wrong lane in front of the bus as it was headed downhill over the pass. The sedan clipped the front end of the bus. The driver tried valiantly to keep the vehicle on the road but the bus broke through the protective guard cables, plunging over the side of the ravine.

Ben Geraghty, who had earlier switched seats with another player, was thrown out a window. After regaining consciousness, he viewed a gruesome scene: the bus had burst into flames and come finally to rest on the embankment some 300 feet from the road. He took off his jacket to smother the flames from a teammate.

Geraghty recovered and, while he never played baseball again, went on to a 20-year career as a minor-league manager, achieving success with several teams while being highly regarded for his baseball knowledge and handling of players. Hank Aaron, who played for Geraghty with the Jacksonville Braves in 1953, called him the finest human being he ever met.

Jacksonville was a club in the Sally League, made up of teams from Southern states that had never allowed players of color in its 49-year history. That changed in 1953 when Aaron, Felix Mantilla, and Horace Garner joined the team. When black players were prohibited from eating in some of the restaurants with their white teammates, Geraghty would order burgers and bring them back to the bus, noted Vickery.

Sadly, Geraghty never achieved his goal of managing in the big leagues, remaining in the minor leagues to teach players the fundamentals of the game he loved so much. In the minors, players usually traveled by bus which meant Geraghty spent years riding about with the memories of that fateful day Snoqualmie Pass. “Ben would sit behind the driver and consume a case of beer each trip in an attempt to drown away the nightmarish images…of that horrible crash,” stated Pete Wevurski, a sportswriter with the Jersey Journal.

Vickrey also includes the story of Jack “Lucky” Lohrke, a member of the Spokane

Chandler invented Philip Marlowe, after all. He wrote about the mean streets of Los Angeles years before Dragnet. His novels have been developed into quintessential noir movies such as The Big Sleep and Farewell, My Lovely. 

The list of actors who’ve played Marlowe, the definitive private eye, includes Humphrey Bogart, Dick Powell, Robert Montgomery, George Montgomery, James Garner, Elliott Gould, Robert Mitchum, and, most recently, Liam Neeson.

Born in Chicago but raised in England before moving back to the United States in his 20s, Chandler developed a perspective that came through in his writing, said Tom Williams, author of A Mysterious Something in the Light: The Life of Raymond Chandler.

Chandler was the proverbial outsider from the start when his mother placed him in a fancy British prep school. He remained somewhat out of step even after his return to the States, said Williams, noting that “Chandler’s reasonably easy to see but hard to grasp.” 

If you listen to Chandler’s voice on some of the interviews that exist, you find his accent is neither British nor American but just different, Williams said. 

Chandler found his footing in Los Angeles, however, when, while in his 40s, he turned to writing detective fiction. Fascinated and encouraged by pulp magazines like Black Mask, Chandler wrote lines like “He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food cake.”

Marlowe’s dialogue had a purity and straightforwardness that explains the character’s popularity with readers but Chandler (often photographed with a pipe clenched tightly between his teeth) could be difficult, noted Williams.

When James Cain, the author of Double Indemnity, wasn't available to write the movie screenplay (he was under contract to another studio), the call went out for Chandler. So began a rocky 10-week collaboration between Chandler and the film’s director, Billy Wilder.

The two men were unable to get along from the first, said Williams, suggesting that collaboration wasn’t Chandler's strong suit. At one point, Chandler left the studio in a huff, citing a slew of complaints about Wilder, blaming him for everything from arriving late to meetings to opening the blinds without permission.

Despite their differences, the film that was produced stands as a classic, Williams said. In casting Fred MacMurray, better known for comedic roles, as the wayward insurance salesman, the audience found a likable murderer, he said.

Chandler also had problems with another famous director. While Chandler’s name appears on a screen credit on Strangers on a Train, he didn’t have much to do with the film, often cited as one of Alfred Hitchcock’s best. It seems that Chandler reportedly referred to Hitchcock as “that fat bastard,” a comment that Hitch apparently overheard after making a special trip to Chandler’s home in La Jolla to discuss the screenplay.

Chandler wrote a script for the film but Hitchcock not only didn’t use it but made a ceremonious gesture of dropping Chandler’s effort in the trash during a production meeting for the film.

Lest you think that Chandler and Philip Marlowe exist only in noir’s colorful past, the Los Angeles Times reported earlier this year that the Chandler estate has been licensing new literary treatments of the private eye with different authors since 1989. In The Goodbye Coast, published in 2022, Marlowe drives a 2008 Mustang GT and knows how to use GPS.

Hold on, said Eleanor Patterson, media studies professor at Auburn University. Scripted radio programs may have stopped from being the dominant form of entertainment which they were through most of the 30s, 40s and 50s but radio drama has always been around, she said.

Shows like ABC’s Theater5 (1964), CBS Radio Mystery Theater (1974-82), and Sears Radio Theater (1979) were just some examples, she said. You also had The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a BBC effort that aired over many U.S. public radio outlets in 1981 and NPR’s Earplay (https://current.org/2018/06/wisconsin-public-radios-earplay-before-the-podcast-era-a-story-focused-series-with-experimental-edge/).

Now old radio shows proliferate online while other audio entertainment options—audiobooks and podcasts—abound. Depending on how you define radio, the golden age may still be with us.

Audiobooks now often include music and sound effects, emulating dramatic radio shows of the past, said Patterson. Meanwhile, podcasts not only offer original material but also critique shows of the past, she said. “Podcasting represents where creative radio is right now,” said Patterson.

In the TV writing class she teaches at Auburn, Patterson said she spends the first six weeks covering radio. Students create their own scripts using old radio shows like Pat Novak for Hire and The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet as examples, she said.

“It’s important that we know our history. I tell students that radio is where the different genres we know today came from,” said Patterson.

Along with Novak, Patterson said some of her personal favorites are Richard Diamond and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar. “I love radio noir. It’s so visual,” she said.

Radio programs like the Lone Ranger and the Jack Benny Show remain entertaining, said Patterson. “Jack Benny was the first show using the concept of a show within a show,” she said.

In the segmented world of the present, it’s important to remember that a show like NPR’s Prairie Home Companion racked up 4 to 5 million listeners every Saturday night during the 1980s and 90s, said Patterson, noting that the performance of the show’s host, Garrison Keillor, was “an ode to classic radio.”

“Network television would kill for those numbers today,” she said.

Patterson said radio is still telling stories. “This American Life (on NPR) makes use of ambient noise to create a story and sense of place,” she said.

Patterson, whose last book was Bootlegging the Airwaves, is presently at work on broadcast television which she sees surviving despite the rise of streaming. “I like to look at dead things,” she laughed.

Hammett proved to be an inspiration for Mark Dawidziak, a writer whose published works include biographies of Mark Twain (the white-suited author who Dawidziak has impersonated for more than 30 years), Edgar Allan Poe (see previous podcast on The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe) and Teddy Roosevelt along with books on Twilight Zone, Columbo and Kolchak the Night Stalker.

Dawidziak said he was moved to write his own book on Hammett after several biographies appeared on the author (along with a PBS documentary) in the late 70s and early 80s.

Hammett in Hollywood would have explored Hammett’s working life in Hollywood—as a detective in the Fatty Arbuckle case, a union organizer and screenwriter, said Dawidziak. Hammett’s involvement in the movie capital also extended to the stories he wrote that became movies (including two excellent versions of The Glass Key but, most notably, The Maltese Falcon).

Finally, Dawidziak said, came the depiction of the mustachioed Hammett, himself, in a number of movies such as Julia (1977) and Hammett (1982). 

But Hammett in Hollywood never got published, said Dawidziak, because Mysterious Press, which had accepted the piece, made the decision to publish only works of fiction.

A chapter from the book—on the radio show, The Adventures of Sam Spade that ran from 1946 to 1951 with Howard Duff as Spade for four of those years—turns up in The Big Book of Noir, a collection of noirish essays edited by Ed Gorman, Lee Server and Martin Greenberg.

Dawidziak interviewed Duff shortly before the actor’s death in 1990 to learn more about a radio series he characterized as unlike any other detective program of the period.

If you were looking for Humphrey Bogart’s depiction of Spade, you didn’t find it with Duff, said Dawidziak. “Duff had his own distinctive voice,” he said.

Good writing tainted with a sly—sometimes outrageous—sense of humor made the show stand out, Dawidziak said. The distinctive villains on Sam Spade came right out of Dick Tracy, he noted. A strong stock company of radio players included Lurene Tuttle as Effie, Spade’s secretary, whose scenes with Sam are among radio’s best.

Dashiell Hammett was among those ensnared in the Red Scare of the early 50s, a time when any association with Communism was considered criminal.

His association with Hammett—simply playing the author’s best-known character—was enough to get Duff blacklisted. Cited in Red Channels, the maligning missive of the day, Duff was relieved of his duties as the wisecracking detective by Steven Dunne in the show’s final year. 

Hammett has rebounded nicely from the government’s character assassination attempts of the 50s, said Dawidziak. His five novels along with short stories and screenplays have made him almost as important as Twain when it comes to cultural impact, he said.

Sam Spade, the Thin Man, the Fat Man, and the Continental Op are all Hammett characters that have flourished in the ever growing world of film noir.

Perhaps the biggest star of that period was Major Taylor, an African American cyclist who first achieved success as a teenager in 1894, noted Robert Turpin, a history professor at Lees-McRae College in North Carolina and the author of Black Cyclists: The Race for Inclusion.

A bicyclist who previously competed as an amateur in races across the United States, Turpin said he was first moved to learn more about black cyclists after learning about Taylor’s success. “He was world champion in 1899 and continued to compete on the bike racing circuit until retiring in 1910,” said Turpin.

After retiring, Taylor became known as the wealthiest man in Worcester, Mass., a town 40 miles west of Boston, said Turpin. “He purchased the first car in town and owned property there,” he said.

But other black cyclists weren’t as fortunate. While Taylor competed as a professional, able to secure large purses, other African Americans were forced to compete as amateurs, not eligible for the cash prizes offered, said Turpin.

Participation was specifically limited to white participants in the 1890s by the sanctioning body, the League of American Wheelmen (and later the NCAA), he said. Taylor and a number of other black racers who were already members were allowed to remain but others of color were excluded from competing.

Taylor also complained of sometimes being “pocketed” during races. Racers would conspire to work together to box the black cyclist out, restricting his ability to sprint to the finish. Those involved would then divide the prize money amongst themselves, said Turpin.

While racers of color would compete in Europe where they would be less likely to face racial restrictions, sometimes U.S. racism would follow. Turpin said sometimes racers would be denied access to a European hotel because of complaints from American guests.

Despite the impediments placed before them, black cyclists continue to break through, said Turpin, noting that Nelson Vails won a silver medal in the 1984 Olympic games held in Los Angeles while Biniam Girmay from Eritrea, one of the poorest countries in Africa, recently won a stage of this year’s Tour de France, becoming the first black African to take a first in the month-long competition.

You haven’t experienced a special-ops thriller? It’s a whirlwind tour of international intrigue, high-powered weapons, death, deception, and destruction as grizzled soldiers of fortune collide on unmarked battlefields.

Greaney is an old hand, having knocked off a dozen Gray Man books with a new one to be released next February.

Sentinel is part of another Greaney series, this one labeled Armoured. Here we follow the exploits of Josh Duffy and his wife Nikki, who tackle State Department duties in Ghana.

As we learn from the book’s opening pages, we’re plunged into China’s “debt-trap diplomacy” in Africa. “Loan a poor nation enough money to get itself into trouble, then control it with the compromise of debt,” Greaney writes.

One of the many bad guys in Sentinel is the Chinese agent Kang Shikun who’s plotting unrest in Ghana, considered one of the more stable governments in West Africa (while coups abound on its borders).

Kang Shikun is one of the many great names that Greaney comes up with for his characters. Others you’ll find in Sentinel include Lev Belov, Kwame Boatang, and Hajj Zahedi. I asked him how he came up with them.

“It is complete construction work to come with all those names. This is my 20th published novel with 30 to 40 characters in each book. I do all these different things to find out names. A lot of times I look at the volleyball teams of different countries. Nobody knows famous volleyball guys. I’ve pretty much exhausted all of that by now. Every Russian volleyball player has been used in the book,” said Greaney.

One of the heroes in Sentinel is Isaac Opoku, a policeman in Ghana. Greaney said that name was inspired by a taxi cab driver he encountered while touring Ghana last year.

Greaney makes it a point to research his literary locales in person, noting that, while in Ghana, he visited the U.S. embassy where he talked with several dignitaries, and traveled to the Akosombo Dam, a vital power generator in the country where much of the book’s action takes place. 

Keeping up with the news is another Greaney characteristic. In Sentinel, there are references to Russia’s Wagner Group, the mercenary unit that opposed Russian leader Vladimir Putin last year. Greaney said he was first captivated by the blend of fiction with fact that bestselling author Tom Clancy developed. Greaney coauthored three books with Clancy before the author died in 2013.

Greaney first came by a respect for daily events from his father, Ed Greaney, who served as managing editor of a major Memphis TV station, serving at the same station for 50 years, working until he was almost 80.

You can’t have a special-ops thriller without spilling a little blood but if the body count in Sentinel seems to spiral out of control, Greaney said it’s an unfortunate reflection of real-world violence that’s become all too familiar. “You’ve got 1,100 Russians dying every day in Ukraine,” he said.

Now 53, Greaney, who’s been churning out 450-page thrillers with the dedication of a Russian career soldier, vows not to spiral out of control, himself, suggesting he has plans to reduce his work schedule down to one book a year…soon.

A history professor at the University of North Carolina, DuVal provides a view of this country’s colonial history we never got in school.

This history comes from those already present when the French, British, and Spanish landed on North American shores. Her detailed account (the footnotes alone are an informational storehouse) raises the curtain on the American stage, letting us see—perhaps for the first time—the power and diversity of the American Indian.

Native Americans held the upper hand in most engagements with European colonists between 1600 and 1800, noted DuVal. Not only did they have numbers on their side in those years but Native Americans possessed knowledge of the land and its resources that outsiders hungered for. 

Few of those colonists arrived in time to view urban America in its first form, developments exemplified by sites like Cahokia, near St. Louis, which reached a peak around 1100, she said.

Instead, native states developed across North America with their own customs and language, noted DuVal.

“As Spanish, Dutch, French, and British colonists struggled to put down roots, local tribes mostly avoided them, preoccupied with their own blood feuds and fitful alliances. But they were also budding entrepreneurs. They sought advantage among outposts such as Jamestown, New Amsterdam, and Quebec, enriching themselves through barter and luring Europeans into their conflicts,” noted Hamilton Cain in his review of Native Nations.

We’ve all heard about Manhattan being sold for $24 worth of beads but think again if you assume Native Americans were gullible traders, said DuVal, pointing out that the lucrative fur trade that so excited Europeans allowed Native Americans to acquire items in return such as guns, metal cooking utensils, and linen.

The Mohawks “came to Fort Orange (now Albany, N.Y.) for the guns but they stayed for the cake,” wrote DuVal. After sampling cakes and cookies that Dutch bakers produced, Mohawks drove the prices of baked goods beyond the range of many Dutch colonists in the area, she said.

The story of the American Revolution is related through Indian eyes this time, a view that exposes the many moving parts of a conflict that DuVal plans to explore in her next book.

After the revolution, Native Americans convened in 1784 in St. Louis, on the site of one of Cahokia’s vacated satellite cities. The subject in question centered on the threat posed by this new country, whose people were more ambitious and more numerous than the British they deposed. The threat of U.S. expansion to Native American communities was perceived as “a plague of locusts.”

As the United States grew, native people were driven further west. The resulting collision between a determined U.S. government and Native Americans is one history most of us are already familiar with. 

Some Native Americans called for a united front to resist the threat. One of those was Tecumseh, the Shawnee leader who, with his brother Tenskwatawa, traveled widely to unite tribes in opposition to the government.

DuVal notes that Tecumseh, lauded as a brilliant speaker, visited Potawatomi towns and the towns of the Peorias on the Illinois River in 1805. He likely was one of the first of many great orators to speak in Peoria.

Despite government policy often seeming hellbent on extermination, Native Americans have survived, wrote DuVal, who cites an American Indian renaissance in the late 20th and 21st centuries.

“Even as Native communities continue to struggle with poverty, healthcare crises, and the weight of historical loss, they are reinvigorating language and traditions and exercising new political and cultural power,” she noted.

DuVal credited recent wide-ranging research that made her book possible. “Twenty years ago, I couldn’t have written this book,” she said.

Chittka’s book, The Mind of a Bee (Princeton University Press) not only covers bee navigation but explores research by himself and others that demonstrate that bees have distinct personalities, can recognize flowers, solve problems, and learn through observation. In short, bees are smart.

The “simple” act of navigation alone is not a trivial challenge, said Chittka, outlining the hurdles faced as bees solve “the traveling salesman problem.” That’s referring to visiting multiple locations that may be well apart from one another in the most efficient manner possible. The bee’s complex array of senses including being able to see ultraviolet light (something humans can’t do), are part of what sets it apart, said the author.

Research also indicates that bees may be able to use the Earth’s magnetic field to aid them in navigation or the location of a nest.

There’s nothing new about this interest in bees. The ancient Egyptians studied bees while evidence of Mayan honey production in Mesoamerica is over 1,000 years old.

Chittka details his own work as well as that done by other researchers, indicating that individuals are often stories in themselves.

Martin Lindauer was injured while serving in the German army during World War II. As a result, he was sent home from the Russian front, a fact that probably saved his life since his entire company was virtually wiped out, stated Chittka. After attending a lecture by Karl von Frisch, the German scientist and Nobel Prize winner (for his work on bee communication through dance behavior), Lindauer caught the bee bug and went into research himself, carrying on even as Allied bombs fell.

After the war, Lindauer conducted his own breakthrough experiments while starting a succession of bee researchers. Among those studying under him was Randolf Menzel, a scientist who became established in his own right. Among the graduate students that Menzel attracted was Lars Chittka, now having researched the subject for more than 40 years.

Another bee researcher highlighted in The Mind of a Bee is Charles Turner, an African American born two years after the Civil War. By the age of 25, Turner had published articles in some of the most prestigious scientific journals of his day, said Chittka, noting that because of his ethnicity, Turner was never able to land a position at a college or university. Instead, Turner conducted his experiments as a science teacher at Sumner High School in St. Louis.

“His research was remarkable in identifying individual differences among insects,” said Chittka. “Contrary to the beliefs of the day, Turner believed that animals could think. He was a century ahead of his time with his research.”

The honeybees, the roving pollen gatherers, live only a few weeks while a queen bee may live up to seven years, Chittka said. He added that the managed honeybees, those maintained by beekeepers and used in agriculture are not endangered. Wild bees, however, face many obstacles. Like many other animals, bees are endangered through pesticide use and modern farming practices, said Chittka. Monoculture farming, the practice of growing the same crop in the same field year after year, reduces opportunities for bees who seek plant variety, he said.

But people can help the situation by planting a bee-friendly garden or flower box, said Chittka. Goldenrod, Bee Balm, Black Eyed Susan, Foxglove, Hosta, Coneflower, Zinnia, Marigold, and Sunflower are just some of the flowers that draw bees.

While bee research is hundreds of years old, Chittka feels that bee research is like a magic well. “After coming up with a conclusion, some new riddle always emerges,” he said, adding that the question of whether bees are conscious beings is likely to consume fu

It took Victoria Lamont, an English professor at Waterloo College in Ontario, Canada, to open my eyes.

Her book, Westerns: A Women’s History, spotlights accomplishments made by women who wrote about the Old West in an era when the Western frontier was recognized as officially closed (1880 to 1900). Yes, women wrote about cowboys, ranchers, romance, and rustlers.

In doing so, Lamont must deal with the mythology that surrounds the Old West. We know a lot about that mythology since it’s been transferred to screens both large and small for 100 years. We know who wears the white hat and who doesn’t.

“Mythology likes to be simple but these stories are complicated,” said Lamont.

Comparing two books published in April 1902, Lamont notes that both covered the same subject, action based on a real-life rustling dispute in Johnson County, Wyo. in the late 19th century--with completely different results. Owen Wister’s The Virginian became a bestseller that’s generated six films and a long-running TV series. The Rustler by Frances McElrath, a woman whose lone novel was largely unknown until reprinted by the University of Nebraska Press in 2002.

Wistler’s version supports cattle owners who resort to vigilante violence to deal with two men who were opposed to the cattle companies and identified as rustlers.

McElrath tells a different story, a story of a class struggle in the Old West, said Lamont, pointing to a collision between rich and poor. The rich were the big cattle operations financed by wealthy individuals in the Eastern U.S. or Europe. Cowboys who wanted to get a piece of the action, themselves, by getting into the cattle business were discouraged by the large cattle companies from owning cattle.

Unbranded cattle—mavericks—became a big issue. Cowboys who didn’t turn over these cattle to the large cattle companies would be accused of rustling, she said. If courts didn’t find those accused of rustling guilty, cattle owners felt justified in resorting to vigilante action, said Lamont.

“In my opinion, Frances McElrath’s version of history is more accurate,” she said.

Lamont’s next book focuses on another woman whose writing accomplishments have been overlooked, Bertha Bower, whose publisher decreed in 1920 that her books on the Old West were second in sales only to Zane Grey.

But Steve Steinberg and Lyle Spatz, baseball historians whose previous publications have delved deeply into baseball’s early days, the so-called Dead Ball Era, make a convincing case for Mike Donlin, “a rough and rowdy” baseball player who became an idol in New York before Babe Ruth arrived on the scene.

Their book, Mike Donlin, covers the career of the man Damon Runyon said was the most colorful player he ever saw as well as Donlin’s second career, on the stage and in the movies.

Born in Peoria, Donlin is now all but forgotten but played with some of the greats, players like Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson, Tris Speaker, and John McGraw. In 12 seasons, Donlin batted over .330, earning a reputation both as a dynamic hitter and one of baseball’s bad boys, tormenting umpires and managers alike.

A heavy drinker, Donlin got into scrapes more serious than the occasional bar fight or on-field skirmish. He did prison time and was suspended from pro ball for a year after being found guilty of assaulting a woman in 1902. But he was back playing baseball for the Cincinnati Reds in 1903, a year when he batted .351, second only to Honus Wagner’s .355.

Steinberg said that Donlin’s celebrity status blossomed as a member of the New York Giants, one of several teams he played for. Managed by McGraw, the Giants won the World Series in 1905. 

But the Donlin book also has a romantic side, offering a portion of the article James Hopper wrote for Collier’s magazine in 1908: “Two years ago Big Mike Donlin was a reckless, violent, husky-voiced, swaggering brawler. Then he met Mabel Hite, who, discerning a chance for that redemption which woman so dearly loves, gently led him to the altar. Mike Donlin now is a …lithe, clean-hewed, supple athlete; his features made firm through physical and moral health, have regained lines almost classical.”    

As the most prominent vaudeville actress in the country at the time, Mabel Hite was just what the doctor needed when it came to taming the wild Donlin. The team of Hite and Donlin was a vaudeville hit with crowds and critics alike, said Steinberg. “If you miss him (Donlin), you do yourself an injustice,” said a reviewer at Variety magazine. 

But the marriage and her theatrical career were cut short when Hite died of cancer in 1912 at the age of 29. Trained by his wife, Donlin gravitated to the stage. His last baseball season ended in an unsuccessful comeback attempt in 1914 but he married actress Rita Ross and moved to Hollywood where he became a drinking buddy of actors John Barrymore and Buster Keaton. Among the 100 movies he appeared in, mostly in small parts, was the role of a Union general in Keaton’s The General, considered one of the comedian’s greatest films.

Donlin died in 1933, remembered more as a likable actor than the brawling ballplayer “He was something of a headache but more often a joy to me, and player…a fighter, the kind that used to make for winning teams in the days I played the game,” said former manager McGraw who also recalled humorist Will Rogers telling him of his fondness for Donlin. 

Movies and books haven’t stopped rehashing the great war since its conclusion, witness last year’s Oppenheimer and, now playing in your local metroplex, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.

Meanwhile, WWII offers an ongoing avalanche of literary material, exemplified by recent titles like Churchill’s Shadow Raiders: The Race to Develop Radar, WWII’s Invisible Secret Weapon, Madame Fourcade’s Secret War: The Daring Young Woman Who Led France’s Largest Spy Network Against Hitler, and Need to Know: World War II and the Rise of American Intelligence.

WWII was so vast and so involving, that it may be another 80 years before we stop writing books about it. There are always aspects to explore, examining the men and women who put their bodies on the line, sometimes in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Who isn’t interested in tales of that kind of heroism? 

Caroline Alexander’s Skies of Thunder (Viking Press) examines the WWII heroes who flew transport planes in the China-Burma-India theater. During these times of rising tensions between China and the U.S., it’s worth noting that the two countries were allies in WWII.

Japan had attacked China years before Pearl Harbor and, by 1942, had all but sealed China off from the world. Alexander notes that the official line at the time was that America wanted to keep China in the war. The U.S. military didn’t want Japanese troops engaged in China to be diverted elsewhere in the Pacific.

Alexander said that Franklin D. Roosevelt was also thinking about global politics after the war. Assisting the most populous country in the world—that wouldn’t declare an allegiance to Communism until 1949--could only bolster U.S. prospects.

Once Japan closed Chinese ports and gained control of the Burma Road, the only way to get supplies into China was by air. There was only one little problem: the air route required flying over the foothills of the Himalayas. As if navigating through the tallest mountain range in the world wasn’t daunting enough, pilots had to deal with frequent, intense storms over those mountains, the result of warm air from the Bay of Bengal colliding with cold winds from Siberia, said Alexander.

Storms proved to pose an even greater danger than enemy planes at a time when the existence of a weather phenomenon known as the jet stream wasn’t even known, said Alexander. “Pilots sometimes reported being shot up thousands of feet in a minute as they endeavored to fly by instruments,” she said. Flights were scheduled around the clock regardless of the weather. 

The stormy weather proved to be a major obstacle, claiming 600 planes and 1,700 lives. Little wonder that flying the Hump also became known as traversing the Aluminum Trail. 

Alexander said she first became aware of the airlift while undertaking an assignment for National Geographic on the large tiger refuge in Myanmar (Burma’s present name). After noticing that strange, jagged pieces of metal fencing of villagers’ gardens were made from pieces of fuselage from old WWII planes, she learned that the lush jungle was hiding a graveyard of crashed cargo planes.

Alexander also includes information on how Americans supported China on the ground, carving out the Ledo Road, a route between India and China that required “a Herculean engineering project in challenging terrain and climate,” noted Matthew Delmont in Half American, a book about the contributions African Americans made during WWII.

The Ledo Road stood as a remarkable achievement, involving 15,000 American troops, almost two-thirds of them African American, along with 35,000 local Indian, Burmese, and Chinese civilian workers. It took a lot of heavy equipment to

Space may look more promising with all the problems on Earth but while there may not be pollution on Mars, there are plenty of issues to face before relocating to space. Kelly’s a biologist while Zach’s an artist who provided the many cartoons and illustrations in the book. The two admitted to spending four years researching the subject of space settlements.

They went into the project excited about the possibilities but came away skeptical, said Kelly Weinersmith. “The more research we did, the more problems we came across,” she said. “We’re definitely not anti-space settlement but we are pro-a thoughtful, slow approach.”

Among the issues raised in the book are the problems of living in space, the effects of low gravity or space radiation on the human body, the transport of materials into space, and the laws that would define what resources one could use on the Moon or Mars and the altercations that could break out if there’s a difference of opinion between countries on the use of those resources. 

“Space is beautiful but it’s also deeply political,” said Kelly Weinersmith. Countries tend to look at space exploration as a way of saying, “Look how advanced we are,” she said.

Robotics will play a big role in space exploration, Kelly Weinersmith conceded but only if robots can perform all the tasks needed to allow humans to live in space. That involves technology yet to be developed, she said.

“We don’t know how to do it yet, but we still believe that someday, with enough knowledge, we can have Mars…But we must earn it, both by gaining in knowledge and be becoming a more responsible, more peaceful species. Going to the stars will not make us wise. We have to become wise if we want to go to the stars,” she said. 

“In my opinion, you simply can’t name anyone from central Illinois who had this much influence on America and the world, and (yet) no one knows about him,” said William Engelbrecht, the co-author of "The American Banker in Paris" along with Karl K. Taylor..

“This isn’t a book about a bank or finance but about an interesting human being who came out of central Illinois,” said Engelbrecht, noting that after Jay graduated in 1905 from Knox College (located in nearby Galesburg). “After that, he got into finance. Then came World War I,” he said.

Jay entered the U.S. Army and served Gen. Charles G. Dawes as general purchasing agent for the American Expeditionary Force where he later received a Distinguished Service Medal. No fewer than four countries decorated Jay for service during the war, said Engelbrecht.

Following the war, Jay headed the Paris affiliate of the J.P. Morgan & Co. bank in Paris from 1920 to 1941 and then again after WWII.

During the Roaring Twenties in Paris, Jay was a friend of Ernest Hemingway, Coco Chanel, and Gertrude Stein. During that era, Jay was described in the New York Times as “one of the most civilized and authentic Americans in Paris," said Engelbrecht.

Jay was a member of the welcoming party for Charles Lindbergh when he made the first transatlantic flight from New York to Paris in 1927. “The J.P. Morgan Co. was one of the sponsors of the Lindbergh flight. The name on the business card that Lindbergh carried in his pocket during the flight was Nelson Dean Jay,” said Engelbrecht. Jay later criticized Lindbergh to his face, suggesting he reconsider some of his pro-German views, the author noted.

Jay's personal life is also part of the story, said Engelbrecht. Jay met his wife, Anne, on a blind date. He told her of his plan to marry her that night. And he did. The marriage lasted 60 years.

Along with helping Andre Citroen get the start he needed to become the largest automobile manufacturer in Europe, Jay also helped finance the work of his friend, (two-time) Nobel Prize winner Madame Marie Curie, the woman who laid the foundation for modern oncology, said Engelbrecht.

Taking over Nancy in 2026 is cartoonist Caroline Cash.

Nat King Cole, himself, wouldn’t have been able to stay at most of the motels on Route 66 when that song was released.

African Americans taking vacations along Route 66 not only couldn’t stay at many of the motor inns the route helped popularize but weren’t always welcome at restaurants along the way. In many cases, bathrooms were off limits. There was also the problem of “sundown towns,” — communities that excluded blacks after the sun went down.

The Green Book was devised in 1936 by Victor Hugo Green, a New York postman, to provide a list of places that African Americans could visit without fear of retribution.
The guides were published annually until 1966.

Alvin Hall talked about Route 66 in an interview on Read Beat regarding his book, Driving the Green Book.

Victor Hugo Green, a Harlem postal worker, conceived the guide to avoid what he called “aggravations” for black Americans who traveled, noted Hall. Along with Janee Woods Weber, Hall visited 12 U.S. cities from Detroit to New Orleans in a whirlwind 12-day tour, interviewing individuals with stories to tell about travels made with family and friends who traveled when the Green Book provided vital information. The podcasts from that trip help underscore the guide's importance  and the dangers faced en route.   https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/driving-the-green-book/id1519839250 

Hall, who produced a documentary on the Green Book for BBC in 2016, said the initial reaction for many when first hearing about the guide is surprise. “Many people have expressed the fact that they just didn’t know about it,” said Hall, who told Steve Tarter that he found it interesting that the BBC program that played to a global audience—all over the world--except in the United States.

More became aware of the guide after a film called The Green Book made the rounds in 2018, but that movie, highlighting the 1962 tour of African American pianist Don Shirley, “had virtually nothing to do with the actual Green Book,” said Hall.

Among those interviewed by Hall was Noelle Trent, now the CEO and president of the Museum of African American History in Boston, who recounted that even recent family trips started at 5 a.m. in the morning, a holdover from the past.

Five in the morning was that magical hour for many black families when they set out to travel, said Hall, noting that food for the trip was often laid out the night before. Along with facing the problem of obtaining food and services on the trip, “You wanted to get on the road early to reach your destination before dark. The last thing you wanted was to land in a sundown town late at night,” he said.

Sundown towns—communities that prohibited African Americans after the sun went down, Hall explained, were actually more common in the northern United States than in the South.

The Green Book stands as an example of black ingenuity, he said. Finding ways to seek safe harbor in a country where doors were often closed with real danger present was an act of resistance but it was also an act of resilience, said Hall. “It's a story of people who did not become embittered or seek vengeance. We knew we had to make a way through this.” 

Unlike Life, Reader’s Digest and the Saturday Evening Post, the other major magazines of the day, Look tends to be overlooked, he told Steve Tarter.

“Look—which has slipped from national memory—had an extraordinary influence on mid-20th century America,” said Yarrow, noting that the magazine was published from 1935 to 1971 before closing. While a bit on "the schlocky side" at first, by the late 1940s, Look had grown into a powerful force with pictures and stories that both informed and entertained Americans, he said.

While Life continues to resurface at the supermarket counter with special editions on topics from the Beatles to the sinking of the Titanic, Look remains lost in the past. Unlike Life, Look has also never been digitized, said Yarrow, at work on a documentary of the magazine at present.

The loss of national magazines that were often optimistic about solving some of the social problems of the day has proved to be a major loss for the country, he said. “Instead of Look’s thoughtful, public-spirited journalism, we now live in a maelstrom of countless, small-audience, online, broadcast and print media,” said Yarrow, who points to an underappreciated past.

“The mid-20th century was a golden age (featuring) an increasingly prosperous middle class, a government that actually got things done and a reasonably well-informed citizenry,” he said.

Look took strong stands on civil rights and was one of the first national publications to profile gay Americans, said Yarrow. While Norman Rockwell is famous for the many covers he produced for the Post, it’s often forgotten that he also did some 30 paintings for Look, including the famous 1964 work that depicted Ruby Bridges, an African American grade schooler being escorted by federal marshals to a New Orleans school ordered to integrate, he said.

Film director Stanley Kubrick worked as a photographer for Look for six years, starting when he was just 16, said Yarrow.

Magazines like Life (which ended regular publication a year after Look) had millions of subscribers up until the day they folded but weren't able to hold advertisers who moved to television in the 1960s, said Yarrow, pointing to an increase in postal rates and competition from special-interest magazines as helping bring the curtain down on the country's general-interest magazine era. 

Additional information on Yarrow’s documentary project is available at https://andrewlyarrow.com/the-life-of-look-the-film.

His 1998 release, “Dark City: the Lost World of Film Noir,” was just selected as one of the top 100 movie books by the Hollywood Reporter (the book will soon be rereleased from TCM). Muller has produced an entire noir library including “Dark City Dames” (look for a revised edition next year), a book on noir posters and several original novels but this year he’s pushed noir limits even further, publishing the “Noir Bar,” a book of mixed drink recipes and the films that inspired them (Eddie’s first professional job was as a bartender) and, most recently a children’s book, “Kid Noir: Kitty Feral and the Case of the Marshmallow Monkey” (with Jessica Schmidt and Forrest Burdett).

Film noir, that genre made up of those gritty black-and-white crime films mostly from the 40s and 50s, has no better proponent than Muller who not only introduces viewers to films on TCM’s “Noir Alley” ( Saturdays at midnight) but organizes and hosts film festivals all over the country—both for TCM and his own film-restoring foundation —to keep classic noir films in front of the public. Next summer, Muller hosts a film noir fest in Paris, au fait.

What was Muller’s first noir? What old movie led him to a life of crime (movies)? “It was probably ‘Big Heat’ but ‘Thieves’ Highway’ makes a better story,” he told Steve Tarter. “(‘Highway’) could be called agri-noir because it’s about a man who goes to the open San Francisco farmers’ market to avenge his father who he believes was done in by a conniving fruit peddler (played by Lee J. Cobb). There are also a lot of scenes of San Francisco with buildings that are no longer there,” he said.

While he hosts film noir fests from Seattle to Detroit throughout the year—including the granddaddy of them all, the 21st annual Film Noir Foundation festival set for Oakland in January—Muller says he never tires of all the hoopla or the genre, itself. “I’m an enthusiast before anything else,” he said.

So are there still any old chestnuts to pull out of the film noir fire we haven’t seen? Muller said studio releases have been largely tapped but he’s still on the lookout for those independent films released (but not owned) by Hollywood studios back in the day that may have disappeared. There are also films overseas that need to be added to a film noir fancier’s collection, he said. Muller said he's been turned on to some great ones from Argentina.

“Crime shows are a great unifier. I think Americans broaden their horizons with crime fiction such as the present interest in Scandinavian mysteries,” said Muller.

Expressing concern over dangers presented by Artificial Intelligence, Muller said the issue comes down to basic plagiarism. “There’s no way to stop it. Everything today gets on the internet and that’s where AI finds its material." 

Muller recognized AI as a problem that looms larger in the future. "By its very nature, it keeps improving. It’s very much an existential crisis,” he said.

The hope is that AI won’t progress to the point that a revamped version of “Big Sleep” might be released that actually makes sense of that film’s convoluted plot. 

Meanwhile Muller prepares for the annual TCM Classic Cruise this November. If they wind up shorthanded, the czar can always help out at the bar. Here is Eddie’s recipe for the Last Word, a popular Prohibition-era cocktail revived by Murray Stenson at the Zig Zag Café in Seattle: 

(Coupe glass chilled/ Shaker, strained): ¾ ounce gin; ¾ ounce green Chartreuse; ¾ ounce Luxardo Maraschino liqueur; ¾ lime juice, freshly squeezed; Garnish: Luxardo Maraschino cherry. 

That’s the story that Janet Farrell Brodie tells in her book, “The First Atomic Bomb—The Trinity Site in New Mexico.” The action takes place 220 miles south of Los Alamos, the government’s secret laboratory where the Manhattan Project sought to develop a new weapon on untold power.

Before the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ending the war with Japan, the atomic weapon was tested in the New Mexico desert on July 16, 1945.

As we soon learned when the bombs leveled two Japanese cities, the test was successful if you consider it a success coming up with the deadliest weapon ever conceived.

But just as the new movie, "Oppenheimer," reveals, the testing that took place in New Mexico faced plenty of obstacles. "It was a case of extreme secrecy. Everything had to be routed to avoid the possibility of a potential spy or noisy neighbor finding out what was going on. They used fake addresses and fake names," said Brodie.

The secrecy that cloaked the test site remains to this day, she said. While open to the public, it's only for a few hours on just one or two days a year.  "There's nothing really to see but quite beautiful desert," said Brodie who told Steve Tarter that she and her husband paid a visit to the site on the designated day several years ago.

There were actually two tests made in the desert, she said. The first, called "the 100-ton test," using only "a little bit of plutonium" "shocked some scientists" with the amount of radioactive particles that were released, she said.

After the Trinity test proved successful two months later,  atomic components were immediately on their way to Japan, said Brodie. "Everything was rushed." she said.

Brodie describes the atmosphere at the time of the test and the work that surrounded the project, building roads, dealing with neighboring residents (who lived miles away) and the interaction among the scientists, themselves.

The author also touches on Operation Paperclip in her book, the code name for the project that brought some 1,600 German scientists, technicians and their families to the United States following the war, helping develop  U.S. weaponry as well as assisting the American space program at NASA.

Robert Sampson details the game’s early popularity in Illinois in his new book, “Ballists, Dead Beats and Muffins: Inside Early Baseball in Illinois.”

In the aftermath of the Civil War, papers up and down the state were singing the praises of this new phenomenon called base ball (two words back then).

“(Baseball) is spreading like an epidemic,” the Chicago Tribune observed. “Everybody is batting balls and running bases—young, middle-aged and old,” stated the Cairo Democrat.

“At Peoria, ballclubs sprouted everywhere,” wrote Sampson, editor of the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, who identified Captain M.A. Stearns, an Army recruiter in Peoria as one of those who encouraged adoption of the game by organizing the Olympic Base Ball Club in town.

Before he was shipped off to a new post in Fort Reno in the Montana Territory, Stearns did his best—as club president and as a pitcher—to help establish baseball in Peoria. Never mind that his team lost to the Celestial Club of Pekin by a 53 to 35 score.

As for the title, ballists were what they called ball players back them while the Dead Beats was just one of the many figurative names that teams took in those early days (such as the Lively Turtles of Rock Island). Muffins were players that weren't all that accomplished, said Sampson, adding that games between teams made entirely of muffins often drew large crowds.

Access to a train line was important for baseball teams that wanted to travel, Sampson told Steve Tarter. “With few exceptions, teams were in cities, towns and villages served by the growing railroad network in Illinois, soon to become the largest  system of all the states in the union,” he said.

Peoria teams had the benefit of traveling by rail or river. “The Fort Clark Base Ball Club and supporters boarded a special car attached to a train for a match with Chillicothe while, a year earlier, Peoria’s club took the Peoria City Steamboat up the Illinois River to Lacon, promising passengers multiple recreation activities on board and on land,” Sampson noted.

You had your early heroes in this new game. Pana attorney J.C. McQuigg would later be recognized as the Babe Ruth of his era, the author said, “striking the ball so hard it was termed a ‘hummingbird,’ posing a danger to fielders who got in the way."

By 1870, the baseball craze had cooled. It had become established with more organized leagues taking over but the novelty was gone, said Sampson. So were the long accounts that newspapers had been running (that provided the basis for his book).

Mary McLeod Bethune was born in Mayesville, S. C. in 1875, the 15th child of former slaves Patsy and Sam McLeod, the first child in the family to be born free. Young Mary got to attend school even though her father had initially wanted her to join her brothers and sisters in the fields. After learning to read, Mary received the opportunity to attend the Scotia Seminary in Concord, N.C. and then the Moody Bible College in Chicago. She made the most of it, pledging to encourage education.

After marrying Albertus Bethune in 1898, she heard that there was no school for black children in Daytona Beach, Fla. She decided to start one. She opened the school in 1904 with five students. A year later the school had 100 students and three teachers. Later that school turned into Bethune-Cookman College.

Before FDR became president, Eleanor Roosevelt was impressed with Bethune the activist and educator. Roosevelt was drawn into a friendship with someone who shared the same beliefs in women’s rights and the power of education. The two women become fast friends, Benedict and Murray told Steve Tarter, confiding their secrets, hopes and dreams with each other.
  
 When Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president, the two women began to collaborate more closely, particularly as Eleanor moved toward her own agenda separate from FDR, a consequence of the discovery of her husband’s love affair with a member of his staff. Eleanor became a controversial First Lady for her outspokenness, particularly on civil rights.

While Eleanor Roosevelt blazed a trail for equality at the highest levels of government, Bethune worked on the job front. Franklin Roosevelt appointed her to the National Youth Administration to help promote promote employment during the Depression. As a result she became the first African-American woman to hold such a lofty position in Washington.

“I think about the things that Mary went through,” said Murray. “Here she was one of the most powerful black Americans in the country but when she went to visit Eleanor Roosevelt and FDR in the White House she had to ride in the colored car on the train from Florida to Washington, D.C. She lived in both worlds.”

Benedict and Murray, both accomplished writers, collaborated last year on “The Personal Librarian” and have a third book of historical fiction planned together for release next year.
 
 

His book, “Shadow of the New Deal: The Victory of Public Broadcasting,” identifies the universities that built the first educational program networks in the 1930s.

You learn, for example, that Carl Menzer served as engineer, announcer and station manager at the University of Iowa radio station in Iowa City in those early days. He was also a one-man show on the air, willing to go to great lengths to meet federal criteria for a full broadcast day, said Shepperd. “To meet requirements for on-air programming, Menzer took to playing his violin for hours on end over the air,” said Shepperd.

Later Menzer got the idea of having other Big 10 schools supply programming that the stations could trade with one another, later to be known as the “bicycle network” as programs were "pedaled" between stations. Between the 1930s and late 1940s, Menzer was responsible for exploring different ways to relay and exchange information between radio stations. He also helped found the University of Iowa’s TV station.

While NPR has soared in recent years as the driving news force on radio, radio was only penciled in at the last second when Washington passed legislation that led to establishing public broadcasting networks in this country. Shepperd noted that originally the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 only mentioned television. The word “television” was crossed out and replaced by ”broadcasting” on the original bill, said Shepperd.

In the new book, Dawidziak makes the point that Poe is completely misunderstood. “Our vision of Poe remains a blurry one, at best,” he writes. “The Poe we know—or think we know—is a grotesque caricature. He’s the sickly pasty guy with the sunken eyes, huddled over a manuscript in an attic, a raven perched on his shoulder. A red-eyed black cat sits among the cobwebs at one hand, a bottle of cognac at the other. We’ve reduced him to this cartoonish image, letting a small part of his literary output completely frame that distorted perception,” noted Dawidziak.

But Poe, famous for writing “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Raven,” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Cask of Amontillado,” was so much more than a creator of horror tales, Dawidziak told Steve Tarter. In his short life—Poe died under mysterious circumstances at the age of 40 in 1849—Poe’s largest output came as a literary critic and a tough one (nicknamed the tomahawk). He was also an accomplished poet.

“Poe had to find sources of income. He sought to support himself as a professional writer. That was not the norm. Most writers at that time had a day job such as being a teacher,” said Dawidziak.

As a result, Poe wrote a lot—enough to fill 17 volumes when his collected works were published in the early 20th century. “Poe was also funny. He wrote as much comedy as he did horror. We just don’t read the funny stuff,” he said.

Along the way, Poe also created the modern detective story, said Dawidziak, noting that the author "was a dedicated artist who was constantly revising manuscripts."

While Mark Twain’s image has expanded beyond “Huck Finn” and “Tom Sawyer” with the release of writings that showed “he had a lot to say about religion, and the damn human race,” the view of Poe has not similarly been enlarged, said Dawidziak.

“One of the reasons I wrote the book was while the publisher was interested in the mystery of his death, I was more interested in how he lived,” Dawidziak said.

The most famous TV finale came when “The Fugitive” added a late-summer two-part conclusion in 1967 allowing Richard Kimble to stop running, a watershed moment for television, said Howard.

But it wasn’t by grand design. “ABC wasn’t at all interested in ending ‘The Fugitive,’” said Bianculli, who also serves as a TV critic on NPR’s “Fresh Air. “But after they ran the finale in the dead of summer and outrated an appearance by the Beatles on the ‘Ed Sullivan Show’ three years earlier that had been the biggest TV event up to that point, the finale became common and almost mandatory,” he said.

The first finale of note came on “Howdy Doody,” a kids show that finished a 13-year run in 1960. That’s when the camera closes in on Clarabell the Clown, a character played by three different actors, none of whom had uttered a word in 13 years. 

When Clarabelle says very quietly, “Goodbye, kids,” Howard suggests the effect might have proved alarming for some people. “If you had any kind of clown phobia, this is your worst nightmare come true,” he said, adding the scene is available on YouTube.

But finales are known to stir fans that have followed a particular program for years, said Howard, an English professor at Suffolk County Community College in New York. “Sometimes people don’t want to say goodbye,” he said.

Bianculli told Steve Tarter that the finale of “The Dick Van Dyke Show” was “very Seinfeld-ian” That’s when creator Carl Reiner (who played Alan Brady on the show) announced plans to play Rob Petrie, the chief writer, in the final episode.

Sometimes finales don’t go over or come too late, noted Bianculli, the professor of TV studies at Rowan University. “The finale to ‘The Walking Dead’ was like the dog that caught a car that stopped. At one time it was the most-watched cable show and it was excellent over the first several years. But the show refused to die. It went on too long. I’m just not interested in any spinoffs at this point,” he said.

When it comes to TV finales, however, the hardest thing may just be keeping up. Both Howard and Bianculli admitted to looking forward to two finales this Memorial Day weekend—when “Barry” and “Succession” come to an end. 

Production peaked in 1898 and 1899 with a million bikes produced annually, said Turpin. But just a few years later, the biking craze cooled. U.S. production of bicycles dipped to 200,000 a year by 1905, he said.

The arrival of the automobile at this time obviously played a big part in displacing the bicycle as a transportation wonder, said Turpin.  

The U.S. military purchased a lot of bicycles in World War I but couldn’t really find an application for them other than to equip messengers with fresh wheels. 

Bicycles enjoyed something of a upturn in the 1930s, Turpin told Steve Tarter, but the emphasis was more on nostalgia—a desire to recreate the golden days of the 1890s--rather than charting an exciting future.

After World War II, manufacturers finally gave up on convincing adults to ride bicycles, said Turpin. Instead the focus was on the youth market. “The bicycle became more of a toy. Replicas were popular,” he said, noting that one of the popular models in the 1950s was a Hopalong Cassidy bike complete with six-shooters mounted right behind the handlebars.

Turpin said a second bike boom came in the 60s and early 70s generated by the popularity of Schwinn’s Sting-Ray, the first bike with a “banana” seat and high-rise handlebars. With the arrival of the oil crisis in 1973, adults finally outpaced children as bike riders, he said.

Interest in exercise helped get bikes moving again in the later years of the 20th century with mountain bikes taking off after their early adoption in California, said Turpin. More recently, biking spiked during the pandemic when bikes became as hard to find as toilet paper.

Only now have biking stocks resumed to a normal level, said Turpin, a longtime bike rider, himself. 

Today’s trends? The number of kids who once drove the bicycle market are in decline while electric bikes are on the upswing, he said.    

That’s part of the story that Rebecca Roberts tells in her new book called “Untold Power.”

Edith Wilson first met the president during Wilson’s first term. “She inherited a jewelry store when her first husband died in 1908. She was a wealthy woman of status. She was the first woman in Washington to get a driver’s license. She’d tool around D.C. in her little electric car.

While Woodrow, himself a widower, was taken with Edith right away, she took a little longer to accept his proposal. “She initially told him that she’d marry him if he lost (the 1916 election) but came around and said she’d marry him regardless of the vote,” Roberts told Steve Tarter.

While she never gave any interviews, Edith Wilson blazed trails in a lot of ways, said Roberts, who described the first lady as fascinated by politics.

When Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke in October 1919, the president became bedridden. That’s when Edith stepped up as acting president although no formal acknowledgement was ever made. The physical problems that Woodrow Wilson suffered were kept from the public, the press and the president, himself, said Roberts. During this period of his incapacity, if you needed to see the president, you dealt with Edith, she said.

After Wilson left the White House in 1921, Edith covered her tracks and downplayed her role, emphasizing she was only the dutiful wife, said Roberts.

After his presidency, the Wilsons remained in Washington. Woodrow Wilson died in 1924 but Edith outlived him by 37 years, dying in 1961. Following her husband’s death, she returned to her role as wealthy widow, said Roberts, noting that her one focus throughout her life was to burnish her husband’s legacy whenever she could.

While the devastating decline in the nation’s newspaper industry has suddenly made us conscious that the world may not always have newspapers to sort through on a Sunday (or on any other day for that matter), Paul Moore and Sandra Gabriele have written “The Sunday Paper: A Media History” to provide a vivid account on how one of the most successful media stories—from both an artistic and business viewpoint—came to be.

Transcending the constraints of newsprint while facing competition from other media, Sunday editions borrowed forms from and eventually partnered with magazines, film and radio, inviting people to not only read but watch and listen.

“When we started in 2007, we would never have guessed how newspapers would be a thing of the past by the time we finished (“The Sunday Paper” was published last year by the University of Illinois Press), including the great American Sunday paper. But we already knew the art, fiction and fun of Sunday papers had always been precarious and ephemeral,” Moore and Gabriele wrote.

In their interview with Steve Tarter, the authors relate how syndication efforts that started late in the 19th century played a part in making the Sunday paper special. It wasn’t just about news, the very lifeblood of the newspaper, that made the Sunday effort outstanding, “the Sunday paper structured a different relationship between its world and public,” Moore and Gabriele noted.

“From the society and fashion pages to sporting and business reports, theater reviews, and listings, and feature stories about contemporary culture, Sunday supplements took advantage of a day of leisure to reflect upon pastimes and amusements,” the authors stated.

The death of newsprint is also part of the story here as newspapers, displaced first by “breaking news” broadcasts on radio and TV and then by Twitter and other social media, no longer own the public stage. Can a Sunday paper succeed in a digital world? Moore suggests that it would be an effort in nostalgia to try and reinstate a printed journal  since our whole concept of a day of leisure has changed along with our media choices.

But Norm Walzer and Chris Merrett have just produced “Rural Areas in Transition,” a book that sees new hope for rural America, hope spurred on by technology. 

The book shows that rural areas are in a major long-term transition and that local leaders who take advantage of these opportunities in their community and economic development strategies can create a very positive future for residents.

“We now have opportunities for people who live in places where they’d like to live and couldn’t in the past because they had to go to work every day,” said Norm Walzer who founded the Illinois Rural Affairs Institute at Western Illinois University in 1989. 

“It’s debatable as to what’s going to happen in the next few years—whether companies will call people back to work in the office—but without question I think there’s going to be a segment of the population who will continue to work not in the office every day. They’re going to work from home, wherever,” Walzer said.

“That opens the opportunity for them to live elsewhere,” he said. In addition, Walzer said advances in telecommunications also allow telemedicine to serve rural citizens who may not live close to a medical facility.

Institute director Chris Merrett said Mattoon offers affordable, dependable broadband and also benefits from being located near an interstate highway and is a town with passenger rail service. Small towns need to examine what assets they have, he said. “Then the challenge is can you bundle them and market them to attract people?” said Merrett.

“I’m optimistic that if you can convince local places to proactively think about their future, come together to think about their future, great things can happen whether it’s setting up a cooperative grocery store, increasing broadband service or filling up empty storefronts in the downtown,” he said.

“We underestimate the ability of rural communities to make a positive change,” said Merrett, adding, “When a community makes a plan, it strengthens relationships within that community.”

Walzer and Merrett wrote two of the book’s 13 chapters. Other contributors include some of the nation’s top rural economic development specialists.

Croft shared “breaking news” with Steve Tarter that “Stone Cold Fox” had just been picked up as a possible TV series to feature her both as writer and executive producer.

But Croft didn’t settle into success immediately. After college (a 2008 graduate from the University of Minnesota), she headed west to California to make her mark, she said. “The first job I got there was a very popular celebrity gossip blog. I remember thinking then that I had made it but it really was not my calling,” said Kroft who moved back to Chicago “a little deflated about my writing dreams.”

“I needed a real job and ended up working in sales (in Chicago) which was pretty fortuitous for me. What people don’t tell aspiring screenwriters is that you have to go into a room and pitch yourself and your story so I’m actually very glad I got that work experience,” she said.

Her return trip to the Golden State turned out to be more productive. Using her own experience taking road trips to Nashville from Chicago with her girlfriend (both love country music), she fashioned “Torn Hearts,”  a screenplay about two women musicians who travel to the Music City in a story blending country music and horror.

As she tours the country, Croft blends an extrovert’s delight with meeting new people with stories about her “Stone Cold Fox” characters which she described as “little monsters.” 

“The Gray Man” was the most-watched movie of 2022, according to Netflix, and there’s now a second film in the works. Meanwhile Greaney keeps pouring out the novels. This year he’s due to turn out his 13th Gray Man story and the second in the Joshua Duffy series, a new character who debuted last year in “Armoured.”

Greaney got the idea for the Gray Man (Court Gentry) while traveling in Central America, he said. He saw an American at a bar and made up an entire back story that the man was a former CIA agent, living off the grid and taking jobs as they came.

As a collaborator with Tom Clancy in the last three novels Clancy wrote before he died, Greaney was steeped in the intricacies of writing the adventure novel, even continuing to pen Jack Ryan stories after Clancy's death (though Clancy's name still was prominent).
 
In “Burner,” Greaney ties in the Russian invasion of Ukraine into the action—not with any involvement in the Ukraine but in terms of Russian money laundering. A story right out of the headlines, as the movie trailers used to say. Greaney told Steve Tarter that it was a calculated gamble to write about a war that broke out last spring without knowing what was going to happen a year later.

As it turns out, the war goes on and Russian actions (and finances) have never been more newsworthy. Greaney scores again.

Writing books about international intrigue involves plenty of travel and Greaney noted he’s now visited 38 countries in the course of writing his novels. The most recent effort took him to Saint Lucia in the Caribbean, Milan and Zurich, he said.
In the course of the interview, Greaney revealed that his favorite action movie was "The Man From Nowhere," a gritty Korean film about a former assassin who befriends a little girl.

A hotbed of talent since the 1980s, Peoria has produced a number of standout players, such as Shaun Livingston, A.J. Guyton, Marcus Griffin, and Sergio McClain – just to name a few. The city captured six high school state championships – including Manual High’s run of four straight championship titles from 1994-97 – and boasted four Illinois Mr. Basketball winners.

But Karzen’s book, “Playgrounds to the Pros: Legends of Peoria Basketball,” along with coverage of the game, also includes a view of Peoria’s South Side, the poor side of town where the income is low and the crime rate high. But the neighborhood has strong people--and talented players. He notes the positive effect basketball has had not only on this area but the entire region.

“It just kind of popped in my head that there might be some great stories to tell here that haven't been told before,” said Karzen, who pulls the curtain back on the great players and coaches that made Peoria a basketball hotspot.

John Lancaster’s “The Great Air Race” documents the effort of these air pioneers who competed at a time with planes that lacked the many tools that help navigate the skies today and before airfields were fully established in many parts of the country.

It was a time—just after WWI—when airplanes were being looked at for transporting mail. Billy Mitchell, a military man who saw airplanes as a future necessity, is profiled as the catalyst for a race that would promote the potential of flight—even at a risk.

As Lancaster told Steve Tarter, nine people died (two on their way to start of the race) out of 63 entries, a pretty grim percentage. While the race drew attention and crowds who welcomed the brave, young men who flew and worked on the planes (a mechanic was a valuable addition at a time when gas-engines had a tendency to misfire in flight), it also drew the ire of editorialists who condemned the whole thing as a publicity stunt, noted Lancaster.

Planes that had been used to engage in wartime encounters were not built to cover long distances. They also lacked instruments to help pilots when they faced blinding rain, fog or snow, all conditions faced in the 1919 race.

Lancaster also tells the story of Belvin Maynard who won the race, an expert flyer and navigator who was fortunate enough to avoid the storms that slowed other participants. While meticulous in his approach to the great race, Maynard may have gotten complacent. He was killed at the age of 29 when his plane crashed at an air show just three years later.

A pilot himself, Lancaster also included a chapter on his own flight in 2019, recreating the course the flyers took 100 years earlier. Despite the many improvements and safety precautions, danger still lurked. 

“More than the wind or any other aspect of the weather, fatigue was my biggest challenge,” he wrote. “Landing at a satellite airport near Salt Lake City after a memorable flight over the steep forested canyons of the Wasatch Range, I skidded my turn to final approach and let my airspeed sink dangerously low. It was the same sort of low-altitude carelessness that had killed Dana Crissy and Virgil Thomas just a few miles away and a hundred years earlier, on the first day of the race.”

Now with more people than ever working outside the office, there’s a greater need than ever to be personally productive, the former clinical psychologist said. “People do need a strategy to cope with uncertain times,” she told Steve Tarter.

You can boost your own creativity just by trying, she said. “Creativity is easier to ignite than people think,” said Boyes. 

There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all productivity plan, she said. The tricks that work for your colleague may not work as well for you. Or perhaps they don't work at all. The fact is that everyone has their own productivity quirks to make them work efficiently and effectively. They just don't know how to crack them, said Boyes..

Some of the author's suggestions include: 
--Resist the allure of complacency.
--Produce messages that influence the majority– when in the minority.
--Manage the discomfort when trying to rebel
--Champion ideas that run counter to traditional thinking

Kashdan told Steve Tarter that his favorite band Fugazi was not only musically advanced  but "lived their values." They never charged high prices for a concert or used the traditional record company approach, said Kashdan.