Here is something odd and overlooked about the history of the American republic. The second generation of leaders―with one notable exception―is completely devoid of any close relatives, mainly sons, of the people we consider the Founding Fathers. None of the relatives of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, or almost any others that • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,301) on Friday, July 30, 2021. July could rightly be called Independence Month. Not only do Americans and the French celebrate their nations’ birthdays during this time, but the Irish, too, have reason to celebrate ―although few of them do. It was on July 21, • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,302) on Friday, July 23, 2021. Americans, possibly because they are exhausted from their own July the Fourth celebrations, pay relatively little attention to Bastille Day, July 14. They should give it more recognition than they do if for no other reason than to honor • Read More »
If you read any part of Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — and you should if you have never done so — prepare to slow your reading speed down and enjoy the scenery. With just about every sentence, you will be on a journey through Gibbon’s intellect, • Read More »
As a 27-year-old with scholarly ambitions and wondering what to do with his life, Edward Gibbon visited Rome on his grand tour of Europe and was struck by what he saw. The magnificent ruins seared an image and an idea into his brain. Rome had once been the most powerful political entity on earth. Now • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,303) on Friday, July 16, 2021. This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,313) on Friday, July 16, 2021. More and more, the sentiment showing in mainstream news outlets is that online learning during our year of Covid was a bust • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,313) on Friday, July 9, 2021. Within the small number of television shows that I watch (many of them from Great Britain, Australia, or New Zealand), I have become increasingly annoyed and disturbed by a prejudice that seems to have gone undetected by the rest • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,332) on Friday, July 2, 2021. Americans celebrate themselves this weekend, as they should. America has no shortage of problems, faults, and flaws. It also has no shortage of critics, many of whom are Americans themselves. So it should be. But one thing that Americans prove • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,313) on Friday, June 25, 2021. The fact the college scholarship athletes are woefully compensated based on the revenue they generate is obvious and indisputable. I spent the vast majority of my teaching career at big-time state universities whose athletic programs overshadowed almost everything else • Read More »
If you were in a college English composition class most anytime between 1955 and the year 2000, chances are that your textbook was a small-sized book that people referred to simply as the Harbrace Handbook. No one keeps records of these things, unfortunately, but the Harbrace Handbook is thought to be by far the best-selling • Read More »
The story of Han van Meegeren, often thought of as the greatest forger in the history of art theft, was the subject of a two-part series of posts that I offered to newsletter readers a couple of years ago. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Now, we have new information about this extraordinary, though • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,332) on Friday, June 18, 2021. The latest controversy to hit Major League Baseball revolves around the “sticky stuff” many pitchers apply to a baseball before they throw it. Applying any foreign substance to a baseball is against the rules. The controversy has been sparked • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,332) on Friday, June 11, 2021. Periodically, a few people, and a few members of the news media — and then a few government officials and agencies — will stir themselves up over an identified flying objects, UFOs. As I write this, we are awaiting • Read More »
Stories of how writers become writers — the origin narrative, if you will — are continually fascinating and somewhat more rare than you might think. Writers, particularly writers of fiction, enjoy telling other people’s stories, but they often think but their own stories or dull or even non-existent. Not so with Frederick Forsyth, one of • Read More »
When Casino Royale, the first James Bond novel, was published in 1953, it was the product of more than a decade of Ian Fleming’s imagination but only about two months of actual writing work. Fleming began the novel in January 1952 as he was anticipating getting married to Ann Charteris, a woman he had known • Read More »
What happens to a nation that becomes the largest, most far-reaching empire in the history of the world, making the Romans look like pikers by comparison? Things start to go downhill, that’s what. That is where Great Britain found itself it’s the 19th century turned into the 20th. Much of that century had been peaceful, • Read More »
When Ian Fleming accompanied his boss, Admiral John Godfrey, chief of British Naval Intelligence, to America in May 1941, they had to stop over in neutral Portugal. There, they visited a casino. When they left the casino, Fleming said to Godfrey, “What if those men had been German secret service agents, and suppose we had • Read More »
Chances are, there’s a group in your community that wants to dictate what books you and your children can read. They often do this by telling public libraries what they should not put on the shelves. Most libraries resist this kind of pressure, and the American Library Association keeps track of these challenges. Here is • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,332) on Friday, May 28, 2021. Do you know a secret? This week’s newsletter has an item about a secret that “only librarians know.” It’s a fun piece, and I recommend the link. But it got me to thinking that as a long-standing member of • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,350) on Friday, May 14, 2021. The Big Apple is the common nickname for New York City, but its origins are murky. What do apples have to do with New York City? The answer, according to an essay I found recently by Maria Popov (BrainPickings.com), • Read More »