After four years of extensions and delays, the trial of Elizabeth Holmes is finally taking place. Holmes was once touted as the star of Silicon Valley who used technology to create a new and less intrusive way to draw blood for testing. Her company, which took in hundreds of high-roller, high-profile investors, was once valued • Read More »
“I found the best way to inspire myself,” Ray Bradbury once wrote, “was to go to the library in Los Angeles and rove about, pulling books from the shelves, reading a line here, a paragraph there, snatching, devouring, moving on, and then suddenly writing on any handy piece of paper.” Bradbury, whose status as a • Read More »
World War II continues as a touchstone of our thinking about such concepts as courage and treachery, even though the war ended 76 years ago. Two recently published books that I have encountered (but have not had a chance to read) demonstrate that. One is a tale of courage of heroic proportions. The second is • Read More »
During the mid 1970s and before, genealogy was a pretty hard slog, not to mention a lonely one. The few people who took an interest in researching their family’s history found that family stories didn’t square with the facts (they rarely do), family records often did not go beyond a few entries in the family • Read More »
One of the things we know about Abraham Lincoln is that he could tell a good story. He was famous for that. But could he write one? He tried that once, and what he wrote was interesting, if not completely compelling. Before he was elected president in 1860, Lincoln was a lawyer in Springfield, Illinois, • Read More »
Jeeves, the omniscient valet of P. G. Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster stories, began life in the author’s mind as a one-off character. He appeared in a 1915 story titled “Extricating Young Gussie” and was supposed to have only two lines: “Mrs. Gregson to see you, sir,” and “Very good, sir. Which suit will you wear?” Had • Read More »
Alex Haley had a simple idea. The stories that he had heard his family tell when he was growing up might be more than just stories. They might be history—or at least a version of history that had never made it to the history books. Haley knew that history was written by the winners, and • Read More »
If you tried to read a biography during the late 19th or early 20th century, chances are it was pretty rough going and very possibly not very enlightening. Biographies during that time adhered to strict Victorian standards of propriety and subservience to the rich and famous. The good qualities and achievements of the subject were • Read More »
Hugh Edwards loved two things in life: rowing and flying. One nearly got him killed, but the other probably saved his life. Edwards went to Oxford at the age of 19 in 1925 and discovered rowing. He was a big guy— bigger than the average rower—and that earned him the nickname of Jumbo. As a • Read More »
How often are you wrong? Once a day? Once a week? Once a month? And, more importantly, how often do you admit it — first to yourself and then to others? We are wrong far more often than we think we are, and we are willing to admit our errors far less often than we • Read More »
When the heavy hand of the British crown grew more onerous on the American colonists in the 1760s and early 1770s, a satirical play appeared in the Massachusetts Spy lampooning Thomas Hutchinson, the crown-appointed governor of Massachusetts. The title of the play was The Adulateur, and one of the main characters was Rapatio, who was • Read More »
The French name most associated with the American Revolution is Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette, of course. Dozens of places around the U.S. bear that name, and rightly so. La Fayette crossed the ocean and joined the Continental Army, commanding troops in several battles. He was present at Yorktown when the British army • Read More »
Wilfred Owen’s poetry profoundly affected the public’s memory of World War I (then known as the Great War), turning it from a glorious conflict to a meaningless slaughter. Unfortunately, Owen was around to see the impact his words had. As a British soldier on the front, he died during the last week of the war • Read More »
By all rights, the Irish Republic might have celebrated the centenary of its birth — its on Independence Day — this month. It was only July 11, 1921 that Great Britain called for a ceasefire in its battle with Irish Republican Army — a ceasefire that led to the creation of the Republic of Ireland. • Read More »
At one point in the global history, the most valuable spice on earth was nutmeg. It was the 1600s, in Europe what’s in the grip of successive waves of the plague. No one knew what to do about it, And somehow the believe spread that nutmeg could curate or prevent it. It wasn’t true of • Read More »
Where were you when you first saw Midnight Cowboy? What do you remember about the movie? I was spending a Saturday night in Charlottesville, Virginia, the last stop before going to Washington, D.C. It was late February 1971, and I was on two weeks’ leave in the Navy. I had just finished boot camp and • Read More »
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 »
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 »
The Fourth of July always seems to slip by before I can remember that the first week in July was a seminal time in American history. Two great battle of the Civil War concluded just as America was about to celebrate her 87th birthday: Gettysburg and Vicksburg. Of these two, Vicksburg was probably the more • Read More »