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Love stories don’t rank well on my list of preferred movies. When you get right down to it, though, one of my favorite movies — Reds — is just that, a love story, albeit one played out on an epic background. It’s the background that gets me. Written, produced and directed by its star, [...] Tim March 5th, 2010 | Tags: Diane Keaton, Favorite Film Friday, history, Jack Reed, Louise Bryant, movies, Reds, Warren Beatty | Category: Film | Leave a comment |
 Print This Post |  Email This PostActivist and historian Howard Zinn, best known for his A People’s History of the United States, has died at age 87. As leftist activists go, Zinn may have generated as much hatred as Noam Chomsky. Yet his People’s History is an essential and important work. Zinn looks at the history of the U.S. from [...] Tim January 27th, 2010 | Tags: history, Howard Zinn | Category: Culture | Leave a comment |
Print This Post | Email This PostJigoku. The Japanese word for hell. Yet probably no concept of hell is sufficient to convey the paroxysm of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945. Perhaps equally difficult to imagine is being within a few blocks or or a couple miles of Ground Zero and surviving to [...] Tim January 18th, 2010 | Tags: Book Reviews, history, nonfiction | Category: Book Reviews | Leave a comment |
Print This Post | Email This PostThe numbers will finish off the end of the year book-related posts. I’ve been keeping a book diary since the beginning of 1976. This year I reached a record number of books read, 111. That figure is tempered by the reverse of what affected last year’s numbers. Just as my 2008 [...] Tim January 1st, 2010 | Tags: bibliolust, biography, Books, history, memoir, nonfiction, world literature | Category: A Reading Life | One comment |
Print This Post | Email This PostMost professional historians who write books tend to write nonfiction works in their particular field of study. Simon Sebag Montefiore has not only done that with his studies in Russian history, his biographies of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin were both award-winning bestsellers. Montefiore has since decided to apply his knowledge to the world [...] Tim December 23rd, 2009 | Tags: Book Reviews, fiction, history | Category: Book Reviews | Leave a comment |
Print This Post | Email This PostIt’s been too long since the last installment in this series and the celebrations this week over the fall of the Berlin Wall create a perfect opportunity to talk about Good Bye, Lenin!. While the movie is about the fall of the wall and Communism, it presents an innovative and fun take on it. The [...] Tim November 13th, 2009 | Tags: Favorite Film Friday, history, movies | Category: Film | Comments are closed |
Print This Post | Email This PostWith the Cold War being waged for more than half my life, I was among the many millions fascinated with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Twenty years ago today, the East German government — intentionally or not — opened up its borders. For most, it is also perhaps the most substantive symbol [...] Tim November 9th, 2009 | Tags: foreign affairs, history, national issues, Politics | Category: Politics | 2 comments - (Comments are closed) |
Print This Post | Email This PostGiven our history, Americans tend to think of political prisoners as those who actively oppose the political policies or government of their country. Yet in totalitarian societies even aesthetics are political so whether a person is a dissident is in the eye of the beholder. That’s what artist Er Tai Gao learned when [...] Tim October 19th, 2009 | Tags: Book Reviews, history, memoir, nonfiction | Category: Book Reviews | Comments are closed |
Print This Post | Email This PostIt was simply coincidence that I began reading John Christgau’s Enemies: World War II Alien Internment the week of September 11. Yet it reinforced that the book may be more relevant today than when first published 25 years ago and Santayana’s observation that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Enemies [...] Tim September 29th, 2009 | Tags: Book Reviews, history, nonfiction | Category: Book Reviews | Comments are closed |
Print This Post | Email This PostEvery time period has its trappings. And while it may be impacted by its recency, it’s hard to imagine a historical period that carries more baggage than the 1960s. In her reflective quasi-memoir The Sixties, British author Jenny Diski sifts through some of the baggage but ultimately comes away dismayed and discouraged. At the [...] Tim September 8th, 2009 | Tags: 1960s, Book Reviews, history, memoir, nonfiction | Category: Book Reviews | Comments are closed |
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0 / 4   The views expressed here are mine and mine alone. I do not speak for my law partners, our associates, staff and clients or my family and friends. Not only should any opinions here not be attributed to them, chances are they probably don't agree with me.
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