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Currently ReadingRecently Read | Good fortune — luck — manifests itself in a variety of ways. Frequently, just how lucky we are comes only with hindsight and even then we may not realize just what contributed to a serendipitous result. Yet the extent of a person’s fortune may well be a matter of perspective, much like the adage about [...]            Tim November 16th, 2010 | Tags: Book Reviews, history, memoir, nonfiction, Review Copy | Category: Book Reviews | Comments are closed |  Print This Post |  Email This PostWhether cast in terms of manifest destiny or, more crudely, “the Indian problem,” at its core the conflict between white and Native Americans was a clash of cultures. While not necessarily the centerpiece, Dakota Territory was frequently a stage upon which it played out. Despite the fact it focuses on a narrow slice of the [...] Tim November 1st, 2010 | Tags: Book Reviews, history, nonfiction, Review Copy, South Dakota history | Category: Book Reviews | One comment - (Comments are closed) | Print This Post | Email This PostGiven American popular literature today, perhaps a person first seeing Vasily Grossman’s The Road on the bookshelves could be excused if they first wonder if it is vampire or zombie-laden mashup of Cormac McCarthy’s award-winning novel of the same name. Yet readers who actually pick up the book and explore it will discern that this [...] Tim October 18th, 2010 | Tags: Book Reviews, history, journalism, Review Copy, short stories, world literature | Category: Book Reviews | One comment - (Comments are closed) | Print This Post | Email This PostEvery once in a while, something reinforces just what vision those who wrote our Constitution had. The latest for me is Judith Keene’s Treason on the Airwaves: Three Allied Broadcasters on Axis Radio during World War II. The title is self-explanatory but, as the book observes, of the three countries examined — Great Britain, Australia [...] Tim September 14th, 2010 | Tags: Book Reviews, history, nonfiction, Review Copy | Category: Book Reviews | Comments are closed | Print This Post | Email This PostWhen it comes to Scouting, I’m a washout. Not only didn’t I make it past Cub Scouts, tying my shoes is about as advanced as my knot repertoire gets. Fortunately, David Scott and Brendan Murphy’s The Scouting Party: Pioneering and Preservation, Progressivism and Preparedness in the Making of the Boy Scouts of America doesn’t require [...] Tim July 28th, 2010 | Tags: Book Reviews, history, nonfiction, Review Copy | Category: Book Reviews | 3 comments - (Comments are closed) | Print This Post | Email This PostTitling a book may well be an art form in and of itself. Undoubtedly, the goal is to not simply to attract a reader but to convey something about the book itself. I have no idea how much study or analysis went into naming Dean King’s Unbound: A True Story of War, Love, and Survival. [...] Tim July 12th, 2010 | Tags: Book Reviews, history, nonfiction, Review Copy | Category: Book Reviews | 2 comments - (Comments are closed) | Print This Post | Email This PostThere are events in everyone’s life that affect our views and attitudes even if we are not personally or even indirectly involved. One of the events that impacted the course and development of my political views happened 40 years ago today — the shootings at Kent State by the Ohio National Guard that left four [...] Tim May 4th, 2010 | Tags: history, Kent State shootings, Politics | Category: Personal/Family, Politics | One comment - (Comments are closed) | Print This Post | Email This PostApril isn’t ending well for a couple of historians. Orlando Figes, a University of London professor who specializes in Russian history, was identified as the author of some scathing reviews of other historians’ books on Amazon. Figes originally claimed his wife wrote the the reviews but now has ‘fessed up. But that does not [...] Tim April 28th, 2010 | Tags: Books, history | Category: A Reading Life | Comments are closed | Print This Post | Email This PostGiven recent history, it would seem the term “ethnic cleansing” is of late 20th Century origin. Armenian Golgotha, Grigoris Balakian’s firsthand account of the Armenian genocide during World War I, disabuses any such notion. Balakian, an Armenian priest, notes several times that the Ottoman Empire embarked on an intentional campaign to “cleanse” itself of Armenians. [...] Tim April 20th, 2010 | Tags: Book Reviews, history, memoir, nonfiction, Review Copy | Category: Book Reviews | 2 comments - (Comments are closed) | Print This Post | Email This PostUsually lurking somewhere in today’s ongoing immigration debate is an idealized notion of times when the vast majority of those coming to our shores were Europeans. One of those periods was the early part of the 20th Century when eastern, central and southern Europeans came en masse. More than 1 ¼ million immigrants arrived in [...] Tim April 12th, 2010 | Tags: Book Reviews, history, immigration, nonfiction, Review Copy | Category: Book Reviews | 2 comments - (Comments are closed) | Print This Post | Email This Post |         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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