Richard Nixon was never one of my favorite people, but after reading Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland in May and James Rosen’s The Strong Man in June, and seeing the ad guys on Mad Men work on Nixon’s 1960 presidential campaign in July, his malignant spirit has been hovering over my summer. Last night, on the eve …
Congratulations to Cara and her friends in the Summercliff Players on their excellent performance of Les Miserables. It’s amazing that they were able to pull together this complicated show in just five weeks. It was very, very enjoyable, and I was happy to see that Cara seemed to enjoy the experience so much.
Cara was kind enough to let me photograph her at riding lessons on Saturday. I know nothing about riding, but she seems to look better and better each time I see her.
Thanks to my good friend Simon Monroe, the elusive, enigmatic illustrator who did the caricature of me that will henceforth make its home on this site’s blog page. My friend Ken Smith, a man who knows from illustrators, complimented the drawing by saying that it was “Sort of Mencken in spirit, and it sets off …
Those of you expecting to see Paul Newman and Alexis Smith will be disappointed, but I’m not. This week I was lucky to lunch with two of Philadelphia’s finest: Bill Tonelli (with me, left) of South Philly and Temple University, once my colleague at Esquire, and Joe Queenan (with me, right), the pride of St. …
What American Graffiti and Breakfast Club and other movies have done in fiction, American Teen does in a documentary –and rather more powerfully. Director Nanette Burstein spent a year at the high school in Warsaw, Indiana, following around members of the senior class. Eventually narrowing her focus of the 1200 hours of film she shot …
Under threatening skies in a cozy and picturesque former Hudson River train station, twenty or so lovers of literature (or something) came to see the novelist DeLaune Michel and myself perform in a reading sponsored by the Hudson Valley Writers’ Center. The Center’s director, Jerri Lynn Fields, opened the evening with a discussion of the …
“Dark Horse is the story of Bob Long, the governor of California and candidate for the Democratic nomination for president. With this status he is afflicted only temporarily, since his all-but-secured nomination is swiftly undone through a tricky procedural maneuver sprung after some underhanded double-dealing by his rival. . . .Then, something unusual happens: God …
“Seldom is a book as ill-served by its subtitle. . . ” My review of Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed The World by David Maraniss appeared in The Washington Post on Sunday.
I had lunch with John Stacks, my mentor, exemplar, confessor and friend during my years at Time magazine. I was delighted to see him, and to chew over the presidential campaign, the surprising delights of visiting the east of Italy, and how coop board critics are similar to Hamas. I am thrilled to say that …