Thanks very much to Civil War Forum of Metropolitan New York for inviting me to speak on Monday night about my man Commander Will Cushing, and getting the book launched off to a great start. We met at Draughts restaurant on 55th street at Second Avenue. It was great to see friends like Paul Windells …
If you were an editor, and you wanted to have someone review two books about drinking in America, you would look for one of the more abstemious writers in captivity, right? Well, whether they knew it or not, that’s what the editors of The American Interest got when they asked me to review America Walks …
Our escape from the Badlands took us into Minnesota (we were tempted to visit Northfield, where the James Gang met its Waterloo) znd then to Iowa, where we spent Wednesday night, then down through Illinois, Indiana and finally back to Lexington, where were spent Thursday night, and then onto Chamberburg PA, where we spent Friday …
On Wednesday we motored across Tennessee to see Graceland, the surprisingly modest home of Elvis Presley. Meh. Banal testosterone-infused sixties styles. The miracle is that he happened; his personal effects are just leftovers. Here is his grave, left, and on the right, the only bit of wit I saw in the place : Afterwards, we …
Congratulations to my friend A.J.Baime, whose new book, The Arsenal of Democracy, has just been published. I finished it last night, in a whoosh of excited reading. A.J. has done a tremendous job of telling story whose great sweep includes the rise of Nazism and the war in Europe; the development of the automobile, the …
There is in publishing the fine old tradition of blurbing, in which the author of a book, and/or his agent and/or his editor, contact certain friends and associates who might be predisposed to like a new book, and to ask them to read the book and, if they like it, to write a short statement …
On Friday, April 11, Rizzoli Bookstore, a small capital of civilization and culture on West 57th Street, closed its doors. A victim of rising rents and falling readership, Rizzoli was a great place to kill time; it always made one feel connected to larger, smarter, more beautiful world. Rizzoli’s owners hope to resurrect the store …
I had the pleasure on Friday night to attend a lecture at Concordia College by one of my favorite authors, Nathaniel Philbrick. He was invited by the Bronxville Historical Society to deliver the 16th Annual Brendan Gill Lecture, named after the eminent New Yorker writer and ardent preservationist. Philbrick’s subjects, with the exception of his …
My latest piece is an exciting tale of greed and desperation. “The Lost Silver of Cabalos Bay” is about six daring and resourceful navy divers, pulled from Japanese prison camps outside Manila, who were dragooned into helping Japanese soldiers try to recover a fortune in silver coins dumped in Manila harbor by the Philippine government. …
The media has been all over itself lately following Jen Selter, a young woman of no particular distinction other than having a nearly perfect butt. As the New York Post reported today, “The ample-curved Long Island native was working at a gym in March 2012 when she started taking photographs of herself working out. Since …