Russell Banks’ novel Foregone is rocking the bestseller list, and I’m sure the literary world is waiting with bated breath to hear a review from his former son-n-law, blogger Stephen Hartshorne. I won’t keep you in suspense any longer; this is a great book, both for the “deep meaning” readers and the “great story” readers.  […]

Took a trip to School Street in Dedham, Mass., where I failed to grow up.  On the corner is the bicycle shop that everyone said was a bookie joint, though I don’t know of anyone who ever got a bet down.   I went over to Dave Dethlefs house to see what he was up […]

If you’re looking for a powerful, entertaining novel to read on the beach, or anywhere else, I heartily recommend ‘The Last Days of Dogtown’ by Anita Diamant. This is a ripping good read about a now abandoned settlement on Cape Ann in Massachusetts, just north of Gloucester and just west of Rockport in the early […]

I’ve been laboring through a book called John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy by Samuel Flagg Bemis. I couldn’t possibly recommend it unless, like me, you wish to be well informed about the career of America’s most studious and most diligent president, who, after his presidency, spend 35 years in the […]

“I wrote this book in the thirties, against the background of depression at home and mounting tension abroad. The preoccupations of that unhappy time cast their shadows over its pages.” I first took up The Thirty Years War by C.V. Wedgwood ten years ago, and while I was caught up in this prodigious work of […]

First American president to visit Finland? Author of the Monroe Doctrine? Creator of the Library of Congress and the National Weather Service? Only president to meet Empress Catherine the Great of Russia? Close friend of Tsar Alexander II? Still stumped? I don’t blame you. Friend of Sally Hemings. Restorer of the Smithsonian Institute after James […]

I’m reading a brilliant, prodigious work, Paradise Postponed by John Mortimer, the creator of Rumpole of the Bailey. The Rumpole stories, though highly formulaic, are always delightful because Mortimer has a seemingly inexhaustible source of crazy characters that reflect English society. They bring us a mishmosh of classes and generations, as when the Wordsworth-quoting barrister […]

I’ve been poring over Rachel Maddow’s second book, ‘Blowout,’ with great satisfaction and amazement. I’ve been watching the news for the last twenty years, and this book is like a concordance that explains it all and puts it into context. This book connects the lack of tornado shelters for Oklahoma school children with the Russian […]