The Tartar Steppe: An Italian Novel about Wishing for War
A man joins the army and dreams of glory. He is sent to a distant northern frontier post watching for any …
Previous articles
The Music of Strangers — Bringing Down the Walls
You don’t want to miss seeing, and hearing, The Music of Strangers, a fresh breath of air in this season …
Organizing the Little Guy against the Big: From the Great Depression to Yes We Can
“Hopelessly heterogeneous… Honeycombed with diverse and racial sub-elements…. Thus read the Federal Housing Authority report on the Boyle Heights neighborhood in Los …
Boy in the Bush: Coming of Age in New Zealand
Somehow or other last week had us viewing two coming of age movies of young boys. One, Theeb (see below) taking …
Theeb: A Bedouin Boy in the WWI Desert
Aimless movie wandering sometimes pays dividends. We happened into a streaming presentation of Theeb, by British-Jordanian director, Abu Nowar. Recipient of considerable …
The Face of War– Martha Gellhorn, Seven Wars
Martha Gellhorn (1908 – 1998,) wrote much and lived more. As Bill Buford, the fiction editor at “The New Yorker” …
The Starched Blue Skies of Spain – a Remembrance by Josephine Herbst
The Starched Blue Skies Of Spain by Josephine Herbst is a small, mostly overlooked gem of reportage/memoir from the Civil …
Muhammad Ali, on World Peace
On August 5, 1978, a letter to the editor was published in The Nation Magazine. Its author was Muhammad Ali, …
The Face of War –Martha Gellhorn, her life
Martha Gellhorn (1908 – 1998,) referred to by some as one of the world’s great war correspondents did not write …
“Not So Quiet…” — A Woman Writes of War
War writing is almost by definition writing by men about men. It also, almost universally, centers on the climactic moments, the …
“Spain In Our Hearts” by Adam Hochschild
The Spanish Civil war, from July 17, 1936 to April 1, 1939, cost some half a million Spanish lives; another half …
Insults: First As A Wall then as a Weapon
I put aside ten years of political blogging early this year to focus on long deferred writing projects. The hours …