The Pope and Mussolini
Reading David Kertzer’s The Pope and Mussolini:The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe will be a …
Tag Archives: Books
Birdsong: A Novel of Love and War
If you’ve never read anything about life in the trenches during World War One, Birdsong: A Novel of Love and …
Xiao Hong — Women in Rural China
Some months ago I saw The Golden Era, a recent movie by Ann Hui about a ground breaking Chinese woman writer …
Being Mortal by Atul Gawande
Can we talk?!” Joan Rivers peppered her routines with her signature riff, aggressive and not a question at all, but …
The Canal Bridge — Irishmen in WW I
The Great War: A Photographic Narrative
Photography in this day of iPhone snaps and YouTube video is such a part of the fabric of the world …
The First Casualty – A WW I Conscientious Objector as Sleuth
Ben Elton’s 2012 mystery, The First Casualty, is a fine combination of two popular literary genres: men at war and …
Parade’s End — Benedict Cumberbatch as England’s Last Tory
The 5 hour HBO/BBC mini-series, Parade’s End, (2012) with Benedict Cumberbatch as Christopher Tietjens, is a miracle of lossless compression, …
The Comedy of Charleroi – Courage and Cowardice in WW I
“The captain … was due to retire in October. In the very first burst of fire he was swept out …
The Monstrous Enterprise — Céline on the War
The first one-fifth of Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Journey to the End of the Night, [1934, Ralph Manheim translation, 1983] is from …
A Classic from Poland – “The Doll” by Boleslaw Prus
The most unusual book in my reading universe this year has to be the 1890 Polish classic, The Doll (“Lalka”) …
It All Matters
We got one of the best seasonal cards, ever, this week. Simple black text on a fir-green card. It all …