THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER

This good 2008 book by Burton Folsom, Jr., a professor of economic history at Hillsdale College, is a grand debunking of FDR’s effort to tame the Great Depression. He didn’t. The buildup for World War II and the war itself did. FDR succeeded only in laying the foundation of the modern welfare state. These debunkings—another good [...]

Robert McCall was the dean of American space artists and his painting of a proposed moon base (for the 1960s Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey) still haunts my dreams. It might have come true but for the wasted billions spent on the stupid Democrat (JFK & LBJ) war in Viet Nam. Now with Uncle [...]

I’ve yet to read a bad science fiction story by Brit author Eric Brown and Kings of Eternity, a tale of conferred immortality is certainly one of his best. It’s his characters and their inner lives that make the books as interesting as they are, even when the plot is as imaginatively intricate as it [...]

THE LAMENTATION OF THE OLD PENSIONER by: William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) LTHOUGH I shelter from the rain Under a broken tree My chair was nearest to the fire In every company That talked of love or politics, Ere Time transfigured me. Though lads are making pikes again For some conspiracy, And crazy rascals rage their [...]

There’s nothing typical about this space opera, with some intricate overtones of hard science involving the biochemistry of the brain. The more you read the more the clever story unfolds until, pretty soon, you’re in a very different place from where you started—which is all the spoiler I’m giving. Really nice work by author Paul [...]

It was a pleasure to meet the real Rough Rider and Bull Moose in his most difficult moments, in The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey. Although it was very disquieting to learn the harsh fate of his sons. This is quite a good book, which deftly shows the value of civic virtues we [...]

We’ve known for years the seldom-discussed fact that black American families were disintegrating. Too many black fathers seemingly are unable to marry the (white or black) mothers of their children or to stick around to help raise them. They are often unwilling to work, and frequently wind up in prison. Then their abandoned children grow [...]

Found this scouting out some public domain shots for the cover of my new Vietnam War novel, “The Butterfly Rose,” which will soon be available for the Kindle. I decided to use another snap but kept this one on the desktop because it’s so unusual. Hardly the stereotype shot of a covey of Hueys in [...]

This Scottish lament, a pretty song which I recently learned to play on the violin, has a curious history to go along with its curious title. It was composed in 1903 by Scottish fiddler J. Scott Skinner to honor a friend—a Scottish general in the British army who was publically accused of homosexuality with boys. [...]

I’ve finished several new ones lately, some I’ve reviewed at Amazon and others I haven’t, either for lack of time or indecision about how to put my conclusions about them. Even when I enjoyed them as much as I did these. Ashes of Candesce seems to be the end of an incredibly imaginative five-part series. [...]