Prose

What was it like to be an American colonist in the 17th and 18th centuries, living under the rule of Great Britain? Read more about Colonial America

I once read that dreaming of houses means that you are searching for the right one, for your proper place in the world, for, like Goldilocks, the place that's "just right." Read more about House Hunting

gets written. That’s what I’m supposed to be doing today. Not a whole novel, but editing one I’ve already finished. My third. It’s almost ready for its close-up. There are just a very few more lines to double-check. I’ll have it done before close of business tomorrow. Read more about How a Novel

One of the stories I sometimes tell involves a date, one date, I went on back in 1968, He was a black photographer with NBC news that I had met at an Operation Breadbasket meeting. I was in my early 20’s, and dumb as they come. We were chatting politely over dinner about this and that, when he said something about how white folks were always making themselves out to be the descendants of some kind of European royalty. Read more about White Trash

These are two of my favorite takeaways from Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind.

On Gossip: Read more about Gossip and Myth: Pillars of Civilization

JAZZ

According to the Wiki, Jazz, by Toni Morrison, is a tale of purgatory and jazz. I say it is a tale of love that moves to a jazz beat. Listen to Morrison describe a world in which love makes itself known to be a necessary thing: Read more about The Ways of Love

Simone Simonini, a man whom Umberto Eco claims he has tried to make into the most cynical and disagreeable character in all the history of literature is also the only non-fiction character in The Prague Cemetery, which is depressing given that there are a great many characters, and that the novel is, in essence, a his Read more about A Despicable Protagonist

Once upon a time, I worked in the public relations office of Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History for a couple of years. One of my favorite dioramas featured two taxidermied lions -the infamous Man-Eaters of Tsavo. These lions killed and consumed anywhere from 30 to over 100 workers during the construction of the railway bridge over the Tsavo River on the Mombasa/Nairobi/Lake Victoria route built in the late 19th century. Read more about Reluctant Empire

I read Toni Morrison for two reasons: 1. Delight in language. 2. A glimpse into a world I know little to nothing about, which is, in very important ways, part and parcel of my own world.

is ripe with delightful language: Read more about Going Deeper

, David Mitchell:

Sometimes the fluffy bunny of incredulity zooms round the bend so rapidly that the greyhound of language is left, agog, in the starting cage.

Where there’s bluster … there’s duplicity.