And the woman who toppled them. There’s a fascinating new book I must commend to you…A Fever in the Heartland, by New York Times bestselling author, Timothy Egan. As the book cover reads, it’s the true story of the Ku Klux Klan’s “plot to take over America” during the Roaring Twenties—the Jazz Age. When [...]
Boston…where the spark of revolution turned into a raging fire. Where just shy of 200 years later, seats in the bleachers along the first base line at Fenway Park were cheap enough that a broke graduate student and his bride could watch the Red Sox play in fair weather. A place and time of innocence, [...]
A Poem That Bears Repeating Another July 4th is around the corner, and everyone in the U.S. will celebrate my birthday. (That really is what I thought as a kid.) Happy 248th birthday, America! As we near the completion of one-quarter of a millennium, it’s worth reflecting on the generous legacy left to us [...]
An eerie dream just days before.I am forever fascinated by American history.Three days prior to his assassination, Abraham Lincoln related a dream he had to his wife and a few friends. According to Ward Hill Lamon, one of the friends who was present for the conversation, the president said:“About ten days ago, I retired very [...]
How women rode the bicycle on the way to suffrage. A few years back I was Internet hopping in search of a unique idea for my next historical novel. I came across a quote that floored me. Perhaps you will find it interesting as well: “Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. [...]
The day my world expanded. Opening day 2024 is around the corner. My uncle had sprung me and my cousin from school that Tuesday. As we walked through the huge parking lot, I was surrounded by every car in Los Angeles. Well…maybe not every, but that’s how it appeared through these eleven-year-old eyes. We [...]
Markers All you Baby Boomers out there will probably relate the most to this question. Perhaps that’s because we’ve lived through so many explosive events that created big headlines around the world. Historical markers—some good, some bad. Many were violent. All memorable events that shook my generation to the core and redefined our culture [...]
Finding the Perfect Phrase: A Linguistic Hunger Games By the way, I love idioms.Seemingly nonsensical phrases that nonetheless convey colorful pictures that are easily understood worldwide. They have crept into our lexicon over centuries. Even today there are dozens of generic terms that have been adopted into the English language, suggesting that waves of idioms [...]
A Bedouin shepherd left his flock behind one day in 1947 to find the one sheep that had strayed. A natural response of Middle Eastern shepherds for centuries. His search led him to the Qumran caves near the Dead Sea, where he stumbled upon the first of the scrolls that have become one of the [...]
My son, Matthew, and his wife, Cloudia, live in Monrovia, a suburb of Los Angeles in the San Gabriel Valley. We recently helped them move from a cramped, two-bedroom apartment in a not-so-great building to a sweet home comparable in square footage. With a small backyard, in a middle-class neighborhood. They love it, and [...]
