2,424 words
Hypocrisy there is in the story, and weakness, false pride and vaunting, deceit, poltroonery, ugly perversions, and baleful frenzies. But there is more also. Through the story runs the scarlet thread of courage and the golden thread of heroism. — George R. Stewart, Ordeal by Hunger
It may be trite to state that people show their true colors in extreme circumstances, but what better way is there? James Cameron certainly mocked the hubris of the Titanic true believers in the first half of his iconic 1997 movie, but the numbers of the disaster reveal a chivalry which speaks fairly well of the people who traveled and served on that ill-fated, immortalized vessel. (more…)
109 words / 2:09:40
Host Nick Jeelvy put together The Best Year Ever extravaganza on The Writer’s Bloc last weekend, where audience favorites Fullmoon Ancestry, Jim Goad, Mark Gullick, Richard Houck, Greg Johnson, Gaddius Maximus, James J. O’Meara, Kathryn S., Thomas Steuben, Karl Thorburn, and the Z Man recounted their successes and the lessons they learned in 2021, and it is now available for download and online listening. (more…)
2,756 words
Richard Lyman Bushman
The American Farmer in the Eighteenth Century
New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2018
Most of us who are not farmers are tempted to take farming for granted. We certainly see the results of farming in the produce sections of our supermarkets. Beyond that, we have pleasant images of industrious country folk in denim overalls just doin’ their thing amid amber waves of grain. (more…)
1,963 words
Greg Grandin
The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America
New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019
In this excellent and quick-to-read book about the border wall and its place in history, Greg Grandin builds upon the work of historian Frederic Jackson Turner (1861–1932). (more…)
3,288 words
S.C. Gwynne’s magnificent Empire of the Summer Moon hits as hard as literature can hit and offers history as a form of sublime entertainment. I believe the author wouldn’t take all the credit for his book’s success, since the subject matter — which is, as the subtitle tells us, the rise and fall of the nineteenth-century Comanche nation — is so fascinating, so packed with action, so rife with contradictions, so laden with heart-wrenching drama, and so existential in its meaning, the story pretty much writes itself. (more…)
John Gast, Manifest Destiny, 1872
67 words
I was interviewed by Reactionary Tree and the rest of the Manifest Destiny crew on American politics, the Alt Right, White Nationalism after the November US Presidential election, and the books and thinkers who influenced me the most. I think it went very well. Click here to listen. (more…)
3,805 words
California is the jewel in the crown of the American Union. Of all the states it contains the largest economy. Indeed, California’s economy is one of the largest in the world.[1] (more…)
