American Mother by Collum McCann is an as-told-to account by Diane Foley of the 2014 death of her son, freelance American journalist James W. Foley. McCann, the author of Apeirogon and Let the Great World Spin, is a master storyteller, tells the first and last chapters of this riveting book in the third person, but …
Continue reading Fanatics and vigilantes: two books with red flags
Our phone has been ringing off the hook; our electronic mailboxes flooded. Friends, even staunch supporters of Joe Biden, have come to accept the idea that he is not well enough to serve another term. Worse, that he didn't have the stamina even to win a second term. The stakes could not be higher. Now, …
Four days in the halcyon setting of the Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox were not enough to insulate us from the political sturm und drang that erupted this past weekend. I joined others in shock and horror at the shooting of Donald Trump, saddened that the violence following upon incendiary political rhetoric may have contributed …
Continue reading Should the Democrats give up? Absolutely not!
James by Percival Everett tells the story of Huckleberry Finn’s escape from his drunken abusive father with slave Jim in pre-Civil War Missouri. As a child, I read Huckleberry Finn as a simple adventure tale; as a college student, I came to understand it as telling account of mid- 19th century American life and culture. …
Remember when we scoffed at Richard Nixon telling David Frost that the President couldn’t be prosecuted for Watergate because “when the President does it, that means it’s not illegal.” We thought that our Constitution established “a government of laws, and not of men” and that no person, even the President of United States, was above …
Continue reading Remind me, why did we fight our Revolution?
It wasn't long ago that I wrote that I thought there was nothing to be gained by a Trump-Biden debate. Knowing that presidential debates are usually more about style than substance, I said that, if there were to be a debate, there should be real-time fact checking. Without it, I feared that Trump's repeated falsehoods …
Long Island by Colm Toibin is a May, 2024 sequel to his notable 2009 novel Brooklyn and follows its principal characters, Eilis Lacey, an Irish immigrant to Brooklyn in the 1950’s, and her husband Tony Fiorella, a plumber from a robust Italian family. When Toibin picks up their story again, it’s the 1970’s, and they …
Continue reading Four Novels by Three Authors, All About Family Life
The Claims of Life by Diana Chapman Walsh is a deep and delightful memoir by the former president of Wellesley College, whom I met and with whom I briefly worked in conjunction with the 125th anniversary of the college. A child of privilege in suburban Philadelphia and an athlete, she grew up dismissing her intellectual …
Continue reading Diana Chapman Walsh: a college president we can admire
Should we be able to decide the nature of our passing when we are close to the end of our lives? Many people who are terminally ill and suffering want the legal option of self-administered doctor-prescribed medicine for a peaceful passing. Here in Massachusetts, the battle to give individuals who are terminally ill (in the …
Continue reading Support grows for end-of-life medical care option: action needed now
Knife by Salman Rushdie is an account of the near-fatal attack on the well-known writer in 2022 by a lone knife-wielding terrorist who hated Rushdie for his writings, having read just two pages, and could only aver that Rushdie was “disingenuous.” The assailant, whom Rushdie calls “A” (for ass) but refuses to name, somehow eluded …
Continue reading Non-fiction books taking us to places both familiar and strange
Marjorie Arons-Barron