by bob_oganovic | Mar 7, 2020 | Books
Idiot America by Charles Pierce As suggested by its subtitle — “How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free” — the premise of this book is that once upon a time our country was in a certain way enriched by dreamers, eccentrics, and...
by bob_oganovic | Mar 7, 2020 | Books
1912: Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft and Debs by James Chace The book is subtitled “The Election That Changed the Country”. This is not hyperbole — author James Chace makes a very convincing argument that, indeed, the U.S. presidential election of 1912 was...
by bob_oganovic | Mar 7, 2020 | Books
Paul Bowles: A Life by Virginia Spencer-Carr Ask a literature student “Who was Paul Bowles?” and you’ll likely hear “a well-respected American expatriate writer who lived much of his life in Morocco and whose works draw upon the material he gathered both from the...
by bob_oganovic | Mar 6, 2020 | Books
Driving Like Crazy by P.J. O’Rourke PJ O’Rourke illustrated by Lyndon Hayes I can say three things with absolute certainty: I love the writings of P.J. O’Rourke — I have read every one of his books. I know next-to-nothing about cars. This is the...
by bob_oganovic | Mar 2, 2020 | Books, Movies
A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nazar Economists are an easy profession to poke fun at. There’s an old joke: Q: What’s the definition of an economist?A: Someone who didn’t have the personality to become an accountant. Then there is the quote attributed to...
by bob_oganovic | Mar 2, 2020 | Books
Traitor to His Class by H.W. Brands FDR and Sir Winston Churchill Brands makes a compelling case that it is not hyperbole to state that the President was, as the title of his book suggests, a “traitor to his class”. A well-known joke of the time — one that the...
by bob_oganovic | Mar 1, 2020 | Books
The Lost Spy by Andrew Meier British author Andrew Meier, whose book is subtitled “An American in Stalin’s Secret Service”, has exhaustively reconstructed the tragic life of Isaiah “Cy” Oggins (1898 -1947) in this carefully researched book. Oggins...
by bob_oganovic | Feb 22, 2020 | Books
City of Lies by Ramita Navai Navai is a British-Iranian journalist who has had rare access to the people and places that make up the toxic underbelly of Iran’s capital. This is a story the ayatollahs and apologists for the regime do not want us to know about. The...
by bob_oganovic | Feb 22, 2020 | Books, Classical Music
Paul Robeson: a Biography by Martin Duberman (1989) The phrase “larger-than-life” is probably over-used nowadays but for Paul Robeson (1898-1976) it is an apt characterization. He had: A towering physical presence, a handsome face, and a mega-watt smile. An intellect...
by bob_oganovic | Feb 21, 2020 | Books
Rome 1960 by David Maraniss The summer and winter Olympics are pretty much a snooze for me. Therefore it may seem unlikely how much I loved this detailed description of the summer events held in Rome in 1960. In a book subtitled The Olympics that Changed the...
by bob_oganovic | Feb 21, 2020 | Books
Black Dahlia Avenger: The True Story by Steve Hodel The brutal murder in Los Angeles in 1947 of Elizabeth Short (AKA “the black dahlia”) remains an unsolved crime. There are many unusual and grisly details associated with this homicide: where the body was found, how...
by bob_oganovic | Feb 19, 2020 | Books
When Bad Things Happen to Good People by Harold Kushner Harold Kushner Harold Kushner is a rabbi from the Boston area who wrote this book after his young son died from progeria, a rare and incurable congenital condition that causes early and irreversible signs of...
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