Category Archives: Books and Politics

AKA Elizabeth Linington Born in Aurora, Illinois, she settled in California where, in addition to achieving her prolific output as a novelist under her own name and the pseudonyms Anne Blaisdell, Lesley Egan, Egan O’Neill, and Dell Shannon, she was a right-wing political activist, … Continue reading →

Thanks to the recent death of William F. Buckley, we’ve been treated to a number of panegyrics from George Will and others who’d like to assume the moth eaten mantel of chief conservative highbrow, all of them informing us of … Continue reading →

Ice Sphinx   Austral storm wild saxifrage Island or continent Spartan queen antarctic sphinx A fragment of Sophia With singular meaning The framework of humanity Appalling and irresistible Grace and freedom of being That which ignites desire Under the action … Continue reading →

Hey, we just hosted an event for a really good book called Burning Rainbow Farm: How a Stoner Utopia Went Up in Smoke by  a real cool guy named Dean Kuipers. It’s basically the story of two men, Tom Crosslin … Continue reading →

The Orientalist by Tom Reiss (Random House, $14.95) PART TWO So what lessons can we learn from Lev Nussimbaum’s trek through the low lights of Twentieth Century history? Let’s consider the Bolsheviks who first shattered Lev’s idyllic childhood. Anyone who … Continue reading →

The Orientalist by Tom Reiss (Random House, $14.95) I’ve just read a fascinating and informative book called The Orientalist by Tom Reiss. In one way it’s a literary detective story like A. J. A. Symons’s The Quest for Corvo or … Continue reading →

Lee Child is a writer I avoided for a while — his books look like what I call "airport" books, you know the ones they sell in airports and drug stores, big and squat, tending to have things like bloody … Continue reading →