Barefoot Gen, a Japanese Graphic Novel in Ten Volumes: Hiroshima
THE RECENT SURGE OF INTEREST in graphic novels, with roots in the Underground Comix of the 1960s has not …
Tag Archives: Books
Heinrich Boll: German Miniaturist of War
Heinrich Böll (1917 – 1985) is not a name that non-German readers will associate with other 20th century German …
The Crazy Iris — Japanese Writers and the Atom Bomb
Not much is more startling to read than a paragraph beginning “At about noon on the day Hiroshima was bombed …
Herman Melville — Who are the Real Savages?
For those of you who are decades away from reading Herman Melville or find that what you remember of him …
Stephen Pinker – Getting Better all the Time?
Stephen Pinker, Harvard savant and current leader in the Candide impersonator contest, was up to his usual tricks at the …
The Battle Cry of Freedom — The Beginnings of the Civil War
In these years when many have worried aloud about a neo-civil war brewing between American shores it is somewhat …
Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans
Ken Burns’ PBS series, The Vietnam War has been much in the news, and on many minds, this fall, 52 years …
Iceland — Volcanoes and New Fiction
Friends and I spent a most memorable two weeks in Iceland at the beginning of September, 2017. Not only was …
Tides: The Science and Spirit of the Ocean
A surprise gift from a brother on a recent birthday was Jonathan White’s 2017 Tides: The Science and Spirit of …
Croatia — The Sorrows of Separation
The news from Spain and Catalonia this week has made my blood run cold. Plebiscites, exuberance, declarations of independence. The …
On Tyranny – Timothy Snyder
Do Not Obey in Advance This is the sentence which starts Timothy Snyder’s sadly necessary book, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons …
The War at Home 1918-1923
I’ve been away and tramping the back roads of Iceland for two weeks and am so far behind I can’t …