Richard Carrington has been called a naturalist and a naturalist-historian. But, above all, he’s a writer. In his 1957 Mermaids and Mastodons, he writes about creatures and events from millions and millions — and millions — of years ago...
Well, I was at the Newberry Library Book Fair at the end of July, and my eye was caught by the cover of Walt Huffine’s 1970 Alabam McCall. It showed a tough, heavily tanned, hulking guy with a rifle, a dusty black hat and a thick black...
When I headed to the Newberry Library Book Fair on a Friday at the end of July, I knew I had to come up with a strategy. It’s a locally famous sale, featuring tens of thousands of used works available very cheaply. A kind of Nirvana...
1950s By Patrick T. Reardon . I put my faith in the Cisco Kid riding TV with fat guy (Oh, Poncho!)— through desert as I watch — it’s really happening! . It is as if I watch through God’s own window — just as I watch the World Series and see Lew...
Emily Wilson, a classical studies professor at the University of Pennsylvania, set herself a challenging task — to translate Homer’s Odyssey into modern English in lines of iambic pentameter. To complicate things, she also decided to produce a...
I have a theory about Elmore Leonard’s 1988 novel Freaky Deaky. I suspect that one of the main characters, Donnell Lewis — an ex-Black Panther and ex-con who is sort of working a scam as the chauffeur and do-it-all for a rich clueless guy named...
In early July, I tested positive for Covid, and, within hours, I’d started a regimen of five days of Paxlovid. I had a range of mild symptoms, not bad, and some fatigue. So, I wanted to pick up something that would be light and fun, and I...
Near the end of his concise life of the Bible’s David, David Wolpe writes: He is such a contradictory personality that even the ancient rabbis confessed: “We are unable to make sense of David’s character.” That’s a sentence that Wolpe, the...
by Patrick G. Reardon and Patrick T. Reardon . When you get to be old farts as we are, you recognize that Jesus never made it to his 70s or 80s. This guy who is the model for every Christian — What would Jesus do? — spent a lot of his life...
As the cover for Terry Bisson’s Galaxy Quest makes clear, the novel really isn’t completely Bisson’s. It’s the novelization of a screenplay for the comic movie Galaxy Quest by Robert Gordon that was based on a story by David Howard and...
As if crying By Patrick T. Reardon . Month money envelopes, unlabeled something cans, irregulared clothing, big boy, little kids, duty. . Shoes on sideboard, morning machine. Line up, line down. . Church altar, gold, silver, cryptic incense...
Nine-year-old Damian Cunningham and his brother Anthony, a year older, are at a bank in their English town, trying to open an account in which to put a bag-load of money. I mean, a really big bag. The teller explains that she’ll need an adult...
Two-thirds of the way through Patrick Radden Keefe’s 2021 Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty, I had to take a break. I was sick and tired — and more than a bit bored — of spending so much time with the self-important...
Summer mornings, in my West Side childhood, I would go out on our rickety second-story back porch, and, across the alley, on the worn, gray asphalt of the parking lot/school playground, I’d see thousands of sparkling stars, constellations of...
When I look on Google Maps, the neighborhood on Leroy Street along the edge of Greenwich Village, near the Hudson River, looks a lot tonier today that it must have been in 1993 when Sandra Scoppettone published her mystery I’ll Be Leaving You...
There is much that can be, and has been, said about Martin Luther, the man who triggered the Reformation and the break-up of western Christianity into myriad sects. Consider that, in the last dozen pages of her engaging and perceptive biography...
Reporting Jesus Patrick T. Reardon . I wish that Jesus could be interviewed and that I was the one to question him. I wish that he would sit behind his desk, doodling on a pad of paper and talking from topic to topic, as I watched the muscles of...
Corpus Christi honeymoon By Patrick T. Reardon . Let us honeymoon in the Texas town with the Latin name. Let us hide out together under the sacrament’s cipher. . Let us head west into Texas and swing back to wade in Gulf water, chary of...
Rereading The Souls of Black Folks, I am struck by the sheer chutzpah of W.E.B. Du Bois in putting together this collection of essays and sketches. Actually, “chutzpah” is too light-hearted a word. It was courageous of Du Bois to address...
Mal, the leader of the group of six adults, one child and one infant, is dying, and the old woman is doing what she can to keep him alive. “Be well and strong, old man. Fa has taken an offering to Oa for you.” Oa is the goddess...
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