A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam, by Neil Sheehan (Random House, 1988, 861 pp.) “Rage — Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles, murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses, hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls, great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies …Continue Reading »
Lord Jim: A Tale, by Joseph Conrad (1900; Easton Press Edition, 407 pp.) I was reminded very recently that fifteen years ago, when one of my colleagues first came to work at the Georgia Historical Society, I asked her what she was currently reading. She told me, and—according to her—I responded with just two words, …Continue Reading »
All Heaven and Earth in a Bookstore This week we take a break from discussing current reading to talk about another favorite book-related topic: the joys of the used book store. Long-suffering readers of this blog have read about the wonders of the used book sale, which usually only happens once a year. A great …Continue Reading »
The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World, by Jenny Uglow (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002, 588 pp.) Social media and smart phones have made face-to-face interaction passé. It was not always so. Jenny Uglow reminds us that in Britain in the second half of the eighteenth century, people formed clubs of all …Continue Reading »
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Scribner, 1925, 180 pp.) Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald is one of those artists whose tragic life has become in some ways more famous than his creations. He was a founding member of the Lost Generation of (mostly) expatriate writers who flourished in the 1920s and ’30s, and who …Continue Reading »