When I was a junior in high school, my English teacher, Mrs. Donaldson, told my class that she’d been browsing in a book store and found a book that perfectly described the typical American teenager. Of course, she was not talking about us, as we were all superior human beings. The title of the book was “Where Did You Go? Out. What Did You Do? Nothing,” by Robert Paul Smith. According to Amazon.com , it was a “hugely popular bestseller when it first appeared in 1957.”  I don’

Imagine living in a small, quiet community that is just a few miles from a minimum-security prison. Well actually it used to be minimum security, but an escalating crime rate, overly-full prisons for serious offenders, and some administrative slight of hand has changed the prison population considerably. The facility now houses some of the most violent and dangerous prisoners in the state. In “A Small Town” (2020, 320 pages in softcover format), author Thomas Perry paints a p

As too many Americans wonder how they can pay their monthly bills AND buy Christmas presents, let’s peek at economic affordability. It was a DAY ONE important issue in last year’s election. The president has put coal in our stockings. He cut taxes for the rich at the expense of the middle class and the poor and imposed tariffs that raised prices for American consumers. He grades himself on the economy as A+++++. But now, as most Americans disagree with him, he calls affordabi

“Buona sera. This is Il Ristorante L’Anima d’Italia. How may I help you?” “Hello. I’d like to make a reservation for two at seven toes and half a pinkie. And we’d like a booth.” Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? But wait. Consider that we’ve been brainwashed for centuries into believing that a day is divided into 24 hours, hours into 60 minutes, and minutes into 60 seconds.

Greg Iles died a couple of months ago at the age of 65. He was born in Stuttgart, Baden-Wurttemberg, West Germany, but lived his life in Natchez, Mississippi. He was one of the great American novelists to have obtained his college education at Ole Miss. And like many other best-selling authors (some in the Southern Tradition, some not) like humorist Dave Barry, Stephen King, Ridley Pearson, Amy Tan, James McBride, Mitch Albom, Scott Turow, Roy Blunt, and Matt Groening, he was

Around the turn of the century, maybe earlier, education critics were saying that college majors in English, or philosophy, or art history were likely to spend their post-college years living in their parents’ basement. At the time, automation and cybernation were already replacing human beings in jobs, but they were mostly factory jobs that were easily converted to machine technology, like painting automobiles or filling bottles with wine and then corking them. That level of

I suppose that, for at least some men, marrying the daughter of a billionaire would be a dream come true. But what if that billionaire is a Russian oligarch who has agents and influence that reach everywhere? And what if, for some reason, that “lucky” man had done something that displeased his father-in-law? Well, for Paul Brightman, a very successful hedge-fund manager, that dream became a nightmare. Joseph Finder (“The Oligarch’s Daughter,” 2025, 438 pages in hardback forma

I ran into a customer of mine from when I was in business.  It was a good conversation. He told me he sees my letters in the paper and said, “you’re a Trump guy.” I replied, “Yes, but more on what is right.” That is true… we are on the right track, I believe. Take drugs, for example.