The Greatest American Hero was a comedy-drama superhero series that ran for three seasons, from 1981 to 1983.
Here’s the premise: Ralph Hinkley, (later Hanley—I’ll explain why in a moment) is a substitute teacher in the Los Angeles public school system. Extraterrestrials bestow on him a suit that gives him superhero powers.
After that, Ralph (played by William Katt) works with his FBI sidekick, Bill Maxwell (Robert Culp) to thwart criminals, and accomplish the usual superhero endeavors.
Ralph is also aided by his divorce lawyer, Pam Davidson (played by Connie Sellecca).
The show premiered on March 18, 1981. On March 30, 1981, a whackjob named John Hinkley Jr. shot then-President Reagan and three other individuals. This was an association that the show’s producers obviously wanted to avoid. So Ralph Hinkley became Ralph Hanley.
Was The Greatest American Hero great TV? Oh, heavens no—not even by the modest standards of the early 1980s. But I would submit that this was not bad TV, either.
I watched The Greatest American Hero on occasion. It was light entertainment, with a bit of light action, and tolerably likable characters who were lightly drawn.
The Greatest American Hero was also responsible for giving a generation of adolescent boys a crush on Connie Sellecca.
Happy birthday to American actress, producer, and former model Connie Sellecca, born May 25, 1955, whose credits include the comedy-drama television series Flying High, comedy-drama superhero series The Greatest American Hero, and the soap opera Hotel. pic.twitter.com/RB9r83LiYb
A personal note here, on the international reach of this show and the aforementioned actress. In the mid-1990s, I worked with a Taiwanese man who was about my age. We were discussing American pop culture one day, and he went out of his way to express an appreciation for both The Greatest American Hero and Connie Sellecca. Make of that what you will.
In 1938, the planners in Nazi Germany know that war is coming. They are eager to acquire the atom bomb.
They are working against Allied governments, operating both in Germany and abroad. (And not all of the Reich’s accomplices are German nationals.)
A group of ordinary Americans and Germans are forced to choose sides. Their choices will lead them into a web of betrayal, murder, and espionage.
Their paths meet in Cairo, Egypt, where the Reich is hunting a fugitive atomic physicist.
The main characters:
Betty Lehman is a 19-year-old girl from Dutch Falls, Pennsylvania. Her family is active in the German-American Bund. Betty has been recruited to betray her country in the service of the Reich.
Rudolf Schenk is an undercover agent of the German Gestapo. He wants to do his duty. But can he abandon his last shred of conscience?
Jack McCallum is an American treasure hunter in Cairo. He falls for two women: one who is working undercover for the Third Reich, one who is fleeing the Gestapo.
Heinrich Vogel is a physicist who fled Germany for Egypt. He and his young adult daughter, Ingrid, face a daily game of cat-and-mouse with the Gestapo. His goal: to reach Britain or America before the Gestapo reaches him and his daughter!
The United States House of Representatives has just passed a bloated foreign aid package that will send $25 billion to Israel and a whopping $60 billion to Ukraine. The House also approved legislation that could potentially ban TikTok, the Chinese-made app that is so beloved among members of Generation Z.
We haven’t had a foreign policy election since 2004, when the US was embroiled in the war in Iraq. (2008 probably should have been a foreign policy election; but at least half the country was so punch-drunk on the ascension of Barack Obama, that not much else mattered.)
In recent election cycles, foreign policy has hardly been a factor. We’ve been obsessed with abortion, and LGBTQ this and that, and the personality of a certain Republican candidate.
This election might be different. The Biden Administration has involved the United States in two major conflicts. One is a bottomless quagmire in the former Soviet Union. The other is an apparent fight to the death between Israel and the Palestinians.
The United States is generally seen to be on the “right” side of the Ukraine conflict. But what’s our bottom line? How far are we willing to go, over the question of whether the Russian flag or the Ukrainian flag flies over the Crimean peninsula, and a few oblasts between Ukraine and Russia? How many more billions of taxpayer dollars—and Ukrainian and Russian lives—is it worth? Is it worth the very real risk of World War III?
And then there’s Israel and Palestine. My attitude toward the two sides could best be summed up by Mercutio’s line in Romeo and Juliet: “A plague o’ both your houses! I am sped.” I’m not a Zionist. I’m not a pro-Palestinian. I’m sick to the gills of them both, and their bloody, childish conflict.
The wars in the former USSR and the Middle East could come back to bite us in any number of ways—and I’m not only talking about the taxpayer dollars that could better be spent elsewhere. (But think, for a moment, about all that could be done with that $85 billion: all the highways and bridges, all the medical care, all the education.)
The conventional wisdom used to be: fight them over there, so we don’t have to fight them over here. That old chestnut predates the ICBM and the suicide bomber.
Our entanglements in Ukraine and the Middle East endanger us because by picking sides, the Biden administration has picked two fights. Our government has made each of us a proxy combatant in two wars. If you’re an American citizen, you are now indirectly at war with the Russian Federation and Palestine.
Are those wars in your best interest? That’s a question you should be asking yourself as an American citizen—and as a voter—as Election Day approaches.
How I wrote a horror novel called Revolutionary Ghosts
Or…
Can an ordinary teenager defeat the Headless Horseman, and a host of other vengeful spirits from America’s revolutionary past?
The big idea
I love history, and I love supernatural horror tales.“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” was therefore always one of my favorite short stories. This classic tale by Washington Irving describes how a Hessian artillery officer terrorized the young American republic several decades after his death.
The Hessian was decapitated by a Continental Army cannonball at the Battle of White Plains, New York, on October 28, 1776. According to some historical accounts, a Hessian artillery officer really did meet such an end at the Battle of White Plains. I’ve read several books about warfare in the 1700s and through the Age of Napoleon. Armies in those days obviously did not have access to machine guns, flamethrowers, and the like. But those 18th-century cannons could inflict some horrific forms of death, decapitation among them.
I was first exposed to the “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” via the 1949 Disney film of the same name. The Disney adaptation was already close to 30 years old, but still popular, when I saw it as a kid sometime during the 1970s.
Headless Horsemen from around the world
While doing a bit of research for Revolutionary Ghosts, I discovered that the Headless Horseman is a folklore motif that reappears in various cultures throughout the world.
In Irish folklore, the dullahan or dulachán (“dark man”) is a headless, demonic fairy that rides a horse through the countryside at night. The dullahan carries his head under his arm. When the dullahan stops riding, someone dies.
Scottish folklore includes a tale about a headless horseman named Ewen. Ewen wasbeheaded when he lost a clan battle at Glen Cainnir on the Isle of Mull. His death prevented him from becoming a chieftain. He roams the hills at night, seeking to reclaim his right to rule.
Finally, in English folklore, there is the 14th century epic poem, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”. After Gawain kills the green knight in living form (by beheading him) the knight lifts his head, rides off, and challenges Gawain to a rematch the following year.
But Revolutionary Ghosts is focused on the Headless Horseman of American lore: the headless horseman who chased Ichabod Crane through the New York countryside in the mid-1790s.
The Headless Horseman isn’t the only historical spirit to stir up trouble in the novel. John André, the executed British spy, makes an appearance, too. (John André was a real historical figure.)
I also created the character of Marie Trumbull, a Loyalist whom the Continental Army sentenced to death for betraying her country’s secrets to the British. But Marie managed to slit her own throat while still in her cell, thereby cheating the hangman. Marie Trumbull was a dark-haired beauty in life. In death, she appears as a desiccated, reanimated corpse. She carries the blade that she used to take her own life, all those years ago.
Oh, and Revolutionary Ghosts also has an army of spectral Hessian soldiers. I had a lot of fun with them!
The Spirit of ’76
Most of the novel is set in the summer of 1976. An Ohio teenager, Steve Wagner, begins to sense that something strange is going on near his home. There are slime-covered hoofprints in the grass. There are unusual sounds on the road at night. People are disappearing.
Steve gradually comes to an awareness of what is going on….But can he convince anyone else, and stop the Headless Horseman, before it’s too late?
I decided to set the novel in 1976 for a number of reasons. First of all, this was the year of the American Bicentennial. The “Spirit of ’76 was everywhere in 1976. That created an obvious tie-in with the American Revolution.
Nineteen seventy-six was also a year in which Vietnam, Watergate, and the turmoil of the 1960s were all recent memories. The mid-1970s were a time of national anxiety and pessimism (kind of like now). The economy was not good. This was the era of energy crises and stagflation.
Reading the reader reviews of Revolutionary Ghosts, I am flattered to get appreciative remarks from people who were themselves about the same age as the main character in 1976:
“…I am 62 years old now and 1976 being the year I graduated high school, I remember it pretty well. Everything the main character mentions (except the ghostly stuff), I lived through and remember. So that was an added bonus for me.”
“I’m 2 years younger than the main character so I could really relate to almost every thing about him.”
I’m actually a bit younger than the main character. In 1976 I was eight years old. But as regular readers of this blog will know, I’m nostalgic by nature. I haven’t forgotten the 1970s or the 1980s, because I still spend a lot of time in those decades.
If you like the 1970s, you’ll find plenty of nostalgic nuggets in Revolutionary Ghosts, like Bicentennial Quarters, and the McDonald’s Arctic Orange Shakes of 1976.
***
Also, there’s something spooky about the past, just because it is the past. As L.P. Hartley said, “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”
For me, 1976 is a year I can clearly remember. And yet—it is shrouded in a certain haziness. There wasn’t nearly as much technology. Many aspects of daily life were more “primitive” then.
It isn’t at all difficult to believe that during that long-ago summer, the Headless Horseman might have come back from the dead to terrorize the American heartland…
I discovered the books of historical novelist John Jakes (1932 – 2023) as a high school student during the 1980s. The television miniseries adaptation of his Civil War epic, North and South, aired in 1985.
North and South was extremely well-done for a network (ABC) television production of the mid-1980s. The cast included Patrick Swayze, Kirstie Alley, David Carradine, Lesley-Anne Down, and Parker Stevenson. The sets were realistic and the production values were high.
After watching that, I decided to give John Jakes’s books a try. I read North and South(1982), plus the subsequent two books in the North and South trilogy, Love and War (1984) and Heaven and Hell (1987).
Then I delved into The Kent Family Chronicles. The books in this long family saga were published between 1974 and 1979. These are the books that really put Jakes on the map as an author of commercial historical fiction.
I emphasize commercial. John Jakes never strove for the painstaking historical accuracy of Jeff Shaara, or his approximate contemporary, James Michener. Jakes’s first objective was always to entertain. If the reader learned something about the American Revolution or the Civil War along the way, that was icing on the cake.
As a result, John Jakes’s novels lie somewhere along the spectrum between literary fiction and potboilers. His characters are memorable and he imparts a sense of time and place. But these are plot-driven stories.
At the same time, Jakes’s plots have a way of being simultaneously difficult to believe and predictable. Almost all of his books have a Forrest Gump aspect. His characters are ordinary men and women, but they all seem to rub shoulders with figures from your high school history classes.
That said, Jakes is one of the few authors whose books pleased both the teenage me and the fiftysomething me. This past year, I started rereading The Kent Family Chronicles, and catching up on the few installments I missed back in the 1980s. I have changed as much as any person changes between the ages of 17 and 55, but I still find these books to be page-turners.
This past week, I started listening to the audiobook version of California Gold. This one was published in 1989, after Jakes’s long run of success with The Kent Family Chronicles and the North and South trilogy.
California Gold is the story of Mack Chance, a Pennsylvania coal miner’s son who walks to California to seek his fortune in the 1880s.
I will be honest with the reader: I don’t like California Gold as much as Jakes’s earlier bestsellers. California Gold is episodic in structure, and the main character is far less likable than some of Jakes’s earlier creations. In California Gold, Jakes indulges his tendency to pay lip service to the issues of the day (in this case: the budding American labor movement and early feminism) through the voices of his characters. Most of these pronouncements are politically correct and clichéd.
Worst of all, California Gold employs sex scenes as spice for low points in the plot. This is always a sign that a writer is struggling for ideas, or boring himself as he writes. When Jakes wrote California Gold, he may have been a little burned out, after writing The Kent Family Chronicles and the North and South trilogy.
California Gold, though, won’t be tossed aside on my did-not-finish (DNF) pile. This is still a good novel. Just not the caliber of novel I’d come to expect from John Jakes. No novelist, unfortunately, can hit one out of the park every time.
This is an election year. Given the two candidates and the mood of the country, the 2024 election will almost certainly entail controversy. Whoever wins, millions of Americans will be angry and disappointed by the result. There will be accusations of cheating, or voter suppression, or something.
British filmmaker Alex Garland has therefore chosen an auspicious year for the release of Civil War, a movie about a hypothetical Civil War II in the United States.
But perhaps he has made a movie that is just a little too timely. More on that shortly.
Civil War is “deliberately vague” about the exact causes and instigators of its hypothetical conflict. The movie posits four different factions, each comprised of various states.
This is where things get hinky. Garland doesn’t follow the Red-Blue formula that most of us would expect. For example, the movie portrays Texas and California in an alliance. We can all agree that this is something that would never happen in real life.
This unrealistic scenario is, I suspect, deliberate, too. Garland did not want to make a movie that blatantly picks sides in the American culture wars. Making the alliances unrealistic would be one way to do that.
Reviews and…buzz?
Reviews of Civil War are mixed. I’m not the first person to observe that the political alliances depicted in the film don’t mirror our current political divisions.
Some reviewers seem to have taken issue with that. Johnny Oleksinski of the New York Post put it this way:
“Civil War’s shtick is that it’s not specifically political. For instance, as the US devolves into enemy groups of secessionist states, Texas and California have banded together to form the Western Forces. That such an alliance could ever occur is about as likely as Sweetgreen/Kentucky Fried Chicken combo restaurant.”
Oleksinski called Civil War “a torturous, overrated movie without a point”. We may conclude that he didn’t like it.
But what “point” was Oleksinski looking for, exactly? Alex Garland faced an obvious marketing dilemma here. If he had made a movie about the Evil Libs, he would have alienated half his potential audience. If he had made a movie about the Evil MAGAs, he would have alienated half his potential audience.
There is really no way to please everyone with a movie like this. Except by remaining vague. And then you irritate people because you didn’t take a stand.
I haven’t heard a lot of buzz about this movie in my own social circle, nor in my personal Facebook feed. Civil War is not exactly a movie that most people will want to see with their kids. Nor is it likely to become a date night favorite.
Civil War’s topic, and the clips I have seen of it, make the movie seem too similar to the news stories we have seen in recent years: the BLM riots of the summer and fall of 2020, and the J6 riot of January 6, 2021. The current war between two former Soviet Republics: Ukraine and Russia.
How many people want to pay good money to see a movie about something like that at the cinema?
Good question. I suspect that Civil War will find a wider audience once it moves to streaming/cable.
Could another Civil War really happen?
Alex Garland is not alone in his speculations about a Civil War II. Frankly, I have my doubts.
The First Civil War (1861 – 1865) was actually about something. Southerners were fighting to preserve their entire economic system. White Northerners were fighting to preserve the Union.
(Contrary to what many people believe, the Union did not initially wage the Civil War with the goal of ending slavery. The sainted Lincoln, moreover, would have let the Confederate states keep their slaves, if only they had not seceded.)
Blacks had the biggest stake of all, with their freedom on the line.
Whichever side you were on, there was something worthwhile to fight about.
But what about now? Are we really going to go to war over transgender bathrooms and idiotic pronoun rules? Over the self-evident question of what a woman is? Over abortion? Over the annual Pride Month spectacles? Over whether or not President Biden will force Americans to buy uneconomical and unwanted electric vehicles?
The issues that divide us now, as divisive and tiresome as they are, seem trivial by comparison.
A civil war, over all that nonsense? Hopefully, the country has not become that stupid. But you never know.
Nearly half a century after Rush’s third album tanked in the marketplace, I’ve seen this case made on the Internet. The argument is especially prevalent in the YouTube comments where the album’s two enduring songs (“Bastille Day” and “Lakeside Park”) appear in video form.
The idea here is that Caress of Steel was given short shrift by both music fans and critics in 1975.
“This album was underrated!” one YouTube commenter opined.
“Actually one of the best Rush albums ever,” declared another.
I can see two motivations for the above arguments. The first is the underdog spirit that tends to appeal to all diehard Rush fans. Rush fans tend to be reflexive contrarians. If the audience and critics didn’t “get” something, isn’t that resounding proof of how good it actually was?
The second motivation may be diehard fandom itself. Older Rush fans like me have been devoted to the band’s music for decades (since 1982, in my case). We don’t want to believe that Rush ever made a song—let alone an entire album—that wasn’t absolutely brilliant.
But in this instance, I have to agree with the consensus view. (And yes, this pains me as yet another reflexively contrarian Rush fan.) Caress of Steel was Rush’s least listenable album. I was first exposed to it in the early 1980s, and I still don’t quite “get” it myself. I’ve given the album 40 years, and I’ve listened to it as a teen, a young adult, and a middle-aged man. Isn’t that enough time?
There are only really two completely satisfactory songs on the album, the aforementioned “Bastille Day” and “Lakeside Park”. (I will grant you the merits of “I Think I’m Going Bald” if you want to push for that one.)
I never warmed up to “The Necromancer”. “The Fountain of Lamneth” has a few good musical moments. But the idea behind the song simply doesn’t support the twenty-minute composition. And it’s very hard to follow, or even understand.
Caress of Steel goes down in history as the Rush album that nearly sunk the band as a going concern. The album was marked by poor record store sales, low concert turnout, and threats by Mercury to pull the plug on Rush—which had yet to really prove itself in the marketplace.
Caress of Steel is best remembered as a transitional effort. It was not a good album, as Rush albums go.
It was, however, the album that enabled the band to work out its kinks in the difficult endeavor of the progressive concept album. After the Caress of Steel misstep, Rush produced its three great concept albums of the 1970s: 2112, A Farewell to Kings, and Hemispheres.
These albums would be commercial successes, and they would prove that Rush’s brand of progressive rock could succeed in the marketplace…until the band changed its style yet again, in the early 1980s.
In 1994, O.J. Simpson probably killed Nicole Brown and her male friend, waiter Ron Goldman. But he got off scot-free.
The O.J. Simpson case had heavy racial overtones, at a time when America was going through yet another hand-wringing, navel-gaving moment over race.
Two years prior, the white LAPD officers who beat black suspect Rodney King in 1991 were acquitted of the charges against them. The Los Angeles Riots of 1992 were one result of that misguided decision. But not the last result.
At least one O.J. Simpson juror has speculated that the majority-black Simpson jury decided to acquit the former football player as “payback” for Rodney King. One juror, a man named Lionel Cryer, gave Simpson a Black Power salute in the courtroom after the verdict was read.
That’s all I’m going to say about the O.J. Simpson murder case of 1994, and the trial that finally ended in 1995. It was a long time ago. Everything that possibly can be said about it has probably been said in the intervening years.
I was 26 years old in 1994, the same age as Nicole Brown Simpson’s male friend, Ron Goldman. I watched Simpson’s slow-speed run from the LAPD. I watched his surrender on television. I followed his drawn-out trial sporadically throughout 1994 and 1995.
The 1990s were a peaceful time, at least compared to the 2020s. That was an era when a celebrity murder trial could become the top item on the news, and remain so for a stretch of months.
Nowadays, I suspect, we would have far less bandwidth for the O.J. Simpson murder trial. We have much more to worry about.
Orenthal James Simpson is now beyond earthly justice. Did he kill Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Perlman in 1994? Like many people old enough to remember it all, I believe that he did.
But I don’t know for sure. I will therefore fall back on those lines from Romans 12:19: “Avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.”
There really was something special about growing up in an era when video games were not old hat, but something brand-new and on the cutting edge of the technology of that time.
I suppose I like my 21st-century iPhone and my MacBook as much as the next person, but they are tools for me, not objects of indulgence. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed anything quite as much as that first Atari console I received for Christmas in 1981.
Did I have a favorite game? Of course I did. Space Invaders, hands down. Missile Command came in a close second, though.
Today’s solar eclipse was a bit anticlimactic here in Cincinnati. The local news channels all predicted a 99.2 percent eclipse in my area just outside the city.
That didn’t happen, not by a long shot:
Me, eagerly awaiting the full eclipse as the shadows start to lengthen
This is going to get good any minute now! I tell myself. But I am already growing skeptical.
The high point of the eclipse, at around 3:20 p.m. EST. The sun has been noticeably dimmed, but it’s a long way from dark.
What can I say? Here in Cincinnati, the local weather forecasts are right only about 50 percent of the time. Why should the eclipse forecast be any different?
This was worth walking outside for, but I’m glad I didn’t make a day of it.
I hope the eclipse was better for you, if you live in an area that was forecast to experience it.
Termination Man is a corporate mystery/thriller. I wrote this story in 2012, and it was inspired by my experiences in the automotive industry.
I also took inspiration from some of the more unsavory corporate HR practices I’d read about, including the controversial practice of “managing out” an unwanted employee. (This basically means: making the employee’s life so unpleasant that he or she will want to quit.)
Who should read Termination Man? This is a good fit for readers who already like the corporate/financial thrillers of Joseph Finder. Fans of John Grisham will find significant overlap, too.
Termination Man will be available on Amazon Kindle at a reduced price through the end of this weekend. Kindle Unlimited members can read it there gratis, too.
House Republicans have put forth a proposal to rename Dulles International Airport after former (and perhaps future) President Trump. The bill is meeting with the expected braying in the mainstream media.
As an American citizen, there are many issues that concern me at present…
Our government, and the clownish governments that rule the various countries of the rest of NATO, are rushing toward World War III with Russia. They are risking all our lives over the question of which flag flies over land that was long Russian territory, anyway.
The deficit continues to grow at an unsustainable rate. Washington is no longer burning through our money. It’s burning through the money of Americans who won’t be born before all presently living Americans are dead.
Biden has made us a laughingstock and a near-failed state with his mismanagement of the border. It’s become a cliché, but yes: the only border Biden cares about is the one between Ukraine and Russia.
Every week, a foolish new “woke” initiative spews from the White House. These range from forcing us to buy electric vehicles that no one wants, to declaring a special day of visibility for Americans who self-identify as cocker spaniels.
The country is a mess, to put it mildly.
Amid all of this, renaming Dulles International Airport after Donald Trump—or anyone, for that matter—would not even make the bottom tier of a thousand-item priority list.
There is no monopoly on foolishness in our government at present. The only real question is: which band of fools will bring about collapse first, if permitted free rein? The Democratic Party is doing its best to destroy us in any number of ways, but we ought not get cocky about the GOP. Case-in-point: this new initiative to rename Dulles International Airport, an item as unwanted as Joe Biden’s electric cars.
One of those is Bobby Mackey’s Music World in Wilder, Kentucky. (I live in suburban Cincinnati, Ohio. But Wilder, Kentucky is less than thirty minutes from my front door. I’m a hop, skip, and a jump from the Ohio River.)
Bobby Mackey’s has been the subject of many paranormal studies and documentaries over the decades. I won’t venture a guess as to whether or not the site is haunted, but the building (a former slaughterhouse) is loosely associated with a gruesome murder that occurred in 1896.
The murder itself is a matter of historical record. Two men beheaded a young woman, Pearl Bryan, nearby. Bryan was pregnant at the time, and one of the murderers was the father.
The killers were promptly caught and hanged for the despicable crime. But Pearl’s head was never found.
Guess where urban legends say the head ended up? Bryan’s headless body was found 2.5 miles away, in Fort Thomas, Kentucky. But if you believe the local legends, the killers tossed Pearl’s severed head down a well in the basement of the slaughterhouse that would become Bobby Mackey’s Music World in 1978.
Photo by Nicolas Henderson
Over the years, many patrons of Bobby Mackey’s have reported various phenomena: cold spots, disembodied voices, and worse. Above the main bar hangs a disclaimer, stating that the building is haunted, and that management is absolved of all responsibility for injuries or trauma caused by wayward spirits.
I’ve also talked to patrons who report that the only danger is the very living, very human clientele. Bobby Mackey’s has a reputation as a mildly dangerous place. Despite its popularity on the ghost tour circuit, the bar draws a rough-and-tumble crowd on the weekends. But if you’re a certain kind of person, that’s part of the charm, maybe.
No, I have never been there myself. Partly because I don’t like the bar scene (especially the country music bar scene), and partly because I don’t like to tempt the paranormal…especially when demonic forces are said to be involved, as is the case here.
I don’t know if the stories about Bobby Mackey’s Music World are true or not, but I don’t want to find out.
And now it looks like I won’t get the chance, anyway. The 76-year-old Bobby Mackey is moving his business to a new, and hopefully unhaunted, location nearby.
This blog wishes Mr. Mackey success at the new site.
I’m a child of the Cold War. I was twenty-one when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. I well remember the Soviet Union as a topic on the evening news. I grew up with a dark fascination with the USSR. I am always interested in acquiring new books and other materials about it.
I was therefore eager to listen to Anne Applebaum’s book: Gulag: A History. Although she’s recently taken to opining about current events on Twitter, Applebaum is the author of a handful of books on Soviet history.
Gulag, as the title suggests, is focused on the Soviet work/concentration camp system, which often housed political prisoners.
Gulag is a thoroughly researched book. Applebaum draws not only on Soviet-era documents, but also on extensive interviews she conducted with camp survivors.
The book has no ideological ax to grind. Applebaum doesn’t soft-pedal the human cost of the Soviet gulag system. Nor does she endlessly bludgeon the reader with authorial intrusions of shock and disapproval. Applebaum assumes that the reader can make her own moral judgments.
While there are passages about the leadership of the USSR and Kremin-level politics, the emphasis of the book is on the prisoners’ experience. Gulag gives the reader a sense of what it was like to have been an inmate in a Soviet prison camp, as much as any book could.
The only downside to this approach is that the many, many firsthand stories sometimes overload the reader with repetitive details.
I’m listening to the audio version of this book, but the printed version is 736 pages. My guess is that 436 pages could have accomplished the same ends in a more succinct manner.
But no book, either fiction or nonfiction, is perfect. Gulag: A History is a worthwhile read for anyone with a serious interest in Soviet history.
I am a big fan of making use of all available time. During the spring and summer months, I mow two suburban lawns. That means about three hours of walking behind a lawnmower.
Here’s the problem, though: ordinary earbuds don’t provide sufficient hearing protection while you’re mowing the lawn. Nor are you likely to hear much of what you’re listening to, unless you only want to listen to KISS and AC/DC.
It took me only a minute to sync my pair with my iPhone, which is loaded with podcasts and audiobooks. These headphones muffle the sound of my lawnmower to a very small background rumble, and I can hear the spoken audio content perfectly.
You can also accept incoming calls on these bad boys. Even with the lawnmower going, the party on the other end of the call can hear you perfectly if you speak at normal volume.
Highly recommended for audiobook enthusiasts who mow their own lawns. Audiobooks make the task of lawn-mowing much more pleasant.
