Retelling the Past for Today's Young Readers
“I must confess to considerable distaste for Y. Frankly, I didn’t like him at all. He acted like a wooden Indian.” [Fagone 104] William Friedman‘s aversion to fellow cryptologist Herbert Yardley was sincere, yet his choice of descriptor is odd. … Continued
Elizebeth Smith, like so many bright, talented women of her era, understood the limitations before her. Her Quaker upbringing nurtured natural intellectual curiosity and independence of mind. But the unyielding horizon around her family’s Indiana farm threatened to swallow her. … Continued
David Kahn called it the Yardley Symptom, the compulsion of the cryptologist to chip away at the puzzle throughout his waking moments. He turns the letters over in his mind even as he fries his morning egg, scrubs his evening … Continued
Video Conferencing Presentation on my process writing “The Many Lives of Eddie Rickenbacker.Thursday, October 8, 7:00-7:45 pmZoom Link: https://zoom.us/j/85376796720 Passcode: MLER451
I wrote a tenth grade English research paper on Douglas MacArthur. For whatever reason–most likely the limitations of my sources (source!) or the limitations of my reading of same–I focused primarily on his actions in Korea. I remember writing about … Continued
Guerra = “war” in Spanish. Guerrilla = “little war.” In English, guerilla more often means a fighter in one of those little wars. Louise Spencer’s husband, an engineer for an American mining company in the Philippines, became guerilla fighter. That’s … Continued
The Many Lives of Eddie Rickenbacker is coming out in two months. Just last month I completed and approved the final changes to the manuscript. Near the end of the process I panicked about this sentence: “[Rickenbacker] visited the island … Continued
Enoch Waters called his memoir American Diary. I admit to being confused by the title. I had chosen it mainly as a source of war reporting from the Pacific, especially from an African American correspondent for The Chicago Defender. I … Continued
As the Japanese Imperial Navy was gearing up for war with the Allies, destroyer captain Tameichi Hara was brushing up on his Sun Tzu. The axiom from the third chapter of The Art of War jumped out at him: “If … Continued