Retelling the Past for Today's Young Readers
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
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
Ian Toll‘s Pacific War Trilogy, coming in at more than 1,700 pages of text and 500 pages of notes and sources, obviously aims for comprehensiveness. Yet, in its breadth, there are nevertheless many moments of you-were-there intimacy. Instead of dry … Continued
Silly or serious? Silly and serious? The fight over American Dirt can seem either or both. “Mexicans have been writing about the border and borderlands published in English since the 1800s. It is a bit insulting that someone thinks we … Continued
To start with, only one lived to tell his tale. Only one could, in subsequent years, collect information from the public record and recollect his actions, thoughts, and emotions at the time. The other left only letters for a stranger … Continued