Teacher and Author
I implied–well, stated outright–that Rickenbacker was an indulgent father. That’s not quite right, of course. Human behavior is always more complicated than a single word can capture. That he could seem indulgent from a few lines of his letters is … Continued
Forget the one percent, says David Brooks. It’s all about the top ten–or perhaps twenty–percent. My family falls at the cusp of this upper income quintile, yet family wealth (see Thomas Picketty) has loomed even larger in our household’s well-being. … Continued
“Sometimes it’s hard to tell fact from fiction.” So begins Candace Fleming’s Amelia Lost, in her foreword called “Navigating History.” Fleming wants her reader to know–up front, right from the start–that there was much she unearthed in her research that … Continued
The Chicago Tribune declared him “a speed-mad, matrimony insulated-bachelor.” He “has but one love,” it said, “and that the thoroughbred of steel with which he pursues prize money.” Whenever he was asked if he had a girl, Eddie would insist, … Continued
He was no Eddie Rickenbacker. He did not grow up poor, was not forced to drop out of school and work on factory floors after his father’s untimely death. He did not need boundless energy and ambition just to escape … Continued
Biographies of Eddie Rickenbacker bear titles and subtitles such as “Enduring Courage,” “An American Hero of the Twentieth Century,” “Rickenbacker’s Luck.” Would these books and these epithets have been written had things happened, not so much differently as, at different … Continued