Teacher and Author
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
“Reliving this chapter of my life is not an easy thing to do because of the trauma and excruciating pain it caused me for many years. Yet I know it must be told….” [130] The sentence leads the ninth and … 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