Teacher and Author
Erik Larson describes Martha Dodd’s, Sowing the Wind as the tale of “a good-hearted World War I flying ace” being “seduced and degraded” by Nazi brutality. [In the Garden of Beasts 359] Her tale is redolent of W. H. Auden … Continued
Martha Dodd. She was not a journalist stationed in Berlin. She did not report on the heady news from a Nazifying Germany (though she had had a brief stint with the Chicago Tribune). She was no diplomat. She did not … Continued
“This is a big story,” says Steve Sheinkin at the start of Bomb: A Race to Build–and Steal–the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon (Roaring Brook Press, 2012). Indeed. For those, like me, who came of age in the late seventies … Continued
What a delightful book! Sarah Jane Marsh shows that big events in history can be simplified for younger readers without dumbing them down. She establishes on the first two pages that Paine is a dreamer, enamored with words. On the … Continued
Charles Dickens and the Street Children of London is a biography of Charles Dickens and a brief history of a reform movement. The industrial revolution created great wealth for a few and new opportunities for a growing middle class. It … Continued
“I have always had an insatiable desire to learn,” Eddie Rickenbacker told his hometown newspaper in 1955 when he was at the peak of his power as president of Eastern Air Lines. He wasn’t bragging. Eddie sought knowledge with an … Continued
Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give accomplishes what fiction does best: create a world recognizably our own and takes us to places, physical and otherwise, we couldn’t otherwise go. Through the life of Starr Carter, we travel back and forth … Continued
Before and after. Before, he was a gadfly, goading leaders to hasten the age of aviation. After, he was a Jeremiah, warning against complacency, denouncing featherbedding. In between, there was a twenty-three-day ordeal on the Pacific. Because he survived, he … Continued
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