During the Northern Ireland civil war from 1968 to 1998, known as “The Troubles,” a spectrum of adversarial Roman Catholic “Republican” and Protestant “Loyalist” terrorist groups, and the responding British government’s military, police and intelligence undercover units, operated in the province.
“On the night of April 18, 1908, in the railroad town Bellefontaine, Ohio, eighteen-year-old Charles Demar walked into the fruit shop he owned with his uncle, Salvatore Cira, and put a bullet into his uncle’s head,” opens the story of a Post Office inspector who investigated Black Hand criminals — with a suitable bang.
Arne Duncan's memoir of his experience as U.S. secretary of Education under President Barack Obama draws you in because he acknowledges that K-12 education in America is built on a tissue of lies. His opening sentence is: "Education runs on lies." But all too often he himself falls into misstatements, delusions and omissions of needed facts. Blinders made out of his beliefs block him from facing reality.
MASTER OF PERSUASION: BRIAN MULRONEY'S GLOBAL LEGACY
Dystopian novels spin off a current reality to show it leading to a hateful life down the road, when its abuses will have established a stranglehold.
Having read Los Angles prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi's book on the Charles Manson trial, "Helter Skelter," in 1974, I thought the case was closed on Manson. But then I read Jeff Guinn's excellent biography, "Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson," (which I reviewed here in August of 2013).
The June suicides of fashion designer Kate Spade and celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain shed a light on mental illness and how it affects celebrities. It also brought to mind the similar death of actor and comedian Robin Williams that stunned the world in August 2014.
History doesn't care. Learning recently that a warship named for my ancestor was lost in solo combat off Guadalcanal -- sunk in minutes by Japanese planes that left sailors swimming with sharks for three days and claimed 233 American lives -- I could find only one comparison: The famous sinking of USS Indianapolis on July 30, 1945.
Of the heroic men who signed the Declaration of Independence, Dr. Benjamin Rush surely deserves high rank for all-around versatility.
The first page of "Red, White, Blue" notes that Anna had inherited grace. "She was, some might say, born for public life. She was also born temperamentally disposed against it, against even the occasional party."
"Birds of Pray," available Tuesday, depicts the ebbs and flows of the Philadelphia Eagles' triumphant 2017 season with a focus on the Christian faith of many of their key players.
The most memorable line of the 2016 presidential campaign was delivered in a speech by Hillary Clinton to a group of donors, in which she said "you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it."
