Many years ago, an old Hungarian acquaintance — an ethnic German native of the Hungarian half of the Austro-Hungarian Empire who had served as a cavalry sergeant in World War I — told me the tragi-comic tale of Trooper Popovich, a Hungarian-born ethnic Serb in his squadron of hussars.
Only several years ago, invoking socialism as a serious alternative to freedom was not entertained in polite society. With self-described “democratic” socialists now in Congress, and more socialists winning Democratic primaries in New York, we can expect new entreaties of religion to justify their philosophy
Dark doesn't even begin to describe Ottessa Moshfegh's latest novel, "Death in Her Hands." Try horrifying, macabre, fashionably self-referential and exceptionally well-written - a book, as the publisher's blurb says, that asks us to consider how the stories we tell ourselves both reflect the truth and keep us blind to it. Plus, it's got a great dog.
They say that the fruit seldom falls far from the tree. This was certainly true with the infamous Jeffrey Epstein, bogus billionaire, phoney philanthropist, suspected blackmailer, proven pedophile and supposed suicide.
Eric Engberg, one of my fishing buddies a couple decades ago, was an on-the-air reporter for CBS News for 26 years until he had emergency bypass surgery, bagged his television career in 2002, bought a used trawler and retired to Florida to fish and enjoy the good life.
When she was 12, Martha McSally's father died unexpectedly, telling her on his deathbed, "make me proud." And that, throughout a distinguished career of service to her country, is precisely what she's done, as she tells us in this well-written, highly-readable personal narrative of overcoming a battery of obstacles to become a genuine American hero.
His superb 2018 debut thriller, "Warning Light," found readers and critics proclaiming that in David Ricciardi this genre had a new star. "One of the best thrillers you'll read this year," Lee Child called it.
There's something about gold. Since earliest times it has obsessed mankind like no other element. The ancient Greek legend of the "Golden Fleece" is both myth and fact. The factual side is based on the real practice of prehistoric prospectors in Colchis, part of what would become the modern-day Republic of Georgia.
In the pre-television and Internet era, it's hard to imagine the wattage a star player such as Lou Gehrig created or the emotion generated by his famous 1939 farewell speech at Yankee Stadium.
As current National Press Club President Michael Freedman points out in his foreword to this engaging pocket history of one of Washington's most colorful institutions, "The National Press Club is 'the stuff of legends,' most of which have the added benefit of being true." Substitute the word "many" for the word "most" and the argument is unassailable.
"I am Ana. I was the wife of Jesus ben Joseph of Nazareth. I called him Beloved and he, laughing, called me Little Thunder." With these opening words, Sue Monk Kidd launches into her ambitious new novel, "The Book of Longings."
I like to think of Stephen King as a high-paid starting pitcher. Between starts -- bestselling novels often thick enough to be doorstops -- he works in the bullpen, writing novellas. Over the years, many of those have been made into movies that are now essential parts of the King canon like "Stand By Me" and "Shawshank Redemption."
I wonder what the late, great spy novelist Charles McCarry would make of the COVID-19 outbreak and the Chinese connection, be it the Wuhan "wet markets" or the science labs near Wuhan. McCarry, who died last year at the age 88, set his 2013 novel "The Shanghai Factor" in China.
