Professor O. B. Fuscate © By S. Martin Shelton Professor Fuscate’s strides are long and quick. He’s late for his lecture “Deconstructing Dashiell Hammett’s novel The Maltese Falcon.” To save a few steps, he cuts through the parking lot. His mind is focused sharply on telling his students what Hammett meant in the scene where […]
Category Archives: 20th Century Topics
BOOK REVIEW: Bohemians, Bootleggers, Flappers, and Swells by Graydon Carter, editor
The title of this book promises more than it delivers. It’s a completion of seventy-two articles that were published in the magazine Vanity Fair in the 1910s, ‘20s, and ‘30s. On the whole, the articles are thoughtful, perceptive, and sometimes clever. I expected a frivolous, funny, and carefree expose of the Roaring-Twenties: jazz, bootleggers, flappers, […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Last Days of the Romanovs: Tragedy at Ekaterinburg by Helen Rappaport
This powerful account of the Romanovs’ internment and regicide at “The House of Special Purpose” at Ekaterinburg, July 1918, is compelling, evocative, and horrifying. I suspect that Rappaport’s book on this ghoulish event is the most meticulously researched and accurate account of the Bolshevik’s liquidation of Czar Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra, and their five children. […]
BOOK REVIEW: Killing Patton by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard
Killing Patton is a compelling tale of World War II’s greatest general: George S. Patton (1885 to 1945). The manuscript reads easily—almost as an adventure novel. We are propelled into the story as a participant as our intense empathy builds. Importantly, one does not have to have a keen knowledge of the War to follow Patton’s […]
Book Review: Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War by Mark Harris
Mark Harris weaves an intriguing story of five top-notch motion-picture directors that abandoned their careers in Hollywood and joined the military to help win World War II by producing documentary, propaganda, and information films. He has integrated numerous moving parts into a coherent tale with keen interest. It’s a heavy book that deserves a careful […]
Early Leica Cameras
Ernst Leitz GmbH, Wetzlar produced their first Leica camera in 1913. In 1925 Leitz introduced the Leica model 1A and continued its production until 1930. The model 1A was the first mass produced 35mm camera of high quality. Following were a series of several dozen cameras with constantly improving functions and reliability. Introduced in 1933, […]
Malaysia Missing Flight
It’s now thirteen weeks since Malaysia Flight 370—a Boeing model 777 aircraft disappeared. It’s not where the searchers heard the pings in the Indian Ocean: about one-thousand miles off the coast of western Australia. Searchers are at a loss. Flight 370 seems to have vanished into the ether, or elsewhere. Today, I received an email […]
Thoughts About D-Day, 6 June 1944
We thank and honor the men who landed on the Normandy beaches on June 6th 1944. All are heroes. I was fifteen years old when we heard a radio announcer blurt that the Allies had landed on the beaches in northern France. Involved were 130,000 Allied soldiers from USA, Britain, Canada, and the Free French. There was […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Guns of Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944 to 1945 Volume III by Rick Atkinson
The Guns of Last Light, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2013, 877 pp. Contents, 29 maps, photographs, Notes, 167 pp.; Selected Sources, 28 pp,; Acknowledgements, 6 pp.; Index, 26 pp. Volume Three of Atkinson’s liberation trilogy details the exploits of the United States Army in North Africa, Italy, and Western Europe during World War […]
Famous Missing Flights
Malaysia Flight 370 disappeared over six weeks ago. The primary search instrument is damaged, and for now, the hunt for this airplane is on hold. Some of the searchers wonder if this airplane is in the wide area in which they are looking. Meantime, let’s review some of the more famous aircraft disappearances. 8 […]