By Jason Elliot Jason Elliot first traveled from England to Afghanistan in 1979, at age nineteen, during the Soviet occupation. His second journey occurred after the Soviets had pulled out and the Afghans were fighting the Taliban. An Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan is a travelogue of three journeys, each ten years apart, interspersed with […]
By Randy L. Schmidt Karen Carpenter is almost as famous for her anorexia nervosa death as for being lead singer of the duo, The Carpenters, in the 1970s. Little Girl Blue: The Life of Karen Carpenter encapsulates two decades of research by author Randy Schmidt. He became fascinated with Karen when he watched the made-for-TV […]
By Gregory L. Vistica Secretary of the Navy John Lehman largely orchestrated the Reagan military buildup of the 1980s. To obtain funding for a massive force of aircraft carriers and new strategic homeports, designed to counter a perceived Soviet threat, Lehman suppressed intelligence reports and studies that described a defensive, submarine-based Soviet navy. So says […]
By Christopher Corbett Polly Bemis became a nationwide news sensation when she arrived in the town of Grangeville, Idaho, in 1923, coming out of the mountains for the first time in fifty years. The 70-year-old Chinese woman, who had never heard of trains or automobiles or electricity, wanted dental work and eyeglasses. About emigrating from […]
By Oscar Andrew Hammerstein The Hammersteins: A Musical Theatre Family, by Oscar Andrew Hammerstein, commemorates the author’s grandfather and great-great grandfather, the first two Oscar Hammersteins. Oscar I turned the future Times Square into the theater capital of the world. Oscar II gave us some of our best-known musicals, from Showboat to Oklahoma! to The […]
By Eileen Sisk “This biography paints an unprecedented portrait of not only country’s biggest star of the ’60s, but perhaps its biggest son of a bitch.” So says the jacket cover of Buck Owens: The Biography. Following 19 number one songs on Billboard’s charts, Buck Owens spent 17 years as co-host of syndicated television show […]
By Rosanne Cash Rosanne Cash is the eldest of four daughters of Johnny Cash and his first wife, Vivian Liberto. She was born to the impoverished young couple in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1955, one month before the release of her father’s first single, “Cry, Cry, Cry.” They moved to Los Angeles several years later, after […]
By Jeffrey Buckner Ford River of No Return: Tennessee Ernie Ford and the Woman He Loved is the story of a husband and wife who loved each other deeply, whose alcohol addictions swept them helplessly down a river, and whose emotional instabilities made it a river of no return. The cover photo beautifully illustrates this […]
Author: Kingsley Browne “Much of men’s motivation to fight comes from their appreciation of the link between warfare and masculinity,” Kingsley Browne states in Co-Ed Combat, “and disruption of that link is likely to diminish their motivation.” Allowing women to be combat soldiers would decouple being a soldier from being a man, and failure in […]