Book Review
Legends Never Die
Against all the laws of nature, certain sports heroes pull off the extraordinary stunt of running faster, jumping higher, hitting a ball farther after they die. In a word, athletes—think George Gipp (the Gipper), Lou Gehrig, Dale...
Book Review
The Vél d'Hiv Raid
Rare and invaluable is the writer who can address a topic that can’t possibly withstand further scrutiny—oh please, not again—only to produce a brilliantly original, insight-filled manifesto. Maurice Rajsfus pulls off that exact...
Book Review
Pie & Whiskey
In vino veritas, in whiskey wit, in pie pleasure. With that Latin-inspired preamble, we are called West to an all-American literary event held annually in Spokane and Missoula named Pie & Whiskey. And yes, pie and whiskey are served...
Book Review
Canada's Dream Shall Be of Them
War memorials—it doesn’t get any gloomier, but also awe-inspiring as the male mind seeks to comprehend the horror of battle, from a but-for-the-grace-of-God vantage point. World War One took the lives of 66,000 Canadians and maimed...
Book Review
Ralph Fasanella
Facing a blank canvas, most artists strive to paint a pretty picture under the guidelines (however loose) of Impressionism, Expressionism, or some other style or technique, while a rarer few seek to use their paintings to address...
Book Review
From the Dugouts to the Trenches
Major League Baseball has gone to war with itself—the Black Sox gambling scandal, collective-bargaining negotiations in the late 1960s, steroid use—and also against Germany and Austria-Hungary during World War I when more than 1,250...
Book Review
The Arctic Melt
The term “climate change” obscures the infinite number of global disturbances caused by rising temperatures. One of the dooziest is taking place at the earth’s poles: ice is changing to water and that melting exposes land and...
Book Review
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
With Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, the explosive year of 1967 got the album it deserved—delivered from a band desperate to replace its mop-top-boys persona with that of artists-basking-in-the-glow-of-psychedelia. Described as a...