News

Ron Silver    1946 – 2009

Ron Silver died in his sleep on Sunday at his home in Manhattan.  He was 62. When I was named editor of Saturday Review in 1984, one of my first tasks was to liven up that distinguished by moribund institution.  In my search for interesting and unusual reviewers and...

As Others See Us

("L'Amerique Septentrionale Divisee En Ses Principales Parties ..."  This map of North America, from Pierre Mortier's Atlas Nouveau, was printed in either Amsterdam or Paris in 1692.  It depicts California as an island and and represents six, rather than five, Great...

Equal time for Democratic Poker Party

  Both the Republican Poker Party “Grand Ol’ Gang” and Democratic Poker Party “True Blues” are reproductions from paintings by Andy Thomas.  Mr. Thomas does Civil War, Oil Well and Western Prints.  There is a local art gallery in town, “The Galloping Goose” that has...

Blue Orange?

(Cross posted from Epic Journey) Orange County, birthplace of Richard Nixon, may be on the cusp of political upheaval. In the Orange County Register, Dena Bunis reports: Orange County Democrats have become so emboldened by how well President Barack Obama did here on...

Jonathan Aitken To Revisit RN

One thing that becomes apparent if one's followed the world of books for a while is that when the anniversary of a famed personality's birth (or sometimes death) comes up, there are likely to be one or more volumes to mark the occasion. In the world of literature,...

The Freeman Fracas

When President Obama, during his period of transition, announced that he was appointing onetime Nixon White House aide Leon Panetta to head the CIA, the former Clinton chief of staff's appointment, after a few initial stirrings of dissatisfaction, sailed through the...

The Chance That Ted Missed

Eleanor Clift, in a Newsweek article on Sen. Ted Kennedy's effort to get a comprehensive health-insurance program through Congress, reminds readers that he once had a chance to help reach that goal but let it slip through his hands in the name of political...