When it comes to murder and mass shootings, America is a freak among nations. Murder rates are highest in countries with the most income inequality, and the U.S. is high on that list with the likes … more

One of the better memories I have from my 1970s high school years are the hours I stole for myself by ditching an English class I despised. I hid out in the stacks of the library, sneaking along the … more

Since time immemorial, writers in Russia have had the most forceful, penetrating and far-reaching responses to what was happening in their country — for those willing to listen, … more

Many times over the last 18-plus years I have wondered why I feel so much at home and so contented on the Key Peninsula. Certainly, there are many similarities to Scotland but that really … more

Some dirty comic book about the Holocaust got banned from the eighth grade English Language Arts curriculum by the McMinn County School Board in southeast Tennessee Jan. 10, because the book has cuss … more

Some of my teenaged relatives enlisted after 9/11.  One became a Marine and deployed to Afghanistan. He did convoy duty or was behind the wire, on base. When he came home, he had nothing but … more

As the former spouse of a Vietnam veteran, I did not think I would ever read another book about that war. For 16 years I absorbed everything I could find to understand the devastation Vietnam did … more

His name still evokes fear, anger and admiration five decades after his murder. Alex Haley interviewed Malcolm X more than 50 times from 1962 to ’65, and the result was a book alive with the same intensity as their all-night talks about racism, protest and brutality that seem little changed since then. more

Many of us went to school with a Shuggie Bain. Depending on what school you attended, there might be several pupils like him in each class. more

“The attack on the Fascist redoubt which had been called off on the previous occasion was to be carried out tonight. I oiled my 10 Mexican cartridges, dirtied my bayonet (the things give your … more

I had no idea. I have been an avid student of American history both before my arrival in this country and while living here and I still had no idea. I prided myself on the breadth of my … more

When you look up a word in the dictionary, do you end up spending half an hour looking up 20 other words? Psychologists have a clinical term for this. You could look it up. more

It seems an appropriate season to revisit the work of an author who wanted nothing but that his readers recognize the unexpected grace in people unlike themselves and offer them an unfamiliar mercy. more

The title comes from Ecclesiasticus 44:1 in the Old Testament, part of the Apocrypha or “Books which are not regarded as equal to the holy scriptures, and yet are profitable and good to … more

“The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914” was a bestseller when it was published by historian Barbara Tuchman in 1966. Drawn from a collection of lengthy essays … more

Sometime in 1987, I think, I accidentally got to hear Toni Morrison read at a private gathering. I was a neophyte assistant at a large publisher in New York City. A sympathetic editor had offered … more