Some people / Eventually may be appraised / By the value of the garbage / They collected on the way. These poems and short-short prose pieces represent conversations with God, atoms, souls and grand existential issues. Subjects stressed... Read More

“Race,” writes the author, “complicates the issue of classical reception more than any other ideological prism, including class, nationalism, or gender and sexuality.” This book explores the relationship between a few African... Read More

Fascinating Fashions: In the 1920s, American women morphed from alabaster Victorian homemakers to painted jazz babies. The conformist ‘50s mom vacuuming in heels made way for braless, mini-skirted, go-go-booted iconoclasts. Thirty... Read More

It is a paradox well worth repeating that no single author is ever quite master of his or her literary material: words outwit and outgrow their writers’ best intentions. (That’s why poetry is not journalism.) This humbling wisdom is... Read More

In the past, when I’ve talked to audiences like this, I’ve often started off with a lawyer joke, a complete caricature of a lawyer who’s been nasty, greedy and unethical. But I’ve stopped that practice. I gradually realized that... Read More

This book takes its title from a song in the 1936 film musical, Swing Time, which starred Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. The lyric recalls a sophisticated tension that strikes the perfect mood and sets the tempo for this all-out... Read More

Dr. Watson is flabbergasted at the landlady’s bombshell, though Holmes merely shrugs until Watson starts to remonstrate with Holmes about financial matters. After all, with Holmes retiring, how is Watson to sell any more of his... Read More

One of the postcards in this meticulously researched book shows a streetcar riot in Muskegon, Michigan on August 5, 1919, where some of the streetcars are overturned. The postcard’s message reads, “Had a serious riot here Tues. eve -... Read More