Dr. Heilman opens his memoirs with a quote from Benjamin Franklin: “If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten either write things worth the reading or do things worth the writing.” These words are tough to live... Read More

The siblings Crump began transcribing their great-grandmother’s journals some 150 years after Augusta Chase lived through the tumultuous settling of the Kansas Territory. In many ways that settling was a precursor to the Civil War.... Read More

Sexual relations have always been a popular subject for humanity to document—from the Neanderthal cave paintings to Etruscan erotic artwork on the walls of Pompeii; from the pornography empires of Larry Flynt and Hugh Hefner to the... Read More

The literature of the Holocaust is vast and ever-growing. The thousands of memoirs and autobiographies written by survivors can hardly be judged on their literary worth alone. These stories heart-rending and nearly unbelievable in their... Read More

Every law student learns quickly that neither the United States nor any other country has legal authority over foreign powers or their citizens. The United Nations is an institution deprived of the two standard tools of behavior... Read More

There are certainly reasons to approach this book cautiously. Despite producer Irving Thalberg’s celebrated influence on American film, the trite phrase “Hollywood Dreams” gives one pause. In fact, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to... Read More

Tell some people from Chicago that Mayor Richard M. Daley’s political machine takes ten percent off the top and their reply will probably be something along the lines of “So what? This is the best-run city in the country!” A... Read More

“Of gougers fierce, the eyes that pierce, the fiercest gouger he.” —The City of the Saints, Richard Francis Burton. The above quote is a description of the infamous American gunslinger Jack Slade, cited by Dan Rottenberg in this... Read More