The World At My Birth
I was born March 1, 1965, so let's see what made the New York Times the following day, March 2, 1965: Australia Punishes Dawn Fraser For Capers as Olympic Swimmer…
Random Learnings #69
Growing up in Iowa, all I knew of Kossuth County was its unusual size: essentially double the size of other counties in the state, it's the reason Iowa has 99…
Random Learnings #68
The Literary Digest Vol. 50, No. 2 (9 January 1915) shows World War I's impact on Germany less than six months after declaring war, primarily economically but also socially. Die…
Unique Hotel
My wife and I visited Iowa City, Iowa last week to attend a University of Iowa women's basketball game, a rather bad loss to Minnesota. Our hotel was Graduate by…
Random Learnings #67
If we know anything about National Socialism, it's that for the first time in German politics human stupidity has been successfully and completely mobilized. -Kurt Schumacher, SPD member of Weimar…
Scary Times, Predicted
I'm still working my way through Fateful Hours: The Collapse of the Weimar Republic by Volker Ullrich, in which he gives a riveting account of Germany's inter-war history, from World…
Book Review #3
In the translated book Planning in the USSR by I.A. Yevenko, the communist hyperbole and delusion begins immediately with the Author's Notes on page 5: The system of socialist planned…
Book Review #2
A Brief History of Freemasons: the true story of the World's Most Powerful Secret Society: From the back cover: An illuminating and unbiased history of this most enigmatic secret society.…
Constitutionality
Donald Trump's continual declaration of national emergencies that he uses to declare executive orders of dubious legitimacy harkens back to similar usage in Germany following World War I. This was…
Book Review #1
The cover description of Retreat From Glory by R. H. Bruce Lockhart in tantalizing: By the author of British Agent. Mr Bruce Lockhart continues the fascinating story of his career.…