In the wake of the tragic crash of American Airlines Flight 5342 with an Army Black Hawk helicopter over Washington, D.C., and the Learjet 55 crash in Philadelphia, I’m reminded of a plane crash during my time in the Afghanistan War and how a group of soldiers with whom I served barely escaped a terrible […]
Some kinds of creativity are harder to capture on camera than others. Eureka moments are fairly easy to present in music or occasionally in art. Architecture can have its napkin sketch epiphanies, but the fundamental requirement of the profession is then to tweak these dreams to hold up floors and keep out rain, a process […]
What is it about the Wild West that keeps us coming back for more? Surely the popular appeal of the Western, on the page, on the stage, and on the screen, derives at least in part from prurience — the ever-present blood, guts, and sex on prominent display in an untamed land. On top of […]
Although always popular, revisionist history is an area fraught with pitfalls. This is because, fundamentally, most historians are not idiots, and the standard version of history is more often than not broadly correct. Archives may be opened, errors corrected, and characters added to the storyline, but truly revolutionary reinterpretations, at least sane ones, are uncommon. […]
Nuns, Sylvia Townsend Warner wrote in her historical novel The Corner That Held Them, set in a 14th-century English convent, are “beings who are, in any case, much less interesting when seen from above than when studied sideways.” The nun at the center of Australian writer Charlotte Wood’s new novel, the 2024 Booker Prize-shortlisted Stone […]
Bram Stoker’s Dracula begins with an unsettling journey. As Jonathan Harker crosses the Danube River, he remarks ominously, “The impression I had was that we were leaving the West and entering the East; the most western of splendid bridges over the Danube, which is here of noble width and depth, took us among the traditions […]
One would think that after an election in which Democrats were thoroughly trounced on the matter of illegal immigration, their party might be looking for an opportunity to show it is capable of delivering law and order. However, that is not the case in Los Angeles, where Mayor Karen Bass, fresh off letting entire neighborhoods burn […]
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said discussions over how to pass President Trump’s legislative agenda will continue through the weekend — including Super Bowl Sunday — as lawmakers race to complete the final details of the sprawling package as the Senate threatens to move on its contrasting strategy. Leaving the Capitol just before midnight on Thursday after a...
A high-profile sheriff in Michigan who first came to national attention in 2020, has announced his bid to run for governor, replacing Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
The Trump administration presented a plan Thursday to dramatically cut staffing worldwide for U.S. aid projects as part of its dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, leaving fewer than 300 workers out of thousands.