Literature and Poetry
Books and Authors Worth Revisiting: Islandia By Austen Tappan Wright
The outstanding characteristic of Islandia is that it will leave no reader unmoved, or even untouched. To make your way through this tour de force of imagination will change you, according to what aspect of it touches you most closely. more »
CultureWatch, August 2009
Duchess of Death tells of Agatha Christie's travels with her husband on Middle East digs, to sleep in a tent or on a desert floor, hardly usual in a woman “to the manor born.” Dreaming in French thrives on the gossipy, ex-pat society of Paris. Drawing in… more »
CultureWatch: My Father's Tears and Other Stories
Divorce is a part in a surprising number of them, and usually the reader cannot imagine any other outcome for the situation described, but sometimes it seems an oddly self-serving decision, with little or no hope of improving the emotional lot of those involved. more »
Book Review of We Had Sneakers, They Had Guns: The Kids Who Fought for Civil Rights in Mississippi
Tracy Sugarman describes the roads different people in the summer project took after 1964, including his own, that of the white couple, local blacks, SNCC and summer workers. In 1978 Sugarman and his wife began a documentary on Fannie Lou Hamer, who had died the year before. Never Turn Back: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer took five years to complete. more »
