Last week I did presentations on history in three middle schools in three different Georgia counties, Gwinnett and Walton in metro Atlanta and Fannin in North Georgia. Two of the programs were for 8th graders and one for 6th graders. I’ve been doing public speaking since I first started this job nearly 16 years ago, …Continue Reading »
The Richard Burton Diaries. Edited by Chris Williams. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012. $35.00. 693 pp. “Do you really keep a diary? I’d give anything to look at it. May I?” So asked Algernon, to Cecily, in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. Reading someone else’s letters and diaries can be a great …Continue Reading »
Spencer Tracy: A Biography. By James Curtis. Alfred A. Knopf, 2011, 1,001 pp. $39.95 He’s the kind of actor who makes it look so easy and you think to yourself, I can do that. Go ahead and try it. It’s not easy and you can’t do it. Spencer Tracy is widely considered to be the …Continue Reading »
In case you missed them, here’s a roundup of some interesting stories related to history that have been in the news recently. The freshest advices, foreign and domestic. Enjoy. Selfies before Selfies: Here’s a story about a cache of photographs that were found of a man who took almost 450 pictures of himself in …Continue Reading »
Poet Pam Brown wrote that the difference between “coming home to an empty house” and “coming home” is one small cat. You wouldn’t think that an 8-pound ball of fur that mainly played, ate, and slept could do that to your heart. But she did. And it didn’t take long. I first met the cat …Continue Reading »