Review by Jim McCarthy Admittedly, this reviewer, a retired attorney, favors reading legal novels, especially thrillers or suspense tales. Scott Turow ventured away from US shores to craft a story about an incident in the very complicated ethnic conflict in Bosnia… Read More ›
Book Review
THE RECKONING by John Grisham: A Review
Review by Jim McCarthy After a blockbuster start with A Time to Kill in 1981, followed by a dozen equally captivating legal dramas and thrillers, John Grisham’s works beginning in the early 2000s began to stumble. The Reckoning seemed an… Read More ›
RUSSIAN ROULETTE by Michael Isikoff and David Corn: Review
Review by Jim McCarthy Any who have followed the byzantine architecture that constitutes the Trump-Putin relationship and the Russian meddling in our 2016 presidential election will find little new facts in this narrative by two seasoned polemicists. Russian Roulette is likely… Read More ›
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: The Patriarchy Will Always Have Its Revenge
I remember her turquoise suit, her red lipstick, her perfect posture, her poise. I remember Justice Thomas’ denials, and the senators’ sneers and the pundits’ dismissals. She followed him from one job to another, they’d say. A few jokes about… Read More ›
BOOK REVIEW: Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County, by Kristen Green
Book review by Jim McCarthy Sub-titled A Family, a Virginia Town, A Civil Rights Battle, this sometimes first-hand account of the massive resistance that gripped Virginia chronicles the author’s recall of her experience in the 1950s and ‘60s in Prince… Read More ›
Defectors, by Joseph Kanon
Reviewed by Jim McCarthy Occasionally, it’s a good thing for a blog that tends to be serious to reveal its lighter side and share its interest in fiction, especially police procedurals and spy tales. Defectors is set in Russia in… Read More ›
BOOK REVIEW: The Fifties, by David Halberstam
Reviewed by Jim McCarthy Readers should recall Halberstam’s seminal volume The Best and the Brightest,… Read More ›
BOOK REVIEW: Leonardo da Vinci, by Walter Isaacson
Reviewed by Jim McCarthy “Just out of curiosity. Pure curiosity.” These are the final words of Isaacson’s impressive biography of Leonardo da Vinci, which includes a number of excerpts from da Vinci’s writings as well as over 100 illustrations of artistic accomplishments,… Read More ›
Clapper: Russians Swung Election for Trump
As discussed with Rachel Maddow on May 23, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, in his new book, affirms his clear opinion that the Russians swung the 2016 presidential election for Donald Trump. In the book, Clapper writes: By… Read More ›
“DEMOCRATS NOMINATE VIRULENT ANTI-SEMITE IN THE FIFTH DISTRICT” ~VA GOP Press Release
Following is the first paragraph of the VA GOP’s press release: May 5, 2018 Richmond, VA – Today, the Democrat Party of Virginia nominated Leslie Cockburn to run against Republican incumbent Tom Garrett in Virginia’s Fifth Congressional District. Cockburn has a… Read More ›