Wow. Just wow. “The Alluring Art of Margaret Brundage” is a gorgeous, lavishly illustrated history of one of the great, forgotten cover artists of the 1930’s pulp magazines. Artist Margaret Brundage lived an interesting, challenging life but what she is remembered for today are her pulp magazine covers, mainly for Weird Tales. This history reproduces […]
I loved Blood of an Exile by Brian Naslund. He is a new author and this is the start of a great new world in fantasy. His new series is called The Dragons of Terra. This is important not because dragons figure prominently in his new book (although they do) but because of what kind […]
“Aurora Blazing” is Jessie Mihalik’s newest installation in her three-part series “The Consortium Rebellion.” We have to have a rebellion, right? We’re always fighting the evil government, never paying attention to the fact that, if we win, we will become the evil government that good rebels will fight. Meanwhile, the rank and file who die […]
97 Orchard: The Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement by Jane Ziegelman is a valuable addition to your library if you’re interested in how normal people lived in the past. Not the aristocracy. Real people. Ms. Ziegelman is the director of the Tenement Museum’s culinary center. Her well-researched book covers […]
Work on the Thurber book is proceeding apace. Most of the footnotes are done, and I’m working on a map of Columbus, Ohio, when Thurber lived there. One biographer mentioned that his family moved no less than 14 times during his childhood, yet apart from a few years spent in Washington, D.C., they stayed within […]
Now that we’ve been doing public appearances, we’ve fallen into a pattern. Summer’s the high time with frequent weekend events. There’s surprise events, like signings at Cupboard Maker Books. We slow down a little in the fall, and come to a halt at Small Business Saturday after Thanksgiving. After that, there’s no events at all. […]
Welcome to the fifth installment of “The Adventures of Shylock Homes” by John Kendrick Bangs. (Read the first one here.) Bangs wrote 10 of these installments of Shylock’s adventures in the underworld for American newspapers in 1903. In this episode, he takes on Rip Van Winkle. It was not many days after the amusing discomfiture […]
Welcome to the fourth installment of “The Adventures of Shylock Homes” by John Kendrick Bangs. (Read the first one here.) Bangs wrote 10 of these installments of Shylock’s adventures in the underworld for American newspapers in 1903. In this episode, he matches wits again with his nemesis LeCoq, involving the solution of an historical mystery. […]
Welcome to the third installment of “The Adventures of Shylock Homes” by John Kendrick Bangs. (Read the first one here, and the second one here.) Bangs wrote 10 of these installments of Shylock’s adventures in the underworld for American newspapers in 1903. In this episode, he meets the Arthurian knight Lohengrin, who needs Homes’ help […]