I was surprised and flattered to stumble across my name and the article I wrote on Warren G. Harding’s 1921 civil rights speech in Birmingham, Alabama in Jon Meacham’s new book The Soul of America. It was the first, and I hope not the last, time my name is in the pages of a New … More Jon Meacham’s The Soul of America
From Chapter 19 All around I knew there were underground tunnels left by the coal mines. Nobody bothered to keep track of them so today no one knows for sure where they are until a building cracks apart when the coal mine deep underground collapses. Even the rich people in the better part of town … More A Short Excerpt from my novel “Darryl Ray”
It may be fairly estimated that every ton of coal taken from the earth has come at the cost of one drop of human blood. The history of coal has been one of the most violent chapters in human history from the inherent risks of mining, the intense conflicts generated by owners and miners and … More Excerpt from “The Herrin Massacre”
Favorite books The Crisis of the Old Order by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr Truman by David McCulloch Lincoln by David Herbert Donald Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Dr. Hunter S. Thompson Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin Walden by Henry David Thoreau The Collected Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway The Gallery of Regrettable … More Favorites & Top Tens
Here’s an article from 2018 in History News Network Flying in the post September 11th world is often a maddening gauntlet of petty and seemingly arbitrary rules and procedures at the cold, probing hands of the TSA. But the current security measures are only additions built upon the foundations of the reaction to a wave … More Hijackers
I can still feel the music shaking my ribs and sternum, the 100-plus decibels impacting my eardrums, the lights on stage filling the once-dark arena. And suddenly a man wearing a loincloth hanging onto a rope swings across the stage like Tarzan, swinging back and forth until he stops and grabs a guitar. Ted Nugent, … More Still Fans?
Selections of my work, from Moonpies to geopolitics. … More Some of my Work
