Book Watch

"If we had imagined what we were doing in Vietnam it would have had to be stopped. But the images of old women holding shattered babies or of babies screaming ended by passing before our eyes but never penetrating to consciousness where they could be experienced.

As much as any writer who's ever written, Stephen King knows how to grab and hold readers' attention and keep them coming back for more -- and he keeps on giving them their money's worth.by KenOn Friday I began looking at "George Plimpton, Stephen King, and how it can help us readers to know what category of writing we're reading," with the caveat: "

Little Brown has reissued, in a common series format, seven books by George Plimpton which fall more or less in the category of what the author called "participatory journalism."by KenDon't be fooled by the post title.

Plus: The irony of superliar Rafael "Ted fromAlberta" Cruz titling a book A Time For TruthDaily Kos caption: "A Time For Lies?""This fake 'popularity' of conservative books is evidenced by the fact that

In case you're keeping count, as of when I looked this evening, "Mariel Feliciano and 123,347 others like[d] this."by KenI know, I know, you're thinking it's both obvious and childish to be the umpteenth, or umpteen thousandth, person to jump ugly on Facebook guru, and therefore media wizard, Mark Zuckerberg for writing, in a January 2 Facebook p

The most intellectually rigorous of the progressive messaging theorists, George Lakoff, has brought out a new-for-2014 version of his classic Don't Think of an Elephant!by KenI've plunked the new edition of George Lakoff's Don't Think of an Elephant! atop this post because my copy arrived in the mail today.

Central Mongolia is where Tim began his 6000-mile westward horseback journey across the steppe to the Danube. With both Russia to the north and the Chinese "autonomous" province of Xinjiang to the south closed to a foreigner in 2004, he continued into giant Kazakhstan, the second-largest of the former Soviet republics (after Russia).

by KenEspecially with a holiday weekend coming up, some of us may have turned our thoughts to getting some reading done.Summer reading lists have become a publishing tradition, based on the apparent assumption that people who don't read many books the rest of the year suddenly turn bookworm in summer, or perhaps that summer readers are looking for a different kind of reading. Depending on who's doing the listing, I sometimes give a quick glance.

An 1847 view up Wall Streeet to the third (and currrent) Trinity Church, completed just the year before, distributed as last week's "Postcard Thursday" offering from the Inside the Apple blog.