Long Before The Beatles, There Was Elmer Just prior to the firing on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, triggering the Civil War in 1861, one of the most famous men in America was Elmer Ellsworth. Never heard of him? In 1861, everyone knew his name. This...
Why Is Brezhnev Kissing Honecker on The Berlin Wall? It's called "The Kiss"Â or "The Kiss of Death."Â And it is perhaps the most famous image that appears in Berlin's East Side Gallery--a nearly mile-long mile stretch of the Berlin Wall. What's left of the Wall,...
The Puzzle People and the Trouble with Trabis The votes are in, and East Germany's Trabant has been named the 9th worst car of all time, according to Edmunds.com. Much of my new novel, The Puzzle People, takes place in East Berlin during the Cold War, so the Trabant...
Bill Bryson Shines a Light on Rats and Other Pests in His History of the Home One of the scenes in my new novel, The Puzzle People, features an escape through the Berlin sewer system--a scene based on an actual escape that took place on October 12, 1961. In my version...
Shell Shock Diagnosis Emerges From the Horrors of World War I I watched the Stephen Spielberg movie, War Horse, on the same weekend that I taped the latest episode of the PBS show, Downton Abbey, giving me a double-dose of World War I. The trauma of shell shock and...
Solving a 600-Million-Piece Puzzle My new novel, The Puzzle People, hasn't quite hit the shelves yet. But it has hit the webosphere and is now available for download on Kindle, Nook, IBook, and other electronic formats. But exactly who were the Puzzle People? My novel...
Elijah Lovejoy's Last Stand Mobs had already destroyed Elijah Lovejoy's printing press three times, and they were aiming for a fourth time in November of 1837. Lovejoy, a Presbyterian minister, had riled up people in St. Louis for his abolitionist views in his...