The 9th Worst Car of All Time!
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...
Rats!
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...
War Horse, Downton Abbey, and Trench Warfare
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...
‘The Puzzle People’ is Out on eBooks–But Who Are the Puzzle People?
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...
The Civil War’s First Martyr
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...
How Do You Say ‘Oops’ in German?
A Bureaucrat's Mistake Led to the Fall of the Berlin Wall In a country loaded with bureaucrats, it seems oddly fitting that a bureaucratic blunder would lead to the fall of the Berlin Wall. To set the scene, the year was 1989, and the Soviet empire was unraveling. In...
Mao: The Unknown Story
Powerful Biography Lays Millions of Deaths at Mao's Feet The first sentence of the acclaimed biography, Mao: The Unknown Story, couldn't be more to the point: "Mao Tse-Tung, who for decades held absolute power over the lives of one-quarter of the world's population,...
Henry and Nancy
Canton Actors Bring a Remarkable Couple to Life When a friend first approached Roslyn Pratt about playing Nancy Brown in the Canton film production of The Disappearing Man, her first reaction was "Oh no, you don't."Â Based on her extensive stage experience, Pratt...
One Book, One Community–And One Film
Canton Group Brings The Disappearing Man to Life Furious, the overseer stepped away from Mamma and kicked up dust with his boot...Then he picked up a stick, a sturdy one, and circled Mamma like he would a dangerous dog. Henry had to act. He knew it now...The overseer...