THE GIZA POWER PLANT, by Christopher Dunn.

A book that makes you scratch your head. THE GIZA POWER PLANT is an incredibly thought-provoking work which turns traditional Egyptology on its head by proposing that the Pyramids – with its elaborate structure of internal chambers and complex passageways, positioned with flawless precision – collected earth’s vibrational energy and converted it into power.

It’s wild. And author Chris Dunn knows it and that he faces an uphill battle to persuade the reader. After all, most of us learned as small children that the Pyramids were built by slaves or common workers using hammers and chisels, pushing 20-ton blocks over the sand, dragging them up ramps to a height as much as 480 feet! Somehow, this crew cut 2,300,000 (!!!) stone blocks from a quarry on the other side of the Nile, and fit them together to a tolerance of 1/20^th of an inch. We also learned that these structures were simply tombs or burial chambers for the Pharaohs, who apparently performed motivational miracles to get workers – in 110-degree temperatures, on soft sand no less, to build these things. And all this occurred some 4500 years ago, before iron, before steel, when people lived in clay huts.

Chris Dunn finds this laughable. As did my esteemed Columbia professor, Last week’s post: An engineer turns Egyptology on its head. I found this book tricky to talk about, because it can be technical. The Pyramid is incredibly complicated. But in my own layman’s terms, let me take a stab at Chris Dunn’s unshakeable conclusion: the Great Pyramid was a complicated energy-generating device. Its layout, chambers and passageways were aligned in such a precise and intentional way as to bring several natural forces together. They collected the gravitational and subtle vibrations of the earth itself, turning them into sound waves of a desired frequency. These waves were directed into an acoustical resonance chamber (commonly called the “Grand Gallery”), then amplified up into the “King’s Chamber”, then distributed outward through angled “air shafts.” Other shafts brought in microwave signals and hydrogen (ever-present in our atmosphere, and was ‘collected’ by the Pyramid; hydrogen’s ‘universal wavelength’ exactly matches the dimensions of one of these shafts). The massive black granite box in the King’s Chamber (no, it’s NOT a sarcophagus) was actually a ‘crystal oscillator’, due to the incredibly high quartz content imbedded in the granite. (This super-saturated-with-quartz granite came from a quarry over 500 miles away!)

So, the “Kings Chamber” resonated like the cavity in a guitar, echoing these waves, increasing their force through massive granite beams (the so-called Relieving Chambers) above the King’s Chamber. Dunn shows how these beams were tooled to such incredibly precise dimensions so as to amplify the waves passing through them. Accordingly, vast amounts of energy were produced. My best summary: due to the quartz and the precise alignments, and the chemicals introduced, the Great Pyramid produced endless free energy much like a quartz watch.

So that’s the deal. An ancient yet super advanced civilization built the most elaborate quartz watch in the solar system, at least 4500 years ago. To be sure, my super-simplified explanation is an insult to author Chris Dunn, who goes to incredibly elaborate steps to demonstrate exactly how the Pyramid at Giza was an energy device. It all sounds so far-fetched; and Dunn agrees! But then he explains it all, in careful detail. Step by step. And it’s convincing! As poor as my summary is, Dunn admirably describes the vibrations, microwaves, hydrogen combustion and acoustical properties at work here. I hasten to add, he’s also the first to admit: he doesn’t have all the answers. But one thing is quite clear. This is not the tomb for a Pharaoh.

Done begins by describing dozens of the incredibly precise objects and items found within the Pyramid. Corbelled stones machine-cut to a tolerance of less than a millimeter. Polished granite boxes 10 times larger than the passageways that lead to them. The nature of the specialized quartz, the impossible alignment of chambers, passageways, and the meticulously angled shafts 350 feet long that deviate less than 1/4 inch their entire length. When you read his catalog of unexplainable items, each accomplished before iron, steel, or saw-blades, you’re baffled. Workers using hammers and copper chisels did not forge 2,300,000 20-ton blocks. Dunn simply states this is nonsense.

Christopher Dunn master Mechanical Engineer and machinist. He researches with a fresh set of eyes, not clouded by academic tradition or relationships. With his technical expertise, he simply looks at the Pyramid differently. He sees a machine, while others see blocks of rock. Dunn offers example after example of the incredible techniques used in the Pyramids. He provides irrefutable evidence that ancient Egyptians had powerful machining techniques where they cut through the hardest granite far more efficiently than we can today. They used high-powered cutting tools in three-dimensional ways with such accuracy as to defy modern methods. Nothing less than sophisticated machines could have produced the fittings and stone cuttings. He draws on his mechanical and machine background to explain the construction difficulties in the passageways, artifacts, chambers and angles. Such construction, he states, would be virtually impossible today, even using diamond-tipped saws and space age technology. He shows ample evidence that the precise corners and precision stonework in the Pyramid was achieved by machine power, using pressure and force that we simply don’t have today. The rocks themselves show machine marks, where high speed metal slid through stone like butter.

Read this book with an open mind. It’s a lot of fun. The speculation starts from the first page: how did the builders of the Pyramids know the exact distance from the earth to the sun? How did they know the exact circumference of the earth? How did achieve a perfect North – South alignment? And how did they possibly build the Pyramids on a flawlessly level platform that varies less than 1/4 inch across the entire base, of thousands of feet?

Many books speculate about time travelers and aliens and unexplainable archaeological anomalies in Egypt, Peru, Stonehenge and many other places. For the most part, these books describe the anomaly itself, but stop without explanation of purpose. The great value in GIZA POWER PLANT is that Chris Dunn does offer an explanation. He explains how the passageways and chambers align mechanically, why it makes sense from a mechanical and engineering standpoint, exactly how the energy was produced, and why it would have worked. He’s persuasive. He’s compelling. And if you have any sense of wonder at all, page after page will trigger your imagination.

Chris Dunn also asks his own questions. If these people produced and distributed so much energy, what did they use it for? He has no idea. He’s simply an engineer who’s identified the Pyramid as a machine. What they did with the energy they produced, he leaves that to others.

There’s some technical stuff. What about the thick acid residue covering the walls and floors of the Queen’s Chamber? Such residue never occurs naturally, it’s always a chemical by-product. He strongly believes the Queen’s Chamber housed a chemical reaction, the acid being a by-product of mixing certain chemicals. He describes this reaction in great detail, but it’s too technical for here. He does conclude there’s strong evidence of a cataclysmic event that occurred within the Great Pyramid. Deep in the center of the Pyramid, an explosion occurred that was strong enough to displace millions of tons of stone. He says the displacement is easy to see when you’re inside the Chamber, as every wall, floor and ceiling is pushed apart from its original position. He speculates such an explosion occurred thousands of years ago, ending the working life of the Great Pyramid.

I found the book mesmerizing. You read GIZA POWER PLANT for the joy of opening your mind to a subject that most of us have pondered for decades. You read GIZA POWER PLANT to hear one astonishing mind-blowing fact after another about the Great Pyramid. You read GIZA to step outside old school archaeology and consider an explanation by a mechanically oriented engineer. This is a book for fans of wild speculation. But little by little, your mind is turned, and the speculation just isn’t so wild. Finally, I think you read GIZA POWER PLANT as a huge invitation to release our minds from the hammer and chisel assumptions that we’ve contributed to ancient societies. These guys clearly had advanced technologies far above and beyond what we have today. Where did they get them? And what in the world happened that they’re no longer with us. These people were more advanced than we are. What’s the explanation for that?

If you’re ready for crazy speculation backed by dozens and dozens of solid examples and explanations, GIZA is for you. This book was written over 25 years ago; maybe I should have said that in the first paragraph. Chris Dunn has written a sequel or two, refining his theories. Dunn has been a regular on Joe Rogan, Coast to Coast, History Channel, and other outlets where open minds are welcomed. He’s not shy with his explanation. It’s wildly entertaining, but his science seems to back it up. Here’s the Amazon link to GIZA POWER PLANT

____________________________________

Meanwhile, back in Arizona, I’m putting the finishing touches on my eighth novel, titled TACO NIGHT AND THE LITTLE OLD LADY. Comments from Advanced Readers are extremely encouraging, and it’s going through final editing right now. As with my other books, it will be published by Playa Chica Press. It’s a lot of fun when you’re near the finish line of a book -- maybe I’ll write about this process next time. Thanks again for reading.

All my work is on MIKE’S BOOKS

Share with a reader you know!

MD in AZ

If you learned in school that the Great Pyramids were built by slaves using chisels and hammers, dragging 20-ton blocks through desert sand, as tombs for Egyptian Pharaohs, modern archeology begs to differ. Author Christopher Dunn is a mechanical engineer and expert on ancient technologies who’s studied the Pyramids of Egypt, extensively. He has an incredible theory: the Great Pyramid of Giza was an enormous energy device, which turned Earth’s vibrational energy into electricity, harnessed it, and released it. With its precise passageways and chambers, The Great Pyramid was in fact a ‘resonator’ to capture vibrations coming from within the Earth. Following 20 years of study, Dunn presents his evidence. It’s detailed, impeccably explained, and persuasive. Was there an ancient culture 1000s of years ago, so technologically advanced, with techniques and abilities still not understood today? Dunn makes an incredible case that this is true.

But before a look at the book, here’s why I’ve always been fascinated with the Pyramids. It’s a tale from my college years.

I went to college at Columbia in New York City. Columbia is a terrific school for many reasons. (As an alum it’s sad for me to see how Columbia’s reputation has suffered recently as its wonderful academics have been overshadowed by the militancy and anti-Semitism that the administration was unable to stifle. In many ways Columbia has become the ‘UC Berkeley’ of the tumultuous 60s. But that’s a topic for another day.)

I had 4 great years at Columbia in the late 70s. Being in New York, Columbia considers their campus to be all of the City. The school works hard to get you out of your dorm and into city life. (School dining halls are closed Saturday and Sunday, forcing you down Broadway and into the neighborhood to eat.) Columbia takes great advantage of NYC’s vast cultural opportunities and forces you off campus into endless museums and theaters. I remember going to the Guggenheim, staring at a Van Gogh, writing a paper. Architecture classes send you out to look at skyscrapers. We went to Harlem for jazz and one professor sent us to historic relics like McSorley’s Ale House and Fraunces Tavern -- to appreciate the history of the City.

I took a class in Ancient History about the dawn of civilization, Sumer and Mesopotamia, and then Egypt. This was taught by Professor John Schmidt, an esteemed historian and Egyptologist. He promptly sent us to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at scarabs, amulets, the King Tut Collection (including the amazing golden head!), and even reassembled temples. In the 70s, the Met took a huge interest in King Tut, the Pharaohs, and everything related to ancient Egyptian culture. The Met acquired tens of thousands of ancient Egyptian objects. Every time the Met needed a translation or an authentication, they called Columbia’s Professor Schmidt. He was one of the world’s leading experts on ancient Egypt. He translated hieroglyphics, provided valuations, validated scores of objects of Egyptian art, made over 100 trips to Egypt to study the Pyramids. He was The Guy.

There were about 50 of us in the class. As in most of Columbia’s courses, it was reading-heavy, if not intense. Towards the end of the second semester, the timeline reached the Pharoh Khufu, who stood at the pinnacle of ancient Egyptian civilization. It’s thought that Khufu oversaw the construction of the Great Pyramids. This was the highlight of the course, at which time Professor Schmidt announced his next lecture would be his “Great Pyramids” lecture.

Our class was held in one of Columbia’s stodgy old wooden classrooms, with about 60 desks. However, such was the fanfare for Schmidt’s famous ‘Pyramid’ lecture, Columbia opened the lecture to the entire City! They even advertised it -- anybody in New York was welcome to attend. They moved the lecture to a huge physics hall, seating 800 people! And they filled it! But we felt like big shots -- if you were a student in Schmidt’s class, you could sit in the first 3 rows.

Hundreds of people packed the hall and Professor Schmidt showed slides and flashed his ample expertise. He was spellbinding, stating fact after fact about the Great Pyramid of Giza. It contains 2.3 million stone blocks, each from 2.5 to 40 tons. Each side is over 1/4 of a mile long. It’s 480 feet tall (Schmidt told us the Statue of Liberty was only 300 feet tall.) It was originally covered in shiny bright white limestone, with the blocks fit to such precision he couldn’t slip a credit card between rocks. He told us the blocks themselves came from a quarry on the other side of the Nile — he felt it inconceivable they floated them over on papyrus rafts. The 3 Great Pyramids align with the stars of Orion’s belt. The Great Pyramid aligns perfectly with Earth’s north/south axis. (How did the Egyptians know this?) The base of the Pyramid is so flat, it varies less than 2 centimeters across the entire vast bottom. How did they achieve this? He talked about the three internal chambers, (now we know there are 4) and the special granite that lines the King’s Chamber came from a quarry 500 miles away. He talked about the thousands and thousands of hieroglyphics found in the Pyramid, how he translated most of them, yet none explained how the pyramids were built. He dazzled us with one crazy fact after another.

Professor Schmidt finally posed the question: So, how did they build the pyramids? His answer was quick. “We simply do not know.” But he emphasized, ‘The way common archaeology tells you that the pyramids were built, they’re just plain wrong.’ He promised us that slaves did not build the pyramids. He said he didn’t care how many slaves you had or how hard you pushed them, you couldn’t possibly move 2.3 million blocks across a river, over soft sand and lift them 480 feet off the ground. The accepted theory that workers took hundreds of years to build a tomb for a future king was nonsense; ie, if you were gonna build a tomb, you’d want it ready in 10 or 15 years, for yourself, not for some future king who wouldn’t even be alive for another 200 years. Schmidt promised us there was no Earthly explanation for how the Pyramids could be built in 10 or 15 years. He discussed the absurdity of dragging a 10 ton stone through sand. The notion that blocks were rolled across wooden logs was preposterous, there weren’t any trees in the desert to use as rollers! Besides, sand sinks! He said crude hammers and chisels couldn’t possibly cut such huge blocks into the precise dimensions that existed, let alone set them so close together. And what about the passageways, with their crazy slopes and angles, and hidden doors and false panels. Not to mention the granite from the King’s Chamber came from 500 miles away. Professor Schmidt rejected the explanations about slaves, ramps, and logrolling through soft sand. Additionally, and he was one of the first people in the world to say so, the Pyramids were not tombs. No mummy or sarcophagus had ever been found inside any of them. He said they had a whole different purpose and no one knew what it was.

But here’s the best part! At the end of the lecture, Professor Schmidt teased us all. “We have no idea how they were built, but I have a theory, all my own. It’s a wild theory, so I’m not gonna tell it here, in front of everybody. But if you’re a student enrolled in my class, I’m happy to share it with you during my private office hours. Come and visit.”

I had to know!! Naturally, we thought Schmidt knew about aliens, or anti-gravity, or some crazy thing. So the next day my pal and I went straight to his office hours, we ran up the steps to the fifth floor of Hamilton Hall, turned the corner, and were shocked. 70 people had beaten us to the punch and stood in the corridor, waiting to talk to Professor Schmidt. Many were non-student New Yorkers! We said screw it, we’re not gonna wait. We’ll come back tomorrow. We came back the next day and there were still 50 people ahead of us. I came back myself the third day, 50 people again. And school goes on, and you’re a busy student, and your enthusiasm shifts to other things, and I’m sad to say, I never ever went back to talk to Professor Schmidt. And I never found out what his theory was on how they built the Pyramids. I can honestly say it might’ve been my biggest college disappointment.

(Oh, I never forgot. Years later I tried to track down Professor Schmidt many times, without success.)

Over the years, I’ve listened to many Joe Rogan podcasts and watched YouTube videos describing various theories of Pyramid construction. Some are wild. People now link the Pyramids to stonework in Peru, in Mexico, Stonehenge, and other places. Some recent and modern discoveries are truly astonishing. (Dunn has been on Joe Rogan.)

Christopher Dunn is one such modern scientist, adding his thoughts to the mix. He believes the Pyramid was a giant energy machine. His descriptions and explanations come from an expert engineering perspective, and it’s incredibly well supported. Dunn realizes he’s fighting the headwinds of long-accepted archaeological history, which still upholds ramp building and workers pushing 20 ton stones in soft sand at 110 degree temperatures, to a height of 480 feet. Schmidt didn’t buy it, Dunn doesn’t buy it, and next week we’ll look at the book itself.

The Amazon link to GIZA POWER PLANT.

I’ll talk about the book itself next time.

MD in Arizona.

MIKE'S BOOKS are Here!

From time to time, we write a light-hearted HodgePodge letter, which often include follow-ups and curious literary and culinary topics. Here we go.

Where did Herman Melville get the idea for Moby Dick, the vengeful white whale who drove Captain Ahab to madness? Melville’s great American novel about man,nature and the will of God was published in 1851; but a 1839 story in Knickerbocker Magazine featured a white whale and a daring whale-hunting account. A legendary and elusive whale in the Pacific was named “Mocha Dick” by sailors, because it was “white as wool.” Melville was said to have read the story. Read the full account of the origen of Moby Dick here.

Stolen Kit Kat Kaper! 413,793 special edition Kit Kat bars were stolen in Italy. That’s 12 tons of Special Edition Formula One chocolate bars, which were in a truck on the way to Poland. How a Kit Kat Kaper turned into a PR bonanza!

Burger list: The best Hole-In-The-Wall Burgers Spots in every state. Have you been to the one near you?

Russian dictator Joseph Stalin’s vast wine collection has been unveiled in Georgia, Russia. Some of the bottles go back over 200 years, having belonged to Tzar Alexander III in the early 1800s. Stalin, a noted wine enthusiast, took over the Cellar after the Russian Revolution in 1917 and built it up to over 40,000 bottles. Heading to auction, many are great old labels from France. Stalin’s collection is now uncorked!

More burgers: A list of the 10 best burgers IN THE WORLD, according to Timeout Magazine. Incredibly, none of them are in the United States! Well, the judges have never been to my house! The world’s Best Burgers!

A while back we reported that astronomers continue to discover more and more moons spinning around Saturn. Solar system update: Saturn is officially up to 285 moons. Saturn and its many many moons!

Finally, Heinz Company, the King of Ketchup, has introduced the KegChup. Destined to be a game-day favorite, it’s a limited edition stainless-steel 114 oz beer-shaped keg, at over 19 inches tall with a pump-top. That’s 10 pounds of ketchup!

Sign up for your own KegChup here.

Thanks for reading.

Next, the mysterious reason behind the building of the Great Pyramids??

Michael in AZ

www.MICHAELDASWICK.com

THE MOVIEGOER by Walker Percy. Easy book to read, tricky book to understand. Walker Percy is the much-lauded and very thoughtful writer whose novels added to the Canon of so-called Southern Literature several decades ago. THE MOVIEGOER is his first book (1961) and promptly received the National Book Award. (!!!) That’s a phenomenal achievement for a debut novelist. The novel is now 65 years old, and I decided to take a look.

Set in the suburbs of New Orleans during Mardi Gras, the central character of THE MOVIEGOER is Binx Bolling, who’s about to turn 30 with every seeming advantage in life: good job, plenty of toys, girls, a traditional southern family. Nonetheless, Binx is an isolated loner, alone and adrift from the rest of the world. He’s looking to escape from the “everydayness” of his life. Thus, he’s compelled to ‘search’ for something more. The greater theme of the book might be, What can a person stuck in an ordinary life possibly do to find fulfillment and success? And exactly what does that picture of success mean? We merrily follow Binx and hope we find out.

I’d never read any of Walker Percy’s work, however I knew him as the visionary who championed John Kennedy Toole’s masterpiece, A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES, to publication, after Toole tragically took his own life. While DUNCES may well be known as The Classic New Orleans Novel, THE MOVIEGOER is also a branch on the tree of Southern Lit. So, intrigued by Walker Percy and how he recognized the genius of DUNCES, I picked up MOVIEGOER. After all, National Book Award?

From the very first paragraph, Percy’s incredible prose is so wrenching and clever, the first few pages leave you stunned. It’s a first-person narrative, with a tone and unique point of view that’s like nothing else in literature. It’s captivating. It’s funny. Binx is snarky and thinks like no other person in the world. His tight insights into people and situations are cherished line after line. It’s simply one clever statement and turn of phrase after another. Each sentence has impact, such that you marvel at the wit. Over and over.

In an entertainment world driven by plots and twists and turns, you won’t find much action in THE MOVIEGOER. Binx is a stockbroker who wanders through New Orleans, his job, family encounters, and dates with his secretary. He goes to movies by himself (hence the title) leading a vicarious life through actors and plotlines which trigger his imagination. Binx is well aware he’s stuck in middle class conformity, trapped in others’ expectations. So understanding the plainness of his suburban modern life, he embarks on a ‘search’ for more. He’s searching for something extraordinary. And as the book meanders along, we keep asking ourselves, is he ever gonna get there? Spoiler: not exactly. At least not in the traditional sense.

I don’t think I’m exactly giving away the end. I feel that if 300 readers finished this book, each of them will have a different interpretation of the ending. Maybe that’s its genius.

In his mind, Binx’ first person thoughts are sharp, barbed and precise. Yet when he’s in conversation with others, he’s an absolute bore. He’s unable to articulate or take action. We see this with his elder Aunt Emily, a traditional southern belle, a stickler for action and the traditional measures of success. Binx also has a curious relationship with his cousin Kate, who resorts to pills to get through a divorce and her own life in suburbia, another with a path that’s led to nothingness. But Binx is drawn to her helplessness, like a blind-leading-the-blind deal. But then there’s Lonnie, the kid with the disability in a wheelchair, who savors every moment he has with Binx. And Binx seems oddly responsive to Lonnie’s special situation.

When I first finished THE MOVIEGOER, And its plot that never really seems to kick in, I asked myself, what in the world did I just read? Was that an end without an ending? That won a National Book Award? I reread the last 20 pages, and it started to fall into place. I read a review from the 60s, which talked about Existentialism, and how THE MOVIEGOER was a defining existential work. Now I read a lot, and I know Existentialism was a literary genre of sorts. Saying that, I openly admit I still have no idea what Existentialism is about. I guess it’s about existing, and the various ways to exist. But how MOVIEGOER fits into all that, I truly don’t know.

If MOVIEGOER goer was a puzzle meant to be solved, I think I got it. Here’s a man who’s searching for something, but he doesn’t arrive anywhere in any physical sense. He is always a victim of his own inertia. Binx is not moved by money, material things, or acquiring toys. He’s not any good at human relationships either. But he does keep looking.

You read THE MOVIEGOER because stylistically, this is a first-person narrative which paints the personality of an individual like nothing you’ve ever read. Nobody thinks like Binx. You read THE MOVIEGOER to see how a book is written in subtleties (is it too subtle?) and when the inaction of doing nothing is actually in itself an action. Does Binx subtly but definitely come around? In the end, is he ‘getting it’? The character Lonnie gets it, sitting in his wheelchair. Binx has a great relationship with Lonnie, playing, pushing his chair. It’s a small contribution to make things better – a greatly satisfying to serve those more helpless than yourself. And then the needs of Kate, his struggling cousin. Binx lends a hand. What? Was that a proposal? Why in the world would he want to embrace a misfit like Kate….?

THE MOVIEGOER has its subtleties, and an ending that leaves you scratching your head. Ultimately, I believe Walker Percy is a writer living in the South, a part of America were even grand and once-valued traditions are no longer honored. Materialism is now far more important in humankind, the modern age is adrift. Binx Bolling understands this, yearns for more meaning, but can’t find the path back. Percy offers that path. The true goal of our search is how to help our fellow man. The things that move the needle for Binx Bolling, and worthy of a National Book Award, is a world that upholds compassion and service to humanity. Help others. This is a terrific book, with such a unique and captivating style. It’s ultimately about a world that’s drifted away, and a nudge to return to the human spirit. MOVIEGOER. Here's the Amazon link.

____________________________________

Greetings from Flagstaff, AZ.

If you like these, feel free to share with anyone who’s looking for their next good read.

My Eighth novel is TACO NIGHT and the LITTLE OLD LADY, to be published soon by Playa Chica Press. Two of my earlier novels reached Number One on Amazon across several categories, and everything can be found on all the platforms. Let’s see how the new one does — stay tuned !!

Mike's Books on Amazon

www.MICHAELDASWICK.com

This will be a very simple and straightforward column. RANCH WIFE is a memoir by Jo Jeffers, who grew up in Minnesota with an absolute fascination for all things out West. Her vision of the Great American Dream was to ride horses across wide open spaces with Tom Mix and The Lone Ranger and Tonto, pursuing outlaws. She longed to sit around campfires with Cowboys ever since her grandfather told her stories of western legends like Jim Bridger, the Indian scout, and the bloody saga of the great Sioux uprising against settlers in the Minnesota River Valley. She’d heard about outhouses!

Jo was no dummy. She was classically educated at Stanford and in England, but admits she felt completely out of place in academia, longing for the freedom of the West. When her family moved to Arizona in 1949 she felt a rebirth. Suddenly she was in the world of buffalo, wild horses, Cowboys and Indians, saloons, prairies, gold seekers, Harvey House waitresses, trading posts, tumbleweeds and cattle ranches. She married a cowboy, a rancher. Thus, RANCH WIFE is her story of abruptly landing on a working cattle ranch in Northern Arizona in the 50s. It’s the story of her adventures and misadventures, the hard work, the simple satisfactions, and the many people who became her friends.

The Jeffers cattle ranch was many thousand acres in northeast Arizona. It was just west of Holbrook, bordering on the Navajo Reservation and very close to Petrified Forest National Park. Even today, a 10,000 acre ranch up there is considered small. As part time residents of Flagstaff, we’ve driven across this part of the state dozens of times, and today, some 75 years after Jo Jeffers’ time, I’ll only say this is barren high desert with few features. (And therein lies the beauty!) You can drive for hours and not see a tree. She was in one of the most desolate places in the country. But this was cattle country, where you could turn a herd loose and let it roam for many miles, as long as you could round them up at some point and bring them to market.

In some ways we’ve heard parts of Jo’s story before. The Cowboys, the Indians, the Mexican hired help, working the range, the horses, the cattle, the dogs and the cats who are her constant companions. The land is harsh, beautiful but challenging with all its pleasures, dangers and constant changes. Her life is suddenly one of practicality, simplicity, and dangerous unpredictable livestock.

Her story is one of weather and the hired hands who go into town, get drunk and don’t come back. It’s often a story of her Wild West dreams not always matching the realities. Jo Jeffers learned to ride horses, and to ride horses well. She learned to birth, herd, brand, and castrate cattle. She rode blindly into scrub to locate angry bulls. She learned about trading with the Navajo, their culture and peaceful nature, about the long months without rain and little feed for the cattle.

RANCH WIFE resonates with me because my late father-in-law Vick also dreamt of being a Cowboy; and in the early 1940s he moved from Illinois to Arizona to do just that. First day out here he was hired at the historic Kieckhefer Ranch [The K4], a vast tract northeast of Prescott. (The Kieckhefer family invented the tri-fold milk carton top!) Vick owned horses ever since; my wife grew up on them, as did our kids. Perhaps nobody ever rode through more remote canyons and unexplored patches of Arizona land than Vick. His favorite tale: his very first evening, after work, all the Cowboys from the K4 went drinking on the legendary Whiskey Row in Prescott. (In the 40s, this two-block strip held over 25 saloons.) As Vick and his pals drank, one guy got sideways with another guy over a girl. One thing led to another, and there was a duel. The bars cleared out, two drunk guys stepped outside into the muddy street, counted off 10 paces, turned and drew guns. One guy missed, the other didn’t. The guy who got shot (not Vick’s pal) was picked up by his buddies who carried him upstairs in the St Michael’s Hotel, where they bandaged him up and let him sleep. Everybody else filed back into the bars and kept drinking. So much for Vick’s first day as a Cowboy in Arizona in the ‘40s. (The St Michael’s still stands, with a speakeasy downstairs. Whiskey Row has some 10 saloons that still draw Cowboys and Cowgirls from all over. My wife and I were married on Vick’s small Ash Creek Ranch near Prescott. The night before our ceremony the entire wedding party whooped it up at the historic (and classy) Palace Bar on Whiskey Row.)

In any event, to me, here’s why RANCH WIFE stands out. This book is written by a truly educated woman. She quotes great writers including Chaucer, Milton, and Shakespeare. Don’t see that in many cowboy memoires. But best of all, Jeffers writes in a very gentle style. Not sure I’ve ever used that word before to describe someone’s narrative, but her words are often poetic and they flow like butter. She’s great with vocabulary, the syntax is lyrical, and she simply has a very soft way of describing things. The book reads great. I looked for other work by her, but this appears to be it.

You read RANCH WIFE because it’s a peaceful book about many not so peaceful tasks and toils. It’s a Stanford-educated woman’s view on the unpredictability of living on a ranch in desolate Northern Arizona. You read RANCH WIFE to see the lovely reaction a cultured woman has to vastly new situations, learning to interact with people, family, Indians, livestock, horses, spiders, dogs and cats. Her descriptions of the four seasons, the transitions from winter to spring, from autumn to winter are stunningly written. She chooses her words well. This is a sweet telling of the Wild West, a different approach than the books usually written by toughened old men, and the hard-booted callous Cowboys telling you how brave they were. Jo Jeffers writes with far more subtlety, and a feminine affection you rarely see in such a book.

Lastly, RANCH WIFE is illustrated by the western Cowboy artist, Ross Santee. Santee was an early and very popular Cowboy artist and writer, a contemporary of Frederic Remington and Charles Russell. Santee enjoyed an international reputation and his drawings and art are still much sought after today, having more than retained their value. I won’t say this book is abundantly illustrated by Santee, but there are sketches. I wish there were more, but that alone makes it a noteworthy book.

The book has seen a few editions. The first edition is available on Ebay and Abebooks and is collectible, widely available, and reasonable. Nice to always have the original. Remember… when collecting books, condition is everything! RANCH WIFE on Amazon

A couple letters ago I wrote about the definitive biography of Edgar Allan Poe. EDGAR A. POE, A Biography, by Kenneth Silverman. (Here’s my entry: NEVERMORE. Edgar Allan Poe ) It’s a good book, long and highly-detailed. I stayed interested in Poe and read a second biography. EDGAR ALLAN POE, His Life and Legacy, by Jeffrey Meyers. In many ways this is a more readable, more approachable book than Silverman’s scholarly and almost academic one. Poe was a truly original thinker who almost single-handedly launched the genres of Horror, Science Fiction, and Fantasy, and brought poetry to many non-poetry readers. He’s also interesting in challenging the stuffy New England publishing circles of his day, stayed chronically drunk and in abject poverty throughout his life, and still managed to write some of the greatest and most enduring short works ever. His influence is vast. The Jeffrey Meyers work may not have the excruciating detail and hour-by-hour reporting that POE, A Biography has, but it’s thorough and complete and breezes along easily without getting bogged down in minutia. Meyers has written many fine bios. Recommended as an alternative for Poe fans. POE. His Life and Legacy, on Amazon.

Best wishes from Arizona. Welcome to the many new readers of this Substack. Nothing here was written by AI, nothing to clean up my bad grammar, only me. So thank you for sharing and especially for passing this along to anyone who wants to read interesting but lesser-known books.

MD in AZ

www.MICHAELDASWICK.com Where my stuff can be found.

The German commentator Walter Benjamin wrote an essay on the decline of storytelling and chatty conversation in modern society. The famous western author Larry McMurtry read that essay in 1980, sitting in the Dairy Queen in Archer City, Texas, sipping a lime Dr. Pepper. A decline in storytelling? The thought moved him such that 19 years later, McMurtry set down his own thoughts on storytelling, and many other subjects. Those thoughts became WALTER BENJAMIN at the DAIRY QUEEN. In this book, one of America’s great writers and the “Granddaddy of Texas Novels” looks back on many subjects dear to him, including small Texas towns, the decline of the Old West, and how a remote-ranch-raised kid (Larry!) became an educated cosmopolitan literary superstar. Yet he never forgot the small Texas town he came from.

WALTER BENJAMIN at the DAIRY QUEEN was written in 1999, after McMurtry had written 23 novels, plus many successful screenplays and nonfiction works. Among his famous books are THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, TERMS OF ENDEARMENT, and the LONESOME DOVE quad-rology. (Yes, DOVE is part of a four-book series!) WALTER BENJAMIN might be one of his lesser-known works, but I found it significant. In his 60s, he’d earned the right to write about anything he wanted. Thus, his reflections became a nonfiction memoir about subjects near and dear to him.

It begins with a retelling of how his pioneer grandparents joined the western expansion in the 1870s, moving into the vast open rangelands following the ‘defeat’ of the Comanches. They settled in Archer County, Texas, living in a tent at first, then a one room cabin. These were tough people, the McMurtrys, scratching out a living in the Texas Panhandle. This was open-range, before barbed wire limited cattle drives and movement. (LONESOME DOVE, of course, is about those great cattle drives, from Texas to Montana.) Larry describes how his grandmother talked very very little – she merely toiled in her old-fashioned way. McMurtry laments the decline of the frontier and open ranges, and the decline of the true cowboy, all part of the settings for many of his books.

Archer City was a “bookless town.” In fact, he grew up in a home without a single book. A defining day in his life came when his cousin gifted him 19 adventure books, and his world changed forever. A young ranch hand in the middle of Nowhere, Texas, discovered books! He attended Rice University where he wrote his first novel and began collecting. Over time he acquired one of the great personal collections in America, personally owning over 30,000 books. His legendary bookshop(s) in Archer City would eventually hold over 300,000.

WB at the DQ meanders through family, ranching, the West, writing, and reading. His reflections on his quadruple heart bypass surgery are moving -- for 18 months after surgery he merely sat around staring at the distant landscapes, lacking motivation, doing nothing, unable to move forward.

Throughout the book McMurtry weaves his Dairy Queen philosophies in a quiet conversational style, the master of informality. He loves the Archer City Dairy Queen for its slow and easy pace that does attract regulars and their conversations. Yes, a burger/ice cream shop can be the social center of a town. Of course, he captured this well in THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, his great book about a small town in the withering West.

Just thinking about it, when McMurtry wrote his first novel (Horseman, Pass By, 1961) I’m not sure there was yet a recognized “western writer” in America. Zane Grey? Jack London? Maybe Louis L’Amour? But did they really write about the American Cowboy and the closing of the West like McMurtry would? With so many American novelists working in the East and South, McMurtry provided a western voice. But he avoided cowboy cliches and frontier romantism. His version of the West is based in Archer City, not Hollywood.

You read WALTER BENJAMIN at the DAIRY QUEEN to savor the reflections and wisdom of perhaps America’s finest western writer. Is it dripping with nostalgia? You bet. But it’s the good side of nostalgia, packed with insight into a literary life, a changing country, and family.

Walter Benjamin said that storytelling is dying because people no longer exchange their experiences. Why not? Because the value of experience as a virtue is fading. Larry McMurtry spent a lifetime capturing experiences and sharing them in his novels and works. This is a quick read about the philosophical aspects of life, the sharing of experience, and reflections of the old days. It’s poignant, snarky, wise, and insightful. Nice little book. My copy was less than 200 pages and reads just like Larry would talk to you over a lime Dr. Pepper at the Dairy Queen.

Larry McMurtry was a true book lover. He was an internationally renowned book-hound and collector and owned one of the largest bookstores in America. BOOKED UP was actually several shops, sprinkled across two city blocks. McMurtry put little Archer City on the map. With over 300,000 books, thousands of which are rare, 1st edition, and out of print, Archer became known as a mecca for “Literary Tourism”, attracting collectors from all over the world. When McMurtry died in 2021, his entire collection was purchased by Chip and Joanna Gaines, who promised to keep the spirit of independent bookshops alive. They initially consolidated the stores and continued the traditions. Last year BOOKED UP was converted to the Larry McMurtry Literary Center. Much more than a bookstore, it’s now a “cultural foundation” seeking to preserve the McMurtry legacy and educate people on books, the West, and other far-reaching subjects.

Larry McMurtry has always resonated with my family because my late father-in-law, A Vick Swanson, was an old Arizona cowboy himself. He told hundreds of stories about horses, ranching and riding through some of the most remote places in Arizona and the West. We’ve done our best to continue his tradition. Thus, I’ve read all the McMurtry’s I can get my hands on. Here’s the book on Amazon.

Happy Trails!

MD in AZ

My own versions of the West are here! www.MICHAELDASWICK.com

A Biography. Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance. by Kenneth Silverman

Poet, fiction writer, editor, vicious critic, literary innovator. Author Kenneth Silverman writes Pulitzer Prize-winning biographies. His classic on Poe is complete, readable, incredibly thorough, and scholarly if not academic. Even as biographies go, this one is astonishing in detail, often describing Poe’s activities on a minute-by-minute basis. And while this book combines both Poe’s personal and literary life, it is not a literary analysis of his works. Silverman sticks to the facts, or at least as best he can sort them out from a host of sources.

Poe was born in January, 1809, in Boston, the child of two actors. His father abandoned the family early on and his mother died a year later. Little Edgar was taken in as the foster son (he was never formally adopted) by John Allan, a wealthy importer in Richmond VA. The family moved to the outskirts of London in the early 1800s, as part of Allan’s merchant opportunities. Poe attended grammar school in Scotland and England for a few years before moving back to Richmond. John Allan would inherit great wealth from a business partner, (in today’s money, about $20 million) but by all accounts he gave very little if no money at all to Edgar, his foster son. Edgar attended University of Virginia but fell into drinking and gambling and left. John Allan refused to pay his gambling debts despite clearly having the means to do so.

This lack of money and the constant quarrels with Allan over money and support would become a repetitive theme and lifelong disappointment to Edgar. For his part, Allan considered Edgar ungrateful, wasteful, a gambler and a drinker. Throughout his life, Poe was chronically in poverty and often living day-to-day to support himself and his wife. Broke, he enlisted at West Point but left before graduating. At this early point in his life Poe made the decision to try to earn a living solely through his writing, which in the 1820s, was an exceedingly difficult occupation. In the end, this decision led to an incredibly hard and trouble-filled life, one racked with disappointment and constant distress.

It’s important to consider the habits of the reading public in the 1830s. Poetry was the preferred literary form of the day. Novels (at least in America) were in their infancy. Publishing was controlled by a few blue-bloods centered in New York and New England. And, America had no copyright laws. Publishers simply took works from Europe and published them without paying the author. Therefore, paying a writer for content in America was almost unheard of.

Meanwhile, through reader tastes and innovations in printing, the publication of magazines, journals, periodicals and such were booming. While people didn’t necessarily read books, they certainly read journals. Poe became an editor and critic for such journals, seemingly working for countless tabloids, newspapers, and literary publications. They launched and folded often then, and he never seemed to stay with one longer than a year or so. Many times he lasted mere months or even a few weeks.

At the age of 27 he married his 13-year-old cousin. (She died at 24.) He moved houses often, always seemingly chasing the next job, from Richmond to New York to Baltimore to Philadelphia. His longest stint was 10 years in Philadelphia, where he was constantly changing his domicile. During these years he was editor, critic, poet, and fiction writer. He was constantly plagued by drinking, and constantly asked friends and relatives for money. He died in 1849 at the age of 40 after what seems a very hard life. Characterized by constant disappointment, it’s impossible to touch on all aspects in this brief piece, but a few areas were most memorable to me.

Early in his career, America was fascinated by the sudden rise of literary journals. And given the popularity of these publications, his first career success was as a literary critic. And a brilliant and controversial one at that. (The poems and stories came later.) He was incredibly knowledgeable about the writers of the day, their styles and individual literary nuances. As a critic, he pulled no punches. He had a questioning eye and an unforgiving pen when it came to what he considered poor artistry. Likely through jealousy and his own early inability to publish his own original fiction, he lashed against the New York and New England publishing houses, which he accused of promoting the New England temperament. He called out the American literary world as being upside down, controlled by “absolute nincompoops.” The public loved it and embraced Poe and his acerbic pen. As part of his assault against the conventional, he famously attacked Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, one of the New England fireside poets. In a chain of events that transcended a simple feud, the “Longfellow War” became one of the longest and most publicized personal wars in American literary history. In his criticism Poe denounced Longfellow as a plagiarist, accusing him (apparently, properly so!) of copying songs and poems from others, even translating earlier German works and using them as his own. Poe’s ongoing crusade against Longfellow brought him great notoriety, and a new level of celebrity, although as a critic. George Bernard Shaw called Poe “the greatest journalistic critic of his time.”

These were times that Poe was better known as a critic than a poet. Often writing in the extreme, and becoming fashionably severe, other critics accused him of being “censor general” and slammed him for acting as something of a literary dictator, holding his own opinions as authoritative. In any case, his criticism provided a platform for his poetry and fiction writing. It was during these days he wrote such hair-raising classics as “A Descent into the Maelstrom” and “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” He also introduced his classic sleuth, Auguste Dupin, who became the model for Sherlock Holmes.

Readers were amazed with these stories and their dark tones of urban horror. Fascinatingly, at the time there was no such word as detective in English. His work sparked great curiosity, and planted the roots for countless books, novels, detective stories, and movies. Thousands of authors and directors have stood on Poe’s shoulders, borrowing from his work. Themes: the detached detective, as a gentleman who’s not connected with the police; a first-person narrator who’s not the detective but is acquainted with him… ie, Dr. Watson. Also, the opening sequence of a story where a grim outside world rudely interrupts the detective’s comfortable home or office; an investigative pattern where clues are sprinkled about and slowly disclosed to the reader. And of course the great wrinkle where a crime occurs in a locked room, which first came in “Murders in the Rue Morgue.”

Clearly, Poe did not have the happiest childhood, and his writing clearly characterizes this grimness, as time and again he’s unable to separate himself from his creepy past. His grisly themes are well known: one’s dark past remains alive within oneself; this past can consume you; darkness is everywhere; and the dead are still with us. Topics considered truly trite today -- overused in every book, film or show -- were brand new breakthroughs from Poe: cloak and dagger intrigue, postmortem exams, the least likely murderer, a victim who’s been shockingly framed. Little details are so prevalent… Poe was the first to give Detective Dupin a pipe!

In the 1830s and 40s, while many American writers wrote about the frontier, nature, pastoral scenes of lakes and forests, and the freedom to open up and move freely, Poe wrote about urban confinement. Poe bricked people up in walls, buried them under floorboards, or stuffed them into chimneys. He wrote about enclosure, constriction and restriction. Others wrote about life, while Poe embraced life after death. Poe defied the Naturalists, writers like James Fenimore Cooper, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Nathanial Hawthorne.

When a New York magazine published The Raven in 1845, its reception was stupendous. With great fanfare it was praised as “unsurpassed in English poetry for subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of versification, and consistent, sustaining of imaginative lift.... it will stick to the memory of everybody who reads it.” Readers were electrified by the “weak and weary” narrator and the strange cry of Nevermore. Within weeks The Raven was reprinted many times in the greatest literary periodicals of the day, from Boston to Philadelphia.

By many, in the 1840s, poetry was considered the highest art in fiction. Novels, while growing in Europe, had not especially caught on in America. The Raven was heralded as something readable by the masses and was decidedly not ‘New English’. It was admired, imitated, and parodied, and while revered my most, some were appalled. William Butler Yates said it was “insincere and vulgar.” He said the rhythm was flawed, non-emotional. Some thought it too raw, but the truth was, for Poe it was a resounding success. (Although it brought him little wealth.) The Raven is beloved because it’s a poem for people who don’t like poetry.

After The Raven was published, Poe expanded his assault on Longfellow. And while his stature rose as both a critic and a writer, his battle with Longfellow underscored one thing: Poe was simply jealous of other writers. Poe fought the literary world because he thought everybody else was trying to denigrate him and criticize the value of his own work. Such a state of mind served to accelerate his penchant for drinking. He did have new opportunities to go on the lecture circuit and discuss the state of poetry in the American literary setting. He’d recite The Raven to audiences, but often showed up drunk. He came unprepared, or with old material which he claimed was new. Such erratic behavior frequently made him a laughingstock. To go to war against the New England literary establishment was a tall order and the backlash came hard. Many journals and critics said he was a drunk and in fact insane.

He was never a financial success in any manner. American publishing was difficult, to say the least. In 1845 he put together several volumes of his collected works, nicely but inexpensively bound, aimed at the middle-class buying public. These collections included such notables as The Black Cat, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Gold Bug, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marie Roget, and The Purloined Letter. In four months, it sold 1500 copies at 50 cents each. Poe’s royalty was 8 cents each, meaning he earned $120. Critical success came, but financial success was scarce. Boston hated Poe. He was accused of not writing for humanity, and the Boston Post called his book, “a parcel of current trash.”

Interestingly, Poe found more success in Europe than America. He was loved for his stories of urban distraught and horror. Several prestigious Parisian journals published him to great reviews, and even the poet Beaudelaire loved his work and translated Poe’s poems and stories with great excitement, if not worship.

On a personal level Poe was not all well. Some accused him of having gone mad and there’s little doubt he was increasingly ill. He often turned up at friends’ homes in the middle of the night, drunk. His recitations and readings never took off. His chronic lack of money and drinking problems often rendered him incapable of work, unable to write. As rumors flew, his image as a madman was reinforced. He was characterized as a notorious liar, a common drunkard, an aimless wanderer in the streets of Philadelphia, someone “outside the realm of honor”. Shut out from all inheritance (His foster father remarried, Poe was shunned by the new wife) Poe turned into a critic for hire, writing good and bad reviews for money. He was accused of being an Indian swinging a hatchet -- a “literary Mohawk”, attacking everything with rage.

Late in life, astonishingly, Poe works hard at finding a wife. (He needs the money!) He frequents the fashionable salons of old friends, widows, spinsters. Poe does have some celebrity, and Author Silverman depicts him as somewhat attractive. While he gets some nibbles, nothing transpires, and ultimately he’s caught in a whirlpool of his own making. Drinking, poverty and apparent mental illness combine for a very sad and lonely ending.

You read EDGAR ALLAN POE, A Biography to learn about both his eternally troubled personal life: orphan to ward of a wealthy (but tightfisted) gentleman; West Point Cadet; relationships with siblings, foster parents, his wives, his constant poverty, his drinking. Always fascinating. You read EAP for his professional side as well, chronicled in great detail. He has parallel careers as a no-holds-barred literary critic, and a writer of poetry and fiction. You also get a great feel for ‘Literary America’ in the early 1800s. Silverman tracks Poe relentlessly, often showing his movements on a daily basis. The picture emerges of a non-conformist, an innovator, an originator, and certainly an impoverished drunk.

Silverman declines to provide much literary analysis of Poe’s works. That’s left to others. This is a book about Poe’s life, not his written words. Sadly, in a 500-plus page book, only eight are given to the events leading up to Poe’s bizarre death. The cause of his death (Poe was only 40.) has generated countless theories: alcoholism, heart disease, syphilis, mental illness, suicide, rabies, and even murder. His death, alone in a shabby tavern, then a crappy hospital in Baltimore, is surrounded by deep mystery. Over the centuries, the creepiness only underscores Poe’s dark side. Death and immortality filled his writing. His strange death only enhances these themes, the ones that appear over and over in his work. [ See: Mark Dawidziak’s A Mystery of Mysteries: The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe and David Gaylin’s The Final Days of Edgar Allan Poe: Nevermore in Baltimore. ]

Edgar Allan Poe is one of America’s literary giants. This book is a good long read and a stupendous effort. It’s considered the authoritative Poe biography. Here’s the Amazon link.

I write thoughtful fiction in Arizona where two of my books have reached Number 1 on several Amazon categories, including Coming of Age. The importance of the outsider. Chip Rock ages out of a crummy orphanage in a grimy little town on the California Coast, and embarks on an epic journey that leads Chip to anything but the expected. Learn more about Chip Rock here.

All seven novels are on www.MICHAELDASWICK.com

This was a long one. Thanks for reading all the way!

MD in AZ

Thomas Becket was murdered near the altar in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. We’ve read about this murder since elementary school history, it’s routinely referred to when people mention Pilgrims, Saints and Martyrs. As the larger-than-life Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas was the most important spiritual and religious person of his day. He was ruthlessly murdered in Canterbury Cathedral, the Church’s oldest and most venerated place of worship. Why such a turbulent life and horrific ending? What the heck happened, and why’s he so significant? And why is he still so venerated today, as both the Church of England and the Catholic Church lay claim to Saint Thomas as one of their own.

THOMAS BECKET AND HIS WORLD, by Michael Staunton, provides the gripping details of this murder, a thorough biography and historical background to the events leading up to the assassination. It describes the Medieval times, Becket’s rise to power and flamboyant persona, his closeness and breach with King Henry II. It follows his six-year-long exile in France and daring return to England and Canterbury Cathedral. Lastly, it offers a blow-by-blow account of the murder at the Cathedral’s altar and a full account of perhaps the most compelling figure in the Middle Ages.

First, the state of England in the 1150s: history taught us of the Norman Conquest in 1066. That’s when William the Conqueror crossed the English Channel and conquered the Saxon ‘rulers’ in what is now England. William was the Duke of Normandy (hence a Norman), in the north of where France is today. France as a country did not exist in 1066, but there was a French king who dominated a patchwork of areas around Paris, whose subjects paid tribute thereto. The Normans (people who lived in Normandy) were essentially descendants of Viking invaders (Nord-Men) who were granted permission to colonize the Normandy part of France, and to protect the French king. Across the channel there was no true English identity at that time, just various Saxon groups in Essex, Wessex, Mercia and Northumbria. William the Conqueror came in, ran off the Saxon Lords and gave away their land to his pals from Normandy.

So the Normans controlled England, even though they came from France. In 1153, the Norman descendant King Henry II assumed the throne and married the French Duchess of Aquitaine, who ruled a big part of western France (The area called Aquitaine). This combination made Henry II the most powerful English king to date. Bear in mind all these people spoke French, and spent much of their time across the channel.

Further to this background, it’s important to understand the Crown and the Church (The Catholic Church was the only religion) were engaged in a social tug of war throughout the Middle Ages. The King would establish armies, collect taxes, give away land and titles; but the Church controlled the spiritual side of society, which to most people was far more important. The Church also was in a position to collect money, own vast tracts of land itself, and wield enormous power and influence over people. So in a social setting where the King is on the same level as the Church, here comes Thomas Becket.

Author Michael Staunton is Professor of Medieval History at University College in Dublin. He is perhaps the leading authority in the world on Thomas Becket, and this concise book (less than 175 pages incl pictures!) is a detailed and fascinating read, written by a true expert.

Thomas was raised in London, with what we would call middle class roots. His parents came over from the lands we now know as France. He was a regular guy. This is important because he had neither great wealth nor a particularly focused religious upbringing. For limitations of space, I’ll unfairly compress his early career. By all accounts Thomas was intelligent, talented on many fronts, a strong leader and charismatic. He became a Clerk for Theobald, then the Archbishop of Canterbury. He did well and the position of Chancellor of England became available. This was essentially the right-hand man of the King; a personal representative, treasurer, all around advisor. Becket was appointed.

Thomas became great pals with King Henry II. They hunted together, traveled together, and dined together. Thomas was quite fond of the good life. He made appearances on behalf of the King, had high visibility and enormous influence. As a clear favorite of the King, Thomas was rewarded – lavishly -- with land, wealth, estates, even ships. When the position of Archbishop of Canterbury became open, the King nominated Thomas.

At this point it’s important to understand that Canterbury Cathedral was already 600 years old. It was the heart of the Church of England, the oldest and most important sanctuary of its day. To be named Archbishop there established you as the single highest spiritual leader of the English Church. When Thomas was nominated by the King, monks across the land were shocked that essentially a buddy of the King would become their leader. To them, Thomas was little more than an unqualified commoner, someone with little religious training or knowledge. Politically speaking, he was a religious outsider. Conflict arose because Thomas was not at all favored by the powerful religious order.

More trouble: Staunton explains how Thomas was already the King’s Chancellor, already quite a powerful figure; but it was expected that Thomas would resign his Chancellorship to become Archbishop. But Henry II wanted Thomas to do both. This was the King’s way of gaining more influence over the Church; if Henry’s good hunting buddy was Archbishop, it could only mean more power for Henry!

The King’s pal Thomas now held the most important position in the Church, and the second most important position in the Crown. The King was thrilled. But not so fast. Once Thomas became Archbishop, he resigned his Chancellorship, shocking King Henry. Hence, the schism between Thomas and Henry II is born… and would never be repaired.

We have great records of both Crown and Church from those times, and Staunton uses original sources to describe the volatile issues between Henry II and Thomas. As Archbishop, by all accounts Thomas underwent an amazing change. He gave up many of his lavish trappings, adopted austerity, became less of a bon vivant, and served the Church with enormous enthusiasm. His stunning transformation from hunter/vassal of the King to devoted man of the cloth is subject to enormous historical debate. As Archbishop he was no longer a puppet of the King, but a man of the people. It was Thomas’s view that neither he nor the King can hold or submit to earthly powers. After all, the only power that counts is the higher power. God Himself. God stands above people, and He stands above Kings as well.

It’s Crown versus Church and safe to say, eventually the King could take no more of this haughty impertinence and independence. Becket was accused of betrayal and terrible abuses of power as one who dared to challenge the King. Henry ordered Thomas to give back all his land and extensive personal fortune. But instead of accepting such onerous terms, Thomas fled in exile to France where he remained for over six years.

With an effective vacancy at the head of the Church, Henry II flexed his power and strengthened alliances with Becket’s biggest enemies, the monks and Bishops who detested his appointment in the first place. Henry II and the Archbishop of York conspired to coronate Henry’s son as the next King, without Thomas’s approval. This proved to be a shocking revelation. Years pass, emissaries go back and forth across the Channel, and finally Thomas agrees to make nice with the King, who promises it’s safe for Thomas to come home to England. Thomas returns after over six years, where cheering crowds line the roads and loyal monks welcome him with open arms. But Thomas knows he has enemies and, on his return, Thomas excommunicates the Archbishop of York and other Bishops, outraging Henry all over again.

Thomas travels back to his old home at the Archbishopship in Canterbury where, in a matter of days, four important Knights -- all loyal to both the Archbishop of York and to Henry – head to Canterbury. Staunton provides a minute-by-minute account of the murder scene, as carefully recorded by at least five parties who were on hand. Famously, Thomas refused to be arrested (for treason), did not fight back, did not provide argument or opposition, and in fact raised his chin to the Heavens exposing his neck to the sword.

To this day, great controversy surrounds the murder; namely, who ordered it? King Henry II himself? The Archbishop of York? Or were these renegade Knights acting on their own, to curry favor with the King? To historians and churchgoers alike, this has been a fascinating debate for over 900 years.

The story continues. What happened in the days and years after the murder is as important as the murder itself. On news of the killing, Pilgrims and loyal followers flocked to Canterbury, and many collected scraps of Thomas’ clothing and vials of his blood. And while Thomas was buried the very next day, it’s said that astonishing miracles came to the disabled, the gravely sick and elderly. Among those cured by a visit to Thomas’ tomb included the blind, deaf, mute, and lepers. Even the dead were resurrected. Tales of the miraculous outcomes from Canterbury Cathedral spread across Europe and Believers continued to grow. Accordingly, Thomas was declared a Saint by the Pope only three years later. Such Sainthood reverberates to this day.

Canterbury Cathedral became perhaps the most important pilgrimage destination in the Christian world. As one of the most important Saints in the Christian empire, Saint Thomas became a symbol for the unfailing rights of the Church and for the independence of Churchgoers everywhere. Of course, Geoffrey Chaucer heightened these legends with his masterpiece, the Canterbury Tales. The book, written around 1387, records stories told by Pilgrims on their way to Canterbury. Today, Christians still seek Canterbury Cathedral in honor of Thomas, who was steadfast in his resistance to royal overreach and influence.

This is a good little book. You read THOMAS BECKET AND HIS WORLD to learn about the most important figure in the Christian Church during Medieval times. You read this book because on one level it’s a story of betrayal, of a servant turning against his master, defying royal orders. It’s the story of a passionate person who gives up earthly pleasures for the cloth, claiming to be in the grip of God. You read THOMAS BECKET AND HIS WORLD because it’s a well-documented biography written by an acknowledged expert, about a figure whose influence arguably surpassed many Popes across the centuries. Finally, you read TBAHW to gain insight into the Middle Ages and Medieval times, the balance of power between Crown and Church, the lives of Kings and their loyal Knights, and a renegade in opposition to such power. There’s lots of good history here surrounding an act which echoed across Europe ever after. Here’s the Amazon link.

TBAHW explains the importance of the murder in 1170, and why it’s still meaningful today. The Passionate and the curious still flock to the incredible Canterbury Cathedral, the Medieval Masterpiece which still stands today. Its current alter is a replacement of the one placed by Benedictine Monks of Christchurch Priory in 1172. However, as it remained a symbolic Catholic stronghold for centuries, Henry VIII commanded that everything relating to Thomas be destroyed. Hence, the shrine, tomb and all other relics were purged in 1538. This only managed to increase Saint Thomas’ esteem.

______________________

Great to see many more new readers! Please share with anyone who loves a good read.

Thanks for reading.

I write novels. You can find my work on all the platforms, and at www.MICHAELDASWICK.com

MD in AZ

A few months ago, somebody told me this is “the best western book ever written.” Now I read a fair share of western novels and histories, but I’d never heard of THE TIME IT NEVER RAINED, nor of Elmer Kelton. A few readers know that my late father-in-law was an old Arizona cowboy, about as original a character as you’d ever hope to know, and what I know about ranching and life here in the West, THE TIME IT NEVER RAINED is the best account of life on a western ranch I’ve ever read.

This is the story of a crusty old rancher trying to preserve his dignity in the face of a crushing seven-year drought. Based on actual events from 1950 to 1957 in West Texas, Elmer Kelton has captured the characters and the geography of the past.

My friend was right: this is a great book of fiction, whether western, American, universal or otherwise. The main character is rancher Charlie Flagg, a true relic from another age. In Charlie, Kelton paints one of the most memorable characters in modern fiction. Charlie is a cattle rancher in the small town of Rio Seco, Texas. We took a road trip through West Texas a few years ago, spending a week between El Paso and Marfa. The territory is vast, often unbelievably bleak, dry, usually flat expansive. We drove main roads for 50 miles without seeing another car. Ranches stretched for dozens of miles on either side of the road. With my father-in-law’s cowboy heritage, we marveled at how people could make a living off such land. (Please see my aside at the end of this article for more about that trip.)

Charlie Flagg is the embodiment of stubbornness, tenacity, old fashioned independence. He’s a hardworking, never-complaining soul. He’s old, overweight, has a bad heart, and his communication with his wife is often short and sweet. He is also a gentleman, direct, kindhearted and generous. And he sure ain’t sentimental. THE TIME IT NEVER RAINED is the story of Charlie’s epic battle against two evils: unforgiving nature, and the federal government.

A historic drought has struck West Texas. The book opens with ranchers looking to the sky, and then down on their land, where they watch the grass die, plants shrivel. After a season, when the grass does not grow, Ranchers must buy feed to keep cattle alive. Charlie’s cattle aren’t getting fat, he’s way behind payments to the bank, He sells skinny cattle and anything he can to pay the hired help. He’s a man of honor, and he won’t let them go. He feels duty bound to provide. And he commiserates with other ranchers in the area: when will it rain?

As time continues and the rains refuse to come, month after month, then year after year, Charlie’s unrelenting challenges and financial hardships pile up. Through this background the main theme of the novel develops: self-reliance. Charlie’s in rough shape. But he’s never a victim, he doesn’t want your pity. He simply describes things the way they are and leaves it at that. Charlie Flagg transcends an old cowboy fighting for his dwindling lifestyle; he’s symbolic for human independence in the face of overwhelming odds. As the drought drags on into its 5th and 6th year, Charlie’s neighbors fold. They readily accept government subsidies and “ranch welfare”. To Charlie, they’ve sold out. They’ve violated their principles and lost their independence by accepting handouts. Not Charlie. He refuses to become a ward of the government.

Charlie Flagg stands on the line between old fashioned-ism, and the modern world. Charlie represents the independent self-reliant rancher, refusing government subsidies and the encroachment of corporate farming. Charlie is disgusted with the aid programs, accompanied by their intrusive bureaucrats and regulations. Charlie will not compromise. He’s poor, but his dignity is intact. Charlie watches his ranch collapse at the expense of his principles.

A host of minor characters make this book such a full experience. Charlie’s wife, so strong and determined; the Flores family, who’ve lived and worked on Charlie’s land for decades, remain loyal, toiling in the dust. Charlie continues to pay them even when the money is gone, right to the very end. There’s Charlie’s son Tom, who has absolutely no interest in continuing the family ranch. He’s off to be a rodeo cowboy, a flashy guy chasing flashy girls, and when he brings them home to Charlie’s living room, there’s not a lot of conversation. Charlie’s old-fashioned banker sticks by Charlie through thick and thin, always stretching, always fudging the rules.

THE TIME IT NEVER RAINED has nothing to do with Hollywood westerns like Bonanza or Lone Ranger or any John Wayne movie. It’s not a western about cowboys and Indians, gunfights or bank robbers. The novel is sparse. It simply depicts the day-to-day struggles of a longstanding ranch family facing unpredictable human and natural events.

As a reader, I found enormous enjoyment in the style of writing. The language is so clean and so understated, it’s elegant. Kelton’s descriptions are detailed, slow and methodical. He has the eye for the smallest detail, and as to the dialogue, Kelton’s ear for rancher’s conversation is truly profound. It’s short and clipped, unmistakably West Texan. Kelton has captured the voice of a working cowboy, with a twang in every sentence. Charlie Flagg is wise in an unconventionally simple way.

You read THE TIME IT NEVER RAINED to appreciate the voice of a working cowboy or rancher: thoughtful, appreciative of the smallest details in his largely monotonous life. You read this book to reflect on self-reliance, and the refusal to accept change as the modern clashes with the old and established. You read THE TIME IT NEVER RAINED to appreciate a population that expects no happy endings, no surprise solutions. You read this book to learn about the hardships and daily challenges of a storied segment of Americana. Yet despite the harsh realism, this novel is profoundly uplifting. Finally, you read this book to simply enjoy the stylistic beauty of Elmer Kelton’s language and “Texas-isms.”.

Elmer Kelton wrote over 40 novels. THE TIME IT NEVER RAINED, written in 1973, is heralded as something of his lost masterpiece. Big recommendation.

Here’s the Amazon link.

*****

Aside: I mentioned we took a road trip through West Texas. We live in Scottsdale, Arizona, and wanted to explore the part of the Southwest that included Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, Guadalupe Mountains National Park in West Texas, the great town of Marfa, and points in between. We stayed in the one-stop-light town of Van Horne, TX, making day trips from there. Van Horne is about 130 miles east of El Paso, in the middle of nowhere, a “Last Picture Show” kind of town: tumbleweeds, one light, dust, boarded-up shopfronts block after block. The gas stations haven’t changed in 80 years and the few businesses still there are pure ma and pa. But Van Horne is the home of Hotel El Capitan, an incredibly elegant old railroad hotel. It’s an absolute gem of western Americana, with vaulted ceilings, several lobbies, gardens, beautiful stone and timber, stunning tile work. It’s a glimpse of days-gone-by. BVest of all, it also holds a bar and great steakhouse where every rancher from within 60 miles seemed to gather each night. A stop at Hotel El Capitan in Van Horne is an absolute must, an experience you’ll never forget. And btw, Marfa, TX, population around 1,100, also in the middle of nowhere, contains 7 or 8 -- four and five star restaurants. (plus a sister hotel to El Capitan.) You could spend a week in Marfa and simply eat good food.

________________________________________

Next time, What in the world was the incredible murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket all about?

_______________________________________

Thanks for reading. Please share with someone who appreciates good reading.

________________________________________

I continue to tweak my eighth novel, which I’ll share much more about soon. I write original (ie, non-template) fiction and have reached #1 on Amazon in several categories with a number of my books. I do it for fun and family and it’s rewarding to reach as many people as I have. Best wishes for a wonderful 2026.

Michael in AZ

www.MICHAELDASWICK.com

JANE AUSTEN’S BOOKSHELF A Rare Book Collector’s Quest to find the Women writers who shaped a Legend, by Rebecca Romney

Many people consider Jane Austen as among the Greatest Novelists of All Time. Certainly, she’s at or near the top of all female novelists ever. Some state that she was simply a genius. Consider that from 1811 to 1817, in only seven short years, she published no less than six landmark novels, including Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Emma. (Also, Mansfield Park, Persuasion, and Northanger Abbey.) That’s three enduring classics plus three more solid books, in just seven years. Astonishing.

I’m always quick to point out that in the 1800s, long before radio, movies, TV or Internet, reading was perhaps the highest form of individual entertainment. It’s no accident that the Austens, Dickenses, Hugos and Brontёs could write 700 and 800 page books, to the utter delight of their readership. Picture the happy face of a Tolstoy reader through the Russian winter, laying their hands on War and Peace at 1,100 pages. People were thrilled to settle into a good long read. Nowadays, such page lengths are abhorrent to publishers. Styles change, tastes change, but whether you like her or not, every Jane Austen title has remained in print for over 200 years, and the number of ‘Janeites’ grows and grows.

Many people consider Jane Austen to be the “first great female novelist”. Others say she was the first writer of Romance. (Today, publishers sell more Romance books than any other genre.) Was Jane the first? JANE AUSTEN’S BOOKSHELF explores these questions, and specifically investigates the female authors who influenced Jane. What did Jane read that triggered such masterwork? Who were the female writers before her who shaped her? What did Jane Austen have on her own bookshelf? Author Rebecca Romney names eight female writers and offers plenty of insight, ideas and facts as to how each played a role in Jane’s evolution.

Rebecca Romney gained notoriety as the cheerful book expert in the show Pawn Stars. Each time someone brought in a rare old book to Rick, he called Ms. Romney for her expertise, opinion and valuation. At that time she headed up the Las Vegas location of one of America’s most esteemed rare booksellers, Bauman Rare Books. (I remember when they opened shop in New York City, in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel no less! On a personal note, I’ve collected books and especially 1^st edition literary fiction since the early 70s when I bought a 1^st edition Catcher in the Rye for $200 in Pasadena. That’s when the bookseller, a gentleman named Dirk Cable, told me, “You’re a young guy, with a lot of collecting ahead of you. Just remember one thing: in collecting books, condition is everything.”

I’m sure Rebecca Romney would agree with that. She enjoys an international reputation as a rare book expert, and her individual expertise spreads well into history, the nuances of literary scholarship, and the valuation of an endless number of books. She’s not merely a seasoned professional who knows books; she’s a terrific writer as well. In her book, she’s taken an academic topic and turned it into a breezy, friendly read. She has a cheery conversational style that’s not just approachable, it’s often even punchy. I was impressed. But I should have known, given her success on Pawn Stars.

At this point, maybe I’m reading your mind: you’re asking, Jane Austen? Seriously? Why would I wanna read about Jane Austen in 2025? Today’s book world is dominated by counter-espionage thrillers, murder-for-hire whodunnits, globetrotting CIA-infused terrorism chases and crypto-currency heists. Didn’t Austen write those long boring books where nothing ever happens? Q: Why in the world would I read about Jane Austen’s world of manners and social decorum in the peaceful English countryside in 1799? A: Because Jane Austen wrote compelling and highly thoughtful novels with deeply human characters, long before books started to imitate bad TV shows.

Let me offer a terribly crude and short summary of Austen’s work: Jane Austen wrote about the privileged upper middle class living well in the English countryside. Using plenty of wit and detail, she appreciates the constraints and drama in the lives of her characters, who were largely women. Was she the 1st Romance writer? Probably not, but she certainly developed the genre. She wrote with a lot more humor, irony, and detail than most of her predecessors. Was she the first woman to write a comic novel? Maybe. In Austen’s world, bad guys can become good, a woman who marries well should be applauded, and safe to say her endings are Happily Ever After.

She broke new ground because the popular style of her day was what we now term “Sentimentality”. People read books about the poor, the orphaned, even the criminals – books that invited your sympathy. Austen wrote about the gentry, the upper middle class. Her descriptions were precise and lengthy. It’s foolish to try to characterize Austen in a short paragraph. She’s not merely a one-genre Realist, or a Romanticist. Her plots and characters were highly complex, so let’s just say that she wrote powerful stories with detailed characters and was never afraid to display their subtleties and nuances. If you are a Romance fan, here’s the early evolution of your genre!

JANE AUSTEN’S BOOKSHELF goes into the lives and work of the female writers who she admired and played an influenced. The eight women Romney embraces: Frances Burney, Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Lennox, Hannah Moore, Charlotte Smith, Elizabeth Inchbald, Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi, Maria Edgeworth. How many have you heard of? (I’d heard of two. Me, the Ivy League English major.) They’re largely forgotten now, but each was hugely popular in their day; these are the people who inspired and sculpted Jane.

Examples: Austen read Frances Burney’s Evelina, which was a blockbuster bestseller in its 1778. It’s about a low-born woman’s romantic and problematic journey through London society with a slightly satirical tone. It’s a “courtship” novel. Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794). (Romney made me want to read this one.) It features long descriptions of the French and Italian countrysides, leading up to melodramatic events in a spooky castle, packed with suspense, the supernatural, and as Romney puts it, an overwhelming “feeling of terror.” It’s now considered an early Gothic classic and was the basis for Austen’s novel, Northanger Abbey, a more elegant Horror story, which nonetheless pokes fun at Udolpho.

Writer Charlotte Smith has a fascinating story. She married a horrific man, had 12 children, and fell into writing books simply to support her family. She published 11 novels! She was a victim not only of her awful husband, but of the unjust English legal system which was so unfair to women. Many of her novels reflect this exploitative system. The moral inequities so prevalent in Charlotte Smith’s work certainly had a large impact on Austen. Heavily read by Austen, the phrase ‘Pride and Prejudice’, comes up in Smith’s 1793 work, about 20 years before Austen used that as a title. The phrase also appeared in Frances Burney’s as well.

Author Romney provides a bit of biography on each writer, plus a discussion of their books and some critical analysis. With these descriptions, the result is a breezy and compact history of the evolution of the novel as a literary form. BOOKSHELF meanders effortlessly through aspects of history, biography, humor, and lite literary commentary.

Rebecca Romney is on a personal journey into the writers of Jane Austen’s world; but she’s also the constant book collector, for her own library. As Romney tracks down rare editions of many of these long-forgotten books, her pursuit takes us into rare book shops around the world, large and small, across the Internet, into private libraries. As a collector myself, I found this part of the book fascinating -- the collecting exploits of a true professional.

Many college Lit classes take the view that there were no great women writers in English before Jane Austen. They might want us to believe that people read a long string of stodgy old men, and suddenly Jane burst on the scene. This just isn’t true. BOOKSHELF proves there were many fine women writers before Austen, but for one reason or another, as Romney carefully explains, most of these predecessors have fallen from the modern literary Canon and are all but forgotten. Romney refers to this as the “great forgetting.” Most of Austen’s influencers have become ghosts. But here, Romney has probably done more to resurrect the standing of the eight female authors she highlights, and whom Austen read, than anyone in over 50 years. Bravo!

Why read JANE AUSTEN’S BOOKSHELF? First, it’s simply a very well written and engaging historical record of eight wonderful and interesting writers. BOOKSHELF uplifts Jane Austen with the history of a little-known but hugely influential part of her life. You read BOOKSHELF to see how every modern-day Romance writer and reader can pay their respects and stand on the shoulders of Jane Austen. You read JANE AUSTEN’S BOOKSHELF to learn how the art of the novel evolved, from writers who told moral tales, to a form with deeply written characters with an interest in depicting the realism of the day. Finally, this book tracks Rebecca Romney’s personal exploration into Jane Austen, and her rare book collecting efforts that followed. She shares a deep passion for both, and that passion pours forth in these pages.

Finally, Romney opines about her personal literary journey. It’s interesting that each of these eight people were relative contemporaries, that they knew each other, and each clearly studied and benefited from one another. And each can certainly stand alone. Why have they fallen so far from favor? Why has literary history chosen to ignore them? How do critics and influencers shape what we read? Romney tackles this one, and not necessarily in an 1800’s context.

Each of us has his or her own favorite writers. My favorites certainly don’t come from the bestseller lists, and my likes and tastes are different from yours. The words or ideas or characters that tickle my fancy are always going to be different from someone else’s. A bestseller list should not determine what you like or don’t like. I try hard not to be influenced to any degree by what critics say, how many likes or ratings any book might have on Amazon, what shows up in the New York Times Review of Books, or a random comment on Goodreads. In the end, Romney’s message is, feel free to like what you like. Collect what you want to collect. Have confidence in your own choices. After all, reading is highly personal.

Rebecca Romney is now the co-founder and partner in the Washington DC rare book shop Type Punch Matrix. They offer a vast array of rare books in many many areas, from Classics to Sherlockiana to the recent Avant-Gard. It’s well worth a look and any reader would do well to join their mailing list to see how a top firm operates. BOOKSHELF is for anyone interested in classic literature, the evolution thereof, and especially the Janeites and would-be Janeites around the world. Here’s the Amazon link.

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this, please share with a lucky reader! Reading Off the Beaten Path is approaching 8,000 followers. Very flattering.

I’m a novelist in Arizona, happy here that summer is over. All my work can be found at www.MICHAELDASWICK.com

It’s perhaps the most enduring literary mystery of all, how in the world did Shakespeare acquire his vast knowledge of the world in order to write such a diverse body of plays. He wrote about England, Scotland, Denmark, Italy, France and other countries. He wrote comedies, tragedies, and very accurate histories; his plays include legal details that, at the time, were unknown to trained lawyers. He was a lad who attended the local grammar school in Stratford-on-Avon, where he read Latin and the classics, but it’s still not known where all his information came from. His knowledge of history, kings and queens, royal courts, ghosts, palace uprisings, romances, and the world was unsurpassed. All from an actor who never ventured out of Britian. His work is diverse, authoritative, and detailed. For many reasons he’s perhaps the most remarkable writer in history.

However his knowledge was acquired, it is a fact that so so many of Shakespeare’s quotes and one liners continue to live with us today. They’re embedded in our culture, and we use them regularly without knowing they came from Shakespeare’s pen. Here’s just a partial list of lines William Shakespeare gave us, over 400 years ago, still in use today.

Break the ice, Taming of the Shrew.

As good luck would have it, Merry Wives of Windsor

Cold comfort, Taming of the Shrew.

Dead as a doornail, Henry VI

Be all and end all, Macbeth

All our yesterdays, Macbeth

As pure as driven snow, Hamlet

Bated breath, The Merchant of Venice

Brave new world, The Tempest

In my heart of hearts, Hamlet

Devil incarnate, Titus Andronicus

Forever and a day, As You Like it

Eat me out of house and home, Henry IV

Heart of gold, Henry V

Fancy free, A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream

Foregone conclusion, Othello

For goodness sake, Henry VIII

Good riddance, Troilus and Cressida

Green-eyed monster, Othello

Kill with kindness, The Taming of the Shrew

Laughingstock, The Merry Wives of Windsor

In my mind’s eye, Hamlet

It’s Greek to me, Julius Caesar

Knock knock! Who’s there? Macbeth

Live long day, Julius Caesar

More sinned against than sinning, King Lear

Milk of human kindness, Macbeth

Love is blind, The Merchant of Venice

Off with his head, Richard III

Neither a borrower nor a lender be, Hamlet

Set my teeth on edge, Henry IV

One fell swoop, Macbeth

Play fast and loose, King Lear

You’ve got to be cruel to be kind, Hamlet

Seen better days, As You Like it

Wild goose chase, Romeo and Juliet

Too much of a good thing, As You Like it

I’m sure there are many more.

________________________________________________

Next time: About the world’s “first great woman novelist”… Jane Austen.

Please pass along to anyone who reads books.

I write novels in Arizona. Two of my books have reached #1 in several categories on Amazon and consistently get very positive reviews. Everything I write is a good old fashioned story with well drawn characters fighting to find a place in their world. There’s lots of interesting stuff on my website. MIKE’S BOOKS is where to go.

MD in AZ

THE THINGS THEY CARRIED, by Tim O’Brien

Interesting structure. THE THINGS THEY CARRIED is a fast moving series of autobiographical short stories that ultimately take on the form of a novel. By way of the simplest explanation possible, it’s a book about what it was like being a foot soldier during the Vietnam War, written by a very observant infantryman. On a deeper level, it’s one man’s often poetic attempt to come to grips with his tragic experiences, how war changed him, his emotional scars, how he’s both able and unable to heal; and how he’s moved on.

Tim O’Brien is a National Book Award winner for his novel, GOING AFTER CACCIATO, which I wrote about HERE. That’s a story about a soldier who melts down and chucks it all together, deserts, and starts walking to Paris! A few of his mates are tasked with tracking him, capturing him, and bringing him back. It’s a great book, therefore I tried this one.

First, a note on author O’Brien’s structure. I’m gonna label this “A book of interconnected short stories.” As a writer of short stories myself, it’s interesting, and let’s consider such work as a twig on the branch of the Tree of Modernism. My personal view is that the Literary Modernism movement tried to redefine a narrative by giving writing a style where there was no style. The form has no form. Or at least, no traditional narrative form. Hence, writers like James Joyce, Faulkner, Henry Miller, and the T.S. Eliot’s of this world each attempted new forms, different forms, wilder forms, and form-less-ness. All to push the literary envelope. Some of them even combined forms in a single piece. (The high watermark of such Modernism is often considered to be Joyce’s Ulysses, where each chapter takes on a different form, and/or has a different narrator.)

The stories in THE THINGS THEY CARRIED can stand alone; but as you read along, they link together, speak to each other, build on themselves.

As you might imagine, a soldier’s internal emotional conflict lies at the center of the book. An early story chronicles O’Brien’s youth, in the 60s, when the Draft and its lottery system loom large over every teenager in America. O’Brien, a New Englander, attempts to be a draft dodger and flee to Canada. There’s both a reluctance to enlist, and a reluctance to run away. He ends up staying on a farm near the Canadian border while he sorts out his thoughts, which are filtered through the stability and wisdom of the old farmer. Ultimately, of course, we know O’Brien returns home and enlists, hence his career as a soldier and somebody who writes about being a soldier.

THE THINGS THEY CARRIED is a book about the day-to-day, often minute-to-minute world of the grunts and foot soldiers inserted into the jungle during the Vietnamese war. These are the men placed directly in the path of harm’s way. You read about the jungle and the fear and the bugs and the bullets and all the ammo and equipment a soldier must haul around. You quickly realize that The Things a soldier must Carry are not merely the physical gear on one’s back, but the emotional weight in the mind. And O’Brien is very clear: this emotional burden on your mind lingers the rest of your life. There’s a story about his own daughter, many years after the war, and how he relates to her; tales about some of his mates who survived and came home, their memories and nightmares; the many people unable to move on, when they desperately try to move on. O’Brien is not the typical field reporter writing another book about war. O’Brien is a highly talented writer. Of course he puts you right into the jungle with his descriptions, but he adds an emotional depth and the ability to articulate his emotions so we can truly understand. He chooses words carefully, thoughtfully. With precision. Descriptions are never cliched, and in fact are often downright poetic -- quite unusual when writing about a war setting.

O’Brien wrote THE THINGS THEY CARRIED in 1990, about 25 years after he fought. You read this book the gain a perspective about his experiences, filtered after he’s understood the true emotional toll that’s stuck with him. You read this for the benefit of a talented writer giving you a glimpse of how a soldier remains on edge, day and night. You read about the mental exhaustion and the physical toll, and then how different people deal with the deaths of their teammates. You read it to get a new perspective on lost innocence, and finally, you read THE THINGS THEY CARRIED just to reach the final chapter, which to me is one of the most powerful endings in recent literature. This is relatively short book. It’s gripping yet a fairly rapid read, beautifully conveyed. Here’s the Amazon link.

__________________________________________________

BROTHERS, by Alex Van Halen. Alex and Eddie Van Halen were the founders of their namesake band, Van Halen. Eddie Van Halen is often considered the greatest guitar player who ever lived, and certainly one of the most creative. He sadly passed away in 2020. As a lifelong chain smoker, he fought cancer of the tongue, throat, and lungs for many years. This book is his brother Alex’s moving tribute of their lifetime together on both a personal and professional level.

The Van Halen family moved from the Netherlands to the States when the two Van Halen boys were young. They settled in Altadena, California (yes, where the horrific fires occurred) and then next door in Pasadena. NOTE: I grew up in Pasadena – I’m just a few years younger than the Van Halens. My friends knew their friends, one of those deals. Therefore, my wife gifted me this book because I ”knew” these guys in Pasadena many years ago. Many Pasadena people have great stories about Van Halen. In their early years, known then as Mammoth, just out of high school, they played dive bars and backyards, and quickly earned a reputation as great musicians with athletic showmanship and a big loud party vibe. Eddie himself was becoming an amazing guitarist; Brother Alex was the drummer. David Lee Roth, the lead singer, took off his shirt, showed off his muscles and looks, and leapt around the stage. (DLR’s father was Dr. Roth, a Pasadena eye doctor -- I know many of my classmates who wore glasses saw Dr. Roth. (I’ve even heard it said that it was Dr. Roth who originally funded the band to buy studio time to cut their first record, to stay unbeholden to the avaricious record companies.)

They played an auditorium dance at our high school my junior year. My friend was on the school social committee and it was his job to pay them after the show, $600.00. (It cost a buck or two to get in.) Settling up in a school office, my friend describes how David Lee Roth was a jerk, mixing tequila sunrises on the Principal’s desk; Eddie and Alex were down to earth, describing how their mom sewed sequins and fringe on their outfits. He said they were just normal guys.

I remember going to dance at another Pasadena school called Mayfield, a girl’s school, and Mammoth played on their lawn. David Lee Roth peeled off his shirt even then, with his tan, muscles, long hair flying, doing jumping jacks, cartwheels and the signature leg kicks. But we remember Eddie and his flashy guitar style.

It was not a secret in Pasadena that Mammoth would book two backyard shows a night, every weekend. The first at 8 PM, because they knew the Pasadena High School crowd would show up, crash the backyard, the cops would come and shut them down. Every night. So they’d move along to an 11PM party in someone else’s yard, a double booking, double their money. I think the police chased the Van Halens all over Pasadena for two or three years every weekend.

In any event, Alex has written this book as a tribute to his late great brother. It’s conversational, well written, and especially detailed about their early days in Holland and Pasadena, when their tight and lifelong brotherly bond came about. Their father was a professional musician, and he encouraged the boys to channel their energies in that direction. Their mother was a traditional and modest housewife who kept them polite, humble and down to earth.

Alex’s affection for his family, and especially for his brother Eddie is loud and clear. He’s a decent writer, highly introspective, thoughtful and often witty.

BROTHERS, however, is an important rock’n’roll book for what is NOT said. It’s not the typical rock’n’roll book about drugs and sex and hotel room destruction. It’s more personal and inward facing. Alex chooses not to address Eddie’s painful death, his mouth or throat cancers. He merely acknowledges that Eddie smoked continually, often two cigarettes at a time. He offers vary few details on Eddie’s marriage to the actress Valerie Bertinelli, and essentially stops in 1985 when frontman David Lee Roth left the band. Alex is very clear about this: DLR determined that Van Halen was all about DLR, so he left for a solo career. Sammy Hagar famously took his place, but Alex doesn’t talk about it, nor the Hagar years. While it’s readily apparent Alex and DLR had strong differences, when Eddie died DLR was the first person to pick up the phone.

So if you’re looking for the book about a superstar rocker and all the shlubby tales about the drugs and the girls, this book is not for you. But if you’re interested in the intimate details of a brotherly relationship, an enduring loyalty through good times and bad, BROTHERS is a good read. It’s also an important history of how two immigrant boys went from their garage in Pasadena to backyard parties, to selling millions and millions of records, filling 80,000 seat stadiums, and becoming one of the biggest bands in the world. Amazon link to BROTHERS.

__________________

THANK YOU for reading. If you enjoyed it, please share and pass it along.

I’m a novelist in Arizona, working on my 8th novel. I write sophisticated yet highly readable fiction and good people who find themselves in troublesome situations. Never a page that will not turn. All my work is everywhere you look and on my website, www.MICHAELDASWICK.com. Especially if you like food or have a child who cooks/wants to cook, take a look at the ZIN MIGNON Series. Zin is a 13 year-old Mastermind Chef who searches for his family legacy and the secret source of his amazing talents. Fun.

More soon, all about the many many ways that Shakespeare still influences us today.

MD in AZ

When we're between books on Reading Off the Beaten Path, we often write about food, and when we write about food we often write about cheese. Sometimes I think that truly fine cheese is under-appreciated in America. At least, maybe so in my house.

Somebody said that “Cheese is candy for fat people.” In Europe's finer restaurants, on the dessert menus you'll often see various select cheeses listed next to the Sticky Toffee Pudding and Chocolate Tortes.

The great French Novelist, Émile Zola never wrote a sentence that wasn't descriptive and packed with adjectives. When it came to cheese in Paris, he wrote,

“A silence fell at the mention of Gavard. They all looked at each other cautiously. As they were all rather short of breath by this time, it was the Camembert they could smell. This cheese, with its gamy odour, had overpowered the milder smells of the Marolles and the Limbourg; its power was remarkable. Every now and then, however, a slight whiff, a flute-like note, came from the Parmesan, while the Bries came into play with their soft, musty smell, the gentle sound, so to speak, of a damp tambourine. The Livarot launched into an overwhelming reprise, and the Géromé kept up the symphony with a sustained high note.”

World’s most expensive cheese. At an auction in Spain a lucky bidder paid over $42,000 for 5 lbs of Spanish cheese. The winning cheese maker is family owned by Angel Diaz herrero, and the winning bitter was Yvonne Suarez, who was the high bidder for the fifth year in a row. The cheese was made of cows milk and aged in a dark dry cave for over 10 months, at about a mile up in the Pyrenees mountains. That set the Guinness World Record for most expensive cheese ever sold at an auction. World record cheese details.

Donkey milk cheese (called Pule) comes from the Balkans it goes for up to $1,700 US a pound. (I wrote about donkey cheese before.) It is apparently exceedingly difficult to milk a donkey, and they don’t produce much of it anyways, hence the scarcity. Pule cheese is dry and white and crumbly and is said to taste a lot like Manchego. (I checked and I can get that stuff in my neighborhood Whole Foods. About $9 for a little block.) Donkey Cheese!

In many parts of the world there's as many different cheeses as there are villages or herds of cows, or even reindeer. Here's a great article which describes 20 extraordinarily rare cheeses from around the world, including yak cheese, moose cheese, Black Brie, Canned cheddar with a 70 year old culture, and Sardinian maggot cheese. Your tastebuds are waiting.

I have to admit, with my Americanized palette, whenever I went to the store and bought cheese, I usually ended up with a brick of Kraft, or maybe the plastic package of sliced Sargento. Never gave much thought to upgrading my cheese profile. But as I read more about cheese, and talked to people, a friend said, “For gosh sakes, would you treat yourself and at least get a little brick of aged Tillamook. Pay extra and get the 10 year-old cheddar, or even a 12. Then you’ll understand why cheese is such a big deal.”

So next time I did. I bought an 8 oz bar of Tillamook 10 year-old Maker’s Reserve Cheddar. (Tillamook has all ages of cheese.) And holy smokes, one bite and that cheese is nothing like the cheddar you get from Kraft. And while Tillamook is fairly commercial as cheese goes, and not particularly made in small batches, OMG, it is fabulous. The flavor is so much more intense. From now on I'll happily spend four or five extra bucks.

I did a little snooping and came upon a wonderful site called PLANET CHEESE. It’s written and maintained by Janet Fletcher, who’s an expert on all things cheesy. Janet apparently eats, breathes, and lives for cheese. She holds cheese classes in Napa and each page is filled with affection for cheese. Each time I visit the site I learn something new. It’s classy and eloquent and recommended. I don't know who Janet Fletcher is, but here’s Janet's PLANET CHEESE website. Check it out!

Back to books next time. Please share this with a gourmet near you. For newbies, I’ve written a four-book Series about 13 year-old genius Chef Zin Mignon, who travels the world to find the best ingredients. He’s also searching for the truth behind his mysterious family legacy, which may not be so savory. Fun, surprisingly sophisticated, and perfect for the cooking kid in you or in your home. ZIN MIGNON is fun, mysterious, and page-turning. Eat it up!

Thanks for reading. Please share away!

MD in AZ

...MICHAELDASWICK.com

On May 29, 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first people to stand on top of the world's highest mountain, Mount Everest.

Ah, but were they truly the first? That's the most enduring mystery in Alpine history. For true Everest historians, the real fascination lies in the lingering question: did George Mallory and Sandy Irving get there first, way back in 1924?

THE THIRD POLE sets out to answer this question once and for all. THE THIRD POLE chronicles the 2019 expedition of author Mark Synnott and an accomplished team that traces Mallory and Irving’s route up The North Face. They climb equipped with tantalizing new clues, photographs from high flying drones, and loads of rumors.

Here's what we know. In the first few decades of the 1900s, most of the world's greatest Alpinists were British. And among the elite climbers of the day, George Mallory was considered The Best. So in 1924 a British expedition was organized to conquer the world's tallest peak, the yet to be summited 29,032 foot tall Mount Everest. (In 1924, the race to reach the summit was akin to the race to land on the Moon in 1969.)

The British team established a high camp at over 26,000 feet and on summit day, Mallory and Irving set off for the top in good weather. Mallory was the clear leader; he selected Irving to join him. Several hours later, looking through a scope, team members appeared to catch a fleeting glimpse of them, moving upwards, at well over 28,000 feet, apparently past the most challenging and technically difficult spots on their climb up the West Face. Then clouds came in and blocked further views. And that was it. After this promising sighting, Mallory and Irving were never seen or heard from again. The question has remained unanswered ever since: did they reach the top.

Everest fans have been free to speculate ever since but in 1999, excitement poured in. The accomplished climber Conrad Anker located George Mallory’s body high on the mountain. Well-preserved by the elements, head injuries indicated he'd sustained a pretty big fall. An ice axe was also found, which was probably Irving’s given the markings on the handle. The thinking is, having found Mallory’s body and the axe, Irving’s couldn't be far away. Furthermore, it's known Mallory and Irving carried a VPK Kodak camera with them -- most people think Irving is the one who carried it. So, if we can find Irving’s body, and the camera along with it, (Kodak experts believe any film would still be developable) we might confirm they reached the summit. Optimists want to believe. They think that if their teammate saw them from the camp below, marching towards the summit with the most difficult spots behind them, they would never have turned back within steps of the top. They believe Mallory and Irving reached the summit in 1924, only to die on their descent.

Synnott’s expedition in 2019 sets out to solve the mystery. Over the years other climbers claim to have seen what looks like a body, perhaps wedged in a crevasse, perhaps snagged by some rocks. Given the location, clothing, and other clues, it might be Irving. But this is the incredibly steep and dangerous North Face, all but inaccessible. Yet somebody needs to get up there once and for all. So we have a climbing expedition that’s tracking a previous climbing expedition. The team includes world class climbers, guides, videographers, photographers, documentarians, Sherpa porters, and a few Yaks -- all very common for Everest expeditions.

Central to the story is the distinction of climbing Everest from the south side (through Nepal), or from the north, up the legendary North Face, from Tibet. This distinction is greatly amplified because Tibet is now part of China, and if you want to climb the North Face today – through Chine – there’s a huge political rats-nest to overcome. (In 1924, however, Tibet was the home of the peaceful Dalai Lama and thousands of friendly monasteries. Today the Dalai Lama lives in exile in India, the monasteries have been shuttered and the heavy-handed Chinese have sought to assimilate traditional Tibetan lifestyle into modern Chinese ways.) The author is loud and clear: China is not climber friendly. They restrict access, they're suspicious, and they want to promote the impression that Chinese climbers conquered the North Face first, and not British nor anybody else. The shadow of Chinese authority is dark and pervades much of the book.

The throngs of people with ‘summit fever’ who attempt Everest every year is well documented. The great majority of these climbers come through the south, through Nepal, which is climber friendly. There’s apparently no end to the number of rich people from India with no mountaineering background who will simply pay their way to get to the top of Everest.

With this adventure story and mystery established, the book happily embarks on many related tangents. We learn about the pros and cons of climbing with oxygen, drones that can fly at 28,000 feet, private weather forecasting, the Himalayan jet stream at 29,000 feet, sherpas, The specific terrain and geology of Mount Everest above 26,000 feet, and the storied history of the mountain. We learn about the difference in clothing and climbing equipment from 1924 to today. Hobnail leather boots? Burberry jackets and a scarf? Simple wool socks and mittens. Incredible. Overall, the book offers wonderful insights into what's needed to climb Mt Everest today.

An aside, there's a fascinating section of how the British first measured the height of Everest in the early 1800s. (A decades-long mission by the finest surveyor in the world, who literally stretched carefully measured chains (allowing three inches more per mile during the Indian summer heat) from a beach on the Indian Ocean in India, laying them end to end, ever so precisely, across hundreds and hundreds of miles and the width of India, up into the Nepalese foothills. By modern standards they had crude surveying equipment, and did some guesswork, but in the end they came within 20 feet of the 29,032’ height that's established today. (With continental shift, Mt Everest grows about ½ inch a year!)

There's quite a bit about the private guided expeditions that Everest is known for today. It’s a fact that almost anybody with $45,000 to $90,000 can pay a guide who will almost literally carry them to the top. Ropes are fixed from base camp to the summit, and it's no secret that you can click in, pay a couple of sherpas, and up you go. To a purist and expert climber like Synnott, the distinction between a true alpinist and a rich thrill seeker is loud and clear. He howls for more regulation. It's hard to argue, with so many people dying on the mountain every year.

For that matter, THE THIRD POLE is packed with descriptions of death on Mt Everest. Death comes through altitude, oxygen failure, the cold, sudden cardiac arrest, overcrowding, unexpected long wait times, poor guides, poor decisions, vastly inexperienced climbers, avalanches, falling, and poor skills. The book tracks several characters in the 2019 season, most of whom were on the south side, who suffered personal tragedies and sadly, their bodies remain on Everest today, often mere inches from the ‘conga line’ of people and main track up and down. Some bodies have been there for years. If you die in the “death zone”, no one will bring you down.

You read THE THIRD POLE to find out, did Mallory and Irving make it to the top? Does the 2019 expedition find Irving’s body and camera? You read this book because it’s an adventure, mystery and history rolled into one, with plenty of Everest lore and learning. You read this to get a sense for how ‘summit fever’ and highly paid ‘guides’ have ruined Everest for the true alpinists and created great risk of life for everyone. Who knew the stunning differences between attempts from Nepal on the South and from China to the north? Or how the Sherpa community has both prospered and been taken advantage of, and tried to adapt. You read THE THIRD POLE because it's a page-turning mystery that’s never boring. And finally, you read this book for the final question: What role does China play in covering up the fate of Mallory and Irving?

Really good book on so many levels. btw, obviously it’s a similar subject matter as Jon Krakauer’s INTO THIN AIR, but THIRD POLE holds an entirely different premise and structure. But if you like one, you’ll like the other; complementary.

Here's the Amazon link to The Third Pole.

_______________________

Thanks for reading to the end! For good (and free!) Karma, please share this Substack!

I read and write in Arizona with my wife and family and three small happy dogs. I've written 7 popular novels which are fun, well thought out and rewarding. As a family we've explored different parts of the Wild West this summer, and I'll probably write about some of that soon. Meanwhile, to find out about all my work, check out my website. Books are available on all the platforms. Thank you for your support!

My website is www.MICHAELDASWICK.com

By Dr. Eric Topol

Renowned cardiologist and medical researcher Dr. Eric Topol makes a bold declaration at the beginning of SUPER AGERS: We stand on the threshold of one of the greatest moments in medical history. There’s a veritable Revolution going on in terms of Longevity as medical advances are accelerating at unprecedented levels. These advances are changing the way we approach many chronic killers, including heart disease, cancer, obesity and diabetes, as well as dementia and Alzheimer's. Dr. Topol makes a powerful case that many old presumptions are now stale. Aging does not need to lead to decline. In his groundbreaking book, Dr. Topol is at the tip of the spear of Longevity: we now have the opportunity to not merely age, but we can age well. He makes a robust case for excitement and hope, offering so many reasons to be positive about our future ‘Healthspans’. This is not a book about living longer, it's a book about living better and staying productive.

Disclosure. I've known the author, Doctor Eric Topol on a professional and personal basis for almost 30 years. He's been my wife’s quarterback-for-health and cardiologist for most of that time. He headed the esteemed Cardiology Department at the Cleveland Clinic, the undisputed world-leader in the field. He's personally seen numerous family and friends and has had a life-changing effect on my family. He just might be the most published man in medicine today, as well as a world-famous cardiologist. He now chairs several elite departments at Scripps Institute in La Jolla where his career has expanded into all facets of medical research, genomics, AI, and far more. I’m a huge fan.

I was so excited to get this book. When he told me about it well over a year ago, he couldn't contain his excitement. It's not often we get a glimpse into the mind of a world class physician and scientist. Over the years Dr. Topol has never been shy to challenge the status quo, point out flaws in pharmaceuticals, condemn a certain medical approach or insurance company practices. In SUPER AGERS, Topol takes aim at age-old assumptions about what it means to grow old.

As the subtitle says, everything here is “Evidence-Based.” This is not a book about opinions, the latest fad diet or fringe supplement, not speculation from non-medical people or pseudo-science. AGERS is about factual advice impeccably supported by scads of medical studies and pointed research. Topol has distilled hundreds and hundreds of trials and properly executed tests; amazingly, he cites an astonishing number of rigorous studies to support his findings and suggestions. AGERS is the result of an endless appetite for science -- this guy loves this stuff!

In detailing this book, I feel a little out of my league trying to explain neurodegeneration, gut microbiomes, proteomic clocks, or how GLP-1 drugs help you lose weight and combat inflammation. However, Dr. Topol is a master of explaining these things to laymen like me. While I do not want to mis-state anything medical, let me try to articulate some of the wisdom from this book.

SUPER AGERS works on several levels. First, there's just a whole lot of good solid practical advice (but supported by science!): What can we all do right now, before we get sick, before we visit any doctor. The steppingstones of the Longevity/Healthspan pathway include: a good diet (think Mediterranean, more plants, less meat); solid sleep habits; regular physical exercise; social activity and relationships; and a commitment to lifelong learning. Topol details these areas and offers hard scientific support on how modifications in each area can dramatically improve the Healthspan of an individual. The persuasive research as to how social and intellectual engagement alone can improve Healthspan is impressive.

Second, AGERS presents an extensive list of recent scientific breakthroughs in chronic diseases -- which so many people face as they age. He chronicles what’s new in treating heart disease, cancer, obesity and diabetes, dementia and Alzheimer's, and others. So much great science is emerging in these areas.

Here’s one area: the GLP-1 class of drugs (Ozempic, Mounjaro, etc) helps you lose weight. Don’t ask me how. (But Topol explains) But citing the most recent test studies, Topol argues that much of their value is still under-appreciated. Besides weight loss, GLP-1s appear to do so much more. Studies indicate that they are powerful anti-inflammatories. They are helpful in treating alcoholism and drug addiction, they curb smoking and other addictive behaviors, boost T-cells, help sleep apnea, and can reduce the outbreak of cancer. They lead to better glucose control, improved sensitivity to insulin, a better lipid profile, and more. Most impressive perhaps, is that GLP-1s seem to slow the progression of early Alzheimer’s. We now know that inflammation is the villain in many chronic diseases like heart disease and cancer, and GLP-1s have a profound impact on such inflammation. With this ability to improve patient outcomes in so many areas, Topol suggests GLP-1s aren’t merely weight-loss drugs, but may have as large an impact on Healthspan as statins. As science in this area rapidly evolves, perhaps each of us will be taking a GLP-1 of some form in the near future.

Heart disease. So many people have some form of coronary artery disease long before any symptoms appear. Wouldn't it be fabulous if we could learn we were in a risk category, and possibly start treatment early? Now we can. Early genomic screening is a reality, and we can take a simple test to determine our polygenic risk score. With this information, we might learn we have a genetic susceptibility towards heart disease, and that an early intervention might be warranted. If our genetics indicated we might be predisposed to heart disease, wouldn't it change our behavior? Start a treatment before any symptoms? Eat better? Of course!

There’s a similar breakthrough for Alzheimer’s. It takes years for Alzheimer's to develop and for impairment to emerge. What if we knew we had a biomarker indicating the disease might be coming? Say, 25 years in advance? We can do it! A mere blood test can identify a simple blood biomarker (something called p-tau217) which could be an indication that someone is susceptible to Alzheimer's. With this information years in advance, would we start taking GLP-1? With Alzheimer’s rates soaring, this test alone is an enormous benefit to a huge population.

More on Alzheimer’s: For years doctors thought the brain was an isolated organ, “insulated” and apart from other bodily systems. But lately we've learned how interconnected it is, how the brain is affected by inflammation, and how connected the brain is to the good and bad microbiomes that live in our guts! This is known as your gut microbiome, and Topol rings the bell: a healthy gut is critical! It plays such an enormous role in empowering our immune system and maintaining brain fitness. Turns out the state of our gut biome affects our susceptibility to Alzheimer's, and plays a vital role in our immune system. It also has a direct correlation to the heart, our ability to fight cancer, fight inflammation, and other areas. The path to the brain and the immune system is through the gut! Can we manipulate our gut microbiomes? Yes! (we can readily influence it by diet, exercise, probiotics, and medicine). Can a healthy gut slow the aging process and ward off Alzheimer’s? Absolutely yes. Preserve brain health? Yes. Maximize our immune system (which fights everything) ? Yes!! It’s a fascinating new area and Dr. Topol lays out the facts.

Other breakthroughs include Genomics and AI. (Topol loves these areas!) Merely one application of genomics: today, each and every one of us can get a genomic sequence and risk profile for less than $200. As science evolves it will become more and more important to get such a genomic profile and establish a baseline in your medical file. Down the road, AI and other tests can identify changes in this profile, before actual symptoms are apparent! If this comes to light, someone can act fast. Such a simple genetic profile should be part of our medical history sooner rather than later.

AI? Many of us don't understand or use AI, but Dr. Topol has embraced it for years. AI’s medical applications are profound: we can now combine and analyze massive amounts of health files and records. Each of us accumulates gobs of personal medical data over the years. Various tests, X-rays, scans, EKG's, checkups, blood tests, labs, and genomic profiles! Not to mention the medical data now generated by Fitbits and smartwatches. Then, AI databanks contain the outcomes from scores of patients with similar symptomatic profiles. AI gives us the ability to assemble all this data, integrate it, analyze it in seconds, and spit out a diagnosis. In more and more cases, AI can assess a person's medical history and gauge risks better than a human can. This is already true in the area of radiology, scans, mammograms, colonoscopy, etc. The time has come that when you link up your Fitbit or phone, AI can discover an issue and trigger an alert to you or your medical team. Can a doctor read and digest your entire historical file and gene sequence, then apply it to the outcomes of thousands of similarly afflicted patients? Probably not. But AI can.

AI also plays a role in designing new drugs, new molecular structures that can fight diseases. Personalized medicine? AI is leading the way. Thus, the development of new drugs has accelerated to unprecedented levels.

SUPER AGERS also provides a great discussion of cultural and environmental contexts when studying longevity and Healthspan. Social isolation is a no no. Get out there! Make friends, keep friends, play Uno with grandma. The book brings awareness to environmental matters most of us confront daily: air pollution, rush hour traffic, microplastics and metals in our tissues.

Topol emphasizes that while it's never too late to start, there are proven benefits in starting early. Give this book to your kids! If you are 20, 30, 40, Read this book! It’s a fact that if you ate well or adopted a sustained Mediterranean diet, starting at age 20, you'd likely increase your life by more than 10 years. Further, the combination of interdependent healthy practices (exercise, don't smoke, don't drink too much, sleep well, get good nutrition, manage your stress, have social connections and stay away from opioids) is associated with an increased life expectancy of over 20 years beginning at age 40.

You read SUPER AGERS to learn that we all have a choice as to how we age. You read SUPER AGERS to understand how the medical community is accelerating at a breakneck pace in 2025. These breakthroughs will lead us to longer and healthier lives, and give us more control than we might think. Dr. Topol provides a gameplan for growth and to lengthen the time we stay healthy: do both the practical things available to us all; and explore the new medical opportunities as they continue to emerge. SUPER AGERS tells us what top researchers and doctors are doing. Dr Topol is a distinguished gatekeeper for scientific research, breaking it down, ferreting out the pros and cons, and explaining it in meaningful ways so consumers can understand.

How would I use this book? Here's one approach. Besides the mountain of day-to-day advice, the book details the latest advances into fighting diseases many of us face or might face: heart disease, cancer, obesity, Alzheimer's, etc. AGERS arms us with just enough knowledge of these new developments, and one might use them as talking points with your own medical team, for elaboration and to see what might apply in your case. AGERS can provide a road map and discussion topics to take to your doctor; perhaps you or someone you know is a candidate.

This is an important book. Longevity is now a new medical category, like cardiology or orthopedics. Eric Topol has assembled the best and the brightest ideas, laid them out, and offers a recipe of early adaptation, preventative lifestyles and medicine that can be life-changing. It's no accident the AGERS is a New York Times Bestseller and reached #1 on Amazon. Strongly recommended. Here's the Amazon link to SUPER AGERS.

btw, Dr. Topol writes the always-illuminating Substack letter GROUND TRUTHS which highlights an array of medical developments. It's fascinating, IT’S FREE, and here's the link to Ground Truths.. I strongly encourage everyone to subscribe.

Thank you for reading and sharing. Reading Off the Beaten Path now has over 7,500 followers, and I’m grateful. Thank you!

I’m a novelist living in Arizona. I write high-concept fiction which continue to receive great reviews. My Series about ZIN MIGNON, the mastermind 13-year-old Chef, hit Number One on Amazon and is a terrific read for anyone (all ages!) interested in food, cooking, mystery-with-fun, and humanity.

More into is on my website, MIKE'S BOOKS, right here.

www.MICHAELDASWICK.com

MD in AZ

WAITING ON THE MOON. Artists, Poets, Drifters, Grifters, and Goddesses. by Peter Wolf.

Here's one of the best rock'n'roll biographies in years, intelligently written by one of the most charismatic frontmen in music. Peter Wolf took centerstage with the legendary J. Geils Band through countless hits and a dozen critically acclaimed albums in the 70s and 80s. One of Rocks great showmen, we easily went toe to toe with Mick Jagger, Roger Daltrey, or Freddie Mercury. Yet do people know that Pete Wolf was married to Faye Dunaway when both were in their prime? When Dunaway was filming hits like Chinatown?

With Waiting on the Moon, Peter Wolf classes up the rock-bio genre. He writes with an elevated style and a literary bent. This is not a rock book about drugs or chicks or smashing hotel rooms. This is an eloquent exploration into the art, music, fashion, and poetry of the 60s, 70s and 80s. Peter Wolf is a smart guy who didn’t need a co-writer; he keeps this respectable, never sensational. It’s a rock book devoid of scandal, shock and temperamental conflict. Therefore, it’s refreshing and different.

For the most part, this is an episodic story where Wolf provides intimate vignettes about his friendships with many important influencers in the 60s and 70s. Incredibly, the list includes Tennessee Williams, Muddy Waters, filmmaker David Lynch, the Stones, Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Merle Haggard, Alfred Hitchcock Julia Child, Sly Stone, Aretha Franklin, Martin Scorsese and of course Faye Dunaway. Oh. And Marilyn Monroe!

Peter Wolf became his own self-made star. Growing up in the Bronx he moved to Boston as a teenager to attend art school. His passion for painting veered into music and he became an all-night DJ for a small Boston radio station. He had enough musical taste to promote then-unknowns like Van Morrison and Dylan. He took a deep interest in the Blues and from there, one of rock's stellar careers was born.

Pete Wolf's tales take a classy approach for every individual. He’s not here to smear people, but to uphold the artistic contributions of the likes of Dunaway, Mick Jagger, or even poets like Robert Lowell. Another artist who takes this literary approach might be Patti Smith, the New York singer and Beat poet, who writes in a similar vein. (She has a decent Substack.)

I was lucky one weekend in the late 70s in Washington DC, where we saw Wold lead the J. Geils Band, live. Pete Wolf was captivating. The band was in its finest form, and there's no question Wolf was the equal to such superstars as Elton John, Springsteen, or Robert Plant. Peter Wolf was that good. Saying that, a pure J. Geils fan might be disappointed with this book. There's little mention of specific songs, the ups and downs of the Band, how they opened for the Stones and filled the largest arenas in their heyday. Nor does Wolf go into why the Band eventually kicked him out. He avoids details as to how his marriage to Faye Dunaway crumbled, choosing instead to stay congenial and highbrow.

You read Waiting On The Moon because it’s an actual joy to not have to go searching for deep meaning. You read Waiting On The Moon because of its simple well-crafted storytelling. The value in Waiting On The Moon is how Peter Wolf can paint a portrait of a person, various snapshots across musical and cultural lines. It’s well written, easy to read, you've heard of everybody he mentions, and there’s an original spin to each. Nice book. Here's the Amazon link.

__________________________________________

THANKS to the new readers, thanks to the sharers and passers-on.

Btw, it came to my attention that Ereadernewstoday.com featured my bestseller, CHIP ROCK and the FAT OLD FART in their Christian Reading category as the Book of the Day on June 23rd. It reached Number One on Amazon’s Christian Reading as well. Hooray! It's featured on this page, I understand.

_____________________

Always more on MIKE’S BOOKS … www.MICHAELDASWICK.com

NEXT TIME: The very latest and everything you ever wanted to know about LONGEVITY, by America’s foremost medical scientist….

MD in AZ

BANDIT HEAVEN by Tom Clavin. The Hole-In-The-Wall Gangs and the Final Chapter of the Wild West.

Hello from Flagstaff! And a big Welcome to the many new followers of Reading Off the Beaten Path! Great to have more readers!

BANDIT HEAVEN is a breezy and highly entertaining book about the colorful characters who made the frontier West so wild. It's about both outlaws and the lawmen who chased them, and ultimately focuses on the exploits of Hollywood heroes Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Bandit Heaven refers to the very remote geographical area of Utah and Wyoming which included the notorious hideouts of Brown’s Hole, Robbers Roost, and the legendary Hole in the Wall. This is an easy reading book, very conversational in style, packed with action of the outlaw West.

Tom Clavin is the prolific western writer of over 20 books (!!!) on such topics as Wild Bill Hickock, Tombstone, Arizona, the Dalton Gang, the Texas Rangers, and Daniel Boone. He also had a hand in the terrific seek-and-destroy story, To the Uttermost Ends of the Earth, about the perilous Civil War hunt for the South's most feared battleship. I reviewed that epic read over a year ago, Here. Tom Clavin can spin a good tale, and he's at his best when he's talking about bandits and lawmen.

Bandit Heaven starts in the 1860s, right after the Civil War. Before focusing on Butch and Sundance, we meet several other outlaws who used Robbers Roost and the Hole in the Wall. We meet Kid Curry (he’s not the Sundance Kid), a ruthless killer, and Black Jack Ketchum. It’s the time of Wanted posters and shady sheriffs. Who’s after the bad guys? Most often, it’s the amazing Pinkertons and their top western detective, Charlie Siringo. Pinkerton detectives apparently broke all the rules, made their own laws, and assumed secret identities. They’d ride into a town and blend into the landscape as cowhands or merchants. Once an area was infiltrated, they’d gather information. (Charlie was likely the model used in the timeless movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. We all remember the lawman who wore the white skimmer hat, relentlessly on the heels of Butch and Sundance.) This book makes us wonder, was Charlie Siringo a top Pinkerton detective? Or a sneaky two-faced double agent, willing to lie and cheat anybody to get information which led to a bounty?

Clavin provides vignettes and anecdotes of the Wild West outlaws, their gangs and hideouts. While crooks came and went from the gangs, most of the characters were tied one way or another to Butch. He was the mastermind behind most of the great train robberies of the era, And we get a terrific sense for the difficulties and obstacles faced by both crooks and law enforcers. Butch Cassidy, (real name Robert Leroy Parker) and the Sundance kid, (Harry Alonzo Longabaugh) provide the most fascination. Clavin tracks them through their youth, and then their greatest robberies. Butch was a truly gifted strategist in planning a heist. He left no stone unturned on the execution of a robbery, and the escape. (Before a robbery, he'd hide packs of horses along his escape route so his men always had fresh horses, able to outrun any pursuers.) Also, his hideouts like Robbers Roost and Hole in the Wall were remote and dangerous places, fortress-like, easy to protect.

But these are the dying days of the outlaw West. By the 1890’s it's tougher to rob banks and trains for many reasons. There’re simply more people moving out West. Law enforcement and the incredible Pinkertons post rewards, and bounties become common. Everybody has their eyes and ears open. Communications improve quickly, there’s the Telegraph, trains, better roads and transportation. As the Dalton Gang and Jesse James could attest, it simply got harder to be a crook. Populations grew and there were fewer places to hide.

Nobody felt these pressures more than Butch Cassidy. By all accounts many aspects of the Hollywood movie are accurate: Butch, Sundance and Etta do go to New York City and throw money and caution to the wind. She follows them for years. But as the law closes in, they go to live in South America. There, they become ranchers in southern Argentina. But that's not appealing and doesn't work out for many reasons, and the relatively primitive South American banks look like easy targets. What happens? Do two American’s in South America stand out? Clavin lays out the mystery and offers all the theories. Were Butch and Sundance killed? Was their secret ranchers’ life in Patagonia discovered? Did they turn to thievery again, drifting back and forth to Bolivia to rob banks? Or did they slip back into the United States and live out their days in an anonymity in Utah?

You read BANDIT HEAVEN to learn about cattle rustlers, thieves, bank robbers, killers, and the lawmen who chased them. You read this book to learn about the Wild West in the 1880s, when more and more people are pouring in, and the hideouts aren't so hidden anymore, not even for the most ruthless killers. Ultimately you read this book because it's a wistful or even melancholy tale about the end of the Wild West, an era coming to a close, and the fading of our oddly romantic images of outlaws, six-shooters and posses chasing crooks into the badlands. This is a book where the pages turn and there's never a dull moment. It's a fun western history that gives a great taste of both sides of the law. And if you’re like me, you’ll want to learn more about what truly happened to Butch and Sundance in South America. Here’s the Amazon link.

___________________________________________________

From time to time Reading off the Beaten Path reports on the world of food. We write about cooking, (After all, I've written a Series which reached Number One on Amazon, about a 13-year-old genius Chef.) So I was excited to read about the very recent papal election, the Vatican Conclave, and see thew question: What do the Cardinals eat? We don’t really know, of course, because during a Conclave, secrecy is at the utmost. Nobody goes in or out. Over the centuries the code of conduct surrounding the secret votes has been protected with iron fists. Legends of treachery abound and incredible care is taken to protect the secrecy … they worried that a Cardinal might conceal an update on a vote inside a dirty napkin! Accordingly, rituals are in place in the kitchens, with strict protocols and even specially trained guards who keep an eye on irregularities in pie crusts or loaves of bread!

In modern times, the protocols have slackened. Most recently, the cooking is done by highly trained nuns. So what do the Cardinals eat during a Conclave? Spaghetti, minestrone, veggies, lamb skewers. Here's a good article about Papal cookery within a Conclave.

_____________________________________________

Thw World’s Most Expensive Cheese?

It’s Pule Cheese, from the Balkans. $1,700 a pound.

Made from donkey’s milk. Learn about Donkey-milk cheese here.

__________________________________________________

Finally, what do the following words all have in common: Dulcet, Elixir, Halcyon, Harbinger, Lithe, Inglenook, and Ratatouille? Answer is, they're all among the 100 Most Beautiful Words in the English language. No idea how this was compiled, but it’s no doubt an important one if you’re a writer. And as for a reader, whether they know it or not, these words will lead to a subliminal pleasure within ones’ brain. Here's the whole list of 100.

___________________________________

For the newbies, I'm a novelist living in Arizona, currently working on my 8th book. Two of my works have reached #1 in several different categories on Amazon. I write strong stories with ordinary characters who face various challenges, leading to some turbulence within their moral compasses. Award-winning and high-concept fiction, clean and for all ages. Please learn about all my work on my website. www.MICHAELDASWICK.com

Thank you for reading. Likes and shares are always appreciated.

MD in AZ

TO ANYONE WHO EVER ASKS: The Life, Music and Mystery of Connie Converse. By Howard Fishman

First, a hearty welcome to the many new followers who found this letter over the last few weeks. Word continues to seep out!

________________________________________________

IF I could shout from a soapbox or pound the table with a recommendation, I'm doing that right now! TO ANYONE WHO EVER ASKS is the true story of Connie Converse, a singer and composer whose truly beautiful and haunting music never reached an audience during her troubled lifetime; she dabbled through life, then one day drove off in her Volkswagen Beetle and was never seen again.

99% of you never heard of Connie Converse or her music. It must be a tricky thing to write a biography about a person nobody’s ever heard of, but that’s exactly what author Howard Fishman has done. He's wildly successful. Either posthumously, or in her absentia, Fishman has made Connie Converse a cult hero. She’s quite possibly one of the best folk singers and composers the world never knew; but now, her spectacular work has been recovered and refreshed by this book. Here’s a biography wrapped around a mystery; further, it offers a road map of the musical awakening of Greenwich Village in New York City during the 1950s.

A party in 2011 changed Howard Fishman's life. There he heard a scratchy recording of a soulful woman singing and strumming a guitar. As a musician himself, he had to know more, was gripped by the mystery, and took a deep dive into the world and music of Connie Converse. After 13 years of painstaking research, the life of an utterly unknown artist has been brought to light.

Connie Converse was a mostly typical young woman growing up in New England. Well educated, she attended Mt. Holyoke College. She declined various professional opportunities that appealed to her classmates and moved instead to Greenwich Village in New York. It was during World War II. She took random day jobs and composed music in her apartment after hours. She was independent, almost rebellious at times, long before the social upheavals of the 60s. Over the next several years she sang and played privately for a few close friends and family, after dinners and late at night, in people’s living rooms. By all accounts, everyone who listened was amazed by this talent who did her own thing, before the influence of Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, or Woody Guthrie. She wrote precise lyrics and tight guitar chords, and sang with her own unique voice. While she was applauded and encouraged by all who heard her, she never made commercial inroads. Along the way, someone made a few living room recordings on an old- fashioned reel-to-reel tape recorder. (And that’s all we have today.) She never hit the clubs, let alone a recording studio.

Years passed and Connie moved to Minnesota and became involved in the anti-war movement and causes that combated racism. She remained single with few close relationships, although by all accounts she was not unpopular. She lived in spare bedrooms with friends and cheap apartments. She continued to correspond with family back in New England and New York, made a few trips to visit. Time wore on and she continued to write songs; but as she approached 50 years old she had constant money problems, drank, borrowed money, suffered depression. Then in August 1974, she drove off in her Volkswagen Beetle one day, never to be seen again.

The recording at the party in 2011 that Howard Fishman heard was a version of that reel-to-reel tape. He was fascinated. Not only was Fishman a seasoned writer (He’s a regular contributor to The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, etc.) he’s an accomplished musician himself, entirely capable of describing Converse’s talents and abilities, analyzing her lyrics, melodies, the musical fine points. He's careful not to overwhelm us with technicalities, but he does speak to her eloquence, and holds her as a predecessor or contemporary of early folk singers like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. On the musical chain, her link comes before Guthrie and Seeger, as well as Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, Joan Baez, and even Elvis.

So long before pop and rock, Connie Converse was writing Dylanesque songs before Dylan himself. Her catalog is on Apple, Spotify and other platforms. I was eager to listen. I played 30 or 35 of her songs, listened three times, trying to place myself back into the musical picture of the 1950s. You hear very pure tracks from those living room recordings in the Village from the 1950s. They’re underproduced, non-professional, clean. And I have to say, I'm a fan. Her music is listenable, thoughtful, subtle, and complex. Incredibly endearing. It's not amplified or arranged -- it's just the voice of a simple soul, strumming carefully, singing from her heart. One might only imagine how it’d sound if a producer had ever stepped in, put her in a recording studio, with professional support. Instead, Connie Converse was an outsider who never felt the embrace of the musical mainstream, in fact she never even held its hand.

While I've skipped most of the finer biographical details, Fishman does not. His research is profound, gathered from long-lost friends and family, many with only fleeting memories of Connie. But 13 years of research speaks for itself, and the result is an incredibly detailed portrait of an amazing woman's life. Not much good luck ever came her way. Was that self-imposed? You can reach your own conclusion. In any case we have a portrait of a complicated and groundbreaking artist who seemed to be confronted with that time honored artistic conflict: how can one achieve notoriety, but remain anonymous at the same time.

Connie Converse’s music is slowly creeping out there. Her songs are interesting, carefully constructed, soulful. Are they ballads? Folk songs? Light pop? Many are truly catchy. Most of all, I was captured by the lyrics, so carefully written, each word so precise and well chosen. Converse wrote gifted ‘musical poetry’, which she fashioned in her own style. She has her own unique sound and certainly sits on her own branch of the musical tree. Which all begs the question, did the world fail Connie Converse? Did she under promote herself? Was she too shy? Victim of bad luck? No matter your conclusion, she’s very deserving to be heard.

The book ends with the author offering a few theories on her mysterious disappearance. She literally drives off into the sunset. This is the kicker on an amazing story. He speculates, but allows the reader to draw their own conclusions.

You read TO ANYONE WHO EVER ASKS to learn the wonderful story of someone whose star never shone like it should have. You read it because it’s a first-rate biography; it’s also a fine mystery. You read it also because it offers a narrative of music in the Village in the 50s and ewarly 60s, an important time as folk music emerged, influencial musicians blossomed, and rock followed.

But to me, there's a far more important story here: the book reaches past Connie Converse. This book is an appreciation and tribute to all artists who toil in obscurity their entire lives. There are literally millions of Connie Converses out there -- composers, musicians, singers, writers, painters, poets, knitters and needle-pointers, dancers, woodworkers, and cooks! Anyone with a creative sentiment or talent, and a dream… All of those looking for that One Big Break! Don’t all ‘struggling artists’ think, if only a few things had been different? In any case, this biography of Connie Converse speaks to all the living-room artists who create beautiful expressions, yet remain in the shadows, if not total darkness. TO ANYONE WHO EVER ASKS underscores the struggles and pain of an artistic life, its emotional wear and tear, the challenges and often the sadness. That’s why this is an important book, and why it reaches way past Connie Converse.

Try this fascinating book. Here's the link on Amazon.

_________________________________________________________________________

As always thank you for reading and sharing.

I'm a novelist in Arizona, currently working on my 8^th book. I blend humor, pop culture, outsiders who find themselves up against it, and different sides of human kindness. Two of my novels reached Number One on various categories of Amazon. Find out more about all my work at MIKE'S BOOKS.

www.MICHAELDASWICK.com

MD in AZ

Great train robberies in the Wild Wild West are a thing of the past. Or are they?? After apparently going almost 100 years without a reported train robbery in Arizona, there have been at least ten such robberies in the Mojave Desert in the last few years, with close to $2,000,000 of stolen goods reported. The big target? Air Jordan sneakers, on their way to Dick's Sporting Goods in California

We have a place in Flagstaff, in Northern Arizona; anyone here will tell you that Flagstaff is a railroad town. We hear them day and night, as over 100 trains pass through every day. The traffic goes back and forth, hauling freight from SoCal ports to Walmarts and Targets to the east. Many of these trains are three miles long, or more. These are not little steam engines chugging up the hill, but the enormous Burlington Northern Santa Fe freighters ripping across the desert.

I-40 is the highway linking California to Kingman to Flagstaff to Gallup to points east. It travels through some of the most remote areas of the southwest. The train tracks pass north of this road, in even more remote territory, edging up towards the Grand Canyon. This is some of the most desolate country in America, and this is where modern-day train robbers are active.

A robbery a month ago occurred just north of Seligman, which was once a mining settlement; today, it clings to a de-certified stretch of Old Route 66. This is empty land, seldom traveled. [There's a long road here that goes to a parking lot on the rim of one of the Grand Canyon’s largest side-canyons. It’s the start of a 10 mile trail (all downhill) which takes you to Supai Village, home to the Havasupai tribe. I've done the hike (It's one of the great hikes in America; you need a permit to go past the Village) which takes you to Havasupai Falls in a tight but tall box canyon. The Falls are spectacular -- the water is turquoise blue like the Caribbean]

It doesn't get any more remote than this. It's reported that the robbers know where the trains have to slow down, (the hills, over trestles, around curves). They jump on and cut the air brakes which triggers an emergency stop. Security out there is minimal. Of a train with hundreds of box-cars, the crooks seem to know exactly where to go, exactly which car holds the Air Jordans. A gang recently offloaded over 2000 pairs with the help of ‘undocumented workers,’ left the shoes in gullies, and came back later with U-Haul trucks. There have been 11 recent arrests because tracking devices were placed in certain shoe boxes, which led back to the ‘hideouts’. The BNSF railroad has promised greater security and vigilance.

With shades of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, we're reminded of what Mark Twain said: “History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” Here's a YouTube of an Arizona news report.

__________________________

Happy Anniversary to Arizona Highways Magazine. This venerable and classy publication celebrates its 100th consecutive year in April, 2025. Arizona Highways published its first issue in 1925. This is the same year that The Great Gatsby was published, when Paul Newman, Dick VanDyke and Johnny Carson were born, and The New Yorker Magazine was only two months old.

Arizona Highways (We’ve subscribed for years) is famous for fabulous outdoor photos of land, nature and wildlife and all things beautiful in Arizona. Over the years AHM has showcased the photography, art, writings and poetry of such people as Ansel Adams, artist and novelist Ross Santee, Barry Goldwater, photographers Josef and David Muench, Esther Henderson, artist Ted deGrazi, painter Ed Mell, Maynard Dixon, Frederick Remington. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. Charles Russell, Cartoonist Bil Keane, and many others. The magazine has been instrumental in singing the virtues of Arizona, promoting tourism, preserving its history, horsemanship, and has remained at the forefront of Native American culture and issues and land conservation. I have a special-issue Arizona Highways license plate on my car, and I look forward to every monthly issue to learn about some remote spot, wildlife, a piece of history, a dirt road or hike that's far off the beaten track. With subscribers in over 100 countries, no matter where you live, it's quite a worthwhile publication. Explore Arizona Highways here.

____________________________________

Finally, I hope others find this tidbit as fascinating as I do. It's now a fact that Saturn has no less than 274 known moons! With the Hubbell and Webb telescopes, it seems not a week goes by that we aren't learning something fascinating about our universe. But 274 moons? Back in school as a kid, or at an observatory, I learned that Jupiter was the granddaddy of moons. But Saturn has taken the lead, with 128 new moons officially added to its list. So what if most of these new moons are only a mile or two across? Why so many? Astronomers speculate that something extremely violent happened in Saturn’s past.

By the way, did you know that Mars has two moons? And how many people know that Pluto, (poor Pluto, demoted of its official planetary status a while back—it’s now a dwarf) has five moons. Little Pluto has five! The largest is Charon, which of course deserves a literary reference. You'll remember your Greek mythology -- Charon was the fellow who steered the ferry across the dreaded River Styx, to take the souls of the dead to the Underworld. No one wanted to end up on that boat! More on Saturn's moons!

______________________________________

Next time, I’ll describe a fine book nobody's ever heard of. Meanwhile, with a wave of new followers to this letter, I truly appreciate the shares and referrals. For the newbies, I'm a novelist in Arizona who's working on my 8th book. Two of my books have reached #1 in several of Amazon's categories. I try to blend humor with human kindness, and put ordinary people and underdogs in extraordinary situations and see what happens. I won both of Columbia’s prestigious literary awards and work hard to be thoughtful, original, and give my readers a good honest read in an industry that seems to be getting more formulaic by the day. (Last comment came from my soapbox.) You can learn about all my work on my MIKE'S BOOKS website and my novels are available on all the platforms. I've just learned that two of my books were picked up this month by bargainbooksie.com so they're $0.99 for the e-book. (Great deal for you guys, pizza money for me.) Thank you for reading and sharing as always.

MD in AZ

www.MICHAELDASWICK.com

By Erik Larson

Don’t we all know the story of the sinking of the Lusitania? A German U-boat sunk the largest, fastest and most elite passenger liner of its day as it cruised from New York City to Liverpool, in 1915, killing 1,195 souls. Rumors were that it might’ve been carrying arms and perhaps even troops. That's what I remember from high school history. Oh. It was also the trigger that pushed America into the Great War.

If you ever wanna learn how much you did not know about the sinking of the Lusitania, read DEAD WAKE by Erik Larson. He tells the tragic tale from the point of view of at least four different people, and when you close the book at the end, you'll shake your head and just say, “Wow.”

Erik Larson has a brilliant career as a writer. He takes major nonfiction topics, enlarges them, pulls their components apart to expose fascinating details, then weaves them back together towards a conclusion that shatters what you previously thought. It’s a genre we now known as “Narrative nonfiction.” (In the old days, they said it was “nonfiction that reads like a novel.) Larson has written for decades. His topics include Winston Churchill during the blitz, Galveston's hurricane, Lincoln before the start of the Civil War, and a serial killer at the 1893 world's fair in Chicago. Six of his books are bestsellers. Here's his author's website.

WWI was 10 months old when Lusitania sailed from NYC enroute to Liverpool (its home port) on May 1st, 1915. For perspective, this was barely three years after the sinking of the Titanic. Remember, in 1915 there were no commercial airplanes. Ocean liners were the operative way for transoceanic and intercontinental travel. White Star Lines and Cunard Lines were the big players. (The Lusitania was owned by Cunard) Ships were built to be bigger, faster, and more luxurious. This was how the wealthy showed off; staterooms were opulent, people dressed for dinner to receive black tie service and seven course meals. Butlers filled your needs. (Of the 1,959 passengers, there were 693 staff and 3 stowaways.)

The Lusitania was exceptional because it was considered the biggest and fastest liner in the world. Its coal-fed steam engines could bring 24 knots at top speed (almost 28 mph) and it set records for fastest crossings. (Lusitania had made 101 round trips before the disaster.) It was highly recognizable for its distinctive 4 smokestacks, a testament to its huge engines below.

The narrative jogs back and forth between several points of view. The Captain of Lusitania, William Turner; the Captain of U-boat SM U20, Walther Schwieger; President Woodrow Wilson, and Winston Churchill and his officers, operating in a top secret intelligence bunker -- known only to a few -- as Room 40. There are micro biographies of each; we learn their history, how they rose to their position of importance, plus some of their more hidden motivations. These back stories are fascinating: President Wilson was distracted, as his wife had recently passed away and his eyes and heart were settled on a new woman. Captain Turner of Cunard is experienced, decisive, and trusted. Captain Schwieger is a decorated naval commander in the German ranks, keen to hunt ships around the British Isles. And Winston Churchill, ever crafty and political; his highly classified team in Room 40 has cracked the German code and knows the precise movements of U-boats and their mission of seek and destroy.

We also get to know a handful of passengers and understand the voyage through them. First class passengers, bottom class passengers. The young guy going to England to propose to his girlfriend; the uber-wealthy Alfred Vanderbilt; women with newborns; a book collector from Boston with a near-priceless autographed novel from Charles Dickens; and not to mention plenty of servers and socialites. It's through the eyes of these players, plus the ship and U-boat themselves, that Larson slowly builds the story, raises the tension and suspense, until the catastrophic ending. It's hard to take your eyes away, which is especially remarkable because we already know the ending.

A few threads to share. The American point of view in the early months of WWI was to practice isolationism at all costs. My first surprise was to learn that in the months before the Lusitania, ships and freighters were being sunk left and right all around the British Isles, including in the English Channel and the straight between Ireland and Wales. The Germans considered anything fair game. Even more surprising was that the German government actually ran ads in New York newspapers, warning ocean-going travelers that they were entering a war zone and any ship was at risk. Germany posted the following notice in New York newspapers just a few days before the Lusitania set sail:

"Vessels flying the flag of Great Britain, or any of her allies, are liable to destruction...travelers sailing in the war zone on ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk."

Did Captain Turner know the risk? Certainly. The previous Captain of the Lusitania, Captain Dow, watched as two freighters were sunk on the Lusitania’s course merely weeks before. Captain Dow couldn't handle the responsibility of putting nearly 2000 people, or souls, in jeopardy while he was at command. Telling his bosses at Cunard of his anxiousness, he resigned/was relieved of duty. This is the backdrop into which Captain Turner took command.

Why did Captain Turner and most of the passengers on the Lusitania choose to ignore the explicit warnings and travel anyway? Most simply thought the Germans wouldn't dare attack a passenger liner. Most believed the Lusitania, capable of speeds almost twice as fast as a U-boat (A submarine was a fairly new vessel in 1915. And while they were sinking ships all around, Britain still held to its traditional ‘Naval superiority’.) And finally, passengers (and Captain Turner?) believed that once Lusitania reached Irish waters, just a few hours before reaching Liverpool, British naval destroyers would meet it and escort her safely through the final leg.

By the way, apparently many passengers knew that many vessels, including passenger ships and Lusitania, were regularly ferrying munitions from the US to Britain. Lusitania held 173 tons of rifle ammo and shells.

Perhaps the most devastating knowledge is to read about Churchill's secretive Room 40, a nondescript office in a nondescript building, where intelligence officers cracked the German naval codes and therefore knew the mission and movements of the U-boat fleet. In particular, they knew Captain Schwieger had left the Baltic Sea, was cruising north towards Scotland, traveled up and around Scotland and down towards Ireland, where he and other U-boat captains were sinking ships regularly in the weeks and even days before Lusitania approached. Sadly, it is said that Churchill pointedly withheld this knowledge from America so as not to tip the British hand and let the Germans know that their messages were being intercepted. The biggest shock of all? Britain could have prevented this catastrophe. They could have warned Cunard and Captain Turner, could have revealed the location of Captain Schwieger’s U-boat, which was seen in the days before, cruising the Irish coast. They could have rerouted the ship. Or, they could have sent an escort of destroyers.

Those were just a few of the eye-poppers for me. Yet this in no way lets all the cats out of the DEAD WAKE bag. You read DEAD WAKE to get an hour-to-hour picture of a monumental maritime and wartime tragedy. You read DEAD WAKE because it's full of fascinating world trivia: the personal life of President Wilson; the various people who made up an elite transatlantic crossing in 1915; the culture and customs of a fine cruise ship; coal-burning, U-boat technology and strategy; torpedoes, new and old life jackets, and all about lifeboats. You also read DEAD WAKE to get a minute-by-minute account of the final 18 minutes it took Lusitania to sink. That was a surprise, only 18 minutes. Just a few kilometers off the Irish coast, in full sight of land, on flat water and under sunny skies. The book is full of questions. Why didn't escorts come out to meet it? Did Lusitania really need to slow down so much in the Irish fog? Why didn't it travel across the Atlantic at top speed, it used only three of its four engines. If it had gone faster, would a day have been saved and the U-boat might’ve been avoided? How can a single torpedo sink the largest liner in the world in only 18 minutes? What did Churchill know and not know? What were the real reasons he failed to warn civilian ships and peaceful passenger liners? What happened to the lifeboats? After all, live lifeboat drills were held daily, both on shore and during crossings. And finally, did the sinking drag America right into the war? (No. America didn’t join the allied effort until two years later.)

I really enjoyed the book. It reads fast. It'll turn your high school history knowledge on the Lusitania upside down. You can find it from all platforms here.

Thank you as always for reading and sharing.

I read and write in Arizona. Two of my seven novels have hit Number 1 in their categories on Amazon.

Learn about my style of High Concept Fiction at MY WEB SITE, up in the clouds.

MD in AZ

www.MICHAELDASWICK.com