By James Aitchison Think today’s bestsellers, and the usual suspects spring to mind: J. K. Rowling, Danielle Steel, Lee Child, Stephen King, John Grisham, David Baldacci and James Patterson. And while their sales achievements make headlines, some less familiar names…
By: Andrew Nickerson Sun Tzu and Entertainment: Girls Und Panzer[i]’s Anzio Battle Many tactical theorists have come and gone throughout history, but none have had the influence of Sun Tzu, an ancient general/tactician/strategist whose masterwork, The Art of War,…
By: Jun A. Alindogan I remember growing up in a neighborhood that was surrounded by nature. Our yard was filled with guavas, duhat (java plums), atis (sugar apples), tamarinds, coconuts, and bananas. Outside the yard, there were mango, santol (cotton…
By: Amir Zadenemat 1. The Eroding Present We live in an era when the present feels porous, as if each moment dissolves before it fully arrives. This sensation is not sudden or catastrophic. It is slow, granular, the effect of…
By Ken Poyner AN EDUCATION Each year we debate what should be the proper age for school children to be taken on a first field trip to see captive pianos in the next town. All of our pianos have been…
By Bruce Levine In many ways this has been an odd year for me. Not odd in that I’ve subbed at DHS almost full time – but full time when I covered, long term, for a Social Studies teacher out…
By James Aitchison He is the role model for aspiring young authors: a writer who set himself a target of 1,200,000 words a year, typed with two fingers! Erle Stanley Gardner was the best-selling American author in the 1960s. He…
By: James Aitchison Few British novelists have captured the world’s imagination as completely as C. S. Forester. And, in the process, his cinematic writing style inspired major Hollywood movies. Born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1899, as Cecil Louis Troughton Smith,…
By: Shailendra Chauhan The passing of Vinod Kumar Shukla is not merely the passing of an individual; it is the passing of a language that spoke very softly, said a great deal in very few words, and—away from noise—found profound…
By James Aitchison Nassau, the Bahamas. 8 July 1943. It was after midnight when Sir Harry Oakes, aged 68, one of the world’s richest men, was murdered with a silver ice pick from Simpsons-in-the-Strand. It punctured the side of his…