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Author, Father, Reader, Etc.
Gurney Luck--The 1964 French Grand Prix
Mention Rouen to any self-respecting Frenchman, and he may think of France's Patron Saint, Joan of Arc. Or, perhaps be reminded of...
book review: Getting out of Saigon, by Ralph White
What's interesting about this compelling rescue story, is that the author, Ralph White does not consider himself a hero nor particularly...
Rindt Serves Notice--1969 U.S. Grand Prix
"If Jochen Rindt ever wins a Grand Prix, I will shave off my beard." This was the word of no less an authority than Denis Jenkinson, the...
F-1's Quintessential Number-Two Driver, Snags a Win in Mexico City--The 1965 Mexican Grand Prix
This was not exactly the role Richie Ginther had envisioned for himself. What he had been hired to do was to be a test driver, and...
Jackie Stewart Assumes the Crown--The 1968 German Grand Prix
Somewhere in motor racing's collective consciousness, the Nurburgring will always exist, awaiting some desperate hour: Tazio Nuvolari in...
Tony's Playpen
There was three feet of snow in Denver when the ARS transporter departed from the team headquarters on First Street. Three days later,...
McLaren on the Verge: The 1967 Canadian Grand Prix
NINETEEN SIXTY-SIX was a disastereous year for McLaren Cars. The money they had spent developing the Ford Indy engine for their...
Taffy Revels in the Rain--The 1961 British Grand Prix
The sky over northeast England matched Phil Hill's mood perfectly--dark and foreboding. Two days earlier, Hill had departed Reims in a...
Book Review—The Making of a Quagmire
When I was in college as in the early-1970s, the the heroes of the Journalism Department were Vietnam reporters Neil Sheehan, Malcolm...
The Silver Fox
It was a pivotal moment in Pop Music. Charlie Rich was in Memphis auditioning for Sam Phillips, the owner of Sun Records who’d...
The Man Who Invented Rock ‘n’ Roll
Sun Records was little more than a storefront studio in a bad part of Memphis, Tennessee. Yet, it was here the first rock-n-roll record...
Domes: Easy When You Know How
In the second century A.D., Roman emperor Hadrian commissioned the building of a temple to commemorate the gods of all the planets. Mind...
Amazon Review—The Pantheon—Father of Domes
The Pantheon is brilliant in its simplicity, a combining of the circle and square, with man as part of the equation. “The Pantheon:...
Brunelleschi's Dome -- a Monument to Optimism
It was some contest, and it was some prize. The contest was finding a way to stand an egg on its end. The prize was designing what...
You Want a Confederate Monument? My body is a Confederate Monument
By Caroline Randall Williams NEW YORK TIMES, June 26, 2020 "If there are those who want to remember the legacy of the Confederacy, if...
Book Review: The 1619 Project
His name was Thomas Dartmouth Rice, a New York entertainer who performed under the stage name of T. D. Rice. In 1828, Rice had been a...
Book Review—The Hundred-Year Marathon—"China’s Dream is America’s Nightmare"
In some ways this book is as fantastical as “The Travels of Marco Polo.” It’s a disturbing account of the Chinese Communist Party’s...
In Search of the America Dream
The book is entitled, "The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone And How We Can Prosper Together", by Heather McGhee. What the book does...
Book Review: "Caste: The Origins of our Discontents" by Isabel Wilkerson
It seems we live in a caste society. This is the message of "Caste: The Origins of our Discontents" by Isabel Wilkerson, a Pulitzer...
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