A YOUNG MAN’S ADVENTURE IN THE EARLY AMERICAN FRONTIER

“Don’t love anything overmuch in the backcountry, for the land is a jealous mistress, and she be taking it away.”

AVAILABLE IN AMAZON NOW

A TIME-SLIP MYSTERY

The townspeople of Solvidado regretted the senseless loss of life when the lovers, Thomas and Penelope, drove their wagon over the cliff to escape pursuers, but not nearly so much as the disappearance of the gold they had stolen.

One hundred and twenty years later, the events of that turbulent night are relived and the search for the treasure takes unexpected turns.

BLOGS, ET CETERA

FEMMES FATALES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

According to David Hackett-Fischer, on Christmas Eve 1776 a beautiful young widow entertained Colonel Carl von Donop for almost a full twenty four hours, stalling the progress of his battalion. While the proud and arrogant Hessian enjoyed the widow’s favors and his men twiddled their thumbs, Washington defeated the British at Trenton. There is reason to believe that the beautiful young widow was Betsy Ross.

CASANOVA’S ESCAPE FROM THE LEADS

No one had ever escaped from the Leads—so-called because the prison was on top of the Doge’s Palace in Venice which was roofed in lead tiles. This roofing made the cells into ovens in the summer and freezers in the winter. The only good thing that you could say about the Leads was that it wasn’t the Wells: cells in the cellar of the palace which always had two feet of water in them and were infested with giant sea rats.

WOMAN’S WORK

Resistance Fighters in Epirus

“Woman’s work” is a loaded phrase because it has so often been used in a disparaging sense. It brings to mind a woman caught in endless daily grind of cooking and cleaning for her unappreciative family. I would like to suggest with a few examples that the reality for many women was somewhat different. Not easier, by any means—in fact, harder, scarier, but also richer, fulfilling and, above all, essential for our humanity.   

THE MOHAWK CAPTIVE

Seated beside her Mohawk husband, Eunice, at first, refuses to talk to the trader. He represents her father, John Williams, a notable New England pastor, who for nine years has tried to redeem his daughter. The situation has become political. There is a tenuous peace between the French and English colonies. Pressured by authorities in Canada, the village priests, and powerful officials in New England, who all want Eunice to return to her influential father, she has to speak her mind, so she finally replies in her husband’s language, “Ya!” or in English, “No!”

THE FIRST SAILOR

Do we recognize us in him?

LOVE OF THE DEVIL

Two hours after the doctor pronounced him dead, Sir Richard Burton’s wife pronounced him alive and insisted the priest give him extreme unction so his soul would go to heaven.

Bukharin’s Last Stand

In 1938 Fitzroy Maclean  was one of the foreign diplomats allowed to witness Stalin’s show trials of Nikolai Bukharin, a former Secretary-General of the Communist International, the leading theorist of the Party, Genrihk Yagoda, the feared head of the secret police N.V.K.D and a dozen other comparatively lesser officials. He described what took place in his unforgettable memoir, EASTERN APPROACHES.  

EMPRESS THEODORA AND BYZANTINE NASCAR

In the history of sports the rivalry of Byzantium’s Blue and Green chariot teams stand out in the fanaticism the savagery of their supporters. It was as if the scientist/god of history decided to make an experiment with our species: take away principles, religious and political, take away territory, take away all the reasons cited for conflict and substitute the colors Blue and Green, give them to two different chariot teams, then see what happens.

What in the world did martyrs have in mind when facing their end? Perpetua, a young Roman mother, kept a diary.

A MODEST THEORY OF GHOSTS

The phenomenon of believing in ghosts and haunted places seems to span all cultures since recorded time. Is it just superstition or is another aspect of our humanness at play?

BASKET MEN

A modern morality tale from the Brazilian rainforest.

THE FIRST KISS (ever)

COWARDS OF US ALL

The Antihero in our genes.

THE MARRIAGE OF INCONVENIENCE

John II of the Paston family wanted a wife. Unfortunately, if you belonged to the propertied class in the fifteenth-century England getting married wasn’t all that simple. The goal was to obtain an amiable attractive mate with a dowry befitting the position and dignity of one’s family. The attractive amiable prospective brides with hefty dowries usually had a say in the choosing of their husbands within the limits of their class and therefore were fully aware of their consequent power.

NAPOLEON’S GRAND ARMY AT THE BRIDGES OF BEREZINA

I take this incident from Phillippe-Paul de Segur Napoleon’s Retreat from Moscow. It occurs near the end of the retreat when the Grand Army has been reduced to few fighting units and a great horde of stragglers. What is left of the ninth corps of General Victor is making its way towards the partially iced-over river of Berezina. Accompanying the soldiers, many of whom have abandoned their arms, is an unorganized mass of thousands—in many cases whole families—who supplied the Grand Army’s needs. There are two bridges that cross the river, one for artillery.

HENRIETTE

Casanova was a monumental egoist. Few affairs rose above the level of infatuation, yet there was one woman who eclipsed him in his memoirs. It is hard for a reader even at a distance of two hundred and seventy years not to fall in love with her as did Casanova.

Rommel told Lucy, his wife of thirty years, that the generals had presented him with evidence of his part in the plot against Hitler’s life and because of that, he was to die shortly. He had been given a choice: face the people’s court or take poison that would kill him in three seconds.

The Ice Saint

Gontrans de Poncins begins the chapter about his visit to Pelly Bay in the Arctic thus: “I am going to say to you that a human being can live without complaint in an icehouse built for seals at a temperature at 55 degrees below zero, and you are going to doubt my word.”

 THE FIRST TEAR

We are the only animal that sheds tears, but we are not the only animal that grieves. When did they occur? Did the first human cry, or does it go further back? I have a story that isn’t completely fiction.