Why don’t leaders battle out their differences and claims between themselves instead of taking their entire nations to war? This question is raised in Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, (1929), which I re-read last week. It is
Literature
A Wealth of Foreshadows
Graham Moore’s A Wealth of Shadows (2024) might truly be unique: the one novel of intrigue in which both heroes and villains are economists. It shows how Allied economists broke the code of Germany’s economic miracle, then created their own economic
Ray
Fictional characters are often said to be based on real people. However, in my experience of writing fiction, a character’s initial resemblance to some real person soon blurs. I think of a secondary character, Ray, in my novel Caroline. He’s a
Temperament and Literary Critics
I recently spoke glowingly to a friend about Amor Towles’ story collection, Table for Two (2024). She acknowledged, without enthusiasm, having read his A Gentleman in Moscow (2016), a novel about a charming man leading a charmed life in a hotel
Libby Speaks: Introduction
Inspiration for the Libby Speaks stories In the past I’ve posted six “Libby Speaks” stories to this website. I removed the sixth, but today I’m restoring a revised version. I’ll include links to the previous five at the end of this post. The
An Anthology That Leaves the Best for Last
For Artificial Divide, (2021) Robert Kingett and Randy Lacey collected sixteen stories by visually impaired and blind authors. As I lament in my essay “Twilight of a Stockbroker” (2017), there is almost no fiction created by blind authors in which