I got my first job as a journalist at The American Spectator in the late 1980s. My first boss was R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. I wasn’t even close to being a journalist. I drove Bob around in his diesel Mercedes,…
The gray mantle of evening had finally shrouded the light of a balmy midsummer’s day, and the good citizens of Doylestown, Pennsylvania were busy trimming their lamps and preparing their beds for the night when all of a sudden news…
The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad By Harrison Salisbury ( Da Capo Press, 672 pages, $23) Eighty-two years ago, the Russian city of St. Petersburg — then called Leningrad after the founder of the Soviet Union — was under siege…
The Hotel Harrington, Washington, D.C.’s oldest auberge, closes today. For many within The American Spectator community, the shuttering marks the end of an era. Harry’s, the street-level bar under the 109-year-old hotel’s rooms, hosted for many years revelers spilling over…
Guglielmo Marconi was stubborn. He probably got that from his mother, an Irish noblewoman who had moved to Italy to marry his father, an aristocrat from Porretta Terme, Italy. He also seems to have had no intention of fitting in…
The tragic thing about the modern world is that it believes it has explained everything. How does gravity keep us tought against the earth? Ask quantum physics. How do light bulbs turn on? Max Planck and Einstein found photons a…
The 50th Anniversary of the Saturday Night Massacre passed last month, with C-SPAN’s American History TV hosting a panel featuring prominent figures from that era, all happily reminiscing how the event “set off a chain of political and legal events…
21st Century Mahan: Sound Military Conclusions for the Modern Era By Benjamin F. Armstrong (Naval Institute Press, 240 pages, $26) Alfred Thayer Mahan wrote about naval history, strategy, and geopolitics more than 100 years ago, yet, as Benjamin Armstrong points out…
The revelation comes at the funerals. The side-by-side combatants in trying to block the Panama Canal giveaway or the Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers conspicuously miss the sendoff — no time to pause fighting other battles of varying consequence….
I love Thanksgiving. It’s the best American holiday — besting July 4, if only because the celebrations don’t scare the dog. Usually. Thanksgiving is universal. No matter the religion or creed, all people can express gratitude for their blessings. It…