When Philip Roth died in 2018 at age 85, all eyes turned to Blake Bailey, his appointed biographer who’d been hard at work on a Roth biography already for several years. Roth fans such as myself looked forward to getting…
Hunter S. Thompson was necessary for the rest of us to be able to do whatever we want in our columns and chronicles, without anyone knowing exactly it’s true or if it is all part of some joke — although…
A Catholic and a Protestant walk into a podcast booth. On a blustery Midwestern day, hosts Aubrey Gulick and Luther Abel introduce listeners to The Spectator P.M. Podcast, the latest multimedia offering from The American Spectator. In their inaugural recorded…
When most college graduates toss their caps, they have no idea what they want to do with their life. That wasn’t the case for A.A. Milne: He knew exactly what he wanted to do when he left Cambridge’s hallowed halls,…
Confession: I’m a bookaholic. And I’ve been one all my life. Once, as a toddler, I was taken to visit my parents’ friends Martha and Eugenio, and the only thing I remember is being fascinated by the huge encyclopedia that…
Will publishers next lop off the silent “P” in “Psmith” for fear of otherwise offending the pterodactyls? Penguin Random House most recently insensitively sicced its censors, which it euphemistically calls “sensitivity readers,” upon P.G. Wodehouse. This strange species undoubtedly hatched…
A book is a stack of sheets of paper bound together with glue or stitching. If it contains lines of writing, we call it a book. If it is blank, it is either a notebook or the world-renowned bestseller Joe…
The Man of the Crowd: Edgar Allan Poe and the City By Scott Peeples (Princeton University Press, 224 pages, $25) The writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) spent his entire life searching for a place that he could call home. Born…
Roald Dahl: Teller of the Unexpected: A Biography By Matthew Dennison (Pegasus Books, 272 pages, $24) The iconic children’s book writer Roald Dahl (1916–1990) concluded his last book, The Minpins (1991) with these poignant words: “And above all, watch with…
