American history keeps coming to me as I travel in the northeastern United States. I realize that, as a political science major, I learned more about the French and the Russian revolutions than the one had here at home. French…
A Journey of the Actor’s Mind, Body, and Spirit in One Volume Actress Shirley MacLaine—of Downton Abbey, Terms of Endearment, Steel Magnolias, and Postcards from the Edge fame—also has a bit of a New Age-bent. She takes quite an interesting…
Surprises at the Salem, Mass. Building that Hawthorne Made Famous It has been a long time since I have read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s House of the Seven Gables, but I am still excited to learn that he based his book on…
Doing the Camino de Santiago Your Way The little nagging fear about embarking on a pilgrimage is, at least in my case, that everyone else on the trail will be a whole lot more religious than I am. So it…
Of Pilgrims, Progress, Power I begin reading Nathaniel Philbrick’s Mayflower with the hope that the ending is going to be a slightly different one. I resist picking up this work for a long time because I know it isn’t going…
Looking for a book about the Depression? Roger Vercel’s 1938 novel about the mount still entices What I like about Mont Saint Michel is that the closer you climb to the top of the mount, the farther you are from…
Dorothy Parker Is Long Gone I sit down at the Round Table restaurant in the Algonquin Hotel in New York City with no one but long-dead writer and wit Dorothy Parker spinning through my head. Who wouldn’t admire what might…
Trying to decide what to read on a trip to Salem, MA? Give Ann Leary’s Good House a look.
Even if Siracusa Is Not Your Destination, Ephron’s Book Will Delight You I’ve been sucking up just about everything the Ephron sisters put out since I discovered Nora Ephron’s Crazy Salad Plus Nine many, many years ago. It’s no surprise,…
Literary tourism lives as the Bashful Adventurer ventures into Harry’s Bar in Venice looking for Ernest Hemingway. Will she find him?