Featured Reviews
The Wind in the Willows (1908) - Kenneth Grahame (Grade:A+)
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland (2018) - Patrick Raden Keefe (Grade:A-) Come Back Dead (1997) - Terence Faherty (Grade:B+) The Hawaiian Cult that raised Tulsi Gabbard (with Christine Gralow) [Podcast] (2026) - Christine Gralow (Grade:B) Rebecca (1938) - Daphne du Maurier (Grade:A) Pay-Off in Blood (1962) - Brett Halliday (Grade:B) Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform (2004) - Derrick A. Bell, Jr (Grade:B+) A Political Philosophy of Conservatism: Prudence, Moderation and Tradition (Bloomsbury Studies in the Aristotelian Tradition) (2021) - Ferenc Horcher (Grade:A-) On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (2017) - Timothy Snyder (Grade:B+) The Right Darwin?: Evolution, Religion, And the Future of Democracy (2006) - Carson L. Holloway (Grade:A) Mantle of the Prophet : Religion and Politics in Iran (1985) - Roy Mottahedeh (Grade:B)
Death on a Friday Afternoon: Meditations on the Last Words of Jesus from the Cross (2000) - Richard John Neuhaus (Grade:A+)
AUTHOR SUBMISSIONS: Life of Pi: A Novel (2001) - Yann Martel (Grade:A) The Population Bomb (1968) - Paul R. Ehrlich (Grade:F)
Barabbas (1951) - Par Lagerkvist (Grade:A+)
The Universal Baseball Association, Inc. : J. Henry Waugh, Prop. () - Robert Coover (Grade:A-) MOVIE REVIEWS:
F1; The Movie (2025) - Joseph Kosinski (Grade:A+)
Phantom Thread (2017) - Paul Thomas Anderson (Grade:A-) It Happens Every Spring (1949) - Lloyd Bacon (Grade:B) The Apostle (1997) - Robert Duvall (Grade:A) Brothers Judd DailyBrothers Judd QuasiDaily Bookmarks: William Shakespeare (1564-1616) is assumed to have been born on April 23, 1564. Read Orrin's review of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar (1599)(William Shakespeare 1564-1616) (Grade: A+) James Buchanan (1791-1868), who is easily one of the worst Presidents of the Unnited States, was born in Cove Gap, PA on April 23, 1791. Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989), America's first Poet Laureate, was born in Guthrie, KY on April 23, 1905. Warren won three Pulitzer Prizes, the first in 1947 for All the King's Men (1946) (Grade: A+) Halldór Laxness (1902-98) was born in Reykjavík, ICE on April 23, 1902. Read Orrin's review of Independent People (1946)(Grade: A+) Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) was born in St. Petersburg, Russia on April 22, 1899. Read Orrin's reviews of Lolita (1955)(Grade: A), Pale Fire (1962) (Grade: B) and Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited (1966)(Grade: A) Henry Fielding (1707-54), one of the creators of the novel, was born in Somerset, England on April 22, 1707. Read Orrin's review of The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews (1742) (Grade: B+) Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967), Father of the Bomb, was born in New York City on April 22, 1904. His work at Los Alamos is best recounted in Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Mark Twain (1835-1910) died in Redding, Connecticut on April 21, 1910. Read Orrin's review of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)(Grade: A-) Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855) author of Jane Eyre, was born in Yorkshire, England on April 21, 1816. Charles Dickens' great novel A Tale of Two Cities started coming out in monthly installments on April 20, 1859 Richard Hughes (1900-76) was born in Weybridge, England on April 19, 1900. Read Orrin's review of A High Wind in Jamaica (1929) (Grade: C) (#71 on the Modern Library Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century) Lord Byron died of malaria on April 19, 1824 while helping the Greeks fight for their independence from Turkey. The first battle of the American Revolution took place on April 19, 1775 when Minutemen and British soldiers exchanged fire at Lexington, MA. It was on April 18, 1775 that Paul Revere, Bill Dawes and Sam Prescott, made their famous "midnight ride" to warn colonial militiamen that British troops were advancing toward Lexington and Concord. This marked the beginning of the Revolutionary War. Clarence Seward Darrow (1857-1938) was born in Kinsman, OH on April 18, 1857. He appears in the recommended books Compulsion and Angel of Darkness. Alexander Cartwright, who codified the rules of baseball, was born in New York City on April 17, 1820. It is widely assumed that he was divinely inspired when he established the measurement of 90 feet between bases. Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen, Baroness Blixen-Finecke) was born on April 17, 1885, in Rungsted, Denmark. Read Orrin's review of Out of Africa (1937) (Grade: B+) or watch the excellent movie adaptation. Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) was born in Madison, WI on April 17, 1897. (Read Orrin's review of his 1927 Pulitzer Prize Winner, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Grade: C) Anatole France (1844-1924) was born in Paris, France on April 16, 1844. Jackie Robinson & the Brooklyn Dodgers broke baseball's color barrier on April 15, 1947. Read Orrin's review of Jackie Robinson: A Biography (1997)(Arnold Rampersad) (Grade: B+) If two New Hampshire men aren't a match for the Devil, we might as well give the country back to the Indians. -Stephen Vincent Benet (1898-1943), The Devil and Daniel Webster |
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