Happy Birthday John Steinbeck
Monday, February 27 2023
Bismarck, N.D. — Normally I don’t observe the birthdays of my literary and historical heroes. I know Jefferson’s birthday (April 13, 1743) and Shakespeare’s (April 23, 1564), and Bertrand Russell’s (May 18, 1872), and Samuel Johnson’s (September 18, 1709), and not many more, at least by day of month.…
- Published in Dispatches from the Road
The Tortuous Trail to Publish Lewis and Clark’s Journals
Sunday, February 26 2023
President Thomas Jefferson entrusted Meriwether Lewis with the first great exploration of the American West. At the journey’s successful completion, both men held high expectations for a book worthy of the singular accomplishment and the Age of Enlightenment of which it was a part.
- Published in Features
Why Read Moby Dick?
Saturday, February 25 2023
Why Read Moby-Dick? By Nathaniel Philbrick, 2011.
Bismarck, N.D. — I’m reading Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. I’ll be teaching it at one of my literary retreats come next January, but I wanted to read it anyway.…
- Published in Books
Just Who Is Buried on the Wind River Reservation?
Saturday, February 25 2023
Sacagawea has become a giant figure in American memory and mythology. There are more statues of her than any other woman in America. But we know little about the facts of her actual life.
- Published in Features
Book Review — Our Story of Eagle Woman, Sacagawea: They Got It Wrong
Thursday, February 23 2023
Out Story of Eagle Woman, Sacagawea: They Got it Wrong. By Gerard Baker, Calvin Grinnell, Bernard Fox, Carol Fredericks Newman, and Wanda Fox Sheppard. The Paragon Agency, 2021.…
- Published in Books
To Be or Not To Be On I-94
Friday, February 17 2023
Bismarck, N.D. — I was having a conversation about death and the afterlife with a friend the other day. The question: is death the end — oblivion and complete disintegration — or is it the portal to something else? And if something else, what does that something else entail?
- Published in Dispatches from the Road
32,000 Feet Over the Pine Ridge
Friday, February 10 2023
EDWARDS, Colo. — I flew from Bismarck, N.D., to Denver the other day to give a lecture. After the usual delays, the plane left Bismarck at about 10:30 a.m.
- Published in Dispatches from the Road
Jefferson and Marshall: Two Very Different Virginians
Saturday, February 04 2023
John Marshall’s service with George Washington at Valley Forge helped shape his very different view of America’s new republic than that of Thomas Jefferson.
- Published in Features
Missing McCullough and a Rich Immersion in the Humanities
Tuesday, August 23 2022
BISMARCK, N.D. — The death of David McCullough on Aug. 7, 2022, at the age of 89 is a terrible loss. It seems almost fitting that as the American republic totters near the edge of the abyss, our most civil of public historians has taken his exit.…
- Published in Dispatches from the Road