FEATURES
Assessing My Steinbeck Trip at Week Four
Sunday, May 26 2024
It has been about four weeks since Clay began retracing John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley Tour, shadowing the famous author’s 10,000-mile trek around the USA. Clay makes some observations on the difference between his trip in 2024 and Steinbeck’s 1960 journey.
- Published in Features
Reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich While Traveling With Charley
Monday, May 13 2024
Clay visits Cedar Rapids, Iowa, boyhood home of pioneering journalist and author William Shirer, who later became friends with John Steinbeck.
- Published in Features
John Steinbeck’s True Motivations for Hitting the Road in 1960
Thursday, April 25 2024
As Clay begins his great Travels With Charley journey, our resident Steinbeck specialist, Russ Eagle, weighs in on what spurred the Nobel Prize-winning author to take to the road in a custom truck camper and his dog in 1960.
- Published in Features
John Brown: A Remarkable American Story
Monday, April 01 2024
Hero, terrorist, martyr or madman? Clay examines the dramatic life of John Brown.
- Published in Features
Wild Horses in the Badlands: Wildlife or Livestock?
Monday, March 18 2024
There’s horse trouble in Theodore Roosevelt National Park which is home to a feral herd of about 200 equines.
- Published in Features
Space: The Final and Unforgiving Frontier
Monday, February 19 2024
The inverted landing of the $125 million Japan Space Agency lunar probe makes us realize not what can go wrong but how many things must go exactly right for one of these incredibly complicated space missions to succeed.
- Published in Features
Sports as American Metaphor
Tuesday, January 30 2024
The Super Bowl has become an unofficial American holiday. Though it may not be as important as Christmas or the Fourth of July it fixes everyone in the country on a single monumental event.
- Published in Features
Don’t Touch That Dial: Tuning in to America
Sunday, January 14 2024
Over a lifetime of travel, I have learned that one of the best ways to examine the pulse of America is to listen to local broadcasting.
- Published in Features
America’s Unrelenting Love Affair With the Automobile
Sunday, January 07 2024
The American automobile is one of the most revolutionary (and liberating) technologies in human history.
- Published in Features
Henry Kissinger
Monday, December 11 2023
Adviser to half a dozen presidents, especially Nixon, Kissinger was the only individual ever to serve as secretary of state (1973-77) and national security adviser (1969-75) at the same time.
- Published in Features