painting of John Brown
Hero, terrorist, martyr or madman? Clay examines the dramatic life of John Brown.
Book cover: Blue Highways: Journey Into America by William Least Heat Moon, first published in 1984.
Originally published is 1982, Clay says William Least Heat Moon’s Blue Highways is still our best backroads manifesto.
Book cover: 1984
The question is: how prophetic was Orwell? What does he say to us in the age of “fake news” and “alternative facts”?
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Map of Lewis and Clark Expedition 1804–06. (LOC)
Mak’s In America: Travels with John Steinbeck is without question the best book written about retracing the 1960 Travels with Charley journey.
We’re hard at work detailing plans to follow in the footsteps of John Steinbeck’s journey chronicled in Travels With Charley.
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin stands on the moon facing a US flag during the Apollo 11 mission in July 1969. (NASA)

My Life as a Space Junkie

I’ve been captivated by humanity’s exploration of the heavens since I was a boy growing up on the plains of western North Dakota.
Clay takes us to Fort Dilts, North Dakota, a hastily-made sod fort built in 1864 by a party of would-be gold miners to fend off attacks by the Lakota. However more perspectives to the story should be considered.
Looking for America: A Writer's Odyssey, by Richard Rhodes. Originally published in 1979.
Clay reads from an essay about Robert Oppenheimer by the author Richard Rhodes.
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Allegiant stadium

Sports as American Metaphor

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.
My daughter Catherine, now living in Great Britain, brought her boyfriend Simon to America for the holidays. He’s French-Swiss.