David > Recent Status Updates

Neglecting Antwerp: Ike's worst error of the war?

"The contrast between Eisenhower and those generals who gloried in war could not have been greater." My respect and admiration for Ike are growing.

Four packs of Camels a day!

Ike was nearly 50 years old when he entered onto the world stage. Maybe my big moment is still to come. Of course, he was preparing for it for 30 years whereas I've been -- well, I don't know _what_ I've been preparing for.

If only modern Republicans were along the lines of Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, or Eisenhower. I still wouldn't be one but at least I'd feel some respect and understanding rather than utter contempt and disgust.

Edmund Morris's three-volume biography of TR is a masterpiece. You can learn a lot about how America and the world became what they are today through the story of TR's life. TR was simply extraordinary -- not all good or all bad, and certainly a major actor on a world stage.

Average lifespan for a WWI pilot in 1918: 11 days.

More than 250,000 dead in the first month of WWI!

"a hurricane of steel," "the smell of a half-million unbathed men" marching through Brussels -- Morris quotes many powerful impressions of WWI.

It's amazing how heads of state continue to try to curry favor with TR, a mere former president. In my memory, no former president's opinion has counted for much -- unless it's the posthumous views of Reagan channeled (and invented) by his would-be acolytes.

A former president exploring the uncharted Rio Dúvida in the Brazilian Amazon -- we'll never see TR's like again -- for better or worse.

Don't read it on an empty stomach.

Determination outweighs common sense. Why don't people give up and turn back when doom is all but certain?

Some priceless passages but a bit of a disappointment due to the ratio of scholarly gloss to actual autobiographical material.

Twain describes the slaughter of the Moros in the Philippines by the U.S. military during our occupation of that country. Some liberation!

Those millions of pigeons -- clubbing them to death -- I'm sure those were passenger pigeons, now extinct, not the urban pigeons we know today.

Twain's description of his childhood on the farm -- the sensuous richness of the colors and tastes -- is as vivid as anything I've ever read.

In Twain's boyhood in Florida, Missouri, the doctor charged $25/family a year, medicine included. Of course, in those days I don't think there were any medicines that actually did any good....

"the side-excursions are the life of our life-voyage"

Volume 1 is nearly 800 pages, with 2 volumes to come. This is a daunting prospect! Shorter than À la recherche du temps perdu, though, I guess -- and it's in English!

As a "former great chief," TR is privileged to enter a pit of rattlesnakes as part of a Hopi ceremony -- a rare honor for a white man.

Obama had his shellacking but Taft had "not only a landslide, but a tidal wave and a holocaust all rolled into one general cataclysm."

All the progressives want TR to run again but Wall Street is much more comfortable with Taft.

Roosevelt is in the veldt!

What a great biography and great man. Hamilton is one of the most important founders, with an origin and career unlike any other. You'll end up with a lower opinion of Jefferson, John Adams, Madison and Monroe, however.

Imagine: Hamilton loans money to Burr, who's heavily in debt, and then Burr kills Hamilton in a duel. Some thanks!

Thomas Jefferson wasn't just treacherous: he was downright treasonous!

One good thing about duels: just the prospect could cause a slanderer to retract a lie. Now, we have perpetual falsehoods, e.g., Obama's birth certificate.

Hamilton is caught in a snare of sexual blackmail -- and makes a clean breast of it.

Jefferson and Hamilton meet at last. I never knew before that Jefferson was not only brilliant but also... a fool, hypocrite, backstabber....