Diary: Atlas Shrugged and how Bob Youngblood taught me to appreciate Charles Dickens
At best, I tend to regard Ayn Rand as a sociopath, and yet I’ve read her ball-boiling pot-buster (and seemingly interminable) novel Atlas Shrugged.
Why...
I’m set to write a book about beer, or so this impending contract suggests
(It should be noted that as of October 24, 2025, I have withdrawn from this contract. Things don't always work out like we hope,...
40 Years in Beer (Book II), Part 82: BrewWorks, Jack Daniel’s, and the next...
Previously: 40 Years in Beer (Book II), Part 81: In 2025, the heaviness got me good, and I did NOT write a beer book.
In Louisville...
Menu Items: “Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, Stimulants and Intoxicants”
Originally published at the Food & Dining Magazine web site on 13 September 2020.
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Nothing could be more common than the salt and pepper on...
Books and politics, with Roberto Bolaño and “The Savage Detectives”
In the year 2015 I ran for mayor of New Albany. During a candidate Q & A, I became the first mayoral candidate in...
Daphne Phelps and “A House in Sicily”
The struggle to learn the language was wearing, when study necessarily took place after long days of dealing with endless kind visitors who felt...
My year in books and reading, 2025
To summarize my year in books and reading, I am absolutely delighted to note that when scrolling through the selections, I can find something...
“Trieste,” a novel by Daša Drndić
It can be daunting, perhaps even crippling, to consider the immensity of what remains unknown about the wider world. What we as individuals know...
Does New Albany even have an intellectual history?
Originally written and published at NA Confidential on October 30, 2014.
ON THE AVENUES: Does New Albany even have an intellectual history?
The last time I...
Books: “Bowling for Communism” in Leipzig
Leipzig was among the East German cities to be visited in 1989 during my August working holiday in the GDR, but the group excursion...
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40 Years in Beer (Book III), Part 92: Pentecostal pews, beer judging exams and...
Previously: 40 Years in Beer (Book III), Part 91: New Albany’s brewing history, prior to NABC resuming it.
It would be perfectly reasonable of the...
40 Years of Sidebars: Hugo Claus, Frans Masereel & NABC’s one-off Silent Oath Oud...
This Belgian cultural excursion didn’t slot handily into the “40 Years in Beer” narrative, and so I've declared it suitable as a “sidebar.” The...
40 Years in Beer (Book III), Part 91: New Albany’s brewing history, prior to...
Previously: 40 Years in Beer (Book III), Part 90: A brewery for the New Albanian in all of us, Lite-free NABC debuts in 2002.
In...
