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...
I’m set to write a book about beer, or so this impending contract suggests
It is my pleasure to announce that a contract is impending with Bloomsbury Academic Inc. to write a book bearing the working title of...
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...
“When the Doves Disappeared,” a novel by Sofi Oksanen
The novel is called When the Doves Disappeared, written by the Finnish/Estonian author Sofi Oksanen. The English translation was released in 2015. The publisher...
Take me, I’m existentially yours (or, crisis—what crisis?)
This essay appeared as an "On the Avenues" column on January 1, 2019. For those reading from afar, be aware that in metro Louisville,...
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...
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...
Times change, but Ernest Hemingway was an inspiration to this youthful traveler
Originally published as "(Ernest) Hemingway in a time of mercifully silent thunder" on April 23, 2020. A Ken Burns documentary about Hemingway is coming...
My year in books, 2022
Just before I was born in 1960, my parents purchased a complete set of hardbound Compton's Encyclopedia and subscribed to the annual yearbook supplements....
My year in books and reading, 2023
Just before I was born in 1960, my parents purchased a complete hardbound set of the Compton’s Encyclopedia; furthermore, they subscribed to the annual...
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A big damn guide to downtown New Albany (in 2010)
No, not a "dam" guide to his Gahanic majesty's litigation, but a weekend preview of dining, shopping and events in downtown New Albany from...
40 Years in Beer (Book II), Part 76: A boy can dream – about...
Previously: 40 Years in Beer (Book II), Part 75: My shoes are filled with Volga mud (1999).
This installment was terribly hard to write. Kindly...
The abstract modernism of “monuments and memory” in Tito’s Yugoslavia
Controversies over the newer monuments in Yugoslavia also came up as we talked. We discussed the memorial at Tjentište in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Ćosić argued that...
