Thinkery

I love company, but also solitude, being alone with my thoughts, especially now that my reading ability is impaired. But a downside of my solitude is my penchant for worrying. Even when things are stable, my health good, bills paid, and those dear to me thriving,...

It begins with the Seven Deadly Sins---pride, lust, envy, gluttony, greed, sloth, and wrath---comprising the human condition, their heavy freight giving rise to entire institutions. They manifest through egregious or heinous acts by one person against another....

The dark side of human nature, the hypocritical posturing of empathy and goodwill while secretly harboring anger and resentments derived from a stew of the Seven Deadly Sins. Even good deeds have a self-aggrandizing aspect---social esteem, feelings of...

On the day before my eighteenth birthday in 1961, East Germany’s construction of the Berlin Wall—which physically and symbolically further separated the burgeoning Soviet empire from the West—burst into the headlines. Soviet Russia’s 1949 acquisition of the atomic...

Debut novelist Jeffrey Higgins has written a thriller that makes The Shining look as subdued as a cricket match. The story opens six months after the crib-death of Dagny and Brad’s three-month old infant child. Their live go downhill from there. As a prophylaxis to...

Many thanks to Peter Blauner for resuscitating a 1939 gem of a novel, Christ in Concrete, byPietro Di Donato, a tale told through the eyes of Italian immigrant bricklayers, but one also ofcapitalistic excess, the immigrant experience, and the Italian-American lens...