Subtitled: The American Revolution and its DiscontentsIt was clear to me that in The Cause Joseph Ellis, a Pulitzer-winning historian, who sets a high standard for himself, and has covered the American Revolution comprehensively, will go over much of the same ground in this entry. I didn’t expect to learn as much new material as I did, however.We know George Washington struggled throughout the war to equip, pay, and feed the Continental Army, and really never succeeded in convincing Congress to...
September 15, 2023
"Nickel Mountain" by John Gardner
At the outset of John Gardner’s Nickel Mountain, Henry Soames owns and runs a diner by the side of a Catskills highway. He does a better job of that than of controlling his own giving heart; because of his charitable nature, he ends up not only married to a young woman who is pregnant with someone else’s baby, but also opens his home to a Jehovah’s Witness no one likes or trusts, and who may be an arsonist. The novel’s events swirl around Henry, its enigmatically passive-active agent at the center,...
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