Book Review – Kent State: An American Tragedy, by Brian VanDemark (2024). On May 4, 1970, members of the Ohio National Guard fired upon students at Kent State University in Ohio who had gathered for a protest against the Vietnam War. Four students were killed and nine others wounded, including two who were paralyzed. This book provides a minute-by-minute account of what happened in the larger context of American politics at that time, and also offers some timeless lessons. Discontent with the Vietnam War was rising in America. In his successful campaign for the presidency in 1968, Richard Nixon had promised to end the war, but his actions upon taking office seemed to do the opposite. That was especially true at the end of April 1970 when news broke that U.S. ground forces had invaded Cambodia thereby expanding the geographic scope of the war. This triggered widespread protests across the United States, especially on college campuses. On Friday evening, May 1, 1970, in conservative Kent, Ohio, students from the adjoining university held a protest in the town that escalated to significant property destruction. The following night, other students set fire to  the school’s ROTC building which burned to the ground. That all prompted the state’s governor, who was running for the U.S. Senate on a “law and order” platform, to call out the National Guard and to decree that any gathering of students, either in the town or on the campus, was henceforth illegal. On Monday, May 4, 1970, students organized a large protest on campus. A National Guard general at the campus with approximately 100 troops tried to force the students to disperse. This inflamed the students who moved closer to  the guardsman with some students throwing rocks. The Guard used tear gas but a breeze made it ineffective. The general, whose judgment was later deemed both incompetent and reckless, maneuvered the soldiers into a vulnerable position which heightened their fear. Armed with bayonet tipped M1 rifles with live ammunition and no less-than-lethal tools for crowd control, one of the guardsmen fired which led many others to do the same. Some purportedly fired over the heads of the students but others purposely fired into the students. A few of the rock throwers were hit, but those who were killed were far away, felled by the high velocity bullets fired from the Guard weapons. Most in the country, including President Nixon, were shocked by the violence. But many weren’t, including plenty of people from Ohio whose main criticism was that the Guard didn’t kill enough of the “Communist” protesters. The surviving victims and the families of the deceased received hundreds of pieces of hate mail with similar sentiments, reminding us that horrible people are not a recent phenomenon in America. Another broader takeaway from this book is the need for specialized training and equipment for law enforcement organizations that confront civil protests. Many large city police forces seem to have learned that lesson and try to do it correctly. But as we saw this past year in Minnesota, putting heavily armed, poorly trained, and incompetently (or evilly) led paramilitary forces up against peaceful protesters is a recipe for disaster. 

Magazine Article – “How to Lose a War” by Louis Menand, New Yorker, April 20, 2026. With online newsletter, websites, print journals, newspapers and books, I have access to far more prose than I have time to read. My first layer of triage is to identify the author since, for some favored writers, I will read anything they publish. That’s the case with Louis Menand, a Harvard literature professor and New Yorker staff writer who won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 2002 for The Metaphysical Club and his 2021 book, The Free World was an outstanding cultural history of the U.S. post World War II. This month, Menand compares the quagmire of Vietnam to the current war against Iran. He contends that the decisive event in Vietnam came on March 8, 1965, when the first U.S. ground troops arrived in the country. It’s easy to stop bombing, he observes, but once troops on the ground start getting killed, it’s much tougher to walk away from a war that is likely impossible to win. The paramount U.S. objective in Vietnam quickly became saving face, an effort that dragged on for seven years and cost more than 50,000 American lives. Menand ends his story by drawing a comparison to our current conflict, writing, “Much like Vietnam, only a lot faster, the American war in Iran has reduced itself to saving face. Within two weeks, the United States was trying to figure out how to end the war without losing it.”

Newspaper Op-Ed – “My dog doesn’t read your lawn signs” by Stephen O’Connor, Boston Globe, April 26, 2026. Lowell writer and dog owner Steve O’Connor hits a home run with this essay in last Sunday’s Globe in which he laments the increasing number of lawn signs ordering passersby to “keep your dog off the grass.” Steve, always a close observer of what’s going on around him and a long-time dog owner, gets into the mindset of the dog who is intent on sniffing interesting scents the way we consume interesting content online. Although Steve doesn’t use the term, I’ve heard this described as “pee-mail” and see it in operation each time I walk my dog. Before leaving the house, I shoo her into our back yard to “do her business” which she does so we set out, each with relatively empty bladders. Along the way, my dog will vigorously sniff until she suddenly pauses in one spot, sniffs even more intently, then squats and, as Steve puts it, “squeezes out a drop.” I’m not sure what message she is sending, but I am fully convinced she is communicating with another dog. In the age of email, many of us have acquaintances that we know only through our online communications. We may have never met in person, but the information we share is interesting and fulfilling. My dog’s actions are the canine equivalent of that. To be fair, as a homeowner with a lawn bordering the street, I am always supremely annoyed to find unidentified dog poop in my yard so I sympathize with the sentiment, but every dog owner I know scrupulously cleans up after their dog when walking the neighborhood. Anyway, congratulations to Steve on another terrific article.