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The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Like soft laps on a sandy beach, election night began quietly. 7 p.m., CNN analysts are sifting early-reporting in Indiana and Kentucky congressional districts, looking for signs that might foreshadow voting trends. None mentioned that, hours before, the…
Read More »The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Bunker Hill: A Siege, A City, A Revolution by Nathaniel Philbrick is the perfect book to top off the nation’s 250th birthday year. Having spent most of my life in Massachusetts, having driven or walked through most of…
Read More »The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. A basic premise of our democratic form of government is that people choose their leaders, one person exercising one vote. (This, despite legislative redistricting, where leaders try to choose their voters.) In Massachusetts, we don’t get to choose…
Read More »The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. The Confidante: The Untold Story of the Woman Who Helped Win WWII and Shape Modern America by Christopher C. Gorham is extraordinary not because of the clarity of his writing or the obviously deep and meticulously footnoted research…
Read More »The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Seascraper by Benjamin Wood is a 2025 long-listed Booker novel (really more of a novella) suffused with the gray and misty atmosphere of a British seaside village in the early 1960s, animated by fascinating characters, and enriched by…
Read More »The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Whistler by Ann Patchett is another confirmation of the author’s elegant writing style, her adroitness at weaving narrative threads into a compelling tapestry, and acuity in probing the complexity of human character and emotion. Her stunning use of…
Read More »The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Absolutely on Music: Conversations is a gift to classical music lovers and a perfect book to read as the Boston Symphony Orchestra, having successfully resolved its contract negotiations, prepares to start its 146th season. The book comprises the recordings of…
Read More »The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. The late Barney Frank’s book, The Hard Path to Unity: Why We Must Reform the Left to Rescue Democracy, to be published September 15 by Yale University Press, is a valedictory the former Massachusetts Fourth District Congressman wrote during…
Read More »The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang is a family history and autobiography of three generations of a Chinese family, spanning most of the 20th century in China. Published in 1991, the 650-page tome hadn’t come to my attention…
Read More »The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Years ago, when Martha Raddatz was Martha Bradlee, we were colleagues at WCVB-TV, Channel 5 in Boston — she in the newsroom chasing stories, I in the editorial department, commenting on the news from a safe distance. Millions…
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