Author Archive

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons Barron’s own blog. The Hunter by Tana French is a murder mystery set in the hardworking village of Ardnakelty  in Ireland during an abnormally dry, searingly hot summer, oppressive to humans and animals alike. Nerves are on edge. The only relief for…

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons Barron’s own blog. Kamala Harris pledges, “We won’t go back.” Tonight, however, we all will. At 2 a.m. tomorrow morning we set the clocks back an hour. Sure, it means an extra hour of sleep, but, for many of us,…

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons Barron’s own blog. A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy by journalist Nathan Thrall won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction this year.  The core of the narrative is simple: in 2012 a rickety school bus carrying…

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons Barron’s own blog. Hiding out from election coverage isn’t working all that well for me. Half my recent blogs have been non-political book reviews, but that hasn’t diluted the tension leading up to November 5th. Now I feel compelled to…

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons Barron’s own blog. The Forever War: America’s Unending Conflict with Itself by senior BBC correspondent Nick Bryant is a frigid splash of icy water on the notion of American exceptionalism. It may help us to understand Donald Trump’s enduring, if frightening appeal…

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Donald Trump may claim he’s immune to prosecution for multiple crimes to overturn the 2020 election results, but you can read the Government’s just-released response to federal District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan showing why he acted as a private citizen…

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons Barron’s own blog. Most Vice-Presidential debates are a two-day story, quickly forgotten. I hope that this one follows suit. Viewers who appreciated the largely civil tone of the debaters appear to rate it  largely a draw, with a slight edge…

The entry below is b eing cross posted from Marjorie Arons Barron’s own blog. Fresh Water for Flowers by Valerie Perrin, translated from a 2018 French publication, is a delicately developing mysterious story about people who are a little offbeat but emerge as complex and interesting characters. The principal character, Violette Toussaint,…

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons Barron’s own blog. Jack Rennie, Chairman and CEO of Pacer Systems, Inc, was a genial and successful businessman in Massachusetts who found his purpose in life not infinitely expanding his corporate interests but in educating the workforce necessary to grow…

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons Barron’s own blog. Tuesday night’s debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President (and convicted felon) Donald Trump put a smile on the face of anyone who has ever felt degraded or dismissed as weak, inconsequential or otherwise put…