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Sunday Simplicity
Some of the best times can’t be planned as we all know, and since planning requires by definition that something actually transpires, my afternoon wouldn’t have qualified in any case. I had a great...
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Making Amends to the Bard
When a man realizes that there are only so many days left in his life to make happen the hopes and dreams for which there was so much time in his salad days, it’s time to look honestly inside himself,...
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Booking in St. Charles
The Fox Valley in Illinois has a cluster of charming villages, exemplified by the historic triumvirate of Batavia, Geneva, and St. Charles. I was in search of a decent cup of coffee when I turned a...
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P.G. Wodehouse – The Golf Omnibus
On the eve of the Ryder Cup, the emerging chaos of which I’ve just flown out of in Chicago, I’d like to recommend some between-match reading – The Golf Omnibus, by P.G. Wodehouse (pronounced...
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Giorgio Vasari – Lives of the Artists
Anyone who has even a meager appreciation for the creative enormity that was the Italian High Renaissance owes a debt of gratitude to Giorgio Vasari (1511 – 1574). Much like the Romano-Jewish Josephus,...
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Buried in the Sky – Peter Zuckerman and Amanda Padoan
The apt subtitle to this new book is THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF THE SHERPA CLIMBERS ON K2′S DEADLIEST DAY. This is a great page turner, and it has been reviewed exhaustively since it’s release this...
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William Shakespeare – Richard III
Richard III is the first of Shakespeare’s histories that I’ve read (I thought it might be a good idea to begin to round out my experience beyond the comedies and tragedies, since I named this blog...
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Kansas City – World War I Museum
While I’m not a student of the two world wars, that is not the case with the remainder of my book club. So it was no surprise that our last book assignment was All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich...
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Denver
I have always enjoyed traveling to Denver. It’s a friendly, big town with major league sports, great beer, astonishingly good sushi, a fantastic music scene, and an outdoorsman’s Mecca. While driving...
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Summer Reading: 2013
I know many of us are still looking at snow outside our windows, but it’s not too early to think about collecting a stack of books for a vacation on the beach, nights in a hotel, or just a quiet, warm...
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Gratitude from berowne.com
On the occasion of berowne.com having achieved over 10,000 views, I would like to thank my readers and followers from over 70 countries for their loyalty and indulgence. I truly appreciate the...
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Death in the Afternoon – Ernest Hemingway
Without using the phrase, Hemingway recognized that by the 1920′s political correctness had already pushed the golden age of bullfighting into the past, but there was still honor in the spectacle, and...
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Frankfurt Altstadt
There is a comfort in visiting German cities in that there is always the reliable Altstadt, or Old City, predictably waiting in the epicenter of town. Simply look for the tallest church spire in the...
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Goethe and Faust
On a recent business trip to Frankfurt, I stumbled across the Goethe Haus und Museum, which brought back sweaty memories of reading his magnum opus in German at Notre Dame. Faust is the original “deal...
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Grant’s Vicksburg Legacy
When Shelby Foote was asked by his publisher to write a short history of the Civil War, he responded with a 2,900 page, 1 million word epic which took him twenty years to complete. You may remember...
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Bird – The Life and Music of Charlie Parker
Chuck Haddix, music archivist for the University of Missouri at Kansas City, has written a fresh and well-researched biography of local jazz legend, Charlie “Bird” Parker. It’s a short but thorough...
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Richard III – DNA Match
You can’t make this stuff up. Two years ago a skeleton was discovered under a parking lot in Leicester, England. Historians had posited that King Richard III had been buried there in what was...
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Saucier – Beginning at the Beginning
I think I can trace back my desire to get serious about cooking to a single evening. My mom was visiting us in Chicago with her best friend. Her friend was a refined Londoner I had known my whole life,...
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Trastevere – David McInerny
My book is now available on amazon.com. It feels great to incorporate my years in Rome within a fictional context. If you didn’t get enough to read for Christmas, consider adding Trastevere to your...
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