Free Republic

During Revolutionary times, to be “enlightened” often meant having enough compassion that you were willing to free your slaves — but only upon your death. So when founding fathers such as George Washington began to pass away around 1800, their slaves were set free into a country that had no desire for them. The result, as James Ciment writes in this thorough account of an experimental nation, was to send free blacks whence they came, to Africa. Liberia was the country created by freed American slaves who, perversely, became slave owners themselves.

Western cartoonist and author Stan Lynde, creator of the nationally syndicated “Rick O’Shay” comic strip, has died of cancer in Montana. He was 81. His “Rick O’Shay” comic strip began in 1958 and ran for 20 years with an average daily readership of about 15 million people. In 1979, he launched another comic strip, “Latigo,” which ran through 1983. Lynde died Tuesday in Helena, where he lived with his wife.

A reporter asked me, "Would you prefer that students know information, or how to find information?" Clearly she thought that knowing where to find information was best. Actually knowing facts was, in her mind, not important. That was the old way, the medieval approach, when children were whipped to make them memorize the state capitals and other such irrelevant stuff. Thank goodness, she clearly believed, we have moved on to more civilized ways. Children no longer know anything. All they know is that they must go somewhere to find what they want to know. But why would the reporter believe...

Crime writer Elmore Leonard is recovering from a stroke in an undisclosed Detroit-area hospital. "It happened a week ago, last Monday [July 29]," his longtime researcher, Gregg Sutter, told the Detroit News. "He's doing better every day, and the family is guardedly optimistic."

For you Kindle owners. A little dated, but it's supposed to be some kind of classic. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004BDORIS

London (CNN) -- The bestselling erotic novel "Fifty Shades of Grey" may have done more than spice up readers' love lives. Firefighters in London say it could be to blame for a rise in the emergency calls from people stuck in all kinds of awkward situations -- some involving handcuffs. The wildly-popular trilogy details the S&M-flavored love story of a recent college grad and a billionaire CEO. It's also credited with boosting sales of sex toys, driving women to hook-up sites and fueling a craze over sexual domination. So, it's not surprising there would be a downside. In the past...

An old adage cautions, “if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.” Such is the case with the now famous, “California Comeback.” Faced with a large budget deficit, California passed tax increases on the wealthy, balanced the budget, generated a massive surplus and seemingly solved the state’s fiscal woes. The problem? In the surplus claim, California only counts revenues that will go into the $96.3 billion budget this fiscal year. This is an increase of $9.3 billion from just two years ago. However, the state’s unfunded pension liability debt is not calculated into the budget. There are...

Drew Johnson, the editorial page editor of the Chattanooga Times Free Press was fired after 14 months on the job for publishing an editorial with a headline that read: "Take your jobs plan and shove it, Mr. President." The editorial ran Tuesday, the same day Obama visited Chattanooga. The powers-that-be posted a notice Thursday explaining the firing: The headline was inappropriate for this newspaper. It was not the original headline approved for publication, and Johnson violated the normal editing process when he changed the headline. The newspaper’s decision to terminate Johnson had nothing to do with the content of the...

Author Reza Aslan believes that Jesus probably lacked the education to read a book like the Bible. Or the Torah, or any other written text for that matter, no matter the language. Aslan’s new book “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth” is a revisionist take on the life of Jesus, arguing that his message of love was aimed more at a Jewish audience than a global one, that his attitude toward violence was “far more complex” than is generally thought, and that he was “very likely” illiterate. All of these claims appear to be directly contradicted by...

The cover for the new James Bond novel by William Boyd has been revealed, featuring die-cut bullet holes which "hint at danger and espionage". Solo, set in 1969, features Bond as a veteran agent, whose solo mission in Africa takes an unexpected turn. The designer, Random House creative director Suzanne Dean, said she was inspired by Ian Fleming's 007 series. The audiobook edition of the novel, published in September, will be narrated by actor Dominic West.

Fifty Shades of Grey, the salacious best-selling E. L. James novel often referred to as “Mommy Porn,” is the most popular reading material among Guantanamo detainees in the secretive Camp Seven, Rep. Jim Moran learned last week. “Rather than the Quran, the book that is requested most by the [high-value detainees] is Fifty Shades of Grey. They’ve read the entire series in English, but we were willing to translate it,” the Virginia Democrat, who advocates for closing Guantanamo, told the Huffington Post. “I guess there’s not much going on, these guys are going nowhere, so what the hell.”

Renowned Hollywood actor John Travolta is hoping to land a role opposite Daniel Craig in the next James Bond film as he has long fantasized himself playing a villain in the 007 franchise. The 59 year-old actor admits he is a big fan of the movie series and hopes to eventually follow in the footsteps of actors including Christopher Walken, Christopher Lee and Javier Bardem who have all previously played Bond's rogues. The Saturday Night Fever star tells Britain's Daily Telegraph, "I'd love to play a bad guy in James Bond." He adds of the films' lead actors, "I have...

A Russian lawyer who is assisting fugitive US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden with his asylum request said Tuesday that he had brought Fyodor Dostoyevsky's 19-century classic novel "Crime and Punishment" to a meeting with him at a Moscow airport. "I bought him Dostoyevsky’s "Crime and Punishment," because I think that he should read about Raskolnikov," lawyer Anatoly Kucherena, who arrived at Sheremetyevo airport Wednesday afternoon, said in an interview with Rossia 24 TV, referring to the novel's main character who repents after killing an elderly female pawnbroker and is sent to Siberia for punishment. "I am not saying there is...

Reza Aslan, author of the new book, “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth” has been interviewed on a host of media outlets in the last week. Riding a publicity wave, the book has surged to #2 on Amazon's list. Media reports have introduced Aslan as a “religion scholar” but have failed to mention that he is a devout Muslim. His book is not a historian’s report on Jesus. It is an educated Muslim’s opinion about Jesus -- yet the book is being peddled as objective history on national TV and radio. Aslan is not a trained historian.

"In Virginia, there is an agency bearing the bland name of Technical Operations Support Activity, or TOSA. Its one mission is to track, find, and kill those so dangerous to the United States that they are on a short document known as the Kill List. TOSA actually exists. So does the Kill List. Added to it is a new name: a terrorist of frightening effectiveness called the Preacher, who radicalizes young Muslims abroad to carry out assassinations. Unfortunately for him, one of the kills is a retired Marine general, whose son is TOSA’s top hunter of men. He has spent...

On 23 July 1888, crime novelist Raymond Chandler - creator of Philip Marlowe - was born in Chicago. WH Auden said his novels should be judged not as escapism but as art. When Raymond Chandler began to write for pulp magazines in the Thirties, he planned from the first to smuggle something like literature into them. Most of these magazines hooked their readers with a mixture of sex and violence – “they have juxtaposed the steely automatic and the frilly panty and found that it pays off”, wrote SJ Perelman. But Chandler wanted to do more than titillate: he had...

--snip-- But the attention of the emperor [Valens] was most seriously engaged, by the important intelligence which he received from the civil and military officers who were intrusted with the defence of the Danube. He was informed, that the North was agitated by a furious tempest; that the irruption of the Huns, an unknown and monstrous race of savages, had subverted the power of the Goths; and that the suppliant multitudes of that warlike nation, whose pride was now humbled in the dust, covered a space of many miles along the banks of the river. With outstretched arms, and pathetic...

I am watching a documentary on Gettysburg and the point was made that the town was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I know there are countless military reasons/theories why 160,000 forces met there. But the point about wrong place... got me to wondering - Do FReepers know of any books on what it must have been like to be a resident of Gettysburg, knowing that all hell was about to decend upon your town? I think, at least, that would make a great fictional story. Darn near like a Hitchcock movie with tons of building tensionHere they...

<p>Two and a half years ago, I called Harlan Ellison because I’d heard through a family friend that he was dying. Well, I heard it through a family friend and because he announced it to an audience of fans at a science-fiction convention in Wisconsin. When I spoke with the legendary – and legendarily combatitive – sci-fi writer on the phone shortly afterwards, his voice was weak. You’d better come by soon, he said. I did, and with a tray full of noodle kugle that my mom made for him and for his wife, Susan.</p>

I have been computer-less at home for five weeks. My brand-new laptop went belly up and had to be sent back. During the frustrating wait (which I suspect will lead to a later column), I have returned to writing with a pen and spiral notebook. It's been a flash to the past, reminding me of my younger days when every assignment, story and poem were handwritten. Are the days of writing by hand on their way out? Having beautiful, cursive handwriting used to be a source of immense pride. Handwriting skills were taught right alongside reading and math. Prizes were...

I am starting "The Guns of August: The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Classic About the Outbreak of World War I"

What can literary fiction teach us about recent revelations that the National Security Agency has aggressively been gathering massive amounts of data on American citizens? The novel one usually turns to, of course, is George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, with its terrifying vision of the Thought Police. Even President Obama, in response to questions about the NSA, has been forced to deny that the government has engaged in “Big Brother” tactics. Orwell’s book, however, isn’t the most compelling or accurate literary prediction of modern surveillance. That award goes to a less obvious title: J.R.R Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Tolkien’s most...

There is probably no figure more emblematic of the greedy, penny-pinching capitalist than Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Dickens is often seen as the chronicler of the injustices of the Industrial Revolution, including businessmens’ cavalier attitude toward the welfare of their employees. Yet, Scrooge, like many of Dickens’ other archetypal characters, was a product of an earlier era, and in that context merits some defense. By the tale’s account, Scrooge was honest and frugal—perhaps excessively so. But there’s something missing from Dickens’ picture. The Scrooges of the world were the stewards of the scarce capital—the seed corn...

By the end of last week, "The Cuckoo's Calling," by the debut mystery novelist Robert Galbraith, was as good as dead. Bookstores with unsold copies on hand were contemplating shipping them back to the publisher. Reviews, while generally positive, had tapered off. According to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about 85 percent of print sales, only about 500 copies had sold in the United States since the book went on sale in April. Then J K Rowling, easily one of the most bankable authors on the planet, admitted over the weekend to The Sunday Times of London that she — and...

The Egyptian paper Roz Al-Youssef reported recently about an “Islamic” version of Cinderella that has been published, in which the heroine and other women wear veils and the plot is replete with Islamic motifs. The book, published by Dar Al-Yanabi’, was edited by Mas’oud Sabri, a member of Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi’s International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), and was illustrated by Rif’at Muhi Al-Din. According to Roz Al-Youssef, Cinderella in this version is portrayed as a girl who patiently bears the disasters befalling her and asks Allah to help her continue bearing them. She never says a bad word about her...

Darwin’s Doubt Darwin’s Doubt, the brand new New York Times bestseller by Cambridge-trained Ph.D., Stephen Meyer, is creating a major scientific controversy. Darwinists don’t like it. Meyer writes about the complex history of new life forms in an easy to understand narrative style. He takes the reader on a journey from Darwin to today while trying to discover the best explanation for how the first groups of animals arose. He shows, quite persuasively, that Darwinian mechanisms don’t have the power to do the job. Using the same investigative forensic approach Darwin used over 150 years ago, Meyer investigates the central...

The Star Wars is a new project coming from Dark Horse Comics and can be ordered from retailers now. What makes it unique from any of the previous series is that its taken directly from George Lucas‘ first draft for the movie. Back when it was called The Star Wars, when the heroes were Kane Starkiller and his twin sons Annakin and Deak and they are going to General Skywalker for help. This series is a chance to see how Lucas first envisioned the movie and compare it to what we have today. Mayhew will be working with writer J.W....

By now almost everyone will have heard the news — J.K. Rowling, the author of the "Harry Potter" series of books and one of the most successful writers ever, published a low-selling but highly praised detective novel under the name Robert Galbraith earlier this year. The story was broken last night by Richard Brooks, the arts editor of the UK's Sunday Times. It's clearly a huge scoop — but how exactly did Brooks manage to crack the literary world's best-kept secret?

Author Brad Thor warned about the NSA surveillance state in his last book “Black List,” and in a recent interview with TheBlaze’s Jon Seidl, described the subject of his newest book as an organization “more secretive than the NSA, CIA, and some people claim more powerful than the United States government itself.” On Glenn Beck’s radio program Tuesday, coinciding with the book’s release date, Thor revealed the agency behind “Hidden Order”: the Federal Reserve.… When he peels back the layers, Thor said, Harvath discovers that the Fed “is doing things nobody in America could ever imagine could be done…” “And...

The abrupt resignation this week of William Lynch, the 43-year-old Barnes & Noble chief executive, was only the latest in a catalogue of troubles at one of the US's biggest book chains. If this were a business whodunnit, nobody could fail to spot the culprit: Amazon. Still, with bookshops everywhere in retreat as the internet takes an ever greater slice of their trade, it seemed to many that a chain with its own dedicated e-reader – the Nook – could have the answer. But with Barnes & Noble's device struggling to make any headway against Amazon's Kindle, that strategy, and...

Archaeologists believe they have found a vampire grave on a construction site in the south of Poland. Skeletons were found with their heads removed and placed on their legs, indicating they had been subjected to an execution ritual designed to ensure the dead stayed dead. An individual accused of being a vampire in Europe’s distant past faced a grim fate. Sometimes they would be decapitated, otherwise they might be hanged from a gibbet until decomposition resulted in the head separating from the body. In both cases the head was then laid on the legs of the victim in the hope...

In this month's issue of "Justice League," the Kryptonian hero of the comic book apparently follows the example set by the controversial climax of "Man of Steel." DC Entertainment The climactic battle in Man of Steel proved to be particularly divisive for many longtime comic book fans, with some going as far as to say that the Superman on show in Zack Snyder and David Goyer's movie wasn't the real thing because of certain choices the character made that the comic book incarnation would find some way to avoid. In a comic released Wednesday, DC Entertainment appears to have...

The sound of a single gun shot cut through the quiet, rainy evening and a lanky, black teen, Trayvon Martin, fell to the ground. The shooter was someone Mark and Sondra Osterman spoke with daily. He played Santa for their daughter, treated his wife with preciousness, often ate at their table, and shared their joys and sorrows. The Ostermans are George and Shellie Zimmermans best friends. They were the first people Shellie Zimmerman called on that tragic February night in Sanford, Florida. Because of serious death threats, the Ostermans took George and Shellie Zimmerman into their home, hiding them for...

Why do we love scary stories? Matt Kaplan looks at the science behind monsters old and new, and our perverse love of a good fright. In the darkness it came. There was no way out. Cornered and helpless, all who found themselves in this dreaded place knew their fate ...

Mark Levin's new book - "The Liberty Amendments: Restoring The American Republic"

A new book has been published which collects all CS Lewis’ references to his Ulster childhood and the possible role of such places in inspiring many of his greatest works. CS Lewis – And The Island Of His Birth, by Sandy Smith, lifts the lid on CS Lewis’ early life in Belfast and allows the reader to walk in Lewis’ footsteps on a journey that covers Belfast and Ireland north and south, encapsulating the places that many believe were the inspiration for some of his greatest works. Lewis mentioned parts of Northern Ireland at various times in his writing. “That...

Carolyn Moos — the ex-fiance of trail-blazing gay NBA player Jason Collins — is in Cosmopolitan this month, describing how she was blindsided by Collins’ revelation, which came almost four years after he called off their wedding, ending their eight-year relationship. Although Collins came out personally to Moos the day his Sports Illustrated tell-all hit newsstands, he didn’t say anything about the article, which mentions her and drew overwhelming media attention. (She found out from a friend.) Also, he has been hard to pin down since. “We talked again briefly that night. He answered a few questions, but there was...

Dear Stacey: You have written demanding an apology for my recent characterization of the Mormon religion as "non-Christian." I am happy to write a public letter of apology to you and to the countless Mormon readers who responded negatively to my characterization. I am sorry that so many of my Mormon readers have brazenly accused me of ignorance of their religion and suggested that I read the Book of Mormon. I am sorry that they were unaware that I read the Book of Mormon back in 2006. I am sorry that the science of genetics has refuted claims made in...

I will be driving from Dallas to Navarre, FL (Pensacola area) in a few weeks. I will be driving at night so that my 3 year old can sleep most of the way. I figure it will be much easier that way. I have two questions for my FRiends, if y'all would be so kind as to lend me your pearls of wisdom. First, I would like to listen to a "books on tape" or audio book if you will type of recording. I assume that they can be found on a CD or mp3 download. I do love to...

I just read a Robert Downey Jr. biography written by Ben Falk. Downey didn't help with it, but it was still entertaining. Downey supported Mel Gibson when Hollywood turned on him, and he has this quote from a 2008 NYTIMES article. “I have a really interesting political point of view, and it’s not always something I say too loud at dinner tables here, but you can’t go from a $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary and really understand it and come out a liberal. You can’t. I wouldn’t wish that experience on anyone else, but it was very,...

One can purchase the book using bookfinder.com (generic database book search engine). Link is the following: Bookfinder.com: In the Presence of My Enemies Author: Christopher (Chris) Gladu Editor: Phil Finan Publication date: June 26, 2013 ISBN Information ISBN-10 1452860890 ISBN-13 978-1452860893 Book is a novel published by a sidewalk counselor who has been a sidewalk counselor since the 1980s or 1990s. (I met the author when I became involved in the pro-life movement). Facebook Page Consider liking or disliking the following webpage. Facebook Page of book Presence of My Enemies by Christopher Gladu

A soon-to-be released book claims that the Hollywood film industry had close ties to the Third Reich, the Yisrael Hayom daily reported on Sunday. Hollywood’s major studios not only passively accepted Nazi censorship, but actively collaborated with Hitler’s propaganda machine to protect their interests in the German market, according to the book written by Harvard University doctoral student Ben Urwand. … “Hollywood [in the 1930s] is not just collaborating with Nazi Germany; it’s also collaborating with Adolf Hitler, the person and human being,” Urwand, 35, was quoted as having said in an interview with The New York Times. The fact...

St. Petersburg is the city of literature. Most of its streets are as straight as an arrow, laid out on a fanned grid like books neatly placed on a shelf. But there are anomalies, too. Its curved, tapered streets lined by beautiful old buildings that hug narrow, wending waterways can actually look like an open book if you look hard enough. At least they always have to me. St. Petersburg is a city you share with the writers you love. You sense clearly that they — even if they wrote in the 18th or 19th century — sat in the...

Comic book fans can easily rhyme off names like Superman and The Avengers, but a Canadian team is hoping a new revamp will put Captain Canuck back in the mix. The Canadian hero, who debuted on comic book shelves almost 40 years ago, is making a comeback in a new animated web series debuting — fittingly — on Canada Day at captaincanuck.com. Back in the early 1970s, as industry leaders Marvel and DC Comics were putting out stories about Spider-Man, Batman and Superman, Winnipeg-based artist Richard Comely and his artist friend Ron Leishman were wondering why there wasn't yet a...

If you know the musical “1776,” you know the plot of Joseph J. Ellis’s breezy new book. It’s a stirring and conventional story. A handful of famous men struggle to create a republic against insurmountable odds. In the long run, their greatest challenge is the problem of slavery. But the most immediate threat is the military might of Britain. Toward the end of June 1776, as the Continental Congress nears a vote on American independence, the first of 427 royal ships carrying 1,200 cannons, 32,000 soldiers and 10,000 sailors appears off Long Island. Things look dire, a point made repeatedly...

Here is an excerpted chapter from the new book.

California is home to the greatest diversity of Native American tribes in the US, and even today, 90 identifiable languages are still spoken there.

California is home to the greatest diversity of Native American tribes in the US, and even today, 90 identifiable languages are still spoken there.

He made this uncanny observation in a Vogue essay.

Author Richard Matheson has passed away at the age of 87. As this is breaking news, there are not a whole lot of details we can offer at this time, we'll update this spot as more information comes in but Matheson's daughter, Ali, wrote the following: "My beloved father passed away yesterday at home surrounded by the people and things he loved...he was funny, brilliant, loving, generous, kind, creative, and the most wonderful father ever...I miss you and love you forever Pop and I know you are now happy and healthy in a beautiful place full of love and joy...