Free Republic

They say you should write what you know, but the greatest writer of all completely ignored the world on his doorstep. William Shakespeare set plays in Venice, Rome, Scotland and other locations around the world. Some of his plays revolve around the British Court, but he set almost nothing in the rough-and-tumble of 16th-century London or sleepy Stratford upon Avon, where he spent most of his life. This is all the more puzzling when, as a new exhibition at the London Metropolitan Archive (LMA) proves, his life was so intimately bound up with the capital. The show commemorates the 400th...

Vladimir Nabokov, the Russian American author of such novels as “Lolita,” “Pnin,” and “Pale Fire,” was a compassionate observer of modern Jewish history. This has been established in such works as Stacy Schiff’s “Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov),” a 1999 study of the writer’s much beloved Jewish wife; essays by critics Maxim Shrayer and Shalom Goldman, and a majestic two-volume biography of Nabokov written by Brian Boyd and published in 1991 by Princeton University Press. Supplementing these is a new study, “The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov.” Written by Andrea Pitzer, “The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov” is a good excuse...

Bruce Walker has recently re-published “Sinisterism: The Secular Religion of the Lie,” and expanded it into two volumes (Outskirts Press, Denver, 2013, third edition). The first volume contends the left-right ideological spectrum needs to be scrapped if people truly want to understand modern secular history. Walker demonstrates the left-right divide that pits Nazis on the far right against Communists on the far left, with varying degrees of Socialism and Capitalism in between, should be replaced with the honest admission that we often live in a mad, mad, mad, mad world – or what Walker brands as different branches of “Sinisterism”...

Earlier this month, the Church of Scotland issued a report titled "The Inheritance of Abraham? A Report on the 'Promised Land.'" The essence of the report is that according to the Bible, Jews have no more attachment to the land of Israel than anyone else. Hence "promised land" is in quotation marks in the report's title -- because there is no promised land. In the report's words: "The New Testament contains a radical re-interpretation of the concepts of 'Israel,' 'temple,' 'Jerusalem' and 'land.' When the Bible mentions 'Israel,' it does not mean Israel; when it says 'temple,' the Bible does...

The most extraordinary things about this truly incredible tale of World War II are that it hasn’t been told before in English, and that it hasn’t already been made into a blockbuster Hollywood movie. Here are the basic facts: on 5 May 1945—five days after Hitler’s suicide—three Sherman tanks from the 23rd Tank Battalion of the U.S. 12th Armored Division under the command of Capt. John C. ‘Jack’ Lee Jr., liberated an Austrian castle called Schloss Itter in the Tyrol, a special prison that housed various French VIPs, including the ex-prime ministers Paul Reynaud and Eduard Daladier and former commanders-in-chief...

If you haven't already, you're going to hear a whole bunch of gripes about "The Great Gatsby" movie out this weekend. And the biggest of them all will likely have something to do with how faithful it was to the classic F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. Needless to say, there are some significant changes. But there are significant changes in "Iron Man" when put up against the comic books -- sometimes change is necessary, and even good. Then again, sometimes they're not.

George Orwell could have been killed twice in the Spanish Civil War. Once when he was shot in the throat by General Franco’s fascist forces; then when he was hunted by official Communist agents who, with the backing of Stalin’s Soviet Union, stabbed the revolution in the back and imprisoned, tortured and killed leading leftists and anarchists who were ostensibly on the same Republican side. Orwell learned the hardest way that the war against fascism in Spain was also a civil war against Stalinism. Homage to Catalonia, Orwell’s famous account of his time in Spain from his arrival in Barcelona...

LONDON — Geza Vermes, a translator of the Dead Sea Scrolls and renowned for books exploring the Jewish background of Jesus, has died at 88.He died on Wednesday, David Ariel, president of the Oxford Center for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, said Saturday. ...

Nathaniel Philbrick's new book gets at the on-the-ground reality of the American Revolution, which the author writes began as 'a profoundly conservative movement.' John Trumbull's "Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker's Hill." (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston / Viking / May 12, 2013) It turns out the modern incarnation of the tea party may have more in common with the original Boston hell-raisers than people think. Americans have long romanticized the events leading to the Battle of Bunker Hill and the start of the American Revolution, most without really understanding what happened or what was at stake....

I've been thinking about Philip K. Dick quite a lot in recent months. Philip K. Dick, for those who pay no attention to such things, is the writer who, without ever expressly intending it, transformed the often shabby and degraded genre of science fiction into something resembling art.

A man in upstate New York has just about finished a task that was common enough until the invention of the printing press: Over the past four years, he has copied the King James Bible by hand, the Associated Press reports. Phillip Patterson, a 63-year-old resident of Philmont, N.Y., a town near the Massachusetts border, may be an unlikely scribe for the Bible. He is not especially religious, for one thing, though he does go to church. A retired interior designer whose battles with anemia and AIDS have often slowed his work, he began the monumental task mostly out of...

The best advice I ever got about reading came from the critic and scholar Louis Menand. Back in 2005, I spent six months in Boston and, for the fun of it, sat in on a lit seminar he was teaching at Harvard. The week we were to read Gertrude Stein’s notoriously challenging Tender Buttons, one student raised her hand and asked—bravely, I thought—if Menand had any advice about how best to approach it. In response, he offered up the closest thing to a beatific smile I have ever seen on the face of a book critic. “With pleasure,” he replied....

The Greeks, you will remember, thought up some pretty nifty fates for chaps in their dreary afterlife in the Underworld. There was poor old Sisyphus, condemned for all eternity to push a boulder up a steep hill, only for it to escape his grasp and tumble back down to the bottom, just as he was within sight of the top. Whereupon he would have to start all over again. Then there was Tantalus, chained to a pillar in a lake or river, the water rising to his chest. Tortured by thirst he would lower his head to drink, at which...

Master etymologist Gerald Cohen knows how jazz got its name, why they’re called hot dogs, and much moreOut in the wilds of western Missouri, in Rolla, which is not far from the tornado-devastated town of Joplin, lives a scholar who has made etymology his life’s work. He is Gerald Leonard Cohen, professor in the department of arts, languages, and philosophy at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, and grand impresario of American etymologists—as well as the world’s leading corraler of language historians, who often join him in tackling some of the most challenging puzzles of word origins. Cohen does...

How does a person who is not overweight write about her lifelong obsession with overeating without sounding like a narcissistic, woe-is-me skinny girl with an overinflated image of herself, particularly to those who share her obsession with food but happen to be overweight, or even obese? I can report back to you that the answer to my question was almost unanimous: you can’t. No matter what you say or how you say it, you’re going to sound like a privileged skinny bitch with food issues. Oh yeah, and a TV show. And a woman who was born into a wonderful,...

Are you a fan of Orson Scott Card's best-selling young adult science fiction novel "Ender's Game"? Are you eager for the first glimpse of the film adaption that's due in theaters in November? Well, the good news is it's up on line, and don't worry – it won’t take long at all for you to check it out. "Ender's Game" is vying to become the next major movie franchise based on a hot young adult literary property, and while fans will have to wait until May 7 to see the first full trailer, what could be described as a trailer...

Between the ages of 36 and 38, I spent nearly $50,000 to freeze 70 eggs in the hope that they would help me have a family in my mid-40s, when my natural fertility is gone. For this baby insurance, I obliterated my savings and used up the money my parents had set aside for a wedding. It was the best investment I ever made. In RAH's 1963 Novel "Podkayne of Mars", the common ability of a woman to "Freeze" embryos in order to delay childbirth is the starting plot generator.

The shadowy leader of an American Muslim organization accused of running terror training camps in the U.S. could find himself being questioned under oath if his outfit follows through on its $30 million defamation suit against the Christian group that leveled the charges in a best-selling book. Muslims of the Americas, a group founded in the 1980s by elusive Pakistani Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani, is suing the Christian Action Network for defamation and libel following CAN’s recent publication of the book “Twilight in America: The Untold Story of Islamist Terrorist Training Camps Inside America.” Co-authored by CAN founder Martin Mawyer...

A Northville mother is upset about the unedited version of "Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl" that her seventh grade student is reading in school. According to an article on myfoxdetroit.com, parent Gail Horalek filed a formal complaint with the Northville school district about a passage in the book that she thinks is too graphic for students that age. In the passage, Anne Frank discusses the discovery of her genitalia.

This is from The Gondoliers, an 1889 comic opera by Gilbert & Sullivan, copied from www.gutenberg.org. The song occurs in Act II. As I was doing some quick research this morning and came upon this, I had an epiphanic experience: Gilbert (the librettist) was describing the essence of a positive-rights, equality-of-success society, and how it ultimately concludes with an upside-down-ness, placing shoddiness on a pedestal, as we see in much of our society today. The whole of the opera can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUNvZqTfK-I; this particular song begins right after 1:37:00. ************************** SONG—DON ALHAMBRA, with MARCO and GIUSEPPE. DON AL....

I have friends and relatives in Germany that just do not know the true story of Barack Hussein Obama. I go on Amazon.de and the only books about the guy are all lavish encomiums, books from the left, or his own two books written by Bill Ayres. Are there any conservative books written in German that anyone knows about? Is there a German version of Dinesh d"Souza's film or book? Appreciate your help. Thanks

Any of you who frequent the prepper threads, or are on the Prepper Ping List, I am putting together a monthly free magazine, BY US and FOR US. This is not a blog pimp post, I don't have a blog or web site, and don't want one. I am looking for interested FReepers to provide content (articles, photos, columns, gear reviews, etc.) that will be assembled into a PDF that is ad free and noncommercial, which will be posted here monthly and, if Kartographer agrees, pinged to the Prepper ping list for free download and enjoyment. Readers will not have...

Michael Savage interviews Walid Shoebat on the Boston Bombing and why the U.S. Government failed to prevent it, the threat of Jihad, Sharia; Obama's Kenyan connection to support of Wahhabism and Jihad, etc.

William Boyd announced on Monday that the title of his forthcoming James Bond sequel will be Solo – reflecting the 45-year-old spy's decision to go off piste on an unauthorised mission.

Sixty years ago, the first 5000 copies of a novel by a new author were printed. The novel was Casino Royale by Ian Fleming, published April 13, 1953. When he took the part of Dr No in the first James Bond film, Joseph Wiseman had no inkling that the franchise would become such a success. As he admitted in 1992, he thought he’d signed up for "another Grade-B Charlie Chan mystery". How wrong. Last November, 50 years after the premiere of Dr No, the 23rd Bond film was released, directed by Oscar-winner Sam Mendes, co-written by Oscar-nominated John Logan and...

There are hundreds of books that are considered classics and probably even more over-hyped ones on bestsellers lists. Which do you think are the three most overrated books?

It's 60 years since Ian Fleming published his first James Bond novel, Casino Royale. His greatest fan, Mike VanBlaricum, examines how six decades of cover artists have fulfilled their mission to identify 007 on book shelves around the world.

Wanna go viral? I thought so. Even if your piece is the most amazing masterpiece to have ever graced our planet, if your mom is the only one who reads it, it will end up slipping through the proverbial cracks of the interwebs. If you want your articles to viral, you're going to have to master the art of social media. Thankfully, it's not that hard. Here are six surefire ways to increase views on your articles. 1. Get visual. (GRAPHS AT LINK) Source: Facebook Facts People love pictures. They will like, share and comment on them more than any...

I'm reading Michener's novel 'POLAND'. The history of Poland is so depressing it's reading has been a real struggle. I didn't realize Hitler's goal was to exterminate the Poles as well as the Jews and they were treated just as badly. However Michener ends his novel in 1983. There is a lot that has happened in Poland since that date. What kind of government does Poland have now? I am hoping that the history of Poland finally ends on a happy note.

Chilean poet was long thought to have succumbed to cancer but driver claims he was murdered by Pinochet regimeThe remains of the Nobel prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda are to be removed from his grave in Chile as part of an investigation into his death nearly 40 years ago. A team of forensic specialists will remove bones from the casket where he lies near his seaside home on Monday morning. Neruda, who died suddenly 12 days after the 11 September 1973 military coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power, had suspected prostate cancer and for decades it was assumed that...

Most words can be learned and taught most easily in groups, for example, words used by doctors, terms used every day by car mechanics, vocabulary typically heard in a lawyer’s office. Imagine a photograph of a scientific laboratory with captions on the key elements: test tube, bunsen burner, beaker, pipette, thermometer, technician, lab coat, goggles, periodic table, fume hood, centrifuge. A teacher can walk students through the lab, pointing out the most interesting sights. Quickly and naturally, children learn vocabulary, they have a glimpse of what scientists do, they learn about a new world that may excite their enthusiasm. Words...

Franklin Roosevelt enjoyed the overwhelming support of American Jews during his presidency, and the reasons are clear. In his three-plus terms from 1933 to 1945, he led the war against Hitler, supported a Jewish homeland in Palestine... Starting in the 1960s, a flood of books appeared with self-evident titles like “No Haven for the Oppressed” and “While Six Million Died.” But the most influential account by far was David S. Wyman’s “Abandonment of the Jews,” published in 1984. Wyman considered numerous parties responsible for America’s tepid response to the Holocaust, including a badly divided Jewish community, a nest of virulent...

I've read a couple of other books by Michener and I know he does not have 'conservative' ideals. However, Poland and the other Baltic countries have gone through one war after another. It makes me feel lucky that we are born in America, isolated from all this strife which is the entire history of Europe. However, just read the very first chapter of 'Poland', you get a glimpse of communism and what it's all about. How could anyone ever want to turn this county into a socialist/communist country when they can read what this type of government actually does?

Retired Marine Sniper Bob Lee Swagger and former Washington Post film critic Stephen Hunter are back with The Third Bullet ..... In a move that is rather genius in its simplicity, Hunter has taken his old protagonist and thrown him a mystery that has haunted America for 50 years: who killed President John F. Kennedy? ...... However, Hunter has no time for foolish conspiracies. In his novel he presents a theory that is ridiculously plausible that is supported and sustained by the one thing most readers love about Hunter: his substantial knowledge about firearms...... Besides the central mystery, The Third...

While the familiar caricature was in many ways apt, Margaret Thatcher also had a softer side, discovers Michael Deacon, reviewing Gillian Shephard's The Real Iron Lady. Margaret Thatcher, writes Sir John Major, has been “buried under myths”. And the myths heap higher with every passing year. So overpowering are the myths that today she divides opinion at least as strongly as she did in power. By both Right and Left she has been warped into caricature, the embodiment either of all political good, or of all political evil. To those who worship her, she was a tax-slashing Boadicea; to those...

In recent conversations about girding for the uncertain future I have often suggested that folks accrue the means of productivity, beginning with water, dirt, and seeds to grow food, followed by skills, tools, and raw materials to fix and create useful things. I am not certain if I have mentioned a helpful reference in this matter but it does reflect the course I am following. Thirty years ago I discovered the book "The Alpha Strategy" (available in its entirety at several web sites including http://zombieprepdotnet.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/book2-preface.pdf) and have found it to be instrumental in forming my thoughts. Pete Ferron featured it...

According to one of the Post's Watergate reporters, Bob Woodward, Felt was just a good guy who was troubled by what he saw and could not be silent. But that was never true, and Max Holland's new book "Leak: Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat" explains that Felt was motivated by personal ambition. He wanted to become the director of the FBI and hoped that timely releases of confidential information would undermine his boss, interim FBI Director L. Patrick Gray, and result in Felt's elevation to the top job. - Felt never became the FBI's director. Word got around that...

It was one of the many paradoxes of the Thatcher era in the UK that when it came to accusations of disloyalty and betrayal, the British Conservatives invariably reserved their ire for the trade unions or other representatives of the labour movement. The real traitors were, of course, members of the upper classes: the Cambridge Five spied for the Soviet Union and all acquired positions of privilege and prestige within the Establishment; and those who favoured Hitler and were most vocal in their support for a peace deal after the declaration of war were aristocrats and members of the Royal...

At any book store in the country, you can find hundreds of titles from right-leaning authors — and they are selling like hotcakes. Over the past few years, the Tea Party groundswell and the presidency of Barack Obama has fueled a new and growing crop of conservative authors, as well as renewed interest in the canon of nonfiction works that have shaped conservative thought in American culture and politics. The following is a list of 13 books that are staples to any Republican bookshelf. While the list by no means comprehensive, its a good starter guide for any young conservative...

Book Review: The Infidel by Bosch FawstinSummary: A refreshing, creative and entertaining critique of Islam and jihad. Think Frank Miller channeling Robert Spencer.IllustWriter Bosch Fawstin is a pioneer of sorts in the field of digital counter-culture literature. He's published anti-establishment artwork on the internet for years, well before the proliferation of ebooks. Much of his work uses sophisticated cartoons to express skepticism of or mock government, politicians and current events. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Islam was increasingly a target of Bosch's creative talents. In February 2011, Bosch released Chapter 1 of his much anticipated graphic novel...

I have been recovering from a stroke, so, to keep life interesting I have been reading a few novels. I have now read most of the novels by F. van Wyck Mason. He once was a military officer but I don't know if he is now alive. He really knows his early American History of around 1775 and the conflict between the rebels, Tories, and royalists. You will learn how the New Englanders fit in, Boston, Rhode Island, Norfolk, Virginia and Burmuda. They were brutal on each other as was never told in school history books. I'm reading 'Three Harbours'...

The deadliest sniper in U.S. history performed near miracles on the battlefield. Then he had to come home. There’s a story about Chris Kyle: on a cold January morning in 2010, he pulled into a gas station somewhere along Highway 67, south of Dallas. He was driving his supercharged black Ford F350 outfitted with black rims and oversize knobby mudding tires. Kyle had replaced the Ford logo on the grill with a small chrome skull, similar to the Punisher emblem from the Marvel Comics series, and added a riot-ready aftermarket grill guard bearing the words ROAD ARMOR. He had just...

Jane Goodall Book Held Back After Accusations of Plagiarism Alison Flood 25 March 2013 Leading primatologist Jane Goodall's forthcoming book has been postponed after she was found to have lifted some passages from websites including Wikipedia. An expert asked by the Washington Post to review Goodall's Seeds of Hope, which was due out next month, spotted that some passages in the book echoed various other sources. The paper published a report last week which claimed that at least 12 sections in the book were lifted from other websites, and which included an admission from Goodall of her failure correctly to...

FOLSOM (CBSLA.com) — Northern California prisoners are part of a nationwide effort to ensure blind students receive quality textbooks at school. Inmates from Folsom State Prison are paid 30 to 95 cents an hour to transcribe print books into Braille as part of the prison’s Digital Services Enterprise Unit. “Inmate Nguyen” from Hawthorne, sentenced to life in prison for attempted murder, said he has dedicated his time to learning how to transcribe the reading and writing system used by the blind and visually impaired. “At first I was like, I don’t understand it. The rules are so hard. After a...

Jane Goodall, the primatologist celebrated for her meticulous studies of chimps in the wild, is releasing a book next month on the plant world that contains at least a dozen passages borrowed without attribution, or footnotes, from a variety of Web sites. The borrowings in “Seeds of Hope: Wisdom and Wonder From the World of Plants” range from phrases to an entire paragraph from Web sites such as Wikipedia and others that focus on astrology, tobacco, beer, nature and organic tea. celebrated for her meticulous studies of chimps in the wild, is releasing a book next month on the plant...

Best-selling author James Herbert who wrote the horror classic The Rats, has died aged 69. His publisher, Pan Macmillan, confirmed that he died at his home in Sussex this morning. No cause of death was given.

Say you buy a textbook in another country, where textbooks are cheap. Then you bring the book back to the U.S. and sell it at a profit. Did you break the law? No, you didn't. In a ruling that came down yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a student who had his friends and relatives buy textbooks in Thailand which he later re-sold in the U.S. on eBay. The ruling was a key moment in something called the "first sale" doctrine, which says that, if you buy something that's copyrighted, you're allowed to "sell or otherwise dispose" of...

A man is offering Casey Anthony $10,000 to not share her story. According to newly filed court documents a man named James M Schober has offered Anthony the five-digit sum for the exclusive rights to her life story, forever. But instead of one day profiting from its ownership his filing states his hopes to 'prevent Ms Anthony or others from publishing or profiting from her story in the future.' The offer was revealed as part of Anthony's bankruptcy case this week with a trustee tasked to find profitable ways to obtain the $800,000 owed to her creditors. This one isn't...

The CIA's secret experiments to turn cats into spies Want to know what's going to happen to animals in the next century? Then you must read science journalist Emily Anthes' new book Frankenstein's Cat, about how the animals of tomorrow will be transformed by high tech implants and genetic engineering. We've got an amazing excerpt from the book -- about how the CIA tried to create cyborg cat spies. "Robo Revolution," an excerpt from Frankenstein's Cat: Cuddling Up to Biotech's Brave New Beasts, by Emily Anthes In the 1960s, the Central Intelligence Agency recruited an unusual field agent: a cat....