Free Republic

Leo Tolstoy's classic story, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, is a tale about a man's journey towards death: the denial, the alienation, the terror, and the awful recognition that life has not been lived as it ought to have been. Stricken by a mysterious ailment in the prime of his life, Ivan Ilyich finds himself struggling to make sense of his situation as he witnesses all those closest to him struggle to navigate the unpleasantness of his condition and its impact on their lives. In his hour of greatest vulnerability, Ilyich finds himself isolated and alone, save for the faithful...

Donald Trump falls somewhere between “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen. Ben Carson resembles A.W. Tozer’s “The Pursuit of God.” Marco Rubio has a lot in common with “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” while Jeb Bush is a little simpler and sunnier — closer to “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up,” Marie Kondo’s tribute to decluttering. ...They are instead based on an analysis of the candidates’ speaking styles in this year’s presidential debates, measuring both the complexity of their speech and the positivity (or negativity) of the words they use. To help...

This man is in second place nationally, and tied for first if you believe a few recent polls. He's steadily gained momentum and ground on Donald Trump, and now he's going to capitalize on his momentum by...stepping away from the campaign trail for two weeks for a hybrid fundraising push/book tour. ABC News reports: Republican presidential contender Dr. Ben Carson has put his public campaign events on hold for two more weeks to go on book tour for his new tome “A More Perfect Union” and catch up on fundraising events. The campaign has been careful to separate campaign events...

Dr. Thomas Sowell, my colleague and friend, told me several years ago that he wasn't going to write any more books, but that was two books ago, and now he has just published his 45th. The man writes with both hands, as can be seen from his website (http://tsowell.com), which lists his 45 books, 19 journal articles, 71 essays in periodicals and books, 34 book reviews, and occasional columns written in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Star, Newsweek, The Times (Britain) et al. Plus, he writes a semiweekly...

Although the American Revolution resulted in independence for the United States and World War II made it an international power, the American Civil War was arguably the most important war in American history. It truly was an American watershed. In order to appreciate that war’s significance, it must be understood what the Civil War was about. Contrary to all-too-popular opinion, the Civil War was not about states’ rights. Instead it was all about slavery and white supremacy. As shown in my just-released book, The Myth of the Lost Cause: Why the South Fought the Civil War and Why the North...

I was hired as a graphic designer and I did my job well, recycling the original revolutionary poster by Dmitry Moor, one of the founding fathers of Soviet agitprop. Now that the book is out, here's my two kopecks. This book has a lot of valid, factual information. At the same time, I remain skeptical about the theory that the breakup of the USSR was only a show so that the communists could take over the world by other means. Not that there aren't powerful forces bending the civilized world towards what they call "progress" (and what I call collectivist...

Gilroy police released surveillance images on Thursday of a man they tore up about 40 library books, causing more than $1,000 in damage. Authorities posted the images to Facebook. Police say the man they’re looking for damaged dozens of books at the Gilroy Library on West 6th Street. Authorities didn’t specify which titles were damaged. Anyone who has seen the man or can help identify him is encouraged to contact the Gilroy Police Department.

The thrilling follow-up to the New York Times bestselling novel One Second After Months before publication, William R. Forstchen’s One Second After was cited on the floor of Congress as a book all Americans should read. Hundreds of thousands of people have read the tale. One Year After is the thrilling follow-up to that smash hit. The story picks up a year after One Second After ends, two years since the detonation of nuclear weapons above the United States brought America to its knees. After suffering starvation, war, and countless deaths, the survivors of Black Mountain, North Carolina, are beginning...

British thriller writer Frederick Forsyth revealed he had conducted missions for intelligence service MI6 in extracts from his autobiography published Sunday. Forsyth, whose bestsellers include "The Day Of The Jackal", told of how he had assisted Britain's overseas spying agency in the Nigerian region of Biafra, East Germany, Rhodesia and South Africa. While working as a journalist in 1968, he was approached by an MI6 man called "Ronnie" who wanted "an asset deep inside the Biafran enclave" where there was a civil war between 1967 and 1970.

Science fiction and fantasy offer a rich legacy of great books--but that abundant pile of reading material can also be daunting. So sometimes, it's easier to fake it. We asked some of our favorite writers, and they told us the 10 books that everyone pretends to have read. And why you should actually read them. From Asimov to Pynchon, science fiction contains some fantastic, ambitious works of genre fiction. But a lot of us get overwhelmed. And it's not that hard to fake a first-hand knowledge of these books, because they're everywhere, and we've heard people talk about them so...

Can we simultaneously love our children and betray their generation and generations unborn? Do I have your attention? I hope so, but I can't take credit for that lead. I stole it from Page 1 of Mark Levin's new book, "Plunder and Deceit: Big Government's Exploitation of Young People and the Future." Conservatives have long decried the left's feigned concern "for the children" while it pursues an agenda that is wrecking their future, from Social Security and other budget-busting entitlements to the undermining of our national security. But no one has devoted a book to turning this meme on its...

Ok all what was the last 3 books that you have read/listened to AND what have been the last 2 movie you have seen(Theatre, Netflix Hulu)? X-tra Credit; Tell us what you thought of one of them.

Candidates, By the Book Recently Senator Ted Cruz and the New York Times engaged in a hot debate over how many books the senator had sold---Cruz won that debate and his book appeared on the Times bestseller list. But it underscored the reality that the more than a dozen presidential candidates have almost all used a book as “coming-out” biography to fuel their campaigns. Whether it was Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope or George W. Bush’s A Charge to Keep, the biography has been a favored mechanism for political candidates to introduce themselves to the public. Even John F....

When Americans think about the Confederacy, they often think about Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 classic, Gone With the Wind. Inspired by recent debates over the Confederate flag, I decided to give the book a try. I confess that I did not have high hopes. I expected to be appalled by its politics and racism, and to be bored by the melodrama. (Scarlett O’Hara, Rhett Butler, and Ashley Wilkes? Really?) About twenty pages, I thought, would be enough. I could not have been more wrong. The book is enthralling, and it casts a spell. Does it make a plausible argument for continuing...

Last Thursday, The New York Times made a very serious allegation against a sitting Senator and presidential candidate. When asked by Politico’s Dylan Byers why Ted Cruz’s bestselling book “A Time for Truth” was kept of its bestsellers list, they alleged that “the overwhelming preponderance of evidence” was that someone (read: someone hired by Cruz) made “strategic bulk purchases” of the book. Essentially, Cruz was accused of using dirty tricks to try to get his book to the top of the bestsellers list. The next day, Cruz’s publisher HarperCollins has spoken out, saying they reviewed sales data and found “no...

Michael Savage has written his third and final book in the Jack Hatfield series.

Presidential candidate Ted Cruz will be at FoxTale Book Shoppe in downtown Woodstock on July 3 to promote his new book “A Time for Truth: Reigniting The Promise To America.”Admission is $30 and includes a first edition copy of the book. The book-signing event begins at 10 a.m., and the store, located at 105 E. Main St., will open to the public after the event concludes. “The event ticket includes you and a guest,” said Ellen Ward, co-owner of FoxTale Book Shoppe. “You will have an opportunity to meet Sen. Ted Cruz and get your book signed.” As the son...

FAHRENHEIT 451 by Ray Bradbury This one, with gratitude, is for DON CONGDON. FAHRENHEIT 451: The temperature at which book-paper catches fire and burns PART I IT WAS A PLEASURE TO BURN IT was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With...

... These Orange County stories could be fact but in this case they’re fiction, plots from a few of our list of the top 10 novels or short story collections set in Orange County ...

Editor's note: This column was co-authored by Kristin Carey. The Challenge: Life Narrative Have you ever stopped to consider why "story" means so much to us? Why do great books and great movies enrapture us the way they do? When you pick up your empty popcorn bag and slowly—almost mournfully—make your way out of the theater, or when you finally lay a dearly loved book down after you turn the last page, the deep sense of longing you experience suggests that we crave far more than mere entertainment. In A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, Donald Miller writes about...