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I'm having a promotion for a book I wrote and published (under pen name Lyle Wesley) on Amazon. The title is A Night that Saved Virginia. It is historical fiction based on a true event; a British attempt to capture Thomas Jefferson at Monticello when he was Governor of Virginia. The E-Book version is free on Amazon until March 18th. The Amazon link is https://a.co/d/4mDuwJF. Best Regards and Happy Sunday!

Here's the starting point for this article. For almost 100 years the Education Establishment has maneuvered, plotted, and schemed to eliminate phonics, and to make American children memorize sight-words. The pitch has always been sweeping: phonics can’t possibly work for a complex language like English, and sight-words are the only way to go. Teachers, students, and parents have been bullied relentlessly to embrace what phonics experts (such as Rudolf Flesch) assume is a fraud and a nonstarter. How does the ordinary citizen deal with this? Well, it's been rough because the professors at Harvard, etc. do not play games. They're...

Raden Ajeng Kartini was a first wave feminist and is a national hero in Indonesia. The pillars of her feminism were: A. Family. This included deep love and respect for her father and husband. B. What women are as mothers. C. Education where teachers strive to be like mothers to their students. D. Pride in her own people and culture. If only modern feminists could be more Kartiniist. I believe that is what a true fourth wave of feminism needs to aim for: nomore misandry and no more marginalisation of mums. Like Kartini when she wrote with pride of having...

Gone are the days when reading a book was the preferred means to knowledge, replaced by the rapid consumption of digital media and the allure of screen-based entertainment. This phenomenon is growing in America, and it is pronounced among our youth. One consequence is that we appear to be reading less these days, and while our attention span does not (yet) rival that of the much-maligned goldfish (eight seconds), it is getting discernibly shorter. First, is this thinking true? And, second, do our technological gadgets predispose us to this phenomenon? Are we sacrificing something important, turning from books to bots?...

Amazon MGM Studios is set to take creative control of the James Bond franchise. The shock announcement — which is sure to shake and, indeed, stir the industry — was made Thursday, alongside the news that long-time producers and custodians of 007, Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, would be stepping back. As per details of the historic agreement, Amazon MGM Studios, Wilson and Broccoli have formed a new joint venture to house the James Bond intellectual property rights. The three parties will remain co-owners of the iconic franchise but Amazon MGM will have creative control. “Since his theatrical introduction...

According to The Guardian, the owners of the James Bond franchise are facing a copyright lawsuit barring the use of the titular name and codename "007." A Dubai-based property developer, Josef Kleindienst, has filed lawsuits in the UK and EU challenging the James Bond trademark, arguing that Danjaq and Eon have not commercially exploited it across various goods and services for over five years. The claims target multiple versions of the Bond name, including "James Bond 007" and "Bond, James Bond." What The James Bond Lawsuit Means For The Franchise The Legal Battle That Could Reshape 007’s Future The legal...

The Three Investigators is a series of children’s mystery novels that many members of Generation X, including myself, grew up with. They’ve been out of print in the U.S. for decades. But now, all 10 of the books that were written by series creator Robert Arthur are back in print, in paperback.

Star Trek: Deleted Scene - Who Mourns For Adonais? - Lt. Carolyn Palomas Is Pregnant With Apollo's Child. In this deleted scene from Star Trek (The Original Series - TOS), from the episode, "Who Mourns For Adonais?", on the Enterprise bridge, this scene was voiced by the Script Director, with Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) giving facial expressions, as responses. Dr. McCoy says that Lt. Carolyn Palomas is pregnant, with Apollo's child. Captain Kirk responds with, "What?" McCoy continues that he has a question for Spock's computer: Will the child be man or god? This is reminiscent of Genesis, Chapter 6...

In April 1948, Deir Yassin was an Arab village of about a thousand residents. It was captured then by Jewish forces seeking to break the siege of Jerusalem during the war for Israel’s independence. Most of the fighting was done by the underground soldiers of the Irgun and Lehi, with assistance from the Haganah, the official fighting force of the Jewish establishment. A truck-mounted loudspeaker blaring a warning for residents to flee the village fell into a trench that had been dug by villagers. The result was a bloody house-to-house battle with a high death toll. That much everyone agrees...

Professor John Ellis has been a critic of our higher-education system for many years. His book The Breakdown of Higher Education (which I reviewed here) masterfully analyzed the perverse trends that were (and still are) causing our colleges and universities to deliver much less educational value at much higher cost. His latest book, A Short History of Relations Between Peoples, is not primarily about higher education, but Martin Center readers will find it important because Ellis indicts our academic elites for their role in undoing centuries of progress and turning humanity back towards tribalism. The main goal of this book...

Many generations of young Americans have learned in school under the grading system. We took tests in subjects and would find out how well we had done when the instructor returned them, often with red marks to show where we’d made mistakes. The instructor would go over the tests, often spending extra time on the questions that had given students the most trouble. Then we would move on to new material, followed by another test. At the end of the class, we’d receive an overall grade to indicate how well we had done—an A for excellent work, a B for...

VIDEOImagine that you write a book to prove to the world that you are not just some dumb gold-digger bimbo and then THIS happens..... And don't forget to read the next book from world renowned author Lauren Sanchez: "The Bimbo Who Flew Into a Rage."

Yours truly is rarely to be found at the multiplex, but I guess it was spiritually impossible for me not to go see the new Reagan film, given that Bob Dylan recorded a special tune for it (Cole Porter’s “Don’t Fence Me In”). It’s conceivable I would have gone out to see it anyway, but more likely would have waited to check it out some time in the future in the quiet and comfort of home.

Bob Woodward, a far-left author and Washington Post editor, is set to drop an ‘October surprise’ on Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. Far-left author Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book about Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will drop several bombshells on October 15. Per RealClearInvestigations reporter Paul Sperry: OCTOBER SURPRISE: A source close to Bob Woodward says his forthcoming book, “War,” about the Biden-Harris administration’s inner workings will “not be kind to Biden or Kamala” and will drop several bombshells on Oct. 15 when Simon & Schuster releases the tome … developing … Simon and Schuster called Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book ‘War,’...

Derek Bok has served as president of Harvard twice, from 1971 to 1991 and again from 2006-07. He has written much about higher education and is by no means a reflexive defender of the status quo—see, for example, his The Struggle to Reform Our Colleges, which I reviewed here. Bok’s latest book is Attacking the Elites: What Critics Get Wrong—and Right—About America’s Leading Universities. He explains that his motivation for it was the absence of response from our “elite” higher-education institutions to the surge in criticism from both sides of our political divide. As his subtitle suggests, he thinks that...

JD Vance is a marked man. After accepting the nomination for vice president, Vance has been the subject of endless media attacks. Recently, Vice President Kamala Harris even questioned his “loyalty” to the country despite his serving as a Marine in the Iraq War. Yet, one of the most chilling attacks came from Germany where the publishing house Ullstein Buchverlage has stopped printing the sold-out German translation of Hillbilly Elegy, his 2016 autobiography. As we have discussed previously in this country, it is the modern left’s equivalent of book burning. After all, why burn books when you can simply prevent...

The 1951 J.D. Salinger novel The Catcher in the Rye has long been one of the most controversial literary tomes, inspiring films and criminal conspiracies. John Lennon’s murderer, Marc David Chapman, carried the book at the murder and continued reading it while Lennon lay bleeding at his feet. He has said that he wished to model his life after the novel's protagonist, Holden Caulfield, identifying with Holden’s misanthropic world view. -snip- There have been numerous books, podcasts, and lectures positing even more outlandish schemes emanating from the pen of Jerome David Salinger. One of the most amusing was a three...

Waltzing Matilda is Australia's unofficial national anthem. It is a song about suicide being a better option than being a prisoner of tyranny. Such is Australia. Here the musician, playing in the caldera of extinct volcano Mt Buninyong, slows it down and pauses a lot. This gives the birds in the trees around him a chance to sing back. What do those birds say?

On this, the second day of the abortive 1832 June Rebellion in Paris, police inspector Javert is faux-executed — and mercifully released — by his longtime quarry Jean Valjean in Victor Hugo’s classic Les Miserables. Hugo’s monumental novel is structured by the implacable policeman’s pursuit of Jean Valjean, an absconded ex-con with a heart of gold. Fate brings them together accidentally at the barricade of the (historical, but now forgotten) student uprising — Javert to spy on the student revolutionaries, who unmask him, and Jean Valjean to keep an eye on his adoptive daughter’s idealistic lover. Jean Valjean’s timely contribution...

The conventional wisdom among “progressives” is that black Americans must be given preferences in college admissions, hiring, and government contracting because the nation is so suffused with racism that they cannot advance otherwise. There are many problems with that view, and in her book The Adversity of Diversity Carol Swain explores them. As a black woman who grew up in impoverished conditions in rural Virginia, Swain has a compelling case to make against the idea that preferences actually help blacks. Her success in life is a strong counter to the leftist racial agenda, and she argues that it makes matters...