Featured Reviews

Compulsion (1956) - Meyer Levin  (Grade:B-)

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The Whig Interpretation of History (1931) - Herbert Butterfield  (Grade:A)

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The Beach (1997) - Alex Garland  (Grade:C+)

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The Lessons of Terror : A History of Warfare Against Civilians: Why It Has Always Failed and Why It Will Fail Again (2002) - Caleb Carr  (Grade:C-)

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Shakespeare's Language (2000) - Frank Kermode  (Grade:A-)

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Barabbas (1951) - Par Lagerkvist  (Grade:A+)

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Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir (1997) - Doris Kearns Goodwin  (Grade:B+)

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MOVIE REVIEWS:

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Zodiac (2007) - David Fincher  (Grade:A+)

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The Passion () - Mel Gibson  (Grade:B)

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Brothers Judd Daily

Brothers Judd QuasiDaily Bookmarks:
04/25/24:

Ella Fitzgerald (1918-1996), First Lady of Song, was born in Newport News, VA on April 25, 1918. Dryfoos recommends her Louis Armstrong collaborations.

Mark McCormick reminds us: National Arbor Day is April 24. Connecticut (state tree - white oak) celebrates on April 30. New Hampshire (state tree - paper birch) is more generic, marking Arbor Day on the last Friday of April. Arbor Day varies by state so it coincides with a region's tree planting season.

Anthony Trollope (1815-1882), one of the three Great English novelists of the 19th Century (along with Austen & Dickens), was born on April 24, 1815. The Palliser novels are especially good, try Phineas Finn.

Sue Grafton (1940-), the best of the women Private Eye novelists, was born in Louisville, KY on April 24, 1940. Read Orrin's review of 'A' is for Alibi (1982)(Sue Grafton 1940-) (Grade: A)

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) is assumed to have been born on April 23, 1564. Read Orrin's review of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar (1599)(William Shakespeare 1564-1616) (Grade: A+)

James Buchanan (1791-1868), who is easily one of the worst Presidents of the Unnited States, was born in Cove Gap, PA on April 23, 1791.

Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989), America's first Poet Laureate, was born in Guthrie, KY on April 23, 1905. Warren won three Pulitzer Prizes, the first in 1947 for All the King's Men (1946) (Grade: A+)

Halldór Laxness (1902-98) was born in Reykjavík, ICE on April 23, 1902. Read Orrin's review of Independent People (1946)(Grade: A+)

Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) was born in St. Petersburg, Russia on April 22, 1899. Read Orrin's reviews of Lolita (1955)(Grade: A), Pale Fire (1962) (Grade: B) and Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited (1966)(Grade: A)

Henry Fielding (1707-54), one of the creators of the novel, was born in Somerset, England on April 22, 1707. Read Orrin's review of The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews (1742) (Grade: B+)

Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967), Father of the Bomb, was born in New York City on April 22, 1904. His work at Los Alamos is best recounted in Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb.

Mark Twain (1835-1910) died in Redding, Connecticut on April 21, 1910. Read Orrin's review of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)(Grade: A-)

Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855) author of Jane Eyre, was born in Yorkshire, England on April 21, 1816.

Charles Dickens' great novel A Tale of Two Cities started coming out in monthly installments on April 20, 1859

Richard Hughes (1900-76) was born in Weybridge, England on April 19, 1900. Read Orrin's review of A High Wind in Jamaica (1929) (Grade: C) (#71 on the Modern Library Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century)

Lord Byron died of malaria on April 19, 1824 while helping the Greeks fight for their independence from Turkey.

The first battle of the American Revolution took place on April 19, 1775 when Minutemen and British soldiers exchanged fire at Lexington, MA.

It was on April 18, 1775 that Paul Revere, Bill Dawes and Sam Prescott, made their famous "midnight ride" to warn colonial militiamen that British troops were advancing toward Lexington and Concord. This marked the beginning of the Revolutionary War.

Clarence Seward Darrow (1857-1938) was born in Kinsman, OH on April 18, 1857. He appears in the recommended books Compulsion and Angel of Darkness.

Alexander Cartwright, who codified the rules of baseball, was born in New York City on April 17, 1820. It is widely assumed that he was divinely inspired when he established the measurement of 90 feet between bases.