Featured Reviews

The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness (1969) - Simon Wiesenthal  (Grade:B+)

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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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Metropolitian (1990) - Whit Stillman  (Grade:A+)

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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:
04/27/24:

Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885) was born in Point Pleasant, OH on April 27, 1822. His Memoirs, written while he was dying, in order to save his family from debt, are one of the only real literary achievements penned by a president. Read Orrin's review of Ulysses S. Grant: Soldier & President (1997)(Geoffrey Perret)(Grade: A+)

Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) was born in Surrey, England on April 27, 1737. His masterpiece is The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Frederick Law Olmstead (1822-1903) was born in Hartford, CT on April 26, 1822. Read Orrin's review of A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth Century (1999)(Witold Rybczynski) (Grade: A-)

Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) was born in London, ENG on April 26, 1660. Read Orrin's review of The Life & Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719) (Grade: A)

Anita Loos (1893-1981) was born in Sissons, CA on April 26, 1893. Read Orrin's review of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925)

Bernard Malamud (1914 - 1986) was born in Brooklyn, NY on April 26, 1914. Read Orrin's review of The Fixer (1966)

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