Pricipals of deception, or “Rules in a knife fight”

This Web Log is about…

The purpose of this web site is to make sense of liars whom I’ve lived and worked among, against, and for in my life. There are moments when I shake with rage at the memory of trust broken; as well I quiver with shame at the memory of breaking trust.  We deceive...
Pricipals of deception, or “Rules in a knife fight”

Towards the next novel

On reading War and Peace (Tolstoi), On War (Clausewitz) and War (Sun Tsu) March 15, 2011 In writing my next novel “Wounded,” I have been thinking how to create the eminence grise, Alexander Soroka, is a disillusioned Bolshevik Russian Jew who had had a...

Memories from the time of Stalin

I am reading interviews about Soviet Repression Orlando Figes [ http://www.orlandofiges.com/familyHistory.php ] with the assistance of Russian Memorial had gathered. It is about as sad as it gets. Memorial, controversial in Russia,  is both an organization and an...
In her homeland, in my homeland

In her homeland, in my homeland

On 1 October I served as a Wisconsin Book Festival usher for Kao Kalia Yang, http://www.kaokaliayang.com/ a 28-year-old passion-filled Hmong woman born in one of the post-Vietnam refugee camps in Thailand. This is an exceptional young woman. As part of a larger...
In her homeland, in my homeland

History 419, 42 years later

September 7, 2010 A clap of thunder ricochets down Park Street in the space between the Mosse Humanities Building and Chadbourne Hall. Winds off Lake Mendota drive sheets of cold rain upon students in flip-flops and T-shirts, who screech and laugh, excited this first...