Reader’s Diary

Joseph G. Rosa

This is a thematic treatment of Hickok, with chapters about his prowess (or lack thereof) with guns, his army record, and so on. Rosa devotes quite a bit of the book to discussing how tall tales and lies about “Wild Bill” were, over time, turned into “facts”. As the newspaper man said to Ransom Stoddard in “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence“: “This is the west, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

Ray Harryhausen, Tony Dalton

In the early and mid-60s my young imagination was shaped by “The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms“, “Mysterious Island“, “Jason and the Argonauts“, “First Men in the Moon“, Famous Monsters of Filmland, and Mad Magazine. The first four items on the list were the work of Ray Harryhausen. This book is about the concept art (drawings and paintings) behind those and Harryhausen’s other movies, including ones that didn’t get produced. For a Harryhausen fan, it’s a fascinating, richly illustrated look into the mind of the greatest movie special effects man of all time.

Richard Doetsch

I wouldn’t have even bothered to pick this up, but I was out of reading material in Dickinson, North Dakota, and this was the best of a very limited selection in the supermarket near my motel. It’s is a silly pulp thriller in which the devil hires a reformed American cat burglar to steal the keys to heaven from the Vatican. It shouldn’t be necessary to point out that there are no literal keys to heaven in the Vatican or anywhere else. Despite the dumb premise, it’s a decent thriller with characters you actually care about, in sharp contrast to “The Da Vinci Code”.

Alex Berenson

At last, a good spy novel set in today’s world.  John Wells is a CIA man who, against all odds, infiltrated al-Qaeda years before 9/11.  He’s been underground so long that he’s converted to Islam.  Now, he’s part of a terrorist plot aimed at the US and neither his al-Qaeda superiors or his CIA handlers know what side he’s really on.

Jonathan Englert

This is a sensitive and revealing examination of the lives of several Catholic seminarians. While it’s hard to generalize about seminarians today, these men are definitely atypical because the seminary Englert examines is one near Milwaukee that specializes in “late vocations”. One of the men is an ex-Marine, one is blind, one is widowed, and so on. Englert treats the men and the Church respectfully, neither avoiding nor dwelling on controversial issues.