Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
Long, gripping story of William Alexander Morgan, US citizen and one of only two foreign nationals (the other was Che Guevara) to hold rank of comandante in Cuban revolutionary army. But who was he really?
Admiring review of "The Jews In Poland And Russia", by Antony Polonsky. "He has created the field of modern Jewish history as a subject to be considered and understood rather than simply a tragic past to be mourned"
Goebbels knew he had to engage the public, at home and abroad. "It was an effort that led directly to the creation of that oxymoron in four-bar form: A Nazi-approved, state-sponsored hot jazz band known as Charlie and His Orchestra"
Latest Hemingway column from Star's archives finds the great man reporting on the arrival of craps in Toronto society. If you've ever walked past a casino table and wondered what the hell was going on, now's your chance to find out
More fine stuff from the Star's Hemingway project. "Toronto women were present at prizefights for the first time last Saturday night... 'My, that one was over quickly!' said one of the women back of me, with obvious disappointment'"
Remembering Intervision, Soviet Union's version of Eurovision song contest. Concept came from Wladyslaw Szpilman, hero of Polanski's film The Pianist. Aim was "to prove to the West that 'anything you can sing, we can sing better'"
Captivating review of Laurent Binet's new historical novel "HHhH", about rise and fall of Reinhard Heydrich. SS intelligence chief known as "Himmler's brain". Planned Kristallnacht, convened infamous Wannsee Conference. Assassinated
"Bahrain has become a symbol of the failure of the Arab Spring to deliver real democracy and freedom. What is hardly ever mentioned is that this very system of oppression in Bahrain was largely created by the British"
This republished piece, from 1920, sees Hemingway observe the behaviour of Toronto's opportunistic mayor at a local boxing bout. More great stuff from the Toronto Star's new Hemingway Papers project
In America, eccentrics are not born, but made. Usually by ingesting large quantities of illegal drugs. "When I landed in the People’s Republic of Berkeley in 1970 it felt as though I had followed Alice down the rabbit hole"
Former New Yorker writer excavates history of 44th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, home for many years of his former magazine and "bastions of the old East Coast Wasp imperium" such as the Algonquin and Harvard Club
Photographing Marilyn Monroe. Lawrence Schiller did it, to great effect. His account of working with the flirtatious, calculating star has shades of a coming-of-age story and makes for surprisingly compulsive reading
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