Best of 2021: Book Prescriptions

As we finish this difficult year, I’m wondering how I can thank my readers for sticking with me. Blogs can’t offer hugs, a place to go scream, a few extra hours of sleep, or stiff drinks. However, I can prescribe books that can help those who have this year’s Common … Read More

“A black dream weighs upon me like lead, / For my foreordained death is approaching, / and great wars and great fires lie ahead.”

The great Russian poet Alexander Block wrote these words in 1902, when he was 22 years old. It seemed as if he knew that in less than 20 years, he would die of heart failure brought on by malnutrition. He lived through Russian revolutions in 1905 and 1917; he … Read More