Damn it! The Solomon Scandals novel—topic of a just-posted podcast—has become too timely. Billionaires are turning iconic news organizations into propaganda outlets on occasion. Witness The Washington Post’s defense of the White House ballroom. My Kirkus-recommended novel, conceived in the 1970s, exposes the unholy triad of media, business and government. The book’s available in print […]
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Could a robot reporter have investigated D.C. sleaze better than I did in the 1970s?
Could a reporter bot have been me in real life in the 1970s—or Jonathan Stone, the far more dashing investigative journalist in my novel The Solomon Scandals? And who would have made a better sleuth, humans or AI? With the above in mind, let me share a cautionary story about a CIA-occupied building and an […]
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Build your own chatbot to promote your book: Lessons from my ScandalsBot
I call it the ScandalsBot. If you ask what Washington sleaze inspired The Solomon Scandals, the bot will oblige. The bot can also compare my corruption novel with All the President’s Men and other Washington books, or it can explain why I mixed genres rather than just writing suspense. What’s more, it can lay out […]
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Beware, genre cops! The Scandals Scandals mixes suspense, naturalism and satire
Does your stomach churn if a novel mixes genres? As the author of The Solomon Scandals, I cheerfully plead guilty. My book blends suspense, naturalism, and satire. The goal is to entertain but also explore the oft-bizarre realities of Washington as a white-collar factory town. Scandals is not a quick beach read. But I won’t […]
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Solomon Scandals hardcover is now out
The November 2023 edition of The Solomon Scandals doesn’t just have an improved cover and a new essay on the difference between my fiction and the actual history inspiring the novel. This second edition also has a hardback version. Here is a detailed PDF of the dust jacket, designed by Nate Allison at Hidden Gems […]
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After the Ivory Tower Falls: A Book Review
Just 63 percent of U.S. high school graduates enrolled directly in college in 2020—a decline from 70 percent just four years earlier. What’s going on? Covid? And maybe more temptation to go directly to the shop or assembly line, given a booming job market? Well, it’s a little more complicated than just Covid, and besides, […]
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Civil War II: The best way to prevent it
One bloody American Civil War is enough. The cannons I photographed this week are at Fort Ward in Alexandria, Virginia, just a walk from my place. They inspire reflection. The best way to prevent Civil War II—-scary enough even as an unlikely possibility—is to punish President Trump and other psychopathic officials for treason and countless […]
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Donald Trump could kill me: The biggest reason I’ll vote for Joe Biden
Got a beef with establishment Democrats? I do—more than a few. I worked for a once-thriving factory town newspaper in Ohio that today operates out of a hamburger stand. Bipartisan trade policies over the years were toxic to the local steel industry without the workers getting the much-ballyhooed retraining that free trade boosters talked about. […]
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‘Trump Virus,’ please–not ‘Chinese’ one
Herbert Hoover didn’t singlehandedly cause the Great Depression, but he fumbled in his efforts to fix the American economy. One upshot was the name given the shantytowns housing hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken Americans. “Hoovervilles” popped up near free soup kitchens. Should Donald Trump now face similar obloquy, by way of the term “Trump Virus”? […]
Read MoreStupidity can kill: How to vet and test would-be presidents
A nuclear bomb from China or North Korea—that’s how I expected to die if Donald Trump was too inept to handle a major crisis. The Trump-worsened coronavirus threat is so prosaic by comparison. No, this monster-buffoon didn’t cause the virus, but thousands of Americans may die unnecessarily because he downplayed the threat early on, and […]
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Get out now, Bernie! It’s Joe Biden’s time to run for president.
I’m proud of my vote for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic primary. As an FDR Democrat, how could I have acted otherwise? Roosevelt gave us huge public works projects when we needed them — but, like Sanders, he was far from a Stalin or Castro. Contrary to hints from his enemies, Sanders is not […]
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Facebook vs. Aileen–and Trump-era freedom of speech
Do you remember the start of The Social Network? In the 2010 movie, future Facebook tycoon Mark Zuckerberg gets an earful from the Boston University coed who’s been dating him. “You are probably going to be a very successful computer person,” Erica says in response to his social and intellectual snobbery. “But you’re going to […]
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