‘On Tyranny’ is More Vital than Ever.

On January 19, 2025 By Mark PerigardIn BooksLeave a comment

With Shitler and First Lady Elon Musk taking power, ushering the United States into an era of unprecedented fascism, Timothy Snyder’s 2017 book “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century” is the guidebook for concerned citizens.

“…the history of modern democracy is also one of decline and fall,” he notes in his foreword.

“Americans today are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy fall to fascism, Nazism, or communism in the twentieth century. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience. Now is a good time to do so.”

The first warning is the most presicient:

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Can America ‘Hold the Line’?

On November 7, 2022 By Mark PerigardIn BooksLeave a comment

There have been many books about the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Doubtless there will be many more to come.

But you will be hard-pressed to find one more visceral, more frightening, more damning that Michael Fanone’s “Hold the Line: The Insurrection and One Cop’s Battle for America’s Soul.”

Fanone, in video footage of that day seen round the world, was a Metropolitan Police Department officer defending the Capitol when the angry mob of Trump supporters yanked him out of the building and almost killed him.

He was repeatedly Tased, beaten with a Blue Lives Matter flagpole, and kicked.

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At War with a Book

On October 31, 2020June 9, 2022 By Mark PerigardIn Books2 Comments

Hilary Mantel's "The Mirror & The Light" — Hilary Mantel’s “The Mirror & The Light”

The figure mocks me.

53.

53 percent.

The eReader reports I have read 53 percent of Hilary Mantel’s “The Mirror & The Light.”

That translates to a little more than half, about 415 pages of a 784-page book.

The problem: I started reading this tome on March 10, the day it was released.

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No Way to Treat a Dame

On February 6, 2020February 6, 2020 By Mark PerigardIn BooksLeave a comment

Dame Agatha Christie (Photo: Christie Archive Trust)

It’s a puzzle almost worthy of the Queen of Mystery.

Why is someone sabotaging the works of Agatha Christie?

Christie is the mostly widely published writer in the world, selling more than 2 billion books worldwide, second only to the Bible and Shakespeare, according to her publisher William Morrow.

But for a writer so lucrative, why is William Morrow doing such a criminally poor job showcasing Christie’s work?

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Ronan Farrow’s ‘Catch and Kill’ is the Best Thriller You’ll Read All Year

On October 18, 2019October 18, 2019 By Mark PerigardIn BooksLeave a comment

Of all the horrifying stories in Ronan Farrow’s new book, “Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators,” one aside, barely a paragraph, haunts me.

A victim of movie mogul Harvey Weinstein finally worked up the nerve to broach the subject of her alleged sexual assault with her therapist.

Not long after, she spotted her therapist at Weinstein movie premiere.

Her therapist was a producer on the film.

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