First off it is possible the column I posted in the last post may make it to the Reader next week. It may depend on whether the editor thinks the lawnsign I designed is likely to sick the New York Times on him for copyright infringement. I made a case for the blame falling on me and for my having altered two photos from the newspapers so that the copyright could not be invoked against me. In any case I also put it on my Substack account.
This morning I also managed to write a satisfying rough draft for another Reader column. Yesterday I felt energized to have finally tucked three years worth of debris out of sight but with easy retrieval. I managed to get two chapters of Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton finished creeping past half way through its 737 pages and some writing which I hoped would be easier without all the paper debris on my office floor nagging at my fingers. And before I go back to Hamilton I’d like to introduce you to the next likely addition to my book reading with, as the title says, some of its friends.

There was an excellent and thought provoking column in today’s NY Times A.I. Is Poised to Rewrite History. Literally.
So, the picture above that AI history challenging column shows 4 of the books on my shelves all by history writers who published these books long before entire libraries could be analyzed to ask history questions in twenty seconds. Each of these is about non combatants following US GI’s into battle in WW II. The 2012 book Assignment to Hell is probably my next read. A former School Board friend gave it to me years ago. On its front cover is war correspondent known to Baby Boomers as “Uncle Walter”. The book author Tim Gay says of all these reporters they broke from the yellow journalism press of earlier wars to give Americans an honest look at war. I believe that they set a standard followed by today’s honest reporters of honesty that sets Republican hair on fire. These reporters were woke and all risked their life to tell the folks back home what their sons and daughters faced on the battlefront.
The same is true of the famous martyr to reporting Ernie Pyle in the ragged brown book I found in some yard sale. He traveled with GI’s in Europe and died with them in the Pacific. Although he survived the flying bullets the famous illustrator/cartoonist for Stars and Stripes, Bill Maudlin, brought his GI’s buddies Willie and Joe back to America too. Back in civilian life he needled American politicians in political cartoons well past my college years. I have a couple of short tomes he wrote along with the comprehensive collection about his GI’s misadventures. Finally, the book on edge is the first in a trilogy about WW II by Rick Atkinson. An Army at Dawn is about an American Army preparing to blood itself in North Africa before it moves on to Europe’s beaches in Italy and France.
I thought of Rick as I wrote this because he was mentioned by Time’s columnist Maureen Dowd today that I stopped reading regularly in the Bush Administration. Dowd mentioned Rick because he’s been writing another historical trilogy on the Revolutionary War. Apparently it’s flying of the shelves in Washington DC bookstores. The same thing happened to his first three part series on World War II years ago. I bought a used copy which has been collecting dust on my book shelves as have the other three in the image above.
So the image below led me to read Dowd today in this column Who’s the Mad King Now?

Atkinson the historian portrays crazy King George III who had blue urine for a while as infinitely better suited to leadership than head-up-his-arse-and-taking-deep-breaths Trump.
