“My most vivid memory of growing up was my mom and dad telling me I was different and unique and special and that I could do whatever I wanted with my life.” — Taylor Swift (2016 iHeartRadio Music Awards Speech) (p. 55)

Misty L. Heggeness was a former Principal Economist and Advisor to the U. S. Census Bureau. She is now a professor at the University of Kansas. Swiftynomics both presents economic findings about women in our Economy and Heggeness uses the career of Taylor Swift to illustrate how a woman can become a billionaire in the treacherous U.S. recording industry.

“On May 30, 3035, after rerecording four of her early albums, and backed by the financial success of the Eras Tour [which made $4 billion] Taylor announced that she had bought back the rights to her originals and now, finally, owned her entire music catalogue.” (p. 13)

Heggeness shows how the rise of women in the Economy is determined by the amount of freedom and control they can use. She gives examples of the falling number of children women are choosing to have as their careers play a larger role in their lives.

More women graduate from College today than men. Women are starting Small Businesses and hiring more women to help them run their enterprises. The trend towards women’s positive impact and personal growth is clear. Efforts to curtail women in the U.S. will ultimately fail. But it will be a tough fight… GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Preface: Dear Reader — ix

Introduction: Our Economic Power Era — 1

Ch 1: Reinvention (Taylor’s Version) — 15
Ch 2: Survival: Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince –24
Ch 3: Misogyny: You Have the Right to Prove Them Wrong — 41
Ch 4: Care Work: Invisible — 55
Ch 5: Generations: marjorie / The Best Day — 86
Ch 6: Motherhood: Bigger Than the Whole Sky — 110
Ch 7: Self-Investment: You Don’t Own Me — 128
Ch 8: Negotiation and Planning: Mastermind — 143

Conclusion: Is It Over Now? — 164

Afterword: Timeless — 176

Acknowledgements — 181

Notes –– 181

Selected Bibliography – 225

Index — 233

I love chocolate ice cream. And I subscribe to Consumer Reports. In a recent issue of CR, there were recommendations for chocolate ice cream. One of the recommendations was for Wellsley Farms Premium Chocolate Ice Cream sold at BJ’s Warehouse.

I bought the 64 ounce bucket for $5.59. From the first spoonful, I found Wellsley Farms Premium Chocolate Ice Cream smooth, creamy, and tasty. If you want some delicious chocolate ice cream at a reasonable price, Wellsley Farms Premium Chocolate Ice Cream delivers. What ‘s your favorite ice cream? GRADE: A

Snoopy Presents: There’s No Place Like Home, Snoopy or simply There’s No Place Like Home, Snoopy is the 53rd Peanuts animated special. It is the eighth Peanuts special released on Apple TV on July 31, 2026. The plot follows Snoopy after his doghouse is accidentally sold during Charlie Brown and Sally’s yard sale. 

Apple TV+ is the exclusive streaming home for the Peanuts franchise through 2030. They control the rights to Camp Snoopy, The Snoopy Show, and Snoopy Presents.

If you’e a fan of Peanuts and/or Snoopy, you can find them on Apple TV+, GRADE: B+

I love spy novels. I got off to a shaky start in the 1960s by reading Matt Helm and James Bond paperbacks. But, eventually, I read “grown up” spy novels by John le Carre (David Cornwell), Frederick Forsyth, Eric Ambler, Martin Cruz Smith, Robert Ludlum, and others. Today my favorites are Mick Heron’s Slow Horses, Mark Greaney’s Gray Man series, and Daniel Silva’s series.

Tradecraft: Writers on John le Carre (2025) takes the reader on a deep dive into the works of John le Carre. Several of le Carre’s spy novels are dissected to reveal plenty of facts of the novel and the author that you didn’t know.

My favorite chapter in Tradecraft is written by David Cornwell’s son, Nicholas Cornwell. Nicholas reveals personal facts about his father, his writing methods, and how working with “John le Carre” made him a better writer.

If you’re a John le Carre fan, Tradecraft is a must-read. If you enjoy spy fiction, you’ll learn a lot about the craft of writing spy novels from this book. GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

FOREWORD Simon Cornwall — vii
PREFACE Le Carré and the Bodleian Richard Ovenden — x
INTRODUCTION Federico Varese — 1

TIMELINE OF DAVID CORNWELL’S LIFE — 26

1. Errol Morris: David Cornwell and the hopeless uncertainties of history — 29
2. Elleke Boehmer & Steven Matthews: John le Carré as world writer — 40
3. Lawrence Osborne: The Honourable Schoolboy: Hong Kong nights and Phnom Penh days — 57
4. Andrea Ruggeri: The world has gone mad: International Relations in the work of John le Carré –72
5. Andrei Soldatov: John le Carré and spying as seen from the KGB — 86
6. Michela Wrong: One week in Bukavu — 103
7. Hossein Amini: Adapting John le Carré: My first screenwriting manual — 122
8. Nicholas Cornwell: Writing with my father: Karla’s Choice by way of Silverview –138

Notes — 152

Further Reading –– 162

Acknowledgements — 164

About the Authors — 166

Picture Credits — 168

Index — 169

I’m back to listening to Greatest Hits collections. Pat Benatar Greatest Hits (2006) includes 20 songs from Pat Benatar’s career, mostly from the 1980s. I remember Pat Benatar music videos in heavy rotation on MTV for that decade. “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” might have a different interpretation today. But “Shadows of the Night” and “Love Is a Battlefield” hold up.

My parents loved Henry Mancini’s music. They had his albums–Peter Gunn, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and The Pink Panther–and played them on our stereo system on a regular basis. Later, I read some books about Mancini and Blake Edwards and discovered how they both worked to make their movies legendary.

Do you remember Pat Benatar and Henry Mancini? Any favorites here? GRADE: A for both

TRACK LIST:

TRACK LIST:

I’ve read James Patrick Kelly’s (no relation) stories since the mid-1970s. I consider Kelly an underrated writer even though he’s won Hugo, Nebula, and LOCUS awards. His new collection, The Book of Bots, collects a dozen of his short stories about robots.

But the two essays Kelly includes in this collection are worth the price of admission alone: “The Comedy of Science” and “Robots on Parade 2026.” “The Comedy of Science” is an engaging history of robots in Science Fiction writing. “Robots on Parade 2026” centers on the state of the art of robotics today. I learned a lot from these two finely crafted, detailed essays.

James Patrick Kelly organizes the dozen short stories in The Book of Bots in chronological order by publishing date. The early stories show robots as helpers. The later stories–mixed with Artificial Intelligence–present a more complicated picture of humans interacting with robots with superior intelligence.

If you’re interested in possible futures of robots and humans, The Book of Bots supplies some possible answers. GRADE: B (for bots)

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Forward — 11

Itsy Bitsy Spider — 15

10 to 1 — 28

Undone — 52

Bernardo’s House — 82

The Comedy of Science — 106

The Best Christmas Ever — 121

Uncanny — 136

Grace’s Family — 140

Yukui! — 174

Robot s on Parade 2026 — 184

Your Boyfriend Experience — 193

What It. Means to Be a a Car — 224

Embot’s Lament — 237

Je Ne Regrette Rien — 253

I started reading comic books in the mid-1950s–Batman and Superman mostly. But by 1960, my favorite DC comic series was The Flash. Not far behind was Green Lantern. We all know about the Ryan Reynolds movie version of Green Lantern that bombed. Now we have a new series, Lanterns, on HBO MAX.

 Kyle Chandler’s Hal Jordan, the first of the intergalactic cops known as Green Lanterns recruited from Earth, is paired with John Stewart (Cairo Cash Lee) into plots that seem more like True Detective than a superhero series.

“Created by crime drama specialist Chris Mundy (True Detective, Ozark), TV eminence Damon Lindelof (Lost, The Leftovers), and Eisner-winning comics writer Tom King, it juggles their different strengths and points of view with mixed success.” Those audiences craving something like Spider-Man are going to be disappointed with this Buddies series with a dash of CGI. GRADE: Incomplete but trending towards a B-

“In his sixty years as a working literary critic, he [Bloom] published nearly fifty original books, two of them later his death in 2019, several of which made the New York Times Best-Seller list. He published hundreds of critical collections, each with an introductory essay of his own. He lectured in countries around the world, and taught thousands of students.” (p. 2)

Heather Cass White, the editor of The Man Who Read Everything (2026), is a former student of Harold Bloom. In 2015, she approached Bloom about publishing a volume of his correspondence with poets and writers. Bloom agreed and this volume is the result. White notes that Harold Bloom could read a book in an hour and could cite passages from it because he had a photographic memory.

Some of Harold Bloom’s best letters can be found in the section on Northrop Frye, the world-famous professor at the University of Toronto that Bloom idolized. Bloom also idolized poets: Alvin Feinman, John Hollander, A.R. Ammons, John Ashbery, James Merrill, and Henri Cole.

Bloom believed John Ashbery was the best poet of the second half of the 20th Century (Yeats being the best poet of the first half). But I agree with Irvin Ehrenpreis’s review of Ashbery’s Self-Portrait (1975), “Mr. Ashbery may hope to surprise us agreeably with the leaps or turns of his mind from image to insight and back again; and he may challenge us to make the brightest of these connections ourselves. But most of his work will tire nearly all his readers.” (p. 138)

The letters and email texts from the Ursula K. Le Guin section were the most fun to read. “Her honors include eight Hugo Awards, and six Nebula Awards.” (p. 187)

Ursula K. Le Guin wrote “23 novels, 12 volumes of short stories, 11 volumes of poetry, 11 children’s books, five essay collections, and four works of translation.” (p. 187) Harold Bloom was an enthusiastic fan of Le Guin’s work and his productivity matches hers.

Reading these letters gives insights into a seminal critic of the 20th Century. GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Introduction — 1

A Note on the Texts — 15

Alvin Feinman — 17

Northrop Frye — 31

John Hollander — 51

A. R. Ammons — 69

John Ashbery — 119

James Merrill — 157

Henri Cole — 179

Ursula K. Le Guin — 187

Works Cited — 215

Acknowledgements — 219

Index –– 221

“Gibbon’s fascination with the dissolution of a world that seemed quite literally set in stone is not surprising–deep within the European psyche lies an anxiety that, if Ancient Rome could fall, so can the proudest of modern civilizations.” (p. 3)

Bryan Ward-Perkins opens his short but insightful book by thanking his editor: “She made me prune many of the subordinate clauses and qualifications that scholars love; and above all forced me to say what I really mean, rather than hint at it through Delphic academic utterances.” (p. v)

As a former professor, I too am prone to Delphic academic utterances from time to time. But Ward-Perkin’s brilliant editor turned The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (2005) into something more than Cliff Notes to Edward Gibbon’s classic  Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (a six volume work published between 1776 and 1788). You can read Gibbon’s 3000 page master work…or Ward-Perkin’s 239 page shortcut. I have done both.

Edward Gibbon ran into trouble by suggesting Rome’s fall was caused by Christianity and the spread of monasticism. Gibbon wrote “a large portion of public and private wealth was consecrated to the specious demands of charity and devotion; and the soldiers pay was lavished on the useless multitudes of both sexes, who could only plead the merits of abstinence and chastity.” (p. 40)

Bryan Ward-Perkins suggests another reason for Rome’s fall: “In my opinion, the key internal element of Rome’s success or failure was the economic well-being of its taxpayers. This was because the empire relied for its security on a professional army, with in turn relied on adequate funding.” (p. 41) As the wealth of Rome went to building churches and monasteries, the armies regressed because of lack of funding–and were defeated by barbarians.

The state of the world today shares parallels with the decline and fall of Rome. Civilization could disappear again with a few mushroom clouds… GRADE: B+

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Preface — v

I. Did Rome Ever Fall? — 1

Part I: The Fall of Rome

II. The Horrors of War — 13.

III. The Road to Defeat — 33

IV. Living Under the New Masters — 63

Part II: The End of a Civilization

V. The Disappearance of Comfort — 87

VI. Why the Demise of Comfort? — 123

VII. The Death of a Civilization? — 138

VII. All for the Best in the Best of All Possible Worlds — 169

Appendix: From Potsherds to People — 184

Chronology — 188

Notes — 182

Bibliography –– 216

Picture List — 224

Index — 231

AMAZON PRIME Video dropped the first three episodes of Reacher, Season 4 and I watch them. Reacher, Season 4 is a series of 10 episodes–episodes will drop one at a time on Wednesdays. In the first three episodes, Reacher (Alan Ritchson) takes a lot of punishment. But Reacher deals out a lot of punishment, too!

Reacher, Season 4 is based on Lee Child’s 13th Reacher novel: Gone Tomorrow (2009). You can read my review of Gone Tomorrow here.

While most of Gone Tomorrow is set in New York City, Reacher, Season 4 is set Philadelphia and Washington, D. C. Plenty of alphabet agencies are after Reacher–FBI, CIA, etc. Reacher is on the run, but still managing to investigate crimes in the present and the Past.

There are changes and variations from Gone Tomorrow, but the relentless momentum of Reacher remains in high gear. Are you a Reacher fan? GRADE: Incomplete but trending towards a B+