Rico Stays
Rico Stays is the final novel in Ed Duncan’s Pigeon-Blood Red trilogy. As he did in the other two books in the series, Pigeon-Blood Red and The Last Straw, Duncan…
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Richard Fluck
15 posts
Richard Fluck retired from full-time work in 2011, worked part time in Franklin & Marshall College's Office of College Grants for five years, and has now retired fully.
Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea’s Elite
In 2011, the Korean American writer and teacher Suki Kim taught English to the sons of North Korea’s elite. This book explores her experiences there and, as she writes, “My goal was to write a book that humanizes North Koreans.”
Native Country of the Heart: A Memoir
Native Country of the Heart was the right book at the right time. It read like a personal letter from Cherríe Moraga to me, and I will be forever grateful…
Salt Houses
If you’ve ever built a sand castle in the intertidal zone at the ocean’s edge, you know what happens when the tide comes in: It washes away your castle, leaving not a trace of it except in your memory or a photograph.
The Last Straw
When Jeffrey Phillips, a poor teenager in Chicago, shoots and kills a man in a carjacking gone sideways, Sandra Yanders, a teen witness from “the other side of the tracks,”…
Sucking Up: A Brief Consideration of Sycophancy
Sycophancy (ˈsikəˌfan(t)sē) is the phenomenon known to most of us by alternative words or phrases such as sucking up, ass kissing, brown nosing, and bootlicking—words and terms that give sycophancy…
Hitler: Ascent, 1889–1939
Volker Ullrich Translated from the German by Jefferson Chase As the son of a WW II veteran who fought in the Battle of the Bulge, I grew up hearing stories…
The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches from Syria
One of Di Giovanni’s themes in her book The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches from Syria is “the velocity of war,” the speed with which it descends upon a country, whether it be Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, or Syria. The book is based on Di Giovanni’s reporting from Syria during the six-month period, June–December 2012.
The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine
Ben Ehrenreich, on assignment for Harper’s magazine, went to Palestine’s West Bank in 2011 to report on Israel’s water war with Palestine. The Way to the Spring is based on his eye-witness account of life in the West Bank—in the village of Nabi Saleh and the cities of Hebron and Ramallah.
Music and the Armenian Diaspora
Big Band music saved my sanity during an especially stressful time in my life. I was working long hours, seven days a week, on a high-stakes project. I actually liked…