Take heart, writers, even the Greats have had their moments of torturous self-doubt — “I am not a writer. I’ve been fooling myself and other people.”- Author John Steinbeck writing in his private journal in 1938 — two years before he won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Grapes of Wrath. It’s called The Impostor Syndrome and it’s been a registered term in…

The world’s first female detective helped save President-elect Abraham Lincoln — and the Nation — in 1861 — No one could have been more surprised than Detective Allen Pinkerton was when the petite woman wearing a fashionable dress stepped into his Chicago office, looked him straight in the eye, and revealed the purpose of her visit. …

I like to think the old man did it for a reason, a good reason. That he moved on from that place of his own free will, leaving behind no regrets and no explanations. Owing nothing to nobody. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all say that when it’s…

Picture, if you will, a tropical island where time has no meaning or measure. It stands alone in an ocean of blue-green water far removed from civilized advance. As it does every day, the same sun arcs across the sky, blazing relentlessly from horizon to horizon. Once removed from the…

The ghost of bomber Leo Burt still haunts the Love Generation — Up to that point in history, it was the worst case of domestic terrorism ever committed on American soil. Which was not all that surprising, given the fact that it happened at the height of the most unpopular war this country has ever been a part of. The perpetrators came…

What the Devil washed ashore man tries to answer. — Severed feet washing ashore. At first thought, it has to be the strangest phenomenon in the history of modern forensic evidence. For some, it’s already become an urban legend, something to smirk at, shake your head, then dismiss and move on. …

Clues left behind in a decades-old mystery tell a dark story of love and death — “We did have some moments of beauty together, didn’t we?” Those wistful words were penned by a young vagabond named Everett Ruess in 1934 in a farewell love letter to a girlfriend. Several months later he disappeared forever in the desert of the American Southwest. The line is quoted in…

The storybook nightmare of life in a small town is a hard lesson worth learning — To begin with, there’s the neo-Gothic title and the ghostly family portrait staring at you from years gone by. One glance at that cover and you know you’re in for a strange journey as soon as you open the book. And indeed you are. Wisconsin Death Trip is a nonfiction…

Everything about “The Great Rebellion; A History of the Civil War in the United States” makes me appreciate the artistry of writing — When it comes to books currently in my possession, the one I treasure most is a very old book about the Civil War. How old, you ask? Well, in the Publisher’s Notice at the front of the book the editors proclaim this to be Volume I of a history of…