The Most Interesting People in
Politics and History, Volume 2:
250 Anecdotes and Stories
David Bruce
Copyright 2008 by Bruce D. Bruce
All anecdotes have been retold in my own words
to avoid plagiarism.
Anecdotes are usually short humorous stories. Sometimes they are interesting or thought provoking, not amusing.
Chapter 1: From Activism to Critics 1
Chapter 2: From Death to Good Deeds 24
Chapter 3: From Holocaust to Money 47
Chapter 4: From Mothers to Problem-Solving 68
Chapter 5: From Public Speaking to Work 88
Appendix A: Bibliography 108
Appendix B: About the Author 116
Appendix C: Some Books by David Bruce 117
Chapter 1: From Activism to Critics
Activism
• In early 2008, truck drivers protested $4-per-gallon diesel fuel costs by slowing down or blocking freeway traffic. For example, on the New Jersey Turnpike, trucks crawled along at 20 miles per hour. Near Chicago, they drove with three trucks side by side by side to block traffic, then they slowed down—way down. Similar slow-downs occurred elsewhere in the United States. Many of these activists were owner-operators who can’t make a profit when diesel fuel costs $4 per gallon. Some of them can’t make the payments on their trucks, which are foreclosed by the banks. Maine trucker Donald Hayden lost three trucks when Daimler-Chrysler repossessed them. To make a point, he surrendered the trucks publicly so that other people would know what is happening: He parked them in front of the statehouse in Augusta, Maine, because as he points out, “Repossession is something people don’t usually see.” The Daimler-Chrysler representative repossessing the trucks said, “I don’t see why you couldn’t make the payments.” Mr. Hayden replied, “See, I have to pay for fuel and food, and I’ve eaten too many meals in my life to give that up.” Author Barbara Ehrenreich thinks that making repossession public is a good idea, as it makes people aware of what is going on. In her blog, she writes, “Suppose homeowners were to start making their foreclosures into public events—inviting the neighbors and the press, at least getting someone to camcord the children sitting disconsolately on the steps and the furniture spread out on the lawn. Maybe, for a nice dramatic touch, have the neighbors shower the bankers, when they arrive, with dollar bills and loose change, since those bankers never can seem to get enough.”[1]
• After becoming governor of California, movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger was very popular until he revealed himself to be a bullyboy who insulted nurses and other people who have dedicated themselves to helping others. Early in his administration, he supported big business in the form of large hospital chains by delaying a change that would lower the nurse-to-patient ratio, thus missing a chance to improve service quality and to decrease the chances of a nurse making a serious mistake through overwork. As governor Schwarzenegger addressed 10,000 women at a state convention, a few nurses protested by unfurling a banner that read, “Hands Off Patient Ratios.” He responded by saying on TV, “Pay no attention … to the special interests. I am always kicking their b*tts.” Perhaps he forgot that a nurse’s special interest is taking very good care of very ill patients. In November of 2005, governor Schwarzenegger spent over $50 million of taxpayer money as he sought to have voters pass initiatives harming teachers and unions and the political process. The nurses—and the teachers, and the firefighters, and the voters—rejected all of governor Schwarzenegger’s initiatives. When the election results were announced to the nurses, they formed a conga line and chanted, “We’re the mighty, mighty nurses.” (A few years later, governor Schwarzenegger’s popularity rose again, perhaps as a result of his pursuing a much more liberal—or at least moderate—agenda.)[2]
• In 2008 in San Francisco, a group known as the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco wanted to change the name of the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant. Because of President George W. Bush’s record as overseer of the country’s welfare, they wanted the sewage treatment plant’s name changed to the George W. Bush Sewage Plant. To do that, they submitted to San Francisco election officials over 10,000 signatures in order to get their initiative on the ballot. According to organizer Brian McConnell, “We think that it’s important to remember our leaders in the right historical context. In President Bush’s case, we think that we will be cleaning up a substantial mess for the next 10 or 20 years. The sewage treatment facility’s job is to clean up a mess, so we think it’s a fitting tribute.” In the opinion of this writer, Mr. McConnell is optimistic. It will take much longer than 10 to 20 years to clean up President Bush’s mess. To be fair to President Bush, he did what he set out to do—transfer much more of the nation’s wealth to the already wealthy. President Bush simply did not and does not care about non-wealthy people like the author of his book.[3]
• In the days when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister of England, much protest music was written about her, but early in the 21st century, several conservative British politicians stated that they liked (and often still like) that music. One such politician was the Cameroonian Tory MP Ed Vaizey, who strongly supported Ms. Thatcher and who thought that about everyone else did, too. He listened to a song titled “Stand Down, Margaret” by the 1980s group the Beat, and he says, “I couldn’t work out what they had against Princess Margaret.” On 10 January 2008, conservative politician David Cameron wanted to get his photograph taken in Salford, Greater Manchester, at the Salford Lads Club, known for being the site where the anti-Thatcherite group the Smiths had a photograph taken for their 1986 album The Queen is Dead. Activists discovered his plan, however, so they showed up in force with such signs as “Salford Lads not Eton snobs” and “Oi, Dave —Eton Toffs’ club is 300 miles that way.” Mr. Cameroon was unable to get the photograph he wanted.[4]
• Activism occasionally occurs in the public schools. On Wednesday, 21 May 2008, more than 160 eighth-grade students in a South Bronx middle school—who were taking six different classes at Intermediate School 318—went on strike and refused to take another standardized test as required by President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind program. The students created a petition that listed their grievances, including the “constant, excessive and stressful testing” that forces them to “lose valuable instructional time with our teachers.” Actually, the students didn’t even boycott a real test—they boycotted a practice Social Studies test. How did they do that? They simply handed in blank practice exam sheets for the three-hour practice exam. Thirteen-year-old Tatiana Nelson, one of the protest leaders, complained, “We’ve had a whole bunch of these diagnostic tests all year. They don’t even count toward our grades. The school system’s just treating us like test dummies for the companies that make the exams.”[5]
• In Birmingham, Alabama, African-American children marched for their civil rights. On 2 May 1963, nearly 1,000 children were arrested. The following day, even more children marched. This time, Birmingham police Chief Eugene “Bull” Connor ordered water hoses turned on and turned against the children. The water came out of the hoses with such force that it ripped some children’s clothes off and hurled other children against the walls of buildings. In addition, some children were bitten by police dogs and clubbed by police officers. Bull Connor enjoyed this, shouting, “I want to see the dogs work. Look at those n*ggers run!” The media gave heavy coverage to the police brutality and President John F. Kennedy said the police officers’ brutality made him “sick.” He added, “I can well understand why the Negroes of Birmingham are tired of being asked to be patient.” Eventually, the African Americans got what they were demonstrating for—the stores of downtown Birmingham were desegregated.[6]
• The year 2007 will be remembered in part for the protests of monks against the military dictatorship in Burma. It may also be remembered for a very unusual protest by international women, who discovered that in Burmese society macho soldier types believe that they must not come in contact with female undergarments. This has led to the formation of the international women’s protest called “Panties for Peace,” which may sound satiric but is deadly serious. Women all over the world sent their panties to Burmese embassies all over the world to protest the Burmese military’s bad treatment of the Burmese monks. For example, American women sent their panties to the Burmese embassy in the United States, which is located at 2300 S Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20008.[7]
• During the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott, which lasted 381 days, blacks declined to ride in the city’s segregated buses. Instead, they walked, rode in carpools, and took taxis. African-American taxi drivers even lowered their prices to match those offered by the bus company. An African-American minister who worked in the carpool organized by the Montgomery Improvement Association asked an elderly black woman who was walking, “Sister, aren’t you getting tired?” She replied, “My soul has been tired for a long time. Now my feet are tired, and my soul is resting.” The Supreme Court ruled that the segregated buses were against the Constitution, and the boycott ended in victory for the civil rights workers.[8]
• Professional player Mudcat Grant did his part to get civil rights for people. An African American, Mr. Grant thought things would be better in Reading, Pennsylvania, than in Tipton, Georgia, both of which were minor-league communities. He was wrong. Mr. Grant went to a lounge that served white baseball players, but where he was not served. To make a point, after each home game, he went to that lounge and sat all night. He never did get served. Mr. Grant says, “If I am willing to sit there all night long and not get served, they have to think about that a little bit when they go home at night, ‘Well, maybe this is not right.’ The idea is to get them to think that blacks are human beings.”[9]
• In February of 2007, the University of Chicago came up with a new funding plan for some of its graduate students. According to an article by Deanna Isaacs, “Beginning the following fall, almost every entering grad in the humanities and social sciences divisions would receive an annual stipend of $19,000 for five years, along with free tuition, guaranteed teaching opportunities, and other benefits.” Unfortunately, that program did not apply to the university’s current graduate students working in those disciplines. These graduate students came up with a notable protest. They went to the provost’s office and deposited on the provost’s desk 150 apples, each of which bore a protest message.[10]
• In its performance piece titled Frozen Wages, the San Francisco Mime Troupe uses juggling to show the effects of layoffs on workers. Several people begin juggling, but one by one the jugglers are laid off, leaving a smaller number of jugglers to juggle all the clubs that the large group had been juggling. The number of jugglers gets smaller and smaller, the number of clubs remains the same, the jugglers work harder and harder, and the clubs are thrown faster and faster until one too many juggler is laid off and everything collapses.[11]
• Black dance pioneer Katherine Dunham engaged in activism to support the causes she believed in. In 1992, the United States government turned away political refugees from her beloved Haiti. In protest, Ms. Dunham—at the age of 82—started a widely publicized fast that lasted 47 days and ended only after deposed Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide telephoned her and urged her to eat. The fast was successful in bringing the attention of the media to the plight of the refugees.[12]
• Before the American War of Independence, colonists were upset at being taxed without representation. They succeeded in getting most of the taxes revoked, except for the tax on tea—so the colonists boycotted tea. Instead, they drank coffee, tea from Holland (which had to be smuggled into the American colonies), or “Liberty Tea” (which was made from American plants). Soon the British East India Company had warehouses filled with moldy tea.[13]
• Ronald Reagan made a lot of mistakes when he was President, including saying that trees pollute more than factories do. Pollution kills, and students were upset that their President understood so little about pollution, ecology, and the environment. After saying this remark, President Reagan visited Claremont College in southern California. Around the trees on the campus, students had placed placards that read, “Stop me before I kill again.”[14]
• During the years of World War II, 12-year-old Jim McWilliams, a newsboy in Fairfield, Alabama, became a labor leader when the Birmingham News required African-American newsboys to work much harder than white newsboys. Jim led a strike of African-American newsboys, and after two weeks the Birmingham News agreed to their terms.[15]
Advertising
• Apple Macintosh was introduced to Americans in 1984 in a TV commercial that aired during the Super Bowl. The commercial opened with the face of Big Brother projected hugely on a TV screen, telling the zombie-like masses, “For today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives. We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology where each worker may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing truths. Our Unification of Thought is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth.” As Big Brother speaks, a woman carrying a sledgehammer runs into the room of zombies as she is pursued by the Thought Police. She throws the sledgehammer into the TV screen, which explodes. The commercial ends with the announcer saying, “On January 24, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like 1984.” The commercial was almost not shown during the Super Bowl. The directors of Apple disliked the commercial, and they wanted the advertising agency to sell the two Super Bowl time slots it had purchased for commercials. The agency, Chiat/Day, sold one slot, but lied and said it could not sell the other. The commercial ran in that slot, and it was wildly successful in launching Macintosh.[16]
• On 1 April 1996, Taco Bell announced that it had purchased the Liberty Bell in an effort to help reduce the national debt. The fast-food chain announced the news in full-page advertisements that appeared in these newspapers: Chicago Tribune, Dallas Morning News, New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, USA Today, and Washington Post. Of course, this was an April Fool’s Day joke, but some people believed the announcement and were outraged that such an important national, historical artifact could be purchased by a business. One person who was not fooled by the joke and went along with it was White House press secretary Mike McCurry, who told reporters that the government supported such privatization: “We’ll be doing a series of these. Ford Motor Co. is joining today in an effort to refurbish the Lincoln Memorial. It will be the Lincoln Mercury Memorial.”[17]
• Back in the days when organizers were trying to start unions for miners, the management and owners of the coal companies didn’t believe the First Amendment applied to union organizers. To prevent organizers from speaking, mine owners refused to rent them meeting rooms in coal company towns. They also refused to let organizers rent hotel rooms to stay in. Once, when organizers were forbidden to pass out leaflets announcing a speech by union organizer Mother Jones, two union men solved the problem by going through town and speaking to each other. One man pretended to be deaf, so the other man kept shouting to him, “Mother Jones is going to have a meeting Sunday afternoon outside the town on the sawdust pile!” This form of advertising, although primitive, was effective.[18]
Advice
• After being given a job, Zi Xia, a disciple of Confucius, went to see the master for advice about how he could do his job well. Confucius advised him, “The more you try to do, the less you are able to do. If you are blinded by petty concerns, you cannot accomplish great things.” In other words, haste makes waste; or the more haste, the less speed.[19]
• After aviator Amelia Earhart became a celebrity, she influenced the fashion of her day. Her hair was often tousled, and so other women began to wear their hair tousled. A newspaper editor who disliked the “Earhart look” gave her this advice: “Comb your head, kid. Comb your head.”[20]
Alcohol
• Carrie Nation was serious about keeping people away from what she saw as the evils of alcohol—since her first husband had drunk himself to death, she had a reason for regarding alcohol as evil. On 6 June 1900, she went into Mr. Dobson’s saloon in Kiowa, Kansas, and told his customers, “I have come to save you from a drunkard’s fate.” She then ripped the place apart, breaking every bottle of alcohol in the saloon. (Believe it. The 55-year-old Ms. Nation was nearly six feet tall, she weighed 175 pounds, and she was strong. In addition, she brought a supply of bricks with her.) After destroying Mr. Dobson’s saloon, Ms. Nation destroyed two more saloons, then ran out of bricks. Of course, the sheriff arrived, but he wasn’t sure what to do because saloons were illegal in Kansas at the time and Ms. Nation claimed that she had a right to destroy them. In fact, Ms. Nation demanded that she be arrested because she wanted to publicize her cause, but the sheriff refused to arrest her. Ms. Nation continued to destroy saloons until in January 1910 she tried to enter a saloon in Butte, Montana, that was owned by a strong woman named May Maloy. Ms. Maloy didn’t want her saloon destroyed, so she fought and convincingly beat Ms. Nation. Following that defeat, Ms. Nation retired.[21]
• Leon Askin played German General Alfred Burkhalter in TV’s Hogan’s Heroes. In real life, just before World War II he had been interned in a French prisoner of war camp because of his Austrian citizenship—he was released as soon as his American visa came through. While in the POW camp, he, another prisoner, and a guard were sent to a nearby village, where the guard got drunk. Mr. Askin and the other prisoner brought the guard back to the camp in a wheelbarrow. This experience was used in a Hogan’s Heroes episode where Sergeant Schultz takes Corporal Patrick Newkirk to town to see the dentist. Schultz gets drunk and Newkirk brings him back to camp in a wheelbarrow.[22]
• Izzy Einstein and Moe Smith were government liquor agents during Prohibition and closed down many, many speakeasies. Often, Moe would take a shivering Izzy into a bar and say, “Quick, give this man a drink—he’s been bit by frost.” When the bartender poured out a drink, Izzy and Moe would arrest him. Later, Izzy and Moe became famous because they were written up so often in the New York newspapers, and their mode of operation had to change. So Izzy sometimes went to a bar and told the bartender, “I’m Izzy Einstein. How about a drink?” The bartender would usually laugh, reply, “Yeah, and I’m Buffalo Bill,” and hand Izzy a drink—then Izzy would arrest him.[23]
• In 2008, the twin cities of St. Paul/Minneapolis, Minnesota, hosted the Republican National Convention. The Minnesota state legislature wanted the Republican delegates, candidates, and lobbyists to enjoy themselves, so they voted to allow bars to stay open two hours later and close at 4 a.m. instead of 2 a.m. However, the St. Paul City Council voted against this extension of bar hours. Council member David Thune had a very good reason for voting against more bar hours, “I got 8,000 people who live downtown who don’t want a bunch of Republican lobbyists puking on the streets.”[24]
• When Judge Roy Bean, the Law West of the Pecos, listened to law cases in his saloon, he would take numerous breaks so that he could put on an apron and sell drinks to the lawyers, the defendants, the plaintiffs, the lawmen—in short, to everyone. Despite being a judge, he was not honest. One lawyer paid for a 35-cent beer with a $10 gold coin, but Judge Bean kept the change. Angry, the lawyer started cursing him, so Judge Bean fined the lawyer $10 for disturbing the peace, and then added, “The beer is on me.” Judge Bean also used to fine jurors if they didn’t buy a drink.[25]
• Leif Vidø and other Danish Resistance members needed to escape to Sweden after some of them killed a hated SS policeman from the Baltic states. The Resistance members went to a ship in the harbor in Copenhagen, showed their guns to the captain, and demanded to be taken to Sweden. Actually, the guns weren’t necessary. The captain of the ship hated the Nazis, and he served the Danish Resistance members brandy as his ship took them to safety in Sweden.[26]
• In 1933, fish in Ellicott Creek in New York floated to the surface, where they remained motionless. Game wardens investigated and discovered that the fish returned to normal when placed in fresh water. Eventually, they discovered the cause of the fish’s strange behavior—the fish were drunk. An illegal still was hidden nearby, and the still’s owner had dumped 1,000 gallons of evidence into the creek to get rid of it.[27]
• A glass of beer made a huge difference in Lech Walesa’s life. In 1967, Mr. Walesa thought that he had time to get off a train in Gdansk and drink a glass of beer, but he was mistaken—the train pulled out of the station without him. Therefore, Mr. Walesa found work in Gdansk. His efforts with the Polish worker union Solidarity there led to his receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983.[28]
• During World War I, British army captain Alastair McIntosh got drunk, and then crawled out of bed with a hangover the next morning to officiate at a funeral. All went well until a gun salute was fired right behind him. Mr. McIntosh screamed and jumped headlong into the grave and onto the coffin.[29]
• Queen Victoria enjoyed drinking, and she opposed teetotalism—so much, in fact, that she would not give a cleric a promotion to a deanery unless he stopped advocating refraining from alcohol. According to Queen Victoria, teetotalism was “a pernicious heresy.”[30]
• The Russian Prince Orloff discovered an interesting way of getting out of the military. He entered a drinking contest with another man, drank 112 glasses of Cointreau to his opponent’s 80, went into a seizure, and was promptly relieved of his military duty.[31]
Animals
• In 1804-1806, the Lewis and Clark expedition explored the American West. Among other things, they studied the land scientifically and took back home plant and animal specimens. Seeing several prairie dogs, they decided to capture one, so they formed a bucket brigade and poured bucket after bucket of water into the prairie dog’s burrow. Eventually, one very wet and very angry prairie dog came out and was captured. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark took it with them and showed it to President Thomas Jefferson.[32]
• William Randolph Hearst’s estate at San Simeon included a private zoo—at the time the world’s largest. For the dangerous animals such as tigers and bears, Mr. Hearst’s architect, Julia Morgan, designed closed-in grottoes. The less dangerous animals roamed freely because the entire estate was fenced off. Signs at the estate said, “Animals have right of way.” Once, a giraffe resting in the middle of the road held up Prime Minister of England Winston Churchill.[33]
Art
• The most famous pharaoh of ancient Egypt is King Tutankhamen, who died at age eighteen after ruling for nine years. On November 4, 1922, British archaeologist Howard Carter and his team of excavators discovered a tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. They began excavating it, and on November 26, Mr. Carter looked through a small hole in the tomb’s door. When his eyes became accustomed to the dark, he saw, “strange animals [works of art], statues, and gold—everywhere the glint of gold.” The man financing the archaeological dig, the Earl of Carnarvon, asked, “Can you see anything?” Mr. Carter replied, “Yes, wonderful things.” Of the many tombs of the pharaohs, this tomb is the only one to be found virtually intact. Inside was the mummy of King Tutankhamen and over 2,000 other objects, including statues, a throne, a cedarwood chest, and an alabaster vase. King Tutankhamen’s mummy was encased in several cases and coffins. The innermost coffin weighed 242 pounds, and it was made of solid gold and decorated with colored stones and enamel inlays. Although most Egyptologists regard Tutankhamen as a minor pharaoh, the dazzling discovery of his tomb ensures his lasting fame.[34]
• Artemisia Gentileschi was a Renaissance artist. Another artist by the name of Agostina Tassi decided to marry her. Unfortunately, his method of proposing to her was horrific—he raped her, thinking that she would marry him to save her reputation (something that was regarded as valuable and even a necessity for women in Renaissance Italy). However, instead of marrying him, she took him to court, where he was found guilty of rape, although in the process her reputation was dirtied—his defense was that she was a whore and a slut, anyway. How did being raped affect her painting? She became very fond of painting a certain scene: Judith cutting off the head of Holofernes. She did at least six paintings of this scene.[35]
Children
• Eva Castellanoz is a master of making coronas, which consist in part of flowers made from tissue paper and dipped in wax. Her time as a child was very happy because of her parents, both of whom had Native American blood. She was born in Mexico, her father was Fidel Silva, of Azteca blood, and her mother was Conchita, of Otomi blood. Her father could go into the pumpkin patch and make flutes out of big leaves. At the river, he would ask his children about a rock, “What is the rock? Do you think it’s a boy, or do you think it’s a girl?” Hold it. Touch it. What is it?” Her mother sewed clothes for the children and made little chicks out of cotton and small pieces of wood. To make the chicks yellow, she would paint them with egg yolk. Her father and the children could go out and gather wood, and he would find food in the woods. To Eva, this was magical. She would think, “Wow! How wonderful! We don’t bring anything, yet we’re eating!” And whenever the children were curious about something their parents were doing, their parents would say, “Oh, we’re doing this. Would you like to try? Would you like to watch?” Eva says, “My childhood was magical to me.”[36]
• Esther Nisenthal Krinitz lived in the village of Mniszek in Poland. For the first year of occupation by the Nazis during the Holocaust, things were not nearly as bad as they got later. In July 1940, Esther got a very bad toothache. Knowing that the German soldiers had a dentist at their camp, she decided to go there for treatment. Of course, even then, when things were relatively good, she knew that the German dentist would not treat a Jewish girl, so she took a friend with her and on the way to the dentist she taught the friend how to say in German, “My sister has a toothache.” The German dentist pulled her tooth and gave her a bar of chocolate. Later, when Esther told her mother what she had done, her mother was shocked. Much later, after the Holocaust, when Esther told her children what she had done, Esther was also shocked by her courage when she was a young girl.[37]
• When Daryl’s parents got divorced, he moved in with and was raised by his maternal grandparents. His grandmother signs all of his report cards with “GRANDMOTHER AT LARGE … AND IN CHARGE.” He doesn’t see his father much. At a ball game, a man with a mustache came up to him and asked, “Do you know who I am?” Daryl replied, “No,” and the man said, “I’m your father.” Daryl is perfectly happy staying with his grandparents.[38]
• Growing up in a single-parent household can mean that the child worries excessively about the one parent. Eight-year-old Jessica worried about losing her mother, and her babysitter was unable to stop her crying when her mother was late arriving home one day. Jessica says, “Maybe if I had a dad, I wouldn’t have been so scared. At least then there would be somebody left to take care of me.”[39]
Clothing
• In 2008, Deborah Lawson, a senior at Peabody Veterans Memorial High School in Massachusetts, invited a friend to go with her to the prom because her boyfriend was out of town. However, the friend was a cross-dressing gay guy, so the school principal said no to the prom date. Ms. Lawson called Fox News, Fox News called the school superintendent (the school principal’s boss), and the school superintendent decided to allow the cross-dressing gay guy to attend the prom with Ms. Lawson. The school superintendent reasoned that since the cross-dressing gay guy would be wearing a dress, and since the school handbook stated that “everyone must wear appropriate dress,” and since a dress truly is appropriate for the prom, why not let the cross-dressing gay guy attend the prom? Ms. Lawson says, “I think what I’ve learned is that if you scream loudly enough, you’ll get what you want.”[40]
• Famed photographer Yousuf Karsh took a portrait of Senator John F. Kennedy during his Presidential campaign. Senator Kennedy had not realized that Mr. Karsh would take color photographs in addition to his usual black-and-white photographs. Thinking that his tie was an unsuitable color for his portrait, Senator Kennedy requested of Mr. Karsh, “Let me have yours.” When the color photographs were taken, Senator Kennedy was wearing Mr. Karsh’s tie.[41]
• The caddies at the Royal and Ancient Golf Club at St. Andrews in Scotland sometimes grew close to the golfers, and often the golfers passed on clothing they didn’t want anymore to their caddies. Once, a caddy boasted that he knew former Prime Minister Mr. Balfour very well. Other people disbelieved this, so the caddy said, “I should know him well, and I do—I’m wearing a pair of his breeks [trousers].”[42]
• In the early 1930s, Mahatma Gandhi had tea with King George V of England. Mr. Gandhi wore his regular skimpy clothing made from handwoven cotton, shocking a reporter who asked if he had been wearing enough clothing. Smiling, Mr. Gandhi replied, “The King was wearing enough for both of us.”[43]
Crime
• Frederick the Great once visited a prison where prisoner after prisoner insisted that he was innocent and that a great miscarriage of justice had occurred at his trial. However, one prisoner kept quiet. Noticing this, Frederick the Great asked, “I suppose you’re innocent, too?” “No, Your Majesty,” replied the prisoner. “I’m guilty and I deserve my punishment.” Hearing this, Frederick the Great shouted for the jailor, then ordered, “Release this man before he corrupts all these fine innocent people in here.”[44]
• In 1928, gangster Titanic Thompson cheated fellow gangster Arnold Rothstein in a rigged card game in New York. After the game was over, Mr. Rothstein owed Mr. Thompson $300,000. Mr. Rothstein knew that he had been cheated, so he refused to pay up. The predictable result was that Mr. Rothstein got shot. The police talked to Mr. Rothstein while he was on his deathbed, but he refused to tell them who had shot him, telling them instead, “My mudder did it.”[45]
• The FBI watched Madeline Gilford, the wife of actor Jack Gilford, during the blacklist years of the Joe McCarthy era. Walking in the park, and very pregnant, she saw Alger Hiss, who had just been released from prison. To give the FBI agents a shock, she walked up to Mr. Hiss, who had been accused of spying for the Soviet Union and who had been convicted of perjury, and she gave him a kiss. Years later, Mr. Hiss said that the very nicest thing that had happened to him on the day he was released from prison was that a pregnant woman had given him a kiss.[46]
• After John Hinckley attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in an insane attempt to impress actress Jodie Foster, a friend of filmmaker John Waters put this bumper sticker on his car: “I Did It for Jodie.” Within a week, he received three speeding tickets. After receiving the third ticket, he protested his innocence, but the police officer told him, “With that bumper sticker, you’re always speeding in my book.”[47]
• The creators behind the controversial video game Grand Theft Auto 4 have a sly sense of humor. In the game, the player can run around beating up and murdering police officers and prostitutes, but if the player chooses to drink and drive, a screen pops up advising the player not to do that and to take a taxi instead. If the player chooses to drive drunk anyway, immediately they are pulled over by the police.[48]
Critics
• Winston Churchill was a Tory, but on occasion, he put down even a fellow Tory. When Sir William Joynson-Hicks was speaking to the Commons in the 1920s, he noticed Mr. Churchill vigorously shaking his head. Sir William said, “I see that my right honourable friend is shaking his head. I wish to remind him that I am only expressing my own opinion.” Mr. Churchill replied, “And I wish to remind the speaker that I am only shaking my own head.”[49]
• Modern dance pioneer Martha Graham came in for her share of criticism during her career. One critic called her dancers “Graham Crackers,” and another critic, noting that she often created dances that stressed linear and geometric shapes, suggested that if she ever got pregnant, she would give birth to a cube.[50]
Chapter 2: From Death to Good Deeds
Death
• Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas is the Supreme Court ruling that struck down segregation by establishing that “separate” is inherently unequal. If not for this ruling, segregation would most likely still be legal in the U.S. Although the ruling was unanimous in striking down segregation, it possibly could have gone the other way. United States Supreme Court Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson was a conservative Kentuckian whom civil rights lawyer Thurgood Marshall blamed for holding up action on the case. Mr. Marshall worried about Chief Justice Vinson, feeling that he would uphold segregation and convince the other justices to vote against integrating public schools. However, fortunately for civil rights, Chief Justice Vinson told his wife that he had a stomachache, then a short time afterward he died of a heart attack. This allowed Earl Warren to become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and he turned out to be an effective advocate for civil rights. The Supreme Court upheld the right of seven-year-old Linda Brown, an African American, to go to a White school a few blocks from her house instead of being forced to travel by bus to a school for African-American children.[51]
• British fantasy author Terry Pratchett started out as a journalist, but he realized quickly that he wanted to move on from that occupation, although it is good training for writers. He says, “I was sick of asking: ‘How did you feel, Mrs. Smith, when your son was knifed to death by muggers?’” He joked, “What is she going to say? ‘Oh, I never liked him much?’” One day when he was a trainee reporter, he wrote an article about a collision between a car and a minibus. Six children had been killed, and he was thinking, “This is a great story. It’s going on page one.” However, another trainee reporter came to work late because he had been consoling his mother after their sister had not returned home. Mr. Pratchett looked at his notebook, and he saw the name of the sister—she was one of the six children who had died in the collision. He says, “I ringed the name and handed my notebook to the news editor and went to the toilet. I went into a cubicle and locked the door. And then I laughed—I laughed, but I wanted to scream. There was a lot of that sort of thing, and ultimately, I didn’t want to do it.”[52]
• Sometimes, the rescuers of Jews in the Holocaust had to kill Nazi sympathizers. Marion Pritchard, a Dutch student, was determined to resist the Nazis by hiding and helping Jews. She helped a Jewish father and his three small children find a house to hide in. In times of danger, these Jews would hide in a secret compartment under the floor. One day, four Germans and a Dutch policeman who supported the Nazis searched the house but found nothing; however, from experience they knew that if they would pretend to leave but quickly come back, they would often find Jews who had come out of hiding. This time, the Dutch policeman came back alone and found the children. Ms. Pritchard had a small revolver, and she used it. She disposed of the body of the Dutch policeman with the help of the undertaker, who placed the body in a coffin with another, legitimate body of a local man. Ms. Pritchard says, “I hope that the dead man’s family would have approved.”[53]
• Being an investigative photographer can lead to mental anguish that is severe enough to make the photographer commit suicide. Kevin Carter was one of the members of the Bang Bang Club of South African photojournalists, and he and the other members did much to expose apartheid and its brutality, as well as other evils. In Sudan, he took a photograph of a girl who looked as if she were about to starve to death. The photograph won a Pulitzer Prize, but Mr. Carter felt guilty because he had not helped the girl. People kept asking him what had happened to the girl, and he did not know what had happened to the girl. Eventually, he committed suicide. Of course, as an investigative journalist, he had seen many bad things. His suicide note said in part, “I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain, of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners....”[54]
• Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, was a proponent of birth control, in part because of the methods being used to stop pregnancies, including rolling down the stairs. She also sometimes saw on Saturday nights 50 to 100 women waiting outside the office of a $5 abortionist. The death of a tenement woman made Ms. Sanger a radical when it came to disseminating information about birth control. The woman was very ill from a botched self-induced abortion, but she recovered. During her recovery, she asked her doctor how to avoid becoming pregnant again. He replied, “Tell your husband to sleep on the roof.” A few weeks later she was pregnant again, and this time she died from a self-induced abortion.[55]
• In the early days of unions, miners went on strike in southern Colorado. Surrounding the tent colony of Ludlow with its 1,000 residents were soldiers, including state militia, mine guards, and pit bosses. On 20 April 1914, the soldiers attacked, burning up the tents, shooting machine guns, and throwing bombs. Two women and 11 children hid in a pit under a cot, and they burned to death. In all, 32 people were massacred. When the strike ended in defeat for the union, organizer Mother Jones explained why: “They [the miners and their families] had only the Constitution. The other side had bayonets. In the end, the bayonets always win.”[56]
• Barbara Jordan, Texas politician, had a troublesome neighbor. Ms. Jordan lived down a dirt road, and unfortunately, this troublesome neighbor used to close the gates on that road and lock them. Ms. Jordan called a number of politicians to ask for help, including Texas Governor Ann Richards. Later, Ms. Richards and Ms. Jordan met, and Ms. Richards asked, “Barbara, whatever happened to that dreadful neighbor of yours? Did she ever quit lockin’ the gates?” Ms. Jordan replied, “I am pleased to report that the woman in question has since died. And gone to hell.”[57]
• On 2 April 1917, President Woodrow Wilson stood in the Capitol Building in front of members of the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the Supreme Court, and he called for a declaration of war against Germany, which meant that the United States would join in the fighting of World War I. Everyone shouted, cheered, and waved flags. Afterward, President Wilson said, “My message today was a message of death for our young men. How strange it seems to applaud that.” Then he wept.[58]
• Engineer Joseph Strauss, designer of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, was concerned about safety. Although 11 construction workers died in accidents during the construction of the bridge, many more could have died. Mr. Strauss made a major contribution to safe bridge construction when he placed a safety net under the bridge while it was being constructed. This safety net, whose use is now standard practice, saved the lives of 19 construction workers.[59]
• Sometimes, death occurs when it ought not to occur. At Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, four Korean students were killed in a car accident. Ohio University arranged a memorial service for the students, which the students’ parents attended. One of the fathers of the students thanked the mourners attending the service, then said, “This is not the way it is supposed to be. When a parent dies, you bury them in the ground, but when a child dies, you bury them in your heart.”[60]
• Heavyweight champion Joe Louis was looked up to by many, many people, including many, many young black men. When convicted criminals began to be executed by poison gas instead of by the gallows, microphones were placed in the gas chamber. One young black man in the gas chamber was recorded saying over and over, “Save me, Joe Louis. Save me, Joe Louis. Save me, Joe Louis.”[61]
• General Dwight D. Eisenhower was sickened by what he found in the concentration camps when the Allies won World War II, and he wanted German citizens to know what their leaders had done. Therefore, he brought German citizens into the concentration camps and showed them the crematoria, the showers that dispensed deadly gas rather than water, and piles of corpses.[62]
• At Auschwitz, very many Jews were murdered, and some Jews committed suicide. Emil Gold and Zesa Starr, survivors of Auschwitz, remember the Nazis giving belts to prisoners. Mr. Gold remembers, “Every morning you woke up to find 10 or 20 people had hanged themselves. That was what the Germans wanted.”[63]
Doctors
• Syndicated columnist Susan Estrich wonders about the effect that pollution is having on our lives; many doctors wonder the same thing. She also wonders why politicians aren’t doing more to clean up pollution; many doctors wonder the same thing. After finding a lump in her breast, she consulted a doctor—fortunately, the lump wasn’t cancer. However, she did ask her doctor if she wasn’t too young to be worried about contracting breast cancer—wasn’t that a disease for women older than herself? He asked her if she knew anything about politics. When she replied that she knew a little, he asked her to consult people who were knowledgeable about politics and ask them why he was spending more and more time treating more and more young women who were contracting a disease that used to attack mostly older women. Her doctor said to her, “We need political leadership.” Ms. Estrich agrees.[64]
• Edmund Hillary was one of the first two people to successfully climb Mount Everest, but even he had to have a physical examination before going on the expedition that resulted in the conquest of the 29,028-foot-high mountain. His physician asked if he had been climbing mountains recently, and Mr. Hillary told him about climbing some of the European Alps. When the physician asked how he had found the climbing there, Mr. Hillary replied, “Too easy! Too easy!” He passed the physical examination.[65]
Education
• Kai Chang says, “One of my favorite professors in college was a self-confessed liar.” Dr. K taught the Dismal Science, aka Economics, and in particular a course on Corporate Finance/Capital Markets. Dr. K wanted his students to check what were said to be facts and to challenge falsehoods, and therefore at the beginning of his course he would announce, “I know some of you have already heard of me, but for the benefit of those who are unfamiliar, let me explain how I teach. [From] today until the class right before finals, it is my intention to work into each of my lectures ... one lie. Your job, as students, among other things, is to try and catch me in the Lie of the Day.” Early in the course, the lie would be obvious, and many students challenged the falsehood. Of course, this made Dr. K happy: “Very good! In fact, the opposite is true. Moving on ....” Occasionally, late in the course no one caught the Lie of the Day. When that happened, Dr. K would say, “Ah ha! Each of you has one falsehood in your lecture notes. Discuss amongst yourselves what it might be, and I will tell you next Monday. That is all.” Over the weekend, students would work in study groups, and on Monday, students would give their ideas on what the Lie of the Day had been. Late in the quarter, Dr. K would do something devious. He would give a lecture that had no lie. On Monday, after he had shot down students’ attempts to find a lie in the previous lecture (“no, in fact that is true—look at [x]”), he would say, “Do you remember the first lecture—how I said that ‘every lecture has a lie?’ Well—THAT was a lie. My previous lecture was completely on the level. But I am glad you reviewed your notes rigorously this weekend—a lot of it will be on the final. Moving on ....” Mr. Chang says that “I’ve had many instructors before and since, but few that I remember with as much fondness—and [that is] why my favorite professor was a chronic liar.”[66]
• Mythological stories can be educational. Math Mathonwy was a Welsh wizard who loved his beautiful handmaiden, named Goewin. Unfortunately, Math’s nephew, named Gilfaethwy, decided that he wanted to sleep with Goewin, and he did just that with the help of his brother, Gwydion. Unfortunately, his method of courtship was horrific and he raped Goewin. Math dealt with the situation by first marrying Goewin and then turning Gilfaethwy and Gwydion into a doe and a stag. After a year, the doe and the stag returned to Math with their child, a fawn, whom Math turned into a boy and adopted. Then Math turned Gilfaethwy and Gwydion into wild pigs; he also switched their sexes, so that the one who had been a doe became a boar and the one who had been a stag became a sow. After a year, the boar and sow returned to Math with their child, a piglet, whom Math turned into a boy and adopted. Then Math turned Gilfaethwy and Gwydion into wolves; he also switched their sexes, so that the one who had been a boar became a she-wolf and the one who had been a sow became a he-wolf. After a year, the he-wolf and she-wolf returned to Math with their child, a cub, whom Math turned into a boy and adopted. At this time, Math turned Gilfaethwy and Gwydion back into human beings. Even before they were transformed, they had known what it was like to be an animal, but now they also knew what it was like to be female.[67]
• Alfred Lipson was trapped in the Radom ghetto in Poland with other Jews in the Holocaust. All the schools in the ghetto were closed, and Alfred’s two younger sisters, Myra and Dina, who were 12 and 14 years old, were frustrated because they weren’t getting an education. Therefore, they asked him to teach them. He agreed, and he began to teach them his favorite subjects: algebra, Hebrew, and Latin. Their 16-year-old brother, Sam, was the lookout for German police because teaching was forbidden in the ghetto. The girls were apt pupils, requesting more and more homework. They also requested that he teach their friends, and soon he was teaching nine children. These children also requested more and more homework. He says, “I remember thinking about the futility of it all, about the tragic uselessness of teaching Latin and algebra under those circumstances. But then I would see the enthusiasm of my sisters and [their] friends, and I felt good resisting Nazi orders.”[68]
• Melanie, a singer at Woodstock whose hits include “Brand New Key,” says, “I was the first weirdo in my high school.” Her high school was Long Branch High School in Monmouth County, New Jersey. Back then, students got into trouble for things that are regarded as innocent now and should have been regarded as innocent then. For example, wearing boots in school, especially if you were a girl, was a no-no. Melanie says, “In those days you couldn’t buy a pair of boots if you were a girl. But I traveled cross-country with my mother on a summer vacation and she stopped at Indian reservations along the way and I found these black suede Indian boots with fringe. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I wore them non-stop.” Unfortunately, one of those days she wore the boots was her first day at high school. She remembers, “You cannot imagine what a fuss it caused. I was taken to the principal’s office. As a result, a policy was instituted banning boots as disruptive.”[69]
• Elementary schoolteachers need to be aware of how divorce can affect young children. One elementary schoolteacher wanted her students to gather information about relatives from their fathers and mothers so they could make a family tree in school. Unfortunately, the parents of nine-year-old Erin were divorced and not talking to each other. In fact, none of her father’s relatives were talking to her mother. Therefore, Erin had to tell her teacher that she couldn’t get the information needed to make her family tree. Erin said, “I was so embarrassed. I was sure she’d think Dad and the rest of the family no longer cared about me.”[70]
• Mark Bauerlein wrote a book titled The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future, or Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30. As you can tell from the title, he thinks that young Americans are becoming stupider and stupider. And, of course, he has evidence to back up this assertion, including this anecdote: He once told a group of American college students that they were six times as likely to know the name of the latest American Idol contest winner than to know the name of the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. One of the college students yelled, “American Idol IS more important.”[71]
• Zi You, a disciple of Confucius, started a school in a small town. Confucius visited Zi You, and he was very happy to see the school, but he tested Zi You by asking, “Is it worth it to expend such great efforts for a place so small? Is there a need for education here?” Zi You replied, “Education is necessary both to make good rulers and to make good citizens. Though this town is small, its people deserve to be educated.” Confucius replied, “You are absolutely correct.”[72]
• R. Mendel, a Hassid, looked for a place to establish a House of Learning. He journeyed from city to city, and in each city, he was welcomed and asked to establish his House of Learning in that city. But each time R. Mendel moved on. Eventually, he came to Kotzk, a city where people who opposed Hassidism met him and who threatened to beat him with clubs. R. Mendel then said, “This is the place,” and he established his House of Learning in Kotzk.[73]
• Singer-actor George Jessel and Cardinal Spellman once appeared together on Joe Franklin’s radio show. Cardinal Spellman was amazed at how well, fluently, and accurately Mr. Jessel quoted scripture, and he asked him, “You’re a Jew, you never went to school, so where’d you learn all that?” Mr. Jessel explained that in hotel rooms he often read the Gideon Bible—until the hooker showed up.[74]
• According to political writer Noam Chomsky, the American people aren’t idiots—they’re geniuses. You can discover this for yourself by listening to a sports talk show on radio. About sports, Americans have an amazing memory for facts. According to Mr. Chomsky, we need to make politics as interesting to the American people as sports.[75]
• When choreographer Twyla Tharp started attending Pomona College, a student tradition allowed any sophomore male student to choose any first-year female student and weigh and measure her and record her weight and measurements in a large book.[76]
Elections
• Michael Moore, author of Stupid White Men, believes that high school student councils have no real power and are meant to provide an illusion that students have a say in how their high schools are run. Therefore, he recommends mocking student elections by running on such platforms as forcing the principal to eat school cafeteria food or making the school mascot an amoeba. He also suggests using such political slogans as this: “Vote for me—a real loser!”[77]
• During the Great Depression, President Herbert Hoover was so unpopular that when Franklin D. Roosevelt won the nomination as the Democratic candidate for President, California senator William McAdoo told him that to win, “All you have to do is stay alive until the election.”[78]
Etiquette
• Stuart Rodger, a caddy at the Royal and Ancient Golf Club at St. Andrews in Scotland, once caddied for former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. Afterward, reporters asked him about Mr. Macmillan’s game, and he answered, “He’s a fine gentleman, but he’s nothing but a part-time golfer.” Some people thought that this answer was rude, but Mr. Rodger defended it by saying that he should know, for he himself was a part-time golfer.[79]
• After the buses of Birmingham, Alabama, were desegregated, everyone wondered what would happen on the first day of desegregated operation. Would there be violence and murder? This is what happened. Dr. Martin Luther King and a white minister waited together at a bus stop for an early-morning bus, the bus stopped, the door opened, and the bus driver said, “We are glad to have you this morning.”[80]
• In 1941, Prime Minister Winston Churchill sent a very formal note to the Japanese ambassador telling him that Britain had declared war on Japan. Afterward, Sir Winston said, “Some people do not like this ceremonial style, but when you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.”[81]
Fathers
• British actress Emily Mortimer studied Russian while attending Oxford University, and she has spent much time in Russia. Her knowledge of Russian comes in handy when she is riding in a taxi driven by a Ukrainian. She says that she has “always managed to sort of charm Ukrainian taxi drivers in New York by suddenly swearing in Russia in the back of the cab.” Unfortunately, while making part of the movie Transsiberian in Lithuania, no one seemed impressed by her knowledge of Russian. Soon she discovered why: “Then someone pointed out about a week into it that in Lithuania they’d been brutally oppressed and persecuted by the Soviet Union for 30 years, and the least cool thing to do in Lithuania is to speak Russian.” By the way, her father is Sir John Mortimer QC, about whom she says, “He was a criminal defense lawyer for much of his life, and he defended murderers a lot. And he said that murderers were by far the nicest criminals he’s ever had to defend. And they’d inevitably gotten rid of the one person on earth that was really bugging them. So he’s always kept me very open-minded about murderers.”[82]
• Sir Thomas Phillipps, 1st baronet, lived in the 19th century, and he was a man deeply gifted in hating. A scholar named Mr. Halliwell asked Sir Thomas for permission to marry Henrietta, Sir Thomas’ oldest daughter. Sir Thomas refused. Mr. Halliwell married her anyway, and Sir Thomas started to hate the Halliwells. Sir Thomas’ house was called Middle Hill. He had inherited it, and according to the terms of the inheritance Middle Hill would be the property of the Halliwells after Sir Thomas died. Because Sir Thomas hated the Halliwells, he moved out of Middle Hill and left the house open so it would go to ruin. Thieves stole whatever they wanted from the house. Rain poured into the house. No glass remained in the openings for windows. Banisters disappeared. Because Sir Thomas was so deeply gifted in hating, the Halliwells did not inherit a house—they inherited a ruin.[83]
Food
• George Washington once learned that a contractor had reneged on his contract to supply beef to West Point—instead of supplying beef to West Point, he had given West Point worthless certificates for beef. Mr. Washington had the contractor arrested and put in prison. After allowing the man to go hungry for a long time, he sent a servant to the man. The servant carried a large serving tray, on which were placed three covered serving dishes. However, when the man lifted the covers off the serving dishes, he did not find any food. Instead, he found a certificate for breakfast, a certificate for lunch, and a certificate for dinner.[84]
• Diana Vreeland, editor of Vogue, had strong beliefs regarding food. An employee put two pieces of white bread beside Ms. Vreeland’s bowl of consommé. Shocked, Ms. Vreeland asked, “Who is responsible for this unintegrated farina?” After the employee confessed, Ms. Vreeland told her, “Ah, my child, don’t you know that people who eat white bread have no dreams?”[85]
• On April 29, 1962, John F. Kennedy gave a White House dinner for several Nobel Prize recipients. According to then-President Kennedy, at the dinner was “probably the greatest concentration of talent and genius in this house except for perhaps those times when Thomas Jefferson ate alone.”[86]
• Fannie Farmer—known as the Mother of Level Measurement—made recipes better by insisting on accurate measurements of ingredients; however, despite the very popular cookbooks she wrote, assistants usually did the actual cooking during her lectures—Ms. Farmer was “too impatient” to cook.[87]
• The Great Depression changed many things about American life, including Popsicles. Because of the Depression, the flavored ice treat came with two sticks and could easily be divided in two so one child could share it with another child.[88]
• The father of Wolf Mankowitz knew one of the last Basuto chiefs in Africa who had been a cannibal. Wolf’s father asked him about the taste of human flesh. The Basuto chief replied, “It was delicious.”[89]
Free Speech
• After the Voter’s Rights Act passed in 1965, ending nearly a century of suppression of African-Americans’ right to vote, blacks turned out to vote and elected African-American Julian Bond to a seat in the Georgia House of Representatives. Before taking office, Mr. Bond was asked his opinion of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which had come out against the Vietnam War. He replied, “I admire people who take an action, and I admire people who feel strongly enough about their convictions to take an action like that knowing the consequences they will face.” This upset the Georgia House of Representatives, which called Mr. Bond’s remarks “traitorous” and which refused to allow him to take the office to which he had been legally elected. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., led a march in Georgia in support of Mr. Bond, and 23 United States Congressmen supported Mr. Bond in a telegram they sent to the Georgia House of Representatives. Eventually, the Supreme Court ruled that Mr. Bond had been exercising his legal right of free speech and that the Georgia House of Representatives must allow Mr. Bond to take the seat to which he had been legally elected.[90]
• Maurice Sendak wrote and illustrated In the Night Kitchen, in which the main character, Mickey, is nude much of the time. This has offended some people, including a librarian at Caldwell Parish Library in Louisiana, who painted a diaper on Mickey using white tempora paint. Mr. Sendak, his publisher, and most librarians found and find such censorship appalling.[91]
Gays and Lesbians
• Lesléa Newman is the lesbian author of Heather Has Two Mommies and several other books. She had attended Jericho High School, and in 1999 she went back there because she was being inducted into its Hall of Fame and had been asked to speak. When she was attending Jericho High School, she was not yet out (she came out at age 27), although occasionally while she was growing up other students taunted her by yelling “Leslie the lezzie” at her. (She changed her name to “Lesléa” because the gender-free spelling “Leslie” once caused her to be enrolled in the boys’ gym class—something that horrified her.) While giving a speech to the students of Jericho High School, she came out to them as a lesbian and at one point she asked, “What is like today for gay and lesbian students at Jericho High School?” One boy shouted, “We don’t have any gay students.” Of course, the school did have gay and lesbian students; they simply weren’t out. One year later, Ms. Newsman received an email from a student who had graduated from Jericho High School and then gone on to college. Only then did she feel free to come out as a lesbian. While she was attending Jericho High School, she did not feel free to come out—even to an out lesbian such as Ms. Newman.[92]
• Comedian Jon Stewart is a strong supporter of gay marriage, perhaps because he realizes that gays and lesbians are somebody’s sons and daughters. On June 5, 2006, Bill Bennett, famous gambler and Republican, guested on Mr. Stewart’s Daily Show, where they discussed gay marriage, with Mr. Stewart pro and Mr. Bennett con. Mr. Stewart pointed out that Vice President Dick Cheney is very much a conservative: “Dick Cheney: Conservative. Draconian. Drinks the blood of puppies.” He then pointed out that Mr. Cheney’s daughter is a lesbian and that Mr. Cheney does not oppose gay marriage. Mr. Bennett said that he thought Mr. Cheney did not oppose gay marriage because his daughter is gay. Mr. Stewart then asked, “Isn’t every gay person someone’s son or daughter?” Mr. Bennett agreed to the obvious, but quickly growing tired of the debate, said, “The debate is over, Jon.” Mr. Stewart agreed, “Yeah. You lost.” (One of the few things Mr. Cheney has done right is to pose with his wife for a photograph with his grandson, lesbian daughter Mary’s son. The photograph shows a cute baby boy and a proud grandfather and grandmother.)[93]
• People have been fired for being lesbians. In the early days of the gay rights movement, Jeanne Cordova got a job as a social worker after earning a master’s degree at UCLA. She says, “I had already been out, so I said, ‘F**k it, I’m not going back in the closet just because I got a professional job.’ At lunchtime I talked about my girlfriend and two days later I got fired.” Ms. Cordova is the author of Kicking the Habit, a Lesbian Nun Story (an autobiographical novel) and Sexism: It’s a Nasty Affair.[94]
Generals
• In February 1778, Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben went to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, and volunteered in General George Washington’s army. Baron Steuben claimed that he had been a general in the Prussian Army, and because he bore a letter of introduction from Benjamin Franklin, General Washington welcomed him. Baron Steuben played a major role in training the Colonial Army. He taught the American soldiers how to stand at attention properly and how to drill. Because he knew little English, an interpreter gave most of his orders for him. When Baron Steuben became frustrated with the soldiers, he sometimes ordered the translator to curse the men in English for him. Nevertheless, he was well liked and well respected by the men and by General Washington. In fact, when General Washington learned that Baron Steuben had been only a captain in the Prussian army and not a general, he didn’t care. He made Baron Steuben a major general in the Colonial Army anyway.[95]
• King Wu knew how to seize opportunity—but he had to fight superstition to do it. He set off with a powerful army to war against a neighboring state. One day, wind broke the commander’s flagstaff. A diviner felt that it was a bad omen, but King Wu argued that Heaven was helping his army with the wind behind their backs. On another occasion, a thunderstorm caused a flash flood. Again, the diviner felt that it was a bad omen, but King Wu argued that Heaven was sending the army plenty of water. On a third occasion, the fire went out during a divination. Again, the diviner felt that it was a bad omen, but King Wu argued that Heaven was showing that it was a bad time for divination, but a very good time to advance quickly. Because King Wu took every opportunity to strengthen the morale of his soldiers, his army was victorious in the war.[96]
Good Deeds
• Some people exhibit great moral courage. Carl von Ossietzky opposed Adolf Hitler through his journalism and ended up dying in a concentration camp because of his courage. Mr. von Ossietzky was a pacifist who opposed the rearmament of Germany, but he was far from being a meek and mild man. In 1927, his magazine, Die Weltbuhne, published an article exposing the government’s use of paramilitary organizations to silence political opponents. Because he had published the article, Mr. von Ossietzky spent a month in jail. A couple of years later, his magazine published an article stating that Germans were being trained in the U.S.S.R. to be pilots. In addition, the article exposed the building up of munitions factories in Germany. This time, Mr. von Ossietzky spent seven months in jail. Even after Hitler seized control of Germany, Mr. von Ossietzky kept exposing government secrets, and he kept serving time in jail. Finally, on Feb. 27, 1933, the Nazis arrested Mr. von Ossietzky and other “enemies of the state,” and he was placed in a concentration camp without a trial. Nevertheless, his efforts did not go unrecognized. In 1935, Mr. von Ossietzky was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.[97]
• Aristides de Sousa Mendes, the Portuguese Consul-General in Bordeaux, rescued thousands of Jews from the Holocaust by directly disobeying his country’s orders and giving visas to Jews so that they could escape to freedom. A devout Roman Catholic, Mr. Mendes knew that he was risking his career, his reputation, and his own money by rescuing Jews. However, he said, “I cannot allow these people to die. Our constitution says that the religion or the politics of a foreigner shall not be used to deny refuge in Portugal. I have decided to follow this principle. Even if I am discharged, I can only act as a Christian, as my conscience tells me. If I am disobeying orders, I would rather be with God against men than with men against God.” The Jews used the Portuguese visas to escape to neutral Spain.[98]
• In Calcutta, India, Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity once had trouble obtaining sugar, so a four-year-old Hindu boy told his parents, “I will not eat sugar for three days. I will give my sugar to Mother Teresa for her children.” After he had delivered the sugar, Mother Teresa said, “This little one could scarcely pronounce my name, but he knew exactly what he had come to do. He knew that he wanted to share his love.”[99]
• Some people opposed the Holocaust even though they were supposed to help implement it. Once, a bus filled with Jews needed to pass the border into Switzerland. The French police officer at the border had orders to arrest such Jewish refugees, but instead he waved the bus on and allowed the Jews to reach safety. He did this even though witnesses saw his action and he could be killed for helping the Jews.[100]
• According to the Ethics of the Fathers, a Jewish work, the reward for doing one good deed is to be given the opportunity to do another good deed—in other words, doing good deeds is its own reward. And in Islam, when a charitable Muslim gives to a beggar, both the donor and the beggar give thanks to Allah. The donor gives thanks for being in a position where he has surplus wealth to give to a beggar.[101]
Chapter 3: From Holocaust to Money
Holocaust
• Oskar Schindler was a hard drinker and a womanizer—and a rescuer of Jews during the Holocaust. When he first met Isaac Stern, who would be his assistant during the Holocaust, Mr. Schindler held out his hand, but Mr. Stern would not shake it. When Mr. Schindler asked why he wouldn’t shake hands, Mr. Stern replied that he was a Jew and it was forbidden for him to shake hands with Mr. Schindler. Mr. Schindler’s response was this: “Scheisse”—German for “sh*t.” Mr. Schindler protected the Jews who worked for him in his factory; thus, many Jews tried very hard to get on Schindler’s list of Jewish workers to be moved to Sudetenland—war events necessitated the move. Mr. Schindler did many small as well as big things for Jews in the Holocaust. For example, when he was near a Jewish worker named Moshe Bejski who worked for him as a draftsman, he would light a cigarette, put the pack of remaining cigarettes down, and “forget” to pick the valuable cigarettes up. Even though Mr. Schindler provided extra food for his workers, it often wasn’t enough, and four cigarettes could be traded for a large piece of bread. When a Jewish prisoner became pregnant, he arranged an abortion for her—if the Nazis had discovered her pregnancy, she would have been shipped to a death camp and both she and her fetus would have died. After the Nazis lost the war, the Jews Mr. Schindler had protected gave him many letters in different languages saying that he had saved them and asking the reader to help him. They also gave him a gold ring made from gold teeth donated by a Jew. Years later, one of the Jews Mr. Schindler had saved asked what had happened to the gold ring. Mr. Schindler replied, “Schnapps.” He had traded or sold it for liquor. When Mr. Schindler died, he was buried in the Catholic cemetery at Mount Zion in Jerusalem. The Catholic cemetery was filled with mourning Jews.[102]
• Ralph Codikow survived a number of concentration camps, including Auschwitz. When he was a young teenager, he and 130 children were loaded in a train car so they could be sent to Auschwitz. Ralph was able to help create a plot to attempt to save the lives of at least some of the children on the train car. He and some other children distracted the guards, and some of the other boys escaped from the train car. Of course, this could have gotten Ralph and the others killed, but they reported the escape later, miles down the track, and they reported the escape as if it had happened there, not miles away. Because the guards thought that the escape had been reported immediately, they did not punish the children other than to continue to send them to Auschwitz. There, Ralph narrowly escaped death. At a roll call, a guard asked the boys their ages. A boy near Ralph gave the age of 14, and the guard wrote the boy’s identification number down. Ralph witnessed this, so when the guard asked Ralph for his age, Ralph answered, “Fifteen.” The guard did not write down Ralph’s identification number. Later, the boys whose identification numbers had been written down were taken away by the Nazis, and the boys were never again seen.[103]
• Esther Nisenthal Krinitz grew up in the village of Mniszek in Poland. Her family was ordered during the Holocaust to go to the railroad station at Krasnik to be taken away. No one knew it then for sure, although they suspected something bad, but now we know that they were to be taken to concentration camps. Esther did not want to get on the train, so she begged her parents to find a Gentile with whom she and a younger sister could stay. Their father had a Gentile friend, and so Esther and Mania, her sister, were able to go to their father’s friend. When the two children left, their mother kissed them and said, “Good-bye, my children. Maybe you will live.” They could not stay with their father’s friend for long because so many Nazis were hunting for Jewish children, but they managed to stay alive by pretending to be Catholics and by working on farms. Esther and Mania survived the Holocaust; the rest of their family did not. A close call occurred when Esther was working in a garden, and two Nazi soldiers approached her. Fortunately, some honeybees swarmed around the Nazis, stinging them and driving them away.[104]
• So many times, we try to do our best, but we make mistakes. Author Theodore Dalrymple studied physiology under Gerta Vrbova, who was a survivor of the Holocaust. Her father took the family to Budapest, Hungary, because the government at the time was relatively tolerant toward Jews. Unfortunately, Adolf Hitler replaced the leader of the Hungarian government, Admiral Horthy, with someone who was much more anti-Semitic. Gerta’s father apologized to her, saying, “You must forgive me that I have always made the wrong decisions, and brought you into danger. Your mother wanted us to emigrate, but I had too much trust in my fellow citizens.” That was the last time she saw him. The Gestapo arrested Gerta and her mother, but after a few days Gerta managed to escape by climbing out a window. By then, her mother had given up on life and declined to go with her. Her mother was gassed at Auschwitz.[105]
• The gift of a dress and stockings saved the life of a Jewish woman known as “FF” during the Holocaust. At Auschwitz, FF dug trenches. One day, she saw a Gentile boy who looked familiar. He was Kazik Wonisowski, a political prisoner who was originally from her hometown: Mozowircki. The following day, she saw Zosia, Kazik’s sister, who was also a political prisoner. Zosia gave FF a dress and stockings. How did this gift save her life? Frequently, the Jews at Auschwitz were forced to submit to inspections, during which they were looked over for signs of illness such as sores, boils, and scabs. Jews showing such signs were killed. The gift of the dress and stockings saved FF because although at inspections the top half of her body, which was free of sores, was naked, the dress and stockings hid the lower half of her body, which was covered with sores. FF survived the Holocaust.[106]
• The mother of David A. Adler, author of We Remember the Holocaust and many other books, was born in Germany. Her family moved to Austria, and in Austria her teacher mocked anti-Semitism. Her teacher called Mr. Adler’s mother to stand in front of the class, pointed out her blonde hair and blue eyes to the students, and said, “You see, this is what a typical Aryan looks like.” Of course, the teacher knew that Mr. Adler’s mother was Jewish; the teacher was simply showing the students that Nazi policy did not make sense. While Mr. Adler was growing up in New York, his mother often told him about the Holocaust, “It could happen anywhere, even here. When you see it coming, don’t wait. Leave. Don’t let yourself become tied to material things. Just leave.”[107]
• Early in the implementation of Adolf Hitler’s “Final Solution,” the Nazis told the Jews that they were going to work camps that were not luxurious, but comfortable, and where there would be enough food. A band playing lively music met new arrivals to the concentration camps, and a Nazi officer would casually divide them into two groups. One group, made up of the strongest, would be sent to work. The much larger group, consisting of the weak, the aged, and the young, was sent to the bathhouses to be killed by the poison gas that poured out of showerheads instead of the water the new arrivals were expecting. Even the bathhouses were disguised. They were pleasant-looking buildings surrounded by gardens.[108]
• Despite massive amounts of evidence, including photographs of many, many corpses, some “learned professors” continue to deny the evidence of the Holocaust. Theatrical guru Danny Newman and his wife, Dina, once watched television as one of these Holocaust deniers appeared and stated that the Holocaust had never happened. Most of Dina’s family had been murdered at the Treblinka death camp. She screamed at the TV set, “Then where is my father? Where are my sister and brothers? Where are my uncles, aunts and cousins?” Because the Nazis kept meticulous records, Danny and Dina Newman knew that these relatives had perished at Treblinka. They also journeyed to Treblinka to say prayers for the dead.[109]
• Robert Clary played Corporal Louis LeBeau in TV’s Hogan’s Heroes. He was a survivor of the Holocaust, having spent time at Buchenwald after being deported at age 16 from France. He was the only survivor of 13 members of his family sent to the concentration camps. When he reached Buchenwald, the SS sent him and the others to the showers, where he thought they would be killed. Instead, they slept there for eight days without food: “We were hanging on by pure guts, sleeping on top of each other, every morning waking to find a new corpse next to you.” In 1982, he spoke to the producers of a TV movie about a 1981 meeting in Jerusalem of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. They cast a part for “Robert Clary,” so he ended up playing himself in the movie.[110]
• During World War II, Helen Astrup of Norway helped rescue Jews from the Nazi horror. Once, she used her car to transport a coffin containing two live Jews—a mother and her young daughter—to neutral Sweden, where they would be safe. At one point, the Germans stopped her, ordered her out of the car, and put the coffin on the ground. Some of the Nazis drove away in the car, while others stayed with her. Snow began to fall, but it melted on top of the coffin, making Ms. Astrup afraid that the Germans would realize that living people were inside. Therefore, she sat down on the coffin to provide a reason for the melting of the snow. She was lucky. The Germans who had taken her car returned, and she used it to finish transporting the coffin and the Jews to safety in Sweden.[111]
• Some Nazis opposed the Holocaust and did what they could to resist the Final Solution. For example, if one of these Nazi soldiers was ordered to arrest a Jew, he would go into a cafe, loudly say that he was going to arrest such-and-such a Jew that night, then sit down and eat dinner. When the Nazi finished eating and went to the Jew’s house, the house would be empty because the Jew had been warned to go into hiding.[112]
Husbands and Wives
• J. Edgar Hoover, head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, never liked Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mr. Hoover’s agents spied on the Nobel Peace Prize winner. The FBI once sent to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference a package containing a tape that was supposed to be proof that Dr. King was having an affair. Dr. King and his wife, Coretta Scott King, listened to the tape together and found it to be unintelligible and utterly worthless as evidence to discredit Dr. King.[113]
• The Kennedy family was well known for playing touch football, a game that can sometimes be hazardous. Before marrying John F. Kennedy, Jackie Bouvier played touch football with his family—and suffered a broken ankle. And when John and Jackie were finally married, the groom had scratches and bruises on his face from a touch football game he had played earlier that day.[114]
• When Bill Clinton was only 32 years old, he was elected Governor of Arkansas. The first night he and Hillary stayed in the governor’s mansion, they wandered through the rooms, eating chocolate chip cookies and asking, “Are we really here?”[115]
• In 1925, rodeo cowgirl Bonnie Grey got married. To celebrate, she jumped her horse, King Tut, over an automobile in which were seated her husband and her maid of honor.[116]
Illnesses and Injuries
• Three-year-old Joe Hoagland had it rough in life. He was born with a heart problem that required three operations, and he suffered a stroke during the third operation. After that, he no longer showed an interest in anything. Desperate, his mother, Deena, called Dolphins Plus, a research facility in Florida where Dr. David Nathanson used dolphins to help emotionally ill children. There, Joe frequently met Fonzie, a 650-pound Atlantic bottlenose dolphin. Joe was allowed to feed Fonzie, but he had to use his left hand—the one that was partially paralyzed. This took an effort on Joe’s part, and at night Joe would tell himself, “Open fingers. Close fingers.” After a few months, Joe was able to do such things as use both hands to hold a ball over his head. Joe regained—slowly—his strength and coordination, and he began to do the things that a four-year-old should be able to do. One of the employees at Dolphins Plus, a marine biologist, says, “One day I saw Joe walking out of the kitchen with a pail. It was so full of fish he could hardly carry it. Somehow this little guy, who a year ago couldn’t even hold his head up, made it all the way to the end of the dock with that heavy pail. He was bringing Fonzie his dinner!”[117]
• President Richard Nixon wanted very much to replace liberal Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall with a conservative Justice. However, since Justices are appointed to the Supreme Court for life, the only way he could do this was for Justice Marshall to resign because of ill health or to die. In 1970, a life-threatening case of pneumonia forced Justice Marshall to be hospitalized. President Nixon wanted to see Justice Marshall’s medical records, so Justice Marshall signed a release of his records—but only after he alerted President Nixon that he would not be soon vacating his seat as Justice. He did this by writing on his medical records, “Not Yet!”[118]
• For many years, Margaret Bourke-White was a famous photographer for such magazines as Life. Late in her life, she suffered from Parkinson’s, and to delay the effects of the disease as much as possible and keep her muscles working, she crumpled up thousands of pieces of paper into balls. Even so, she asked Life to give her a coveted assignment—to let her create the first photo essay on the Moon. Life gave her the assignment, perhaps realizing that it was fitting because the Moon was one of the few places Ms. Bourke-White had not worked.[119]
• Israeli statesman Moshe Dayan wore an eyepatch, having lost an eye during World War II. Stopped by a police officer for speeding, Mr. Dayan said, “I have only one eye. What do you want me to watch: the speedometer or the road?”[120]
Language
• Tabloid newspapers often don’t follow the rules that more established newspapers follow—getting readers can sometimes be regarded as more important than reporting truth. Robert Johnson, an assistant editor, said about the Hearst tabloid newspaper the Los Angeles Herald Express, “The paper was aimed at the underside of the community, the barely literate, the bored, the poor, the people who want to know about murders and UFO’s and sports results, and damn little else. It was just sloppy. No metro in America had more typos. We were embarrassed to tell people we worked there. It always crawled over any disaster because they were easy to cover.” The paper did have the first female editor of a major metropolitan newspaper, Aggie Underwood, who enjoyed creating flashy names for murder cases. One murder case featured a waitress who had been stabbed to death. Ms. Underwood dropped a white carnation on the waitress’ corpse so she could call the case “THE WHITE CARNATION MURDER.”[121]
• Actor Jack Gilford was asked to testify before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee during the Joe McCarthy era. He prepared for the encounter by practicing his testimony with his friends. At one point, a friend asked him this question commonly used by the Committee, “Do you believe in the overthrow of the United States government by force and violence?” He joked, “No—just gently.” (According to Mr. Gilford, the first words that Joe, his son, learned to speak were “Mama,” “Papa,” and “blacklist.”)[122]
• The American Family Association, whose major accomplishment is raising money, really, really doesn’t like the word “gay.” In fact, for a while in 2008 its website had an autobot that automatically “corrected” the word “gay” in any story that appeared on its site, changing it to the word “homosexual.” Unfortunately, a lot of stories about American track star Tyson Gay suddenly became stories about American track star Tyson Homosexual.[123]
• When the triangular Fuller Building, aka the Flatiron Building, was built in New York in 1902, it created an occasional breeze on Twenty-Third Street that was enough to raise ladies’ skirts and reveal an ankle or two—something of interest to many men. Occasionally, police officers would have to tell gawking men, “Twenty-three skidoo,” a phrase that means, “Get away from Twenty-third Street.”[124]
• The term “Jim Crow” had its origin when Thomas “Daddy” Rice, a white man who wore blackface and played an African-American in minstrel shows, saw a black boy in ragged clothing singing “Jump, Jim Crow.” Mr. Rice copied the boy’s movements and used them in minstrel shows, and after a while “Jim Crow” began to be used to denote legal segregation between whites and blacks.[125]
• While on the campaign trail with her husband, John F. Kennedy, Jackie sometimes spoke to Spanish-speaking voters in Spanish, Italian-speaking voters in Italian, and French-speaking voters in French. When she was criticized for doing this, she replied, “All of these people have contributed so much to our country’s culture that it seems a proper courtesy to address them in their own tongue.”[126]
• While listening to the BBC in London, blooper collector Kermit Schafer was surprised to hear a woman actress in a TV program about the Battle of Britain tell the actor playing her boyfriend, “I know everything will be all right, if you will only keep your pecker up.” Later, he learned that in Britain, “pecker” means courage.[127]
Law
• On 4 August 1961, in a Panama City, Florida, courtroom, Clarence Earl Gideon went on trial on a burglary charge. The judge asked him, “Are you ready to go on trial?” Mr. Gideon replied, “I am not ready, your Honor.” The judge asked why not, and Mr. Gideon said, “I have no Counsel [lawyer].” He then explained that he was indigent (lacking in money) and could not afford to hire a lawyer, and he requested that the court appoint a lawyer to defend him. The judge ruled that Mr. Gideon would have to defend himself, and eventually Mr. Gideon was convicted and given a five-year prison sentence. In prison, he studied law books and the Bill of Rights, and he handwrote a petition asking the Supreme Court to review his trial and conviction. In 1963, the court did so in Gideon v. Wainwright, and it established the principle that to have a fair trial in many court cases, the defendant must have a lawyer, and if the defendant cannot afford a lawyer, the court must appoint one free of charge to the defendant. Of course, this ruling applied to many more people than just Mr. Gideon—it helped protect the rights of accused people who were indigent. This ruling was controversial, and a reporter asked Mr. Gideon in 1972, “Do you feel like you accomplished something?” Mr. Gideon replied, “Well, I did.”[128]
• At the Salem Witch Trials in 1692, much odd evidence was seriously and legally considered. For example, if an accused person was unable to correctly say the Lord’s Prayer, this was considered evidence that the accused person was a witch. Also, spectral evidence was seriously considered, as when men testified that the specter of an accused woman had visited them when they were home in bed. In addition, the accused persons were stripped and searched (by members of the same sex) for the mark of the devil—a small red circle, usually found near the genitals.[129]
Letters
• On 18 July 1989, a stalker murdered Rebecca Schaeffer, an actress on the television sitcom My Sister Sam. The prosecutor of the case was Marcia Clark, who kept in close contact with Ms. Schaeffer’s family. Just before the case went to trial, she wrote a long letter to Ms. Schaeffer’s mother, Danna, who said later, “It was a letter on a yellow legal pad, just about how personally connected she felt to Rebecca. That’s how she approached the case. She made us feel that she was working on our personal behalf.” The stalker was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole. By the way, the first marriage of Ms. Clark, prosecutor in the O.J. Simpson murder trial, was to professional backgammon player Gabriel “Gabby” Horowitz. They were married in 1976 and divorced four years later. Supposedly, Mr. Horowitz played backgammon against such celebrities as Lucille Ball and John Wayne and won thousands of dollars.[130]
• When something is badly worrying your child, it’s time to take action. Jim, the 16-year-old son of young people’s book author Gary Paulsen, writer of Hatchet, once was badly worried about dying young because of “the nuclear thing.” Mr. Paulsen and his son took action by writing a letter to Russia. The letter carried this message: “Dear Russia, We don’t want to kill you and we don’t want you to kill us. Gary Paulsen and his son Jim do not want to blow you up and we do not want you to blow us up.”[131]
• George Washington once received a letter from a man who claimed to have had a vision. To accomplish the vision, he asked Mr. Washington for £500. On the letter, Mr. Washington wrote the notation: “From Mr. Thomas Bruff, without date and without Success.”[132]
Lodging
• Some people are incompetent. On a cold night, Benjamin Franklin stayed at an inn whose housekeeper started to put wet sheets on the bed. He stopped her, and he requested that the sheets be aired before being put on the bed, because of their dampness. She agreed, and 30 minutes later, she told him that the sheets had been aired and were now on the bed. Mr. Franklin got into bed, but he immediately jumped out again—the sheets had been aired outside and were frozen.[133]
• The Native Americans who lived at Mesa Verde in the southwestern corner of Colorado lived in pueblo villages built in the shallow caves of sandstone cliffs. To get into one of these villages was very difficult. To get into the village known today as Balcony House, people had to climb 30 feet down a steep cliff, then go through a 12-foot-long tunnel that was easily defended against enemies.[134]
• Thomas Jefferson’s home was Monticello, which means in Italian “Little Mountain.” He inherited the land from his father, and at age 25 he began to design the home he put there. Even 40 years later, Monticello wasn’t finished, for as Mr. Jefferson said, “Putting up and pulling down [is] one of my favorite amusements.”[135]
Media
• At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, proceedings were kept secret. Someone dropped a copy of the secret proceedings, and George Washington found it. He told the other members of the convention, “I am sorry to find that some one member of this body has been so neglectful of the secrets of the convention as to drop a copy of their proceedings. I must entreat gentlemen to be more careful lest our transactions get into the newspapers and disturb the public repose by premature speculations.” Mr. Washington then dropped the copy of the proceedings on a table and said, “I know not whose paper it is, but there it is. Let him who owns it take it.” Nobody took the paper.[136]
• A TV commercial for the British newspaper The Guardian made the point that news consumers need to see the whole picture in order to understand what is going on. The commercial first shows a rough-looking young punk running past a woman who flinches. Next the commercial shows the rough-looking young punk charging at an elderly businessman who raises his briefcase in front of his face for protection. Finally, the commercial shows the whole picture. A load of bricks falls from a pallet being hoisted into the air, and the rough-looking young punk runs past the woman and pushes the elderly businessman out of the way of the bricks, thus saving his life.[137]
Mishaps
• In 1954, near Salmon City, Idaho, prospector James Williams found a very valuable lost gold mine. Growing before its entrance was a tree at least 50 years old. When Mr. Williams entered the mine, he discovered so much gold that he could reach out with his fingers and pull nuggets from its walls. What had happened to the original miner who had discovered it? No one knows. He may have died in the wilderness, or after returning to civilization with the gold he had dug, he may have been unable to find the mine again.[138]
• During World War II, a group of Army nurses served in a makeshift hospital near the Algerian port town of Arzew. They were inexperienced at war, and since their hospital did not have a cross to mark it as a noncombat zone and protect it, they decided to make a cross out of 60 white sheets. Unfortunately, after they had finished making the white cross, they discovered that a red cross marked a noncombat zone. A white cross marked an airfield—definitely a target that the enemy would like to bomb.[139]
• On the old TV Show Strike It Rich, a little girl whose father was overseas serving in the Army said she was hoping she would win enough money for her to have her own room. The emcee, Warren Hull, asked her, “With Daddy away in Korea, isn’t the apartment you live in with Mommy big enough?” The little girl replied, “During the week I sleep in the bedroom with Mommy, but on the weekends, when Uncle Charlie comes, they make me sleep on a cot in the kitchen. Anyway, he’s not really my uncle.”[140]
• The Right Honorable The Baroness Trumpington of Sandwich, in the County of Kent, visited the National Stud in Newmarket when she was Mayor of Cambridge. Entering a stallion’s box, she patted the stallion, but the Director then asked her, “Are you wearing scent? Because if you are, you must come straight out of there. When the stallions aren’t interested, we put scent on the mares.” She admitted, “Not only am I wearing scent—but I am a Mayor.”[141]
• It takes a while to understand other cultures. To celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in 2007, a kindergarten teacher at a public school in the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles put green food coloring in the children’s water. Three Los Angeles police cars ended up at the school because the Egyptian mother of one of the young students thought that the green food coloring was poison.[142]
• When China created the Three Gorges Dam, the designers worried about congestion at the multiple series of locks at the dam; therefore, they ordered built a 16,000-ton cable hoist ship elevator. Unfortunately, after the elevator was built, the designers discovered that no cable ever existed that could lift a 16,000-ton cable hoist ship elevator.[143]
Money
• Judge Roy Bean ran a saloon in Langtry, Texas, where many of his customers were travelers quickly drinking a beer during a brief train stop. Once, a traveler came into the saloon while the judge was taking a nap on the pool table. Judge Bean said, “Help yourself to a cold bottle.” The man did, but he was in such a hurry that he neglected to leave 35 cents in payment and instead rushed back into the train. Judge Bean went after him. With two pistols in his hands, he walked through the train, scaring the passengers, all of whom thought the train was being held up. When he reached the man who had taken the beer, he pointed a gun at him and shouted, “Thirty-five cents or I press the button!” After the man paid, Judge Bean told the train passengers, “If you don’t know what kind of hombre I am, I’ll tell you. I’m the Law West of the Pecos.”[144]
• When Canadian figure skater Toller Cranston served as a judge at a Miss USA beauty pageant, one of the questions he asked the contestants was, “Now that you’re here competing in Miss USA, what beauty secrets have you learned that you didn’t know before you came?” A common answer was that the contestant had learned to tape her breasts to make them higher. Mr. Cranston also learned that some states’ citizens take the contest very seriously. For example, after a woman becomes Miss Texas, she will often get whatever it takes to win—breast implants, capped teeth, a nose job and other cosmetic surgery. However, contestants from Alaska and Iowa tend to lack the budget to get such a makeover. According to Mr. Cranston, “The wealthy states win.”[145]
• When Carl Linnaeus, the father of scientific classification and naming, stopped in Hamburg, Germany, while traveling to a university to get a medical degree, he visited the city’s mayor, who showed him a stuffed seven-headed dragon that he was hoping to receive much money for. Mr. Linnaeus, however, pointed out that the seven-headed dragon was a fake because its heads were those of seven weasels and its body was made from snakeskins. The mayor of Hamburg was not pleased, and Mr. Linnaeus quickly left the city.[146]
• While in Tel Aviv, West Berlin Mayor Willy Brandt visited the Mann Auditorium and said that it was a very forgiving gesture on the part of the Jews to name such an impressive building after a German writer. On hearing that the building was not named after Thomas Mann, author of The Magic Mountain, but was instead named in honor of Frederic R. Mann, the Jewish philanthropist from Philadelphia, Mr. Brandt asked, “What did he write?” His host answered, “A check.”[147]
• Many prospectors in the Gold Rush didn’t have enough money to outfit themselves to look for gold, so other people became grubstakers. They gave the miners the money to outfit themselves with food and supplies in return for a share in whatever gold they found. H.A.W. Tabor once outfitted two prospectors. He gave them $17, and one year later, they gave him his share of the gold they had found: $1 million.[148]
• When W.E.B. Du Bois was a young man in the late 19th century, he came across a 5-volume edition of Thomas Macaulay’s History of England and decided that he had to have it. The edition was expensive, and he didn’t have much money, but he paid the bookseller 25 cents a week toward the books, and after many months, he was able to take possession of them.[149]
• Gutele Rothschild was the mother of the tremendously wealthy Rothschild brothers. As such, she understood the language of finance. At the age of 94, near death, she received a visit from a nobleman, who tried to cheer her up by saying that she would probably live to be 100. Using the language of the stock market, Ms. Rothschild asked, “Why should God take me at 100 when he can have me at 94?”[150]
• During the Great Depression, the family of future boxer Joe Louis accepted several hundred dollars from relief and welfare agencies. However, his parents regarded the money as a loan. When Joe became a professional, but not yet famous, boxer, he paid back the money with a $1,200 check that he received for fighting—and defeating—Charley Massera.[151]
Chapter 4: From Mothers to Problem-Solving
Mothers
• Carly Simon’s 2008 album This Kind of Love includes the song “Sangre Dolce,” which had its genesis in an experience she had in New York City’s Central Park, where she met a woman who was taking care of a baby in a very expensive baby carriage. The woman was sitting on a park bench, and Ms. Simon sat down beside her and said, “What a beautiful baby you have.” However, Ms. Simon learned that the baby was not the woman’s. The woman told her, “It’s not my baby. I come up from Buenos Aires to take care of this child, and my own is there. The only way I can support my baby is by taking care of this baby.” Ms. Simon, herself a mother, tried to give the woman money, but the woman declined to accept it.[152]
• In 1959, poet Adrienne Rich gave birth to her third child (all of her children were sons), and she decided to have herself sterilized. These days, such a decision is not especially controversial, but back then some people greatly disapproved. Ms. Rich remembers, “When I awoke from the operation, a young nurse looked at my chart and remarked coldly, ‘Had yourself spayed, did you?’”[153]
Names
• One of Morris K. Udall’s greatest achievements as a politician was doubling the size of the United States’ national parks by preserving much of the wilderness of Alaska. However, this made him very unpopular with the Alaskan citizens who wished to make money from the wilderness. Still, Mr. Udall thought that in the long run, the Alaskan citizens would appreciate what he had done. He said in a speech, “I’ve been through legislation creating a dozen national parks, and there’s always the same pattern. When you first propose a park, and you visit the area and present the case to the local people, they threaten to hang you. You go back in five years and they think it’s the greatest thing that ever happened. You go back in 20 years and they’ll probably name a mountain after you.” Shortly afterward, Mr. Udall received a photograph of an Alaskan mountain in the mail. On it, an Alaskan citizen had written, “With regard to your comments about our naming a mountain after you—you asked for it, you’ve got it. MOUNT BULLS**T—named in honor of Morris Udall, and his programs which so well reflect the name of this mountain.”[154]
• During the Revolutionary War, Mary Hays became known as “Molly Pitcher.” At the Battle of Monmouth, many Americans, exhausted by the heat of the nearly 100-degree day, fell to the ground. Ms. Hays, whose husband, John, was an American soldier, grabbed a pitcher, ran to a nearby stream, filled the pitcher with water, and went from soldier to soldier, giving them a drink. “Molly” was a nickname for “Mary,” and when the soldiers recognized her and saw that she was bringing water, they called out, “Molly, pitcher! Molly, pitcher!” When her husband, a gunner, collapsed from exhaustion, she took his place at the cannon, swabbing, loading, and firing it until the battle was over. Because of Ms. Hays’ efforts, General George Washington made her an army sergeant and gave her a medal. After the battle, people called her Molly Pitcher.[155]
• On May 29, 1953, at 11:30 a.m., Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first two men to successfully climb to the top of Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world. Immediately, the news flashed around the world, and quickly Mr. Hillary was handed a letter addressed to Sir Edmund Hillary K.B.E. He thought at first that the letter was a joke, but then he discovered that the Queen of England had made him, a New Zealander and thus a citizen of the British Commonwealth, a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire. (Mr. Norgay, a Sherpa climbing expert, was not a citizen of the British Commonwealth, and so could not be knighted.)[156]
• Hillary Rodham kept her maiden name after marrying William Jefferson Clinton, but voters in Arkansas did not like this. When Hillary gave birth to her daughter, Chelsea, on Feb. 17, 1980, Arkansas newspapers reported that Governor Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham had had a daughter. Arkansas voters felt that reports should have referred to Governor and Mrs. Bill Clinton, and they voted against Mr. Clinton in 1980 in his re-election campaign for Governor. Hillary Rodham then changed her name to Hillary Rodham Clinton and helped her husband get elected as Governor again in 1982.[157]
• In Chicago, federal agent Eliot Ness selected nine agents to work with him in enforcing Prohibition. A special target of theirs was gangster Al Capone, who tried to bribe each of these agents with $2,000 a week, a huge amount of money that all of them turned down. Once, a gangster’s car drove next to a car in which were two of Mr. Ness’ agents, and the gangster tossed a wad of money into the agents’ car. The agents drove after the gangster—and tossed the money back to him. After that incident, newspapers began to call Mr. Ness’ men the “Untouchables.”[158]
• Years ago, on NBC’s Today Show, Edmund Muskie kept calling host Bill Monroe “Frank McGee.” Mr. Monroe retaliated by repeatedly calling Mr. Muskie “George McGovern.” In addition, prominent politicians often campaign for other politicians they hardly know. President Richard Nixon once campaigned in Miami Beach for Bill Cramer, who was running for office in the Senate. President Nixon told the voters, “So be sure when election time rolls around next Tuesday, to vote for my old friend … Congressman Bull Craner.”[159]
• Actress Margot Kidder was best known for playing Lois Lane in the Superman movies starring Christopher Reeve. She was also an activist who lived in Montana. One group she is involved in was called Montana Women For, and it was anti-George W. Bush. Ms. Kidder said, “We were originally Bushes Against Bush, but we couldn’t go public with that name.”[160]
• Henry Smith was Secretary of the Treasurer to Sam Houston of Texas. When an occasion arose where a seal for the state of Texas was needed, Mr. Smith ripped a button off his waistcoat and used that as a seal. In those days, buttons were big and decorated. Since Mr. Smith’s button showed a lone star, Texas became known as the Lone Star State.[161]
• American colonists became very angry when the British Parliament placed a tax on tea bought by Americans. The politician who proposed the new, unpopular tax was Member of Parliament Charles Townsend, who was also known as Champagne Charlie because he occasionally made speeches in Parliament when he was drunk.[162]
• Russian ice skater Ekaterina Gordeeva writes that Russian churches are named after the subject of the oldest icon in their possession. Thus, if a church is named the Church of Vladimir the Conqueror, you can be sure that the oldest icon in that church’s possession shows Vladimir the Conqueror.[163]
• During World War I, female members of the Salvation Army served American GIs coffee and doughnuts as they walked along French roads on the way to the trenches. The GIs would say, “Hi, Sal,” whenever they saw one of these women. “Sal,” of course, was short for “Salvation Army.”[164]
• In the early days of the United States, roads were poor and travel was difficult. An express line coach went 11 miles per hour—good speed in those days—but because of the poor roads the passengers were considerably shaken up, so they named the express line coach “Shake Gut.”[165]
Native Americans
• Theatrical guru Danny Newman long ago brought 50 Blackfeet Native Americans to Chicago. Two of the Native Americans had been educated at college and were familiar with such technology as telephones and elevators; however, these things were new and exciting to the other Blackfeet, who stayed up all night calling each other on the telephones and riding up and down in the elevators.[166]
• The Native Americans who lived at Mesa Verde ate corn bread every day, and for special occasions they made a sweetened version of corn bread. To do this, young women would chew the cornmeal, mixing their saliva (spit) with it. The saliva acted upon the starch of the corn meal and changed it to sugar. The sweet corn bread was a delicacy.[167]
Practical Jokes
• Israel Putnam was a pre-Revolutionary War Yankee. One day, a British officer challenged Mr. Putnam to a duel. When he arrived at the place set up for the duel, he found Mr. Putnam sitting on one of two kegs. Mr. Putnam explained that he was a poor marksman, so he wasn’t willing to have a shooting duel with the officer, so he proposed a different kind of duel. The two kegs were filled with gunpowder, and Mr. Putnam proposed lighting the fuses connected to the kegs, then having the officer and himself sit on the kegs. Whoever sat on the keg longest would win. The officer was agreeable, the fuses were lit, and Mr. Putnam and the officer each sat on a keg. However, when the fuses had burned down to about an inch, the British officer jumped up and started running for his life. Meanwhile, Mr. Putnam calmly sat—because he knew that the kegs were really filled with onions.[168]
• On April Fool’s Day, a weatherman was handed this bulletin which he started to read on the air, “Here’s tomorrow’s weather forecast: heavy snowfall predicted in the Valley Forge area, which is expected to retard General Washington’s troops—all right, who’s the wise guy?”[169]
Prejudice
• By the end of the 20th century, only one woman had ever won the Medal of Honor. That woman is Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, who served in the Civil War. She volunteered her services to the Union Army, but the officials were unsure what to do with her. Although she wanted to serve as an army doctor, time after time her request was turned down. Still, because of the many wounded soldiers and the great need of doctors, she managed to help the wounded in a hospital temporarily set up in the Patent Office building in Washington, D.C., as well as in field hospitals in Virginia. Later, she went to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where the wounded of the Battle of Chickamauga were coming. However, because of prejudice against women, who were not thought to be capable of being physicians, a medical board of male doctors pronounced her unfit to be a doctor. Nevertheless, she stayed to help civilians around and in Chattanooga. On April 10, 1864, as Dr. Walker was outside the army camp, a Confederate patrol arrested her and charged her with being a spy. She spent four months as a prisoner in Richmond, Virginia, before being exchanged for a Confederate prisoner. She continued to work as a doctor, first taking care of women in a prison, then working in an orphanage. For all of her work as a doctor during the war, she was awarded the Medal of Honor. However, in 1916, the United States Army reviewed the Medals of Honor it had given out, and it decided that Dr. Walker did not deserve her medal because she had been only a contract physician, not a member of the military. Dr. Walker declined to give up her medals (both the one she had been originally awarded, and the redesigned medal she had received in 1906), and she kept them until her death in 1917. However, the Army Board of Correction of Military Records reviewed her case in 1977. It determined that if she had been a man, she would have received a commission as an army officer. For this reason, the board restored her Medal of Honor on June 10, 1977.[170]
• During the Civil Rights days, Mudcat Grant played professional baseball with the Cleveland Indians. At one point, when the national anthem was played, Mr. Grant made his own emendation to the last line: “And this land is not so free, ’cause I can’t even go to Mississipp-ee.” Bullpen coach Ted Wilks was furious and told Mr. Grant, “If you don’t like our country, why in hell don’t you get out?” Remembering the incident years later, Mr. Grant says that he replied, “Well, if I wanted to leave the country, all I had to do was go to Texas. That’s worse than Russia.” A fight broke out, Mr. Grant was suspended, and lots of people heard about what had happened. During the off-season, Mr. Grant played in an all-black barnstorming tour. Before a game in Yazoo, Mississippi, a white man visited the dugout and said to Mr. Grant about the incident, “You had some trouble up there, didn’t you?” Mr. Grant acknowledged that was true, and the white man said to him, “Well, you’re going to find out that we’re not as tough on n*ggers down here as you might think we are. Can I get your autograph for my son?” Mr. Grant gave the man the autograph despite the man’s use of the N-word, and he reflected, “Sometimes the mentality of whites is way beyond where you think they actually are. Sometimes it’s just words they learned in the custom of 30 years before.”[171]
• The town of Mayberry on The Andy Griffith Show was sexist—the men ran Mayberry, and the women weren’t welcome to run for political office. In an early episode, Ellie Walker, the town pharmacist, decides to run for city council—something Sheriff Andy Taylor is against. He tells her, “Oh, Ellie, you don’t want to concern yourself with government business. You want to let the men worry about that. All you want to worry your pretty little head about is women’s stuff. You know, going shopping, looking in windows, trying on hats, making little bitty sandwiches for having at parties, and gossiping. You see what I mean?” Later, Sheriff Taylor’s son, Opie, makes a comment about keeping women in their place, and so Sheriff Taylor has a change of heart. He tells a town meeting, “Now we’re against Ellie because she’s a woman, but when you try to think of any other reason, you kind of draw a blank. I heard my little boy, Opie, just a little while ago say something about women. And I want to tell you the truth, I was ashamed. He was just parroting what he had heard me say. … What I’m getting at is—I hate to admit it—if Ellie wants to run for council, I reckon she’s got a right to.”[172]
• Modern dance pioneer Martha Graham was invited to perform at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin by the Nazis. Although such a performance would have given her international recognition, she turned down the offer because of her political views—and because some of her dancers were Jewish. She responded to the invitation by writing Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, “So many artists whom I respect and admire have been persecuted, have been deprived of the right to work for ridiculous and unsatisfactory reasons, that I should consider it impossible to identify myself, by accepting the invitation, with the regime that has made such things possible.” Ms. Graham’s letter resulted in her being placed on an enemies’ list of the Nazis. By the way, Ms. Graham was the first head of a dance company to integrate her troupe. She hired African-American and Asian-American dancers—years before the civil rights movement—in addition to Jewish and WASP dancers.[173]
• While working as a young lawyer in South Africa, Mohandas Gandhi, a native of India, acquired first-class tickets to ride a train from Durban to Pretoria. Unfortunately, when a white European man boarded the train at Pietmaritzburg, he saw Mr. Gandhi and complained that a non-white was sitting in the same train car that he was sitting in. A train official arrived and ordered Mr. Gandhi to move to a third-class carriage. Mr. Gandhi showed the official his first-class ticket and declined to move, so the official called the police and had him thrown off the train. Later, when Mr. Gandhi was better known as Mahatma Gandhi, he said that politically this experience was the most important in his life. It woke him up to the fact of color prejudice, and he resolved to fight it. In doing so, he made life better for the Indians living in South Africa and he freed India from British rule.[174]
• The early history of white settlements in North America very much includes religious intolerance. In Virginia, many settlers were loyal to the Anglican church—the Church of England. These settlers, who were in the majority, passed laws making it a capital offense to break the Sabbath three times. In addition, they made sure that people who were not Anglican did not build churches. Also, the Anglicans whipped Baptist preachers. At times, the Anglican settlers refused to allow Puritans and Quakers to settle in their colony, and at times they did not allow Roman Catholics to worship in public, to vote, or to hold public office. Because of such religious intolerance, James Madison wrote into the Bill of Rights the right of freedom of religion—the right to be free to worship God as your conscience directs.[175]
• Just before Martin Luther King, Jr., graduated a year early from high school, he won a public-speaking contest in the south of Georgia, and he, his teacher, and some other African-American students traveled back home to Atlanta on a bus. However, the white bus driver told them to move to the back of the bus, and when they did not, he yelled at them, calling them “black sons of b*tches.” The teacher requested that the students move, and they obeyed. Reverend King said much later, “It was a night I’ll never forget. I don’t think I have ever been so deeply angry in my life.”[176]
• For the 1936 Olympic Games in Germany, Theodor Lewald was the president of the German Olympic Committee. Although he had brought the Olympic Games to Berlin, he was nearly thrown off the committee when it was learned that one of his ancestors was Jewish. Although he was not thrown off the committee, his power was severely limited and he was not allowed to make important decisions.[177]
Presidents
• Populist Presidents can be extremely popular. Bill Moyers’ father, Henry Moyers, knew that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was on the side of the people. And because Henry Moyers was one of the people, he knew that President Roosevelt was on his side. Bill once asked his father why he had voted for President Roosevelt four times—only President Roosevelt’s death had kept Henry Moyers from voting for him a fifth, sixth, or even more times. Mr. Moyers—who had never met President Roosevelt—replied, “Because the President’s my friend.” Bill remembers the first time that he saw his father cry—it was the day that President Roosevelt died.[178]
• Some American Presidents, such as Bill Clinton, come into office with little or no foreign-policy experience, but quickly gain respect from foreign governments because of their intelligence, their skills, and their determination. Others do not. Shortly after George W. Bush’s inauguration, Andrew Tobias asked a person whom he calls “a high-ranking British official” what Great Britain’s government thought of Bush. Mr. Tobias relates, “There was a long, thoughtful pause. ‘We think,’ he finally said, ‘he is President of the United States.’”[179]
• Following an operation, President Lyndon Johnson showed his scar to reporters. In 1985, President Ronald Reagan’s colon was examined, and he endured an operation to remove a large growth from it. When some reporters jokingly asked if President Reagan would display his scar to the media, as President Johnson had done, White House deputy press secretary Larry Speakes replied that the President was more likely to show the media “the point of entry of yesterday’s exam.”[180]
Problem-Solving
• The state of Qi attacked the state of Chu. Chu general Zi Fa did all he could to beat off the Qi attackers, but he was unsuccessful. Fortunately, Zi Fa was skilled at directing the talents of others. Learning that a skilled thief was in his army, Zi Fa decided to put the thief’s skills to work. The first night, the thief went to the Chu camp and stole the mosquito netting from the bed of the Chu general, then the thief brought it back to Zi Fa, who had it returned the next day to the Chu general. The next night, the thief stole the pillow from under the head of the sleeping Chu general; once again, Zi Fa had it returned the next day to the Chu general. The third night, the thief stole the hairpin of the sleeping Chu general; once again, Zi Fa had it returned the next day to the Chu general. These thefts made the Chu general afraid that his head would be stolen next, so he gave up the attack and returned home. Because of the skill of a thief—and Zi Fa’s skill at directing those talents—the state of Chu was saved.[181]
• When plans were made to construct San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, some people and companies were opposed. For example, a ferry company knew that people would use the bridge instead of its ferries, so the ferry company opposed construction of the bridge. Nevertheless, citizens voted 3 to 1 in favor of selling bonds to finance construction of the bridge. However, the ferry company—and the railroad company that owned it—sued, and after losing the lawsuit, threatened to appeal, thus greatly delaying construction of the bridge. Citizens swung into action, boycotting the railroad. For example, when the railroad delivered new cars, San Francisco car dealerships declined to accept them. Very quickly, the railroad company decided not to oppose construction of the bridge.[182]
• Benjamin Franklin arrived one very cold day at an inn. He wanted to sit close to the fireplace, but all the best seats were already taken, and no one moved to give him room. So Mr. Franklin asked the landlord if he had any oysters. The landlord did have oysters, so Mr. Franklin told him, “Feed my horse a half-dozen oysters.” This got the attention of the people sitting by the fireplace, and they left to watch Mr. Franklin’s horse eat the oysters. Soon, the landlord returned to see Mr. Franklin seated in a comfortable chair close to the fire. “Your horse won’t eat the oysters,” he said. “That’s all right,” Mr. Franklin replied. “Roast them here in the fire. They will do very nicely for my supper.”[183]
• For a while, André Trocmé, Édouard Theis, and Roger Darcissac, who all helped rescue Jews during the Holocaust, were imprisoned at the concentration camp of Saint-Paul d’Eyjeaux. There, they preached against the Vichy government, which was collaborating with the Nazis. Of course, they could not do this openly, so they devised a code. Instead of saying the name of Marshall Pétain, the collaborationist leader of the Vichy government, they used the name of Karl Marx. That way, their captors thought that they were denouncing Communism, while their hearers knew that they were denouncing the Vichy government.[184]
• The mummy of Ramses II, ancient pharaoh of Egypt, began to be destroyed by an infection, so in 1977 it was sent to Paris for treatment. Fortunately, the infection was cured, and the mummy was returned to Cairo, Egypt. Earlier, in 1881, this mummy and several other royal mummies had been discovered and then taken to Cairo. Customs officials back then had to figure out a way to classify the mummies; after all, “mummy” is not a normal classification of the items a customs official would deal with. They solved the problem by classifying the mummies as “dried fish.”[185]
• William Randolph Hearst spent millions of dollars building an estate at San Simeon. He wanted it perfect, even if it involved moving huge oak trees. Mr. Hearst pointed to a tree and told his workmen, “I want it moved about a hundred feet this way. And this one I want moved a hundred and fifty feet this way. And I want this one turned so that the big branch comes over the driveway.” Workmen dug out the trees, put them in huge concrete tubs, and moved them to where Mr. Hearst wanted them to be. To make fruit trees grow on the rocky estate, holes were blasted in the rock and filled with topsoil.[186]
• Elevators built after the early 1990s have “door-close” buttons, but they don’t work—at least they don’t unless it’s an emergency and you are a person with both authority and a key. Of course, the button does not say that. Why? So that the people riding in the elevator maintain a sense of control. According to Nick Paumgarten, who wrote a long article about elevators for The New Yorker, “Elevator design is rooted in deception—to disguise not only the bare fact of the box hanging by ropes but also the tethering of tenants to a system over which they have no command.”[187]
• Anna Rosenberg, who gave President Franklin Delano Roosevelt the idea for the G.I. Bill of Rights, helped iron out difficulties between management and labor unions. Sometimes, she did this by using humor. Once, labor lawyer Philip Sipser told her, “Now look here, Anna, I know these men, I spend my time with them, I work with them, I play with them, I eat with them, I sleep with them ….” At this point, she interrupted Mr. Sipser and said, “Phil, you got me there.”[188]
• In 1985, the lives of two youths trapped on a ledge in Bells Canyon, Utah, were saved by a book titled Outdoor Survival Skills. The youths stayed on the ledge, just as the book said. They built a lean-to, just as the book said. Finally, they attempted to build a fire, just as the book said. However, they were unsuccessful in starting a fire with leaves and twigs, so they tore up the book and used its pages to start their fire. At midnight, rescuers spotted the fire and rescued the youths.[189]
• Alexander the Great was a marvelous leader and a marvelous problem-solver. When he was in Gordium (now in modern Turkey), he undertook to solve the problem of the Gordian knot, which many, many people had tried and failed to untangle. Alexander solved the problem by simply drawing his sword and cutting the knot in half. Both he and his troops knew the myth that anyone who could solve the problem of the Gordian knot was destined to rule Asia.[190]
• It’s important to arrange for quietness in your life. As Japanese emperor, Hirohito was very busy, constantly attending meetings and other functions. One day he was driven to a place where a meeting was supposed to be held, but no one was there. He walked into the middle of the big open hall, bowed to the quietness, smiled, and then told his advisors, “We must schedule more appointments like this. I haven’t enjoyed myself so much in a long time.”[191]
• Famed photographer Yousuf Karsh wanted to photograph President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but unfortunately President Roosevelt and the three men he was with lined up and posed stiffly and formally. Mr. Karsh pretended to take the photograph, and then he waited. One of the men started to tell a funny story, the other men relaxed, and this time Mr. Karsh really did take the photograph. You can see it in Mr. Karsh’s book titled Faces of Destiny.[192]
• Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s early 19th-century house, had its kitchen area located away from the main part of the house for very good reasons. In the days before electric and gas stoves, food was cooked over fires, which could be hazardous. In addition, in the days before refrigerators, food often spoiled. By keeping the main part of the house away from the kitchen area, Mr. Jefferson helped keep the main part of the house safe and odor-free.[193]
• Medical school textbooks are quite heavy, and Maria Montessori—one of the few women in Italy to attend medical school in the late 19th century—had a difficult time holding them up to read them. Her mother, Renilde, solved the problem by dividing each heavy textbook into sections that were easier to hold up and study. At the end of the school year, Renilde had the sections bound together into one textbook again.[194]
• When General Charles de Gaulle visited Harold Macmillan, an unexpected event arose. A man from the Foreign Office asked where he was going to keep General de Gaulle’s blood. It turned out that General de Gaulle had a rare blood type, and being a VIP he kept a supply with him whenever he went. While the general visited Mr. Macmillan, his rare blood supply was kept in a refrigerator, guarded by a French security officer.[195]
• During the night of June 2, 1864, the Union soldiers at Cold Harbor, Virginia, knew that they faced heavy fighting the next day and that many of them would die. Therefore, they wrote their names and addresses on pieces of paper, then they pinned the pieces of paper to the backs of their coats. That way, if they died, their bodies could be identified and their families would know what had happened to them.[196]
• Spies have to pay attention to the little things if they wish to avoid being caught. During the Second World War, John Knebli, a Hungarian-born bootmaker who emigrated to Canada, made boots for Canadian and American spies who were going behind German lines. Mr. Knebli’s boots were authentic, right down to the nails the Germans used in their boots.[197]
• One person who hated the Eiffel Tower even after it was built (many people thought that it would be a monstrosity before it was built) was author Guy de Maupassant. He hated the tower so much that he frequently ate at a restaurant on its second platform so that he would not have to see the Eiffel Tower in the distance.[198]
• While exploring the Louisiana Purchase with the Lewis and Clark expedition, Private George Shannon got lost for sixteen days but managed to survive by using his wits. After he had run out of bullets but still had some gunpowder left, he shot a rabbit with a pointed stick he had placed in the barrel of his gun.[199]
• As an industrial manufacturer of steel, Andrew Carnegie was always thinking about ways to reduce costs. His fire insurance costs for his steel mills were extremely expensive. Therefore, he replaced all of his wooden buildings with iron buildings—then he cancelled the insurance.[200]
• Activist Abbie Hoffman was under constant surveillance by government agents for five years. He handled this situation well—when he needed to go somewhere, he used to hitchhike and get a ride with the agents who were trailing him.[201]
Chapter 5: From Public Speaking to Work
Public Speaking
• When the United States entered World War II, it suffered defeat after defeat in the Pacific. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt took great pains to explain the geography of battle to the American people. In February of 1942, he urged Americans to buy a map and to use it when he spoke about the war in the Pacific during his fireside chats on the radio. Americans in fact did just that. Many stores sold their entire stock of maps, and 80 percent of Americans listened to President Roosevelt on the radio. Why did President Roosevelt do this? He wanted the American people to know the immense distances that supplies had to be shipped in order to reach the armed forces, and he believed that if they understood that, “they can take any kind of bad news right on the chin.”[202]
• Nikita Khrushchev once addressed a large audience in the Soviet Union and denounced Josef Stalin. Knowing that Khrushchev had been one of Stalin’s colleagues, someone in the audience shouted, “Why didn’t you restrain Stalin?” Khrushchev shouted furiously, “Who said that?” Silence fell in the great hall, and everyone was afraid to speak, especially the person who had shouted the challenge. After a few minutes of silence, Khrushchev spoke again, “Now you know why.”[203]
• William Makepeace Thackeray once made a political speech at which he was given a very poor reception as everyone seemed to be talking during his speech. Mr. Thackeray told the crowd, “There seem to be a great many fools here tonight. I should think it would be much more sensible to hear one at a time.” From the crowd came a voice: “Yes, that’s so. Go on with your speech.”[204]
• Maria Montessori, who developed a new system of teaching young children, used to lecture often about her discoveries; however, she never used notes. Following a lecture, a reporter wished to look at her notes, but she showed him that the pages she had been holding during her lecture were blank—she had used them only as props.[205]
• Famed Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh took a portrait of Lord Wavell, who in February of 1941 inflicted the first significant defeat on the Nazis. Lord Wavell had only one eye, and just before he had to make an important speech, he asked a man at the gathering, “Is my eye in straight?”[206]
• Sometimes Members of Parliament will try to drown out the speeches of Members they oppose by shouting. They tried this against Edmund Burke (1729-1797), who told them, “I could teach a pack of hounds to yelp with more melody and equal comprehension.”[207]
• Albert Schweitzer’s hair was unkempt and would not stay brushed. Before a lecture, a man asked him what he should say to introduce him. Mr. Schweitzer replied, “Just say this fellow who looks like a Scottish terrier is Albert Schweitzer.”[208]
Religion
• Some people went to the Rabbi of Wischnitz to ask for help. Their town needed a Rabbi, and they asked whom he would recommend. The good Rabbi recommended a man who knew Torah, was of good character, and was a good teacher and preacher. However, after investigating the recommended man, the townspeople rejected that man because he was short and fat, explaining that they wanted someone who was tall and imposing. Therefore, the good Rabbi made another recommendation, saying that he knew a man who met all of the townspeople’s preferred qualifications for a Rabbi. This time, when the townspeople investigated the recommended man, they discovered that yes, he was tall and imposing, but he was not a Rabbi—he was a butcher.[209]
• When famed portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh took a picture of Albert Schweitzer, winner of the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize, he asked many questions, including what Dr. Schweitzer thought would be people’s response to Jesus Christ if He were to appear to modern Humankind. Dr. Schweitzer replied, “People would not understand Him at all.” Mr. Karsh then asked which of the Ten Commandments did Dr. Schweitzer believe to be the most important. Dr. Schweitzer replied, “Christ gave only one Commandment. And that was Love.”[210]
Resistance
• During World War II, a group of German college students banded together to form an anti-Hitler group called the White Rose. Their main form of resistance was to exercise free speech and criticize Adolf Hitler. Unfortunately, in Nazi Germany to criticize Hitler was regarded as treasonous, although such White Rose members as Christoph Probst and the brother-and-sister team Hans and Sophie Scholl loved Germany but were opposed to the Nazis. The three were the first White Rose members to lose their lives. Sophie was seen distributing anti-Hitler leaflets by a janitor at the University of Munich, and soon they and other White Rose members were arrested. Christoph, Hans, and Sophie were all sentenced to die, and on 22 February 1943, they were guillotined. Sophie was the first to die.[211]
• During World War II, the Vichy government of southern France collaborated with the Nazis. Some villages in the south of France resisted, including Le Chambon. The village was under orders to ring the church bells on 1 August 1941, in honor of Marshall Pétain, the leader of the collaborationist Vichy government. Pastor André Trocmé asked a woman named Amélie, who was the custodian of the church, not to ring the bells. The bells did not ring, and he was proud of her. Later, he discovered that her resistance had not been merely passive—it was more than simply not ringing the bells. Instead, it had been active—she had forcibly prevented two visiting Frenchwomen from going into the church and ringing the bells to honor Marshall Pétain.[212]
• Resistance can be successful, at least temporarily. On 13 January 1943, a Nazi leader named Paul Geisler made a speech at the University of Munich. In his speech, he stated that women ought not to be students at the university; instead, they ought to be making German babies. Insulted, several women left the lecture hall and were immediately arrested. This enraged the male students, who beat up Paul Geisler until the women were released. Later, the Nazi leader apologized publicly for his remarks.[213]
Royalty
• The Danish nobility was not anti-Semitic. The synagogue in Copenhagen celebrated its 100th anniversary in the spring of 1933, and King Christian X of Denmark was invited to attend the celebration. However, Germany was becoming more and more anti-Semitic, and Adolf Hitler ordered the German citizens to boycott Jewish-owned and -operated stores. The chair of the Jewish Community told King Christian X that Jews would understand if the king decided not to attend the celebration, but King Christian X replied, “Are you out of your right mind, man? Now, of course, is when I will be coming.” So in Germany, Aryans boycotted Jewish-owned and -operated stores, while in Denmark, the king celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Copenhagen synagogue.[214]
• During Word War II, the citizens of Denmark managed to save nearly all of their country’s Jewish population by sailing them to neutral Sweden. The King of Denmark, Christian X, fully supported these rescue efforts, saying, “The Jews are a part of the Danish nation. We have no Jewish problem in our country because we never had an inferiority complex in relation to the Jews.”[215]
• Alexander the Great could be merciful. After he had defeated King Porus of India in battle and conquered his kingdom, Alexander asked him how he would like to be treated. King Porus replied, “Treat me, Alexander, like a king.” Alexander the Great did just that, allowing him to keep on ruling his kingdom and even giving him more land to rule.[216]
• After the Nazis occupied Denmark in World War II, King Christian X continued to ride his horse in public. Seeing the king ride his horse alone, a Nazi soldier asked a young Danish boy, “Where is his bodyguard?” The boy replied, “All of Denmark is his bodyguard.”[217]
Scientists
• When Carl Linnaeus, the father of scientific classification and naming, got his degree as a Doctor of Medicine, two people wanted him to be a guest living in their home. One person was Dr. Johannes Burman, who needed help writing a book; another was George Clifford, who was often ill and wanted a doctor living in his home. Dr. Burman had asked Dr. Linnaeus first, and so Dr. Linnaeus was living in his home and helping him with his book. One day Dr. Burman visited Mr. Clifford and admired one of Mr. Clifford’s books. Mr. Clifford told Dr. Berman, “I happen to have two copies. I will give you one if you will let me have Linnaeus.” Dr. Burman agreed, and he traded away Dr. Linnaeus for a book.[218]
• Scientists calculated carefully how fast the International Space Station needed to go in order to stay in orbit about 250 miles above the Earth. That speed turned out to be 17,500 miles per hour. In fact, the International Space Station displayed a couple of speed signs: one reading 17,500 miles per hour and the other reading 28,000 kilometers per hour. (It is the International Space Station after all.)[219]
Torture
• United States citizens, following the orders of the George W. Bush administration, tortured people. One form of “torture lite” was to play rock music at decibel levels so high that prisoners think they may lose their reason. Oddly, the rock selections sometimes express what the prisoners may be thinking. At Camp Cropper in Iraq, torturers frequently played Queen’s “We are the Champions,” which contains the lyrics, “I’ve paid my dues / Time after time / I’ve done my sentence / But committed no crime.” At Guantánamo, torturers played Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name Of,” which contains the lyrics, “Some of those that work forces, are the same that burn crosses ... / F**k you, I won’t do what you tell me!” All too often, people don’t listen to or understand lyrics. Ronald Reagan played Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” at political rallies, apparently not realizing that the song is about the US government betrayal of Vietnam veterans.[220]
• At the Salem Witch Trials in 1692, torture was used, even of children. For example, Martha Carrier was accused of being a witch. Her two oldest sons, who were 15 and 17, denied that their mother was a witch, so jailers tied each boy’s neck and heels, causing nosebleeds. The torture made the two boys confess that both they and their mother were witches. Their younger siblings had heard the screaming of the two boys, and to avoid being tortured they confessed that they were witches, too. Fortunately, the testimony of the children was not allowed in court, because John Proctor made the jailers’ use of torture public. Nevertheless, Martha Carrier was found guilty and hanged.[221]
Travel
• In 1928, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic as a passenger. Because of this feat, she became famous, although she modestly pointed out that two men had done the work of flying and navigating while her role was that of “baggage.” When asked what it felt like to be the first woman flown across the Atlantic, Ms. Earhart replied, “Like a sack of potatoes.”[222]
• Performing artists often travel by car, even though many performing artists are not good drivers. Members of Twyla Tharp’s dance troupe once stayed stationary in a line of cars as a traffic light kept changing colors until Theresa Dickinson pointed out to driver Sara Rudner that the car was in a parking lane.[223]
• In the early days of road travel in the United States, innkeepers paid little attention to hygiene. After one traveler complained about the soiled condition of a towel, the innkeeper replied, “Sir, 200 men have wiped their hands on that towel and you are the first to complain.”[224]
• Black dance pioneer Katherine Dunham traveled widely and lived in and loved both Haiti and Senegal. Wishing to link these two places she loved, she put soil from Senegal in her yard in Haiti, and she planted herbs from Haiti in her garden at Senegal.[225]
Trials
• Johannes Kepler made major advancements in science before his death in 1630, but he lived in a superstitious and dangerous age; in fact, his mother was put on trial for witchcraft and could have been executed. It all started when Katharina Kepler had a disagreement with another woman, Ursula Reinbold, who then told people that she felt ill after Katharina had served her a drink, and therefore the drink must have been poisoned. Other people started to remember bad things about Katharina. For example, the butcher’s wife remembered that she felt pain in her leg after Katharina walked by her. A schoolmaster remembered that he became lame after drinking a potion prepared by Katharina. A tailor remembered that after Katharina leaned over a cradle containing two of his children, the children died. A woman who worked for Ursula Reinbold claimed to be able to use head measurements to tell if a person had been bewitched. She measured Ursula’s head and proclaimed that Ursula had been bewitched. The daughter of the woman who claimed to be able to tell if someone had been bewitched then claimed that Katharina had hit her in the arm and pain then had crept through her arm until she could not move her fingers. Katharina was put on trial, and the court decided that it did not have enough evidence to torture Katharina and that it did not have enough evidence to proclaim her innocent and set her free. Therefore, the court decided that Katharina would be shown the instruments of torture and then asked if she was guilty. If she said that she was guilty, the court would give her a sentence. Katharina, who was 70 years old, was shown a torture chamber, and then she was asked if she would confess that she was guilty of witchcraft. She replied, “Do with me what you want. Even if you were to pull one vein after another from my body, I would have nothing to admit.” She then prayed on her knees. Because she did not confess, she was set free.[226]
• Following the 1963 Supreme Court case Gideon v. Wainwright, which established the right of indigent defendants to have free legal counsel in many court cases, Clarence Earl Gideon was retried on the charge of burglary that he had previously been found guilty of in a trial in which he did not have a lawyer. This time, a real lawyer represented him, and he was found not guilty. After having served two years of a five-year sentence as prisoner #003826 in the state of Florida, he was released from prison. Of course, Gideon v. Wainwright applied to many more people than just Mr. Gideon. Once, a young man told Mr. Gideon, “I should thank you. You just got me out of prison.” The case was so important that Anthony Lewis wrote a book titled Gideon’s Trumpet about it. When Mr. Gideon received a copy, he wept. After Mr. Gideon died of cancer in 1972, the American Civil Liberties Union erected a tombstone over his grave. Engraved on the tombstone is a sentence from Mr. Gideon’s letter to the Supreme Court asking it to review his trial and conviction: “Each era finds an improvement in law for the benefit of mankind.”[227]
War
• On December 11-13, 1862, a battle was fought between the Federal and Confederate armies at Marye’s Heights, near Fredericksburg, Virginia. At this battle, with its dead sometimes piled three high, General Robert E. Lee said, “It is well that war is so terrible, else we would grow fond of it.” On December 13, many of the Union wounded on the foggy battlefield could be heard crying out for water. Sergeant Richard Rowland Kirkland, one of the Confederate soldiers manning the heights, heard the cries of the wounded from the stone wall he was defending and asked for permission to carry water to them. His commanding officer, General J.B. Kershaw, told him, “Kirkland, don’t you know that you would get a bullet through your head the moment you stepped over the wall?” Sergeant Kirkland replied that he realized that, but he was willing to take the risk. At first, the Union soldiers shot at him because they thought that he was robbing the dead, but when they realized that he was carrying water to the wounded, they cheered him. Because of his actions that day, Sergeant Kirkland became known as “The Angel of Marye’s Heights.” He died at the battle of Chickamauga on September 20, 1863. A statue showing him carrying water to the wounded can be seen at Spotsylvania National Military Park in Fredericksburg, Virginia.[228]
• The first African-American soldier to win the Medal of Honor was William Carney, who fought during the Civil War. His regiment attacked Fort Wagner, which stood on an island and guarded Charleston, South Carolina. While charging the fort, Sergeant John Wall carried the United States flag. Enemy fire wounded Sergeant Wall, but Sergeant Carney grabbed the flag and charged while holding it. Even though he was wounded in the thigh, he planted it on a parapet of the fort and held it there until the Confederate soldiers forced his regiment to retreat. During the retreat, he was shot two more times. With a white soldier helping him, Sergeant Carney reached a field hospital. Before collapsing, he said, “Boys, the old flag never touched the ground.” Sergeant Carney recovered, and he lived until 1908. The flag he carried the day he earned the Medal of Honor can be seen today at the Massachusetts State House.[229]
• During World War II, racism was still rampant in the United States, including the United States Armed Forces. Blacks could donate blood, but the blood they donated was labeled “A” for African. Blood labeled “A” was not supposed to be given to white people. Of course, this is 100 percent stupid, and lots of people knew that, including and perhaps especially those people who needed that blood to stay alive. African-American Army Nurse Prudence Burns Burrell remembers serving in the jungles of New Guinea. A white soldier doing construction near the hospital where she was working injured himself and started bleeding badly. He went to the hospital, but the staff there told him, “We’re sorry, but our blood is labeled ‘A,’ so therefore we can’t give it to you.” The soldier pled, “Please. I don’t [care]. Don’t let me die.” Ms. Burrell remembers, “So they gave the ‘A’ blood to him, saving his life.”[230]
• War can be terrible. During the War of Independence, American soldiers fought the British troops (which included some German soldiers) as they withdrew from Bemis Heights to Saratoga, New York. Baroness von Riedhesel, the wife of a German commander, hid in the cellar of a farmhouse, through which eleven cannonballs blasted. One soldier in the farmhouse was about to have his leg amputated, but a cannonball hit him—it tore off his other leg. An at the Battle of Stone’s River during the Civil War, Union General William Starke Rosecrans charged into battle, followed closely by Colonel Julius P. Garesche. A cannonball hit Colonel Garesche directly in the face, tearing off his head from his body. Spurting blood, the headless corpse stayed on the horse for twenty paces before finally falling to the ground.[231]
• Captain Patrick Corcoran, an Irishman in the Royal Engineers, served at several battlegrounds in the First World War and told some of his stories to the New York World, including one about how he became an officer after enlisting as a private: “I was carrying despatches [a then-current spelling] to different places within our sector; couldn’t go to another sector without special orders. But one day I was asked to take a despatch to another sector and I took it. When I came back, they made me a lieutenant. Nothing at all had happened, and I couldn’t understand it. I didn’t have any pull that I knew of; and besides, pulls don’t count nowadays. They told me a while later that I was the seventh man sent out with that despatch. The first six were killed.”[232]
• The state of Qi wanted to take over the states of Lu and Liang, but did not want to fight a bloody battle. Therefore, the King of Qi decreed that everyone in Qi would wear cotton clothing purchased at high prices from Lu and Liang. The farmers of Lu and Liang stopped growing food and instead started growing cotton, selling the cotton at a high price and buying food. After the farmers of Lu and Liang had sown all their fields with cotton, the King of Qi suddenly decreed that all his people would stop wearing cotton and would instead wear silk clothing manufactured at home. Quickly, a famine started in Lu and Liang, and many of their citizens—including citizens in the military—moved to Qi to avoid starving. The states of Lu and Liang grew so weak that Qi was easily able to take over.[233]
• United States Marines used Reckless the horse to carry artillery shells during the Korean War. After training, Reckless arrived in Korea during the winter of 1952, and the Marines she worked with battled for a hill they named Outpost Vegas. During the battle, Reckless made 51 trips carrying artillery shells across an open field with falling bombs and flying shrapnel. She was wounded twice—in the head and in the side. After the battle, Marine Corps general Randolph Pate recognized her bravery, reading a special citation to honor her and pinning a set of bars to her blanket to show that she had just been promoted to Sergeant Reckless.[234]
• Mark Kurlansky, the author of Nonviolence: The History of a Dangerous Idea, once spoke to a couple of World War II veterans about the book Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command in Future War, in which author and historian Samuel Marshall stated that most soldiers never fired their weapons at the enemy during World War II. In fact, Mr. Marshall thought that only one in four soldiers had fired at the enemy—at best. One of the veterans whom Mr. Kurlansky spoke to said, “I had a machine gun. I never fired the thing.” Another veteran asked, “Why not?” The first veteran replied, “If you fired it, they’d shoot back at you.”[235]
• During World War II, a bomb fell into Trafalgar Square but didn’t explode. A bomb expert was brought in to go into the trench the bomb had dug and figure out what to do. A rope was tied around the man’s waist, with the understanding that if he pulled the rope he was to be quickly brought up out of the trench. The demolitions expert went into the trench and suddenly pulled the rope very hard. He was brought up out of the trench and asked if he had pulled the rope because the bomb was about to explode. “No,” he said. “I pulled the rope because there’s a great big nasty rat down there.”[236]
• Families with a member in the armed forces often live in fear during wars. The younger brother of Kimberly Peirce, director of the war movie Stop-Loss, joined the United States military and started fighting in battles, and so Kimberly and her entire family were always afraid that he would be killed or psychologically scarred by his war experiences. Kimberly says, “My mother would call me crying. She wouldn’t go home at night because she knows if a soldier gets killed they have to inform you in person, and she didn’t want to be there in person.”[237]
• When the United States was fighting in the Vietnam War, controversial filmmaker John Waters was drafted. He didn’t want to go to war, and he was relieved when he saw the forms he had to fill out, knowing then that the Army would never be interested in having him serve as a soldier. On the forms, he checked the boxes for such things as “drug addict,” “alcoholic,” “bed wetter,” and “homosexual,” and the shocked head Army sergeant asked him, “Is this all true?” Mr. Waters said it was. Perhaps it is needless to say this, but Mr. Waters did not go to Vietnam.[238]
• Zhi Bo of the state of Jin once gave the King of Wei, a much smaller state, many presents of jade and horses. This aroused the suspicions of Nan Wenzi, an advisor to the King of Wei. He argued that Zhi Bo must have an ulterior motive in giving the gifts, and that therefore the King should beef up its border guards. Nan Wenzi was correct. Zhi Bo had hoped that the gifts would relax the King of Wei’s guard, but after launching a surprise attack against Wei, and finding its borders well guarded, he was forced to give up the attack.[239]
• C.S. Lewis, the author of the Narnia Chronicles, fought in World War I and was wounded by shrapnel. Earlier, he had a chance to be moved to a safer artillery regiment, but he turned it down, saying, “I must confess that I have become very attached to this regiment. I have several friends whom I should be sorry to leave and I am just beginning to know my men and understand my work.” Not long afterward, his wound put him out of the war.[240]
• Each of the Beatles became Members of the British Empire (MBE), an honor that allowed them to put “Sir” in front of their names, as in Sir John or Sir Paul. In protest, many military men resigned their MBEs, but John Lennon pointed that the Beatles deserved the honor more than the military men who resigned because they had won it for entertaining people, whereas the military men had won it for killing people.[241]
• In ancient Greece, the Olympic Games were very important, and war was halted so that the Olympic Games could be held. When Baron Pierre de Coubertin revived the Olympic Games in the late 19th century, he hoped that they would help stop war, but that has not been the case. Instead, World War II prevented the Olympic Games from being held in 1940 and 1944.[242]
• Comic Paul Zaloom reads government documents about nuclear war and uses them in his comedy. For example, the United States government says that the way to protect your house from radioactive fallout in a nuclear war is to cover it with dirt. Mr. Zaloom estimates that 20,000 buckets of dirt should do the job.[243]
• Marlene Dietrich worked tirelessly to raise money for the Allies during World War II. After the Allies had won the war, she toured her native Germany. She won raves for her performances, but a woman saw her in the street and spat in her face.[244]
• Captain Patrick Corcoran tells how the Brits would amuse themselves while charging into battle against the Germans during the First World War—occasionally one of the British soldiers leading the charge would be kicking a soccer ball![245]
Work
• In 1884, a cowboy named Sam Houston drove a herd of cows across the prairie to take them to market. He needed some extra help, so he jumped at the chance to hire a young kid called Willie Matthews, who turned out to be an excellent cowboy. In fact, Mr. Houston wished for a few other cowboys like Willie. One evening, Mr. Houston and the other cowboys he had hired were astonished to see a young, well-dressed woman walking toward them over the prairie. When the woman reached their camp, she said to Mr. Houston, “You don’t know me, do you?” After a closer look, Mr. Houston recognized her as Willie Matthews. She had wanted to drive cattle, but knowing that women weren’t allowed to do that kind of work, she had dressed herself as a young man. On that particular cattle drive, Mr. Houston’s favorite cowboy turned out to be a cowgirl.[246]
• Izzy Einstein and Moe Smith were very successful law enforcement officers during Prohibition. To make arrests, they frequently used disguises. Once, they and some other law enforcement officers went to a speakeasy while dressed in muddy football uniforms. They announced that they had just played the last game of a winning season, and when the bartender poured a celebratory round of drinks, they arrested him. Unfortunately, Mr. Einstein and Mr. Smith were so successful that they made other law enforcement officers look bad, and they were fired in 1925.[247]
• As a young defense attorney, Marcia Clark, who was later a prosecutor in the O.J. Simpson murder trial, worked on the case of a man who was accused of attempted murder. She believed that the man was guilty, so she put down her pen and told her husband, Gordon Clark, “I can’t do this kind of work!” He replied, “Pick up your pen. We have to pay the rent.” Shortly afterward, Ms. Clark got a new job—and a separation from her husband. (Later, she got a divorce.)[248]
• As an industrialist, Andrew Carnegie was always thinking about how to increase steel production. Once, he got a telegram saying, “We broke all records for making steel last week.” Mr. Carnegie telegraphed back, “Congratulations! What about next week?” On another occasion, he received a telegram saying, “No. 8 Furnace broke all records today.” Mr. Carnegie telegraphed back, “What were the others doing?”[249]
• When W.E.B. Du Bois first decided to work for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, he stopped working as a professor at Atlanta University. He did this even though no one knew where his salary at the NAACP would come from. In fact, Oswald Villard, the director of the NAACP, told him, “I have no money.” Nevertheless, Mr. Du Bois worked there for several years.[250]
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Schuman, Michael A. Martin Luther King: Leader for Civil Rights. Springfield, NJ: Enslow Publications, Inc., 1996.
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Shephard, Marie Tennent. Maria Montessori: Teacher of Teachers. Minneapolis, MN: Lerner Publications Company, 1996.
Sherrow, Victoria. Gideon v. Wainwright: Free Legal Counsel. Springfield, NJ: Enslow Publications, Inc., 1995.
Sherrow, Victoria. The Righteous Gentiles. San Diego, CA: Lucent Books. 1998.
Shindler, Phyllis, collector. Raise Your Glasses. London: Judy Piatkus, Limited, 1988.
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Stewart, Whitney. Sir Edmund Hillary: To Everest and Beyond. Minneapolis, MN: Lerner Publications Company, 1996.
Streissguth, Tom. Jesse Owens. Minneapolis, MN: Lerner Publications Company, 1999.
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Young, Robert. A Personal Tour of Mesa Verde. Minneapolis, MN: Lerner Publications Company, 1999.
Young, Robert. A Personal Tour of Monticello. Minneapolis, MN: Lerner Publications Company, 1999.
Zall, P. M. George Washington Laughing: Humorous Anecdotes by and About our First President from Original Sources. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1989.
Zall, Paul M. The Wit and Wisdom of the Founding Fathers. Hopewell, NJ: The Ecco Press, 1996.
Appendix B: About the Author
It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly a cry rang out, and on a hot summer night in 1954, Josephine, wife of Carl Bruce, gave birth to a boy—me. Unfortunately, this young married couple allowed Reuben Saturday, Josephine’s brother, to name their first-born. Reuben, aka “The Joker,” decided that Bruce was a nice name, so he decided to name me Bruce Bruce. I have gone by my middle name—David—ever since.
Being named Bruce David Bruce hasn’t been all bad. Bank tellers remember me very quickly, so I don’t often have to show an ID. It can be fun in charades, also. When I was a counselor as a teenager at Camp Echoing Hills in Warsaw, Ohio, a fellow counselor gave the signs for “sounds like” and “two words,” then she pointed to a bruise on her leg twice. Bruise Bruise? Oh yeah, Bruce Bruce is the answer!
Uncle Reuben, by the way, gave me a haircut when I was in kindergarten. He cut my hair short and shaved a small bald spot on the back of my head. My mother wouldn’t let me go to school until the bald spot grew out again.
Of all my brothers and sisters (six in all), I am the only transplant to Athens, Ohio. I was born in Newark, Ohio, and have lived all around Southeastern Ohio. However, I moved to Athens to go to Ohio University and have never left.
At Ohio U, I never could make up my mind whether to major in English or Philosophy, so I got a bachelor’s degree with a double major in both areas, then I added a Master of Arts degree in English and a Master of Arts degree in Philosophy. Yes, I have my MAMA degree.
Currently, and for a long time to come (I eat fruits and veggies), I am spending my retirement writing books such as Nadia Comaneci: Perfect 10, The Funniest People in Comedy, Homer’s Iliad: A Retelling in Prose, and William Shakespeare’s Hamlet: A Retelling in Prose.
If all goes well, I will publish one or two books a year for the rest of my life. (On the other hand, a good way to make God laugh is to tell Her your plans.)
By the way, my sister Brenda Kennedy writes romances such as A New Beginning and Shattered Dreams.
Appendix C: Some Books by David Bruce
(Lots of FREE eBooks)
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/bruceb
RETELLINGS OF A CLASSIC WORK OF LITERATURE
In all my retellings, I have tried to make the work of literature accessible to modern readers who may lack the knowledge about mythology, religion, and history that the literary work’s contemporary audience had.
Do you know a language other than English? If you do, I give you permission to translate any or all of my retellings, copyright your translation, publish or self-publish it, and keep all the royalties for yourself. (Do give me credit, of course, for the original retelling.)
I would like to see my retellings of classic literature used in schools, so I give permission to the country of Finland (and all other countries) to give copies of this book to all students forever. I also give permission to the state of Texas (and all other states) to give copies of this book to all students forever. I also give permission to all teachers to give copies of this book to all students forever.
Teachers need not actually teach my retellings. Teachers are welcome to give students copies of my eBooks as background material. For example, if they are teaching Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, teachers are welcome to give students copies of my Virgil’s Aeneid: A Retelling in Prose and tell students, “Here’s another ancient epic you may want to read in your spare time.”
David Bruce Blog with Many Free PDFs
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/
Arden of Faversham: A Retelling
https://wordpress.com/post/davidbruceblog43.wordpress.com/1959
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ziIHDIySgjVBX2Ebco2jX9v2JcKWN4RJ/view?usp=sharing
https://wordpress.com/page/davidbruceblog4.wordpress.com/154
https://wordpress.com/post/cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/730
Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/731768
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/ben-jonson-free-pdfs/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZEHJnB1_5RpznJDgrdO9Fzkz0R5nqF6n/view?usp=sharing
Ben Jonson’s The Arraignment, or Poetaster: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1144681
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S1nIEZ7fgHIyV4-ZDozfJ4FcVUlaC13_/view?usp=sharing
Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/759774
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/ben-jonson-free-pdfs/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SIoalHNdD99q9jKmXO3kVvh8ydxB4to8/view?usp=sharing
Ben Jonson’s The Case is Altered: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1112743
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/ben-jonson-free-pdfs/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WHn6mnGPDbZlTus6A644w0TCg_QoNDE4/view?usp=sharing
Ben Jonson’s Catiline’s Conspiracy: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1098400
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/ben-jonson-free-pdfs/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uQOLh10ExHMrx9z-P-5qUxaHc2CQTD0x/view?usp=sharing
Ben Jonson’s The Devil is an Ass: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/953165
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/ben-jonson-free-pdfs/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/17vGtkBruVyQ09aeFtVStum9NCixZtfN1/view?usp=sharing
Ben Jonson’s Epicene: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1073045
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/ben-jonson-free-pdfs/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dsXMV0sZ26Y9gwFFeu_Kry1cNcz2te6c/view?usp=sharing
Ben Jonson’s Every Man in His Humor: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1104946
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/ben-jonson-free-pdfs/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/14-GEUj96Fxm_Oopp2YyICHPXskE8QLCp/view?usp=sharing
Ben Jonson’s Every Man Out of His Humor: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1121591
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/ben-jonson-free-pdfs/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dGmaBNTIgZ33Kk7kFWn9-LDviAoeeLdU/view?usp=sharing
Ben Jonson’s The Fountain of Self-Love, or Cynthia’s Revels: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1129496
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/ben-jonson-free-pdfs/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-fdVc1npRztXd35ghACIA5SMMo060w8b/view?usp=sharing
Ben Jonson’s The Magnetic Lady: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1155616
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lVkWpm03vUkR69SKkXRdPomyDBkSLDTv/view
Ben Jonson’s The New Inn: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1081049
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/ben-jonson-free-pdfs/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/13yJqpwBvx7Z-NI7SgwQkgsEDj7UOpy3q/view?usp=sharing
Ben Jonson’s Sejanus’ Fall: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1138210
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/ben-jonson-free-pdfs/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eC9wyTDHm8cU2DTzk7sXcP3BQeaYnHEe/view?usp=sharing
Ben Jonson’s The Staple of News: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1088627
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/ben-jonson-free-pdfs/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sRxzFLJWRGRzOUO_lSzscxvQcADrTgX4/view?usp=sharing
Ben Jonson’s A Tale of a Tub: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1150977
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/ben-jonson-free-pdfs/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1o4MRmyFhhKNhlIrItuT9vvSFXEqXYEUX/view?usp=sharing
Ben Jonson’s Volpone, or the Fox: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/745087
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/ben-jonson-free-pdfs/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EagmTdd7dPmGac68TiEYyOVOQwza5moT/view?usp=sharing
BEN JONSON: (HARDCOVER FOR SALE)
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/brucebATohioDOTedu
Christopher Marlowe’s Complete Plays: Retellings
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/911460
Christopher Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/871108
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WqCOjMsMUZMxvrIkJZQXLSCT0ZiGaaeP/view?usp=sharing
Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus: Retellings of the 1604 A-Text and of the 1616 B-Text
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/824058
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UubeU27eLLD5n-ldCChu6WpSU0op30dp/view?usp=sharing
Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/904128
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dL1zOwOsQXTmBMuVvL7byFHSvm7A_XVS/view?usp=sharing
Christopher Marlowe’s The Massacre at Paris: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/880308
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wr0cECCJNB7Y5EB7a8ZTd0nD7ZfnY-6j/view?usp=sharing
Christopher Marlowe’s The Rich Jew of Malta: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/909794
https://drive.google.com/file/d/10QIuaaar9tavcxDtRcOfPnpkitZu3AEy/view?usp=sharing
Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, Parts 1 and 2: Retellings
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/890081
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vlnL66UbtvRMOWAnwTpSq12tbosRNrCN/view?usp=sharing
Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/238180
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16MC3INNAzLtjT4TqGtUmxBKYmp6Lnc5k/view?usp=sharing
Dante’s Inferno: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/89244
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LQ66lugwlsEX5yW1RreCHGxbj27Uptzm/view?usp=sharing
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/brucebATohioDOTedu (HARDCOVER FOR SALE)
Dante’s Purgatory: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/210951
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LCQVTO9wq7l187pyaTg5__OBMERuzLc4/view?usp=sharing
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/brucebATohioDOTedu (HARDCOVER FOR SALE)
Dante’s Paradise: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/238110
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ak3NNXxO0JspM2qXcM7-FmFLR16wnkeS/view?usp=sharing
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/brucebATohioDOTedu (HARDCOVER FOR SALE)
The Famous Victories of Henry V: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/781086
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yj-AAS0oRbapdSeAw33gg6k2il78N7Yu/view?usp=sharing
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/anonymous-retellings-free-pdfs/
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/brucebATohioDOTedu (HARDCOVER FOR SALE)
From the Iliad to the Odyssey: A Retelling in Prose of Quintus of Smyrna’s Posthomerica
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/287203
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hRMimR9VchgFI7q5nBKmE6udiotCzq7c/view?usp=sharing
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/ancient-literature-retellings-free-pdfs/
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/brucebATohioDOTedu (HARDCOVER FOR SALE)
George Chapman, Ben Jonson, and John Marston’s Eastward Ho! A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1159953
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u5IoTl0BCiUyjb9qsTRry9qqL83sQvKC/view?usp=sharing
George Peele’s The Arraignment of Paris: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/942964
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wP9QhCckDYb74nMjJDDVTy2RnCTgB0ja/view?usp=sharing
George Peele’s The Battle of Alcazar: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1006013
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eUZu9AJ46GfP9bMKoBFTJ9_yGal9ZBp_/view?usp=sharing
George Peele’s David and Bathsheba, and the Tragedy of Absalom: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/993326
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RxPvTQl_qnKhbHAfynddd6mswOxY3mi8/view?usp=sharing
George Peele’s Edward I: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1061540
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KbKXK8nazt_KPpw9LfOi9ufZt9wEgybs/view?usp=sharing
George Peele’s The Old Wives’ Tale: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/918341
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_Cnr70ydtTbXAYaihq6I_V-3ik1sTW0Q/view?usp=sharing
George-A-Greene, The Pinner of Wakefield: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1108197
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/anonymous-retellings-free-pdfs/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/18MYbD9wENgFqSMC_s-PijXsorVQguFWx/view?usp=sharing
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/brucebATohioDOTedu (HARDCOVER FOR SALE)
The History of King Leir: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/800724
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/anonymous-retellings-free-pdfs/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MdkCVAtxuWZrgkCNMwrJ2uDLNDwjnFBk/view?usp=sharing
Homer’s Iliad: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/264676
https://drive.google.com/file/d/18tiAjtd5a6Qil0FHIss2UpCEacizaij3/view?usp=sharing
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/ancient-literature-retellings-free-pdfs/
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/brucebATohioDOTedu (HARDCOVER FOR SALE)
Homer’s Odyssey: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/87553
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rn5b3A6TFJngdZ_DC0daL9jZBToiSy-P/view?usp=sharing
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/ancient-literature-retellings-free-pdfs/
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/brucebATohioDOTedu (HARDCOVER FOR SALE)
J.W. Gent’s The Valiant Scot: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1163699
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1J4Kr3XePpMc8EEXENGUw-BLP6jzlOnZE/view?usp=sharing
Jason and the Argonauts: A Retelling in Prose of Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/337653
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11fFWYrzu_YBK_Zb8aYQkYDvj5tDjSYPw/view?usp=sharing
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/ancient-literature-retellings-free-pdfs/
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/brucebATohioDOTedu (HARDCOVER FOR SALE)
The Jests of George Peele: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1064210
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AwIT0aSbN5pJjMu-tqa46LoQyN3aHyL8/view?usp=sharing
John Ford: Eight Plays Translated into Modern English
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/989979
John Ford’s The Broken Heart: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/792090
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PVkKm5BxBYE8uUY9IzcjdEQZ5ipGmxlm/view?usp=sharing
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/brucebATohioDOTedu (HARDCOVER FOR SALE)
John Ford’s The Fancies, Chaste and Noble: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/989291
https://drive.google.com/file/d/19JQQmLv_b3Oy3N3yhRpQM0b5ymAFh_zy/view?usp=sharing
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/brucebATohioDOTedu (HARDCOVER FOR SALE)
John Ford’s The Lady’s Trial: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/985699
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16F0PoPepXJJAX2RBn2lVK1Apvp6gwO9g/view?usp=sharing
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/brucebATohioDOTedu (HARDCOVER FOR SALE)
John Ford’s The Lover’s Melancholy: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/946285
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DTu7EkdqS8PEuljstF4KMnW9d3S5CiXc/view?usp=sharing
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/brucebATohioDOTedu (HARDCOVER FOR SALE)
John Ford’s Love’s Sacrifice: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/925020
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aE9jUQfe3e4acoJ63kIaqY57Mi9hrJja/view?usp=sharing
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/brucebATohioDOTedu (HARDCOVER FOR SALE)
John Ford’s Perkin Warbeck: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/937190
https://drive.google.com/file/d/14GOL5rPf6lcYb-e7ml9_BDzcFufbPjo1/view?usp=sharing
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/brucebATohioDOTedu (HARDCOVER FOR SALE)
John Ford’s The Queen: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/930049
https://drive.google.com/file/d/14GOL5rPf6lcYb-e7ml9_BDzcFufbPjo1/view?usp=sharing
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/brucebATohioDOTedu (HARDCOVER FOR SALE)
John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/771031
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1V9aUtdKeYWY6DRoVimK-Vq6J8a6DL9JN/view?usp=sharing
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/brucebATohioDOTedu (HARDCOVER FOR SALE)
John Lyly’s Campaspe: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1175474
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/john-lylys-loves-metamorphosis-a-retelling-free-pdf/
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/2022/10/28/john-lylys-campaspe-a-retelling-free-pdf/
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/john-lylys-plays-free-pdfs/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sqEiuYqn2GMeq5XqqvFfwP-td-pPmPRJ/view?usp=sharing
John Lyly’s Endymion, The Man in the Moon: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1186906
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/john-lylys-loves-metamorphosis-a-retelling-free-pdf/
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/john-lylys-plays-free-pdfs/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KPeK1Ev4Dj9HTqroO34CFaOlfNzpDYgi/view?usp=sharing
John Lyly’s Galatea: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1183015
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/john-lylys-loves-metamorphosis-a-retelling-free-pdf/
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/john-lylys-plays-free-pdfs/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sqEiuYqn2GMeq5XqqvFfwP-td-pPmPRJ/view
John Lyly’s Love’s Metamorphosis: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1167843
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/john-lylys-loves-metamorphosis-a-retelling-free-pdf/
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/john-lylys-plays-free-pdfs/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LrNhvDd7hduUCRdCoGNpeCYKA4fsCr0Z/view?usp=sharing
John Lyly’s Midas: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1177343
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/2022/11/08/david-bruce-john-lylys-midas-a-retelling-free-pdf/
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/john-lylys-plays-free-pdfs/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EP9PG0eRHnsbwKECxpR7rTEb37ecVGBs/view?usp=sharing
John Lyly’s Mother Bombie: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1301851
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/john-lylys-loves-metamorphosis-a-retelling-free-pdf/
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/john-lylys-plays-free-pdfs/
John Lyly’s Sappho and Phao: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1170124
https://anecdotesandmusic.wordpress.com/2022/10/15/john-lylys-sappho-and-phao-a-retelling-free-pdf/
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/john-lylys-plays-free-pdfs/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xtXFaC1ryypE8aMCWGq7J9iPMI0zQkM6/view?usp=sharing
John Lyly’s The Woman in the Moon: A Retelling
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/john-lylys-plays-free-pdfs/
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1312920
John Webster’s The White Devil: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1000808
https://drive.google.com/file/d/19zCtHbfGVamswILTd8MUDWC1pabCUEs8/view?usp=sharing
King Edward III: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/814530
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_gqk9Es–Qvi8EjqY_4OztVsCiVJcQ0j/view?usp=sharing
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/anonymous-retellings-free-pdfs/
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/brucebATohioDOTedu (HARDCOVER FOR SALE)
Mankind: A Medieval Morality Play (A Retelling)
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1323229
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/mankind-a-medieval-morality-play-a-retelling-free-pdf/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ak90iIXStNXIrV09oICxxBH1ISW5v8fJ/view?usp=sharing
Margaret Cavendish’s An Unnatural Tragedy: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1165938
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LTZmKC-JAVv6b1EjsWa3VKoimLLY35VV/view?usp=sharing
The Merry Devil of Edmonton: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/957047
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/anonymous-retellings-free-pdfs/
Robert Greene’s Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/915455
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bX1a4cbdne38rgJ2sy4A4_8SIQ_ljnCW/view?usp=sharing
The Summoning of Everyman: A Medieval Morality Play (A Retelling)
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1331324
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1o_7FlC5S-PoJ1wov35NC3v4L2bdx4tDL/view?usp=sharing
The Taming of a Shrew: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1052341
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/anonymous-retellings-free-pdfs/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/10FsrQNk4Z1TAbiW_5VCD303VnEZqR6tP/view?usp=sharing
Tarlton’s Jests: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/772884
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QcGqnBsSPsRdPwctADo6DytHqZSyDMkG/view?usp=sharing
Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker’s The Roaring Girl: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1401811
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jKh71BiJJNKlNmLJFmXx_WeT0vmnKW66/view?usp=share_link
Thomas Middleton and William Rowley’s The Changeling: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1350527
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/thomas-middleton-play-free-pdf/
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/thomas-middleton-retellings/
Thomas Middleton’s A Chaste Maid in Cheapside: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1365506
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/thomas-middleton-play-free-pdf/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1U_ZTmKD9gRpxhhAEQy2RBDryldnGndPw/view?usp=sharing
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/thomas-middleton-retellings/
Thomas Middleton’s Women Beware Women: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1384518
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kM1aFU2Vswvigz_pzXqEedB4tH7QOhV5/view?usp=sharing
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/thomas-middleton-retellings/
The Trojan War and Its Aftermath: Four Ancient Epic Poems
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/486330
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SRZ_3O_KHORouVM6L5--uYXyrNe7NK0p/view?usp=sharing
Virgil’s Aeneid: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/277646
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yl8jYM0EJwB99WnoNlZRQEIms6UJIpFW/view?usp=sharing
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/ancient-literature-retellings-free-pdfs/
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/brucebATohioDOTedu (HARDCOVER FOR SALE)
William Shakespeare’s 5 Late Romances: Retellings in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/724666
William Shakespeare’s 10 Histories: Retellings in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/776868
William Shakespeare’s 11 Tragedies: Retellings in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/776890
William Shakespeare’s 12 Comedies: Retellings in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/715562
William Shakespeare’s 38 Plays: Retellings in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/777062
William Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV, aka Henry IV, Part 1: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/396839
https://drive.google.com/file/d/12o7eBSJGMgUC0g8SAMu0nMU2NiACJXrf/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s 2 Henry IV, aka Henry IV, Part 2: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/502075
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qGGQ-Lspj4Gb83sAPswNqUS4b0GRZJ1o/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s 1 Henry VI, aka Henry VI, Part 1: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/675826
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Hh1jTLrHrAKoALVcwJEbrt5aT8pQL_zi/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s 2 Henry VI, aka Henry VI, Part 2: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/687115
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rvMb6nXxK_okkITLF_tyDGaqhuTYVijX/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s 3 Henry VI, aka Henry VI, Part 3: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/694202
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_jjUayHsRVJ2h2gUO1rCfGTCj7SUFJLA/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s All’s Well that Ends Well: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/660279
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ja-2V83BSWhghpq9AL0hhtqFWLW_bPSn/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/561440
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1G1KG2zguWBWjPuhZ5QjwLF03kxFoPclG/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s As You Like It: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/411180
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-0v9ArsOwf-En5qozztSS38VNXR1p1V8/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/474177
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wAatX3tir_baMztNcSFMKBgtXJ3cgvb8/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s Coriolanus: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/651995
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1p6TclIesIQIWseyinVn1JKlaVtVdCkyR/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s Cymbeline: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/607757
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_rFv0GMVio1GWDRzKZaQPz0bpKnmZ4gK/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s Hamlet: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/521558
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uspV57BL_sPkdiFW9CpSfe8NWqb3Cm4T/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s Henry V: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/494583
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Pgwen6K6fAsytS-S2yNZGLaqkshi4man/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s Henry VIII: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/702433
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IKgOFql3um0hFyrvC3IIlc37YaHbwmBb/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/417297
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11rRg9RPr0pRQXF8daiUj6jMudKwRxNks/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s King John: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/667943
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Aub_JpQL7vZQAAp5g-34Vr7NVZyHvuKu/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s King Lear: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/549148
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kO0SpOyjHJEka1hxx0yXJ4qAg9Bf1aFV/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labor’s Lost: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/640495
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-WidUGo3nNGJcZuFw8Qcb9G3MmPzTJQ6/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s Macbeth: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/371976
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I87NcdPFwUcR2fkAAjRQ3qDXigjYcTQ4/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/530136
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fxyLYZse-hVzDdDH5SzqvFysH_juUcxk/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/485384
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DvnFHudHaRpdIzALOYGWcmdmAn-H7bdI/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/510046
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EeW_R4qKQ_jC99YXWI_1fZjWhTAYVvwK/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/389517
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UBJqRbLvEfExAmGTEwyasgyUInvNl_eW/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/432053
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UBJqRbLvEfExAmGTEwyasgyUInvNl_eW/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s Othello: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/469501
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VrfnhPm0GYX2zcNwvWgHQ0ak9sZ51co8/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s Pericles, Prince of Tyre: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/588726
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OnOYpIU6ttyYeDPnE2eZ9HDGaDTKs_Pu/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s Richard II: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/633694
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WBbCx2hqqkeb61YNVOFm_umGUOuER-CT/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s Richard III: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/598141
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jkpgFM73fq_jNSQy38OV6pNBlZ-b8qMl/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/385811
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1J8ZCJ5mBzgrW_04gxTZbw71ZAwIIHF9A/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew: A Retelling in Prose
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1He6vWJCLxqnsKe-tAU6Kya6ZqFJec2NU/view?usp=sharing
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/424622
William Shakespeare’s The Tempest: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/437521
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HX0qJl1uHXVVAQOURGunZOYrBO7_VXxC/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/626171
https://drive.google.com/file/d/12T_925ZjKyv7nq6KabkDSjb5-R25Z-Uu/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/569421
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1j2-iaeffwqRl36PBDraU5IHZf56vIIZp/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/617533
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VB7kp0nYIU-7hs60mT3swV7VQoyQr0ll/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/404123
https://drive.google.com/file/d/181NOX5-JArXwgQEvXP_8ih_4KBVha9xw/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/575743
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ptJBBd08TQX3Uc8DvTltF7n5hZBZ-4-5/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s The Two Noble Kinsmen: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/712849
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Snd6Ml_LDOm-d36mvhLuvC3GhdbN1vBz/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/539561
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KudUVwHQ4Cly2KlW_scQLkRSg1rkoE9C/view?usp=sharing
OTHER FICTION
Candide’s Two Girlfriends (Adult)
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/247531
The Erotic Adventures of Candide (Adult)
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/249299
Honey Badger Goes to Hell — and Heaven
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/306009
I Want to Die — Or Fight Back
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/83479
“School Legend: A Short Story”
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1123252
“Why I Support Same-Sex Civil Marriage”
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/34568
CHILDREN’S BIOGRAPHY
Nadia Comaneci: Perfect Ten
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/96982
PERSONAL FINANCE
How to Manage Your Money: A Guide for the Non-Rich
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/469305
MISCELLANEUS
Mark Twain Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/347339
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VtYT38kPY5vETr3hehGpoGJNmxfyBe6Z/view?usp=sharing
David Bruce Autobiography: My Life and Hard Times, or Down and Out in Athens, Ohio
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1151084
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/david-bruce-autobiography/
Problem-Solving 101: Can You Solve the Problem?
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/140660
Why I Support Same-Sex Civil Marriage
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/34568 Problem-Solving 101
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/composition-projects/
How Can I Write My Own Anecdote Books?
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/composition-projects/
Writing Tips: How to Write Easier and Better
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/composition-projects/
ANECDOTE COLLECTIONS
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
250 Anecdotes About Opera
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/310277
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
250 Anecdotes About Religion
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/106782
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
250 Anecdotes About Religion: Volume 2
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/106861
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
250 Music Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/427367
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
Be a Work of Art: 250 Anecdotes and Stories
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/105419
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
Boredom is Anti-Life: 250 Anecdotes and Stories
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/156495
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
The Coolest People in Art: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/97814
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
The Coolest People in the Arts: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/159914
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
The Coolest People in Books: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/98030
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
The Coolest People in Comedy: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/98364
Create, Then Take a Break: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/254240
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
Don’t Fear the Reaper: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/98212
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
The Funniest People in Art: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/99002
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
The Funniest People in Books: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/99313
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
The Funniest People in Books, Volume 2: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/105652
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
The Funniest People in Books, Volume 3: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/105939
The Funniest People in Comedy: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/99159
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
The Funniest People in Dance: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/98588
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
The Funniest People in Families: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108542
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
The Funniest People in Families, Volume 2: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108809
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
The Funniest People in Families, Volume 3: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108821
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
The Funniest People in Families, Volume 4: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108830
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
The Funniest People in Families, Volume 5: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108841
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
The Funniest People in Families, Volume 6: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108857
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
The Funniest People in Movies: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/34647
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
The Funniest People in Music: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/100442
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
The Funniest People in Music, Volume 2: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/100473
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
The Funniest People in Music, Volume 3: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/100544
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
The Funniest People in Neighborhoods: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/106442
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
The Funniest People in Relationships: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108060
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
The Funniest People in Sports: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/107239
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
The Funniest People in Sports, Volume 2: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/107576
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
The Funniest People in Television and Radio: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/106234
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
The Funniest People in Theater: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/104257
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
The Funniest People Who Live Life: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/107847
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
The Funniest People Who Live Life, Volume 2: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108564
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
Maximum Cool: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/97550
The Most Interesting People in Movies: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108582
https://wordpress.com/post/davidbruceblog43.wordpress.com/1508
The Most Interesting People in Politics and History: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108392
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FQOJ1llI8f8jeHug32xH6w0HiJfF0tJG/view?usp=sharing
The Most Interesting People in Politics and History, Volume 2: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108398
The Most Interesting People in Politics and History, Volume 3: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108422
The Most Interesting People in Religion: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/107097
The Most Interesting People in Sports: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/107857
The Most Interesting People Who Live Life: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108598
The Most Interesting People Who Live Life, Volume 2: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108801
Reality is Fabulous: 250 Anecdotes and Stories
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/209963
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1i6rWfwQwpTLEaHQA7gPXXrSQoG1epmoZ/view?usp=sharing
https://wordpress.com/page/davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/819
https://wordpress.com/post/anecdotesandmusic.wordpress.com/7478
Resist Psychic Death: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/97267
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/anecdote-collections-free-pdfs/
Seize the Day: 250 Anecdotes and Stories
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/96869
https://davidbruceblog43.wordpress.com/2023/05/16/643/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dYCGDaN7SjT1osoT_ZglHk-33pbOtKX8/view?usp=sharing
PHILOSOPHY FOR THE MASSES
Philosophy for the Masses: Ethics
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/374071
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mdBXcfY2lH6vgADeulvt9cWT2SFpz8g1/view?usp=sharing
Philosophy for the Masses: Metaphysics and More
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/374629
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WZhGfAFWyX3Mpt4kIWIyma1IpGx33WdH/view?usp=sharing
Philosophy for the Masses: Religion
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/376026
https://drive.google.com/file/d/10Pkuj2HT64Ug5oq6dy3fc5oqnnVAFi7I/view?usp=sharing
DISCUSSION GUIDE SERIES
Dante’s Inferno: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/342391
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1M2z6Zbu3o9_OyyXknGEPk5tdi1Wd_Seg/view?usp=sharing
Dante’s Paradise: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/345337
https://drive.google.com/file/d/159XB9XjoLI_MIu_uPTRHHk06dhpodFFM/view?usp=sharing
Dante’s Purgatory: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/344723
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aulgBdF_j99fVDHA7sKM8-PLIwdxSeik/view?usp=sharing
Forrest Carter’s The Education of Little Tree: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/340944
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11Nnku03582-Gpm5SEny7_6TZEh0Ms7rc/view?usp=sharing
Homer’s Iliad: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/364356
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H3TxcpybiVU6hPGbQcOkCWjF9abcOFS7/view?usp=sharing
Homer’s Odyssey: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/360552
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1finZUZa8VuPQwij1sG6sDCY7dIVc1GuL/view?usp=sharing
Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/352848
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-Wl1UyZzV5pejBeTf9nOPh8trzCoNgVQ/view?usp=sharing
Jerry Spinelli’s Maniac Magee: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/339978
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FoW8aTn1UteYv0XW5GHVsDffIDBwBy0q/view?usp=sharing
Jerry Spinelli’s Stargirl: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/340610
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PrpIQLv3hqoXJOCLyFyHQ3cRsSn-sSCJ/view?usp=sharing
Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/352048
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16DB9dbN_aNz7VeC80FV6L3yJs6v528Mh/view?usp=sharing
Lloyd Alexander’s The Black Cauldron: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/339002
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AZZ5a7mBff4wppExYQqzqwpUcuv4K99l/view?usp=sharing
Lloyd Alexander’s The Book of Three: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/339120
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1s241wSBd8ewHJ7rhKBGgc1Yq8y-yalu3/view?usp=sharing
Lloyd Alexander’s The Castle of Llyr: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/338589
https://drive.google.com/file/d/14TD-xVntjp5OLBXTRFCgiESqKGR7MjLe/view?usp=sharing
Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/339720
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZWxuAJ4ey3b6ThAAe-NQhuJiRdCvGLQP/view?usp=sharing
Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/350434
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1akBOE7v83kcD2St8bL6LiwLkMFfUP1yU/view?usp=sharing
Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/348104
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ug20zWrfNlBLWS9nNiEdmyrs_UjfLfOu/view?usp=sharing
Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/351719
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YJdkxxMDqgGF7pkWAxfU89Nhs4Hk2SSM/view?usp=sharing
Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/349030
https://drive.google.com/file/d/15kMqrEv5Rgd3zF_EQxPBZe_gHyeVIuv2/view?usp=sharing
Nancy Garden’s Annie on My Mind: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/339564
https://drive.google.com/file/d/18_deuffaKLmwyQaGNw6L5PiAWfB3toWn/view?usp=sharing
Nicholas Sparks’ A Walk to Remember: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/356224
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1895pE6OZY60PIghndq-CPNHZOddlig8q/view?usp=sharing
Virgil, “The Fall of Troy”: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/356868
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IjCj_82aYqWfZNWV0mto_Y9_On-3Ko5q/view?usp=sharing
Virgil’s Aeneid: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/358529
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1B8ZGnq4bRhreb_XiDpMKFo0h6yfJf1qF/view?usp=sharing
Voltaire’s Candide: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/346971
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1szjHvbIzyDDWbPy2G5thKnFFQQMLKWMT/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/355953
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DFL-yQfv139eXfSzDAfOThaXXEFQgz2x/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s Macbeth: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/354870
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Xbds9Cd_73RQYM_MmjaBXv_55WeeRKVZ/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/355465
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TzraO0e2K4w0IoDVC4iCTEgE0hP1POcz/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/354231
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1g8wOAiimFRLoOF5-348OhwkbO7U0KnT7/view?usp=sharing
William Sleator’s Oddballs: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/353345
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ExUHB07gYOd5SMBjXHQg00VAhDLJotKj/view?usp=sharing
***
GOOD DEEDS SERIES (PLURAL)
The Kindest People Who Do Good Deeds, Volumes 1-7
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/the-kindest-people-who-do-good-deeds-free-pdfs/
The Kindest People Who Do Good Deeds: Volume 1
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qQ-aJ4kjGQti20c3G2CPm1zile51Yd-5/view?usp=sharing
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/34822
The Kindest People Who Do Good Deeds: Volume 2
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1h1ZaZEixmzjGLHI5_57AwTFuQ02g8lL3/view?usp=sharing
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/35011
The Kindest People Who Do Good Deeds: Volume 3
https://drive.google.com/file/d/12iOTDEzHV6P576LGAijcPQgpt1ogax0R/view?usp=sharing
The Kindest People Who Do Good Deeds: Volume 4
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1z0-CAMz-4ulX29CAIHNU16Z912eNqt-v/view?usp=sharing
The Kindest People Who Do Good Deeds: Volume 5
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y7DlPdu-eZwA23gEHPT2YWMT0W5r8eu7/view?usp=sharing
The Kindest People Who Do Good Deeds: Volume 6
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zHZv2iTHQnbVY0n_LihTWXKOvUr4_hyr/view?usp=sharing
The Kindest People Who Do Good Deeds: Volume 7
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FSCTtviio4xrX7e07-OuAgYpxmWlIPuk/view?usp=sharing
***
You’ve Got to Be Kind: Volume 1
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GfiQMNnQ4G0CHGt1AZQQIPODV596k30j/view?usp=sharing
You’ve Got to Be Kind: Volume 2
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OHcETsSaWbIhFPIZWeW0laO6mdHVbcph/view?usp=sharing
You’ve Got to Be Kind: Volume 3
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XZCFlAWhtXPnf35OGlUoh991i05D0Bs0/view?usp=sharing
You’ve Got to Be Kind: Volume 4
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Cj8yIDLmFFG6dGzLpoVE3RrQ3-LhKV0d/view?usp=sharing
You’ve Got to Be Kind: Volume 5
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LxqLrwm898Chg3mnRY2NiGZA4FkFdOXR/view?usp=sharing
You’ve Got to Be Kind: Volume 6
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PmAxX5C-viQF0GfIpsM7mTtsyQ9lfm8J/view?usp=sharing
You’ve Got to Be Kind: Volume 7
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Bq_SmSf4rsWdtqA7p0kN9tJ5ip3gqEht/view?usp=sharing
***
The Kindest People: Be Excellent to Each Other (Volume 1)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FqbObI95XKwIr1QWn0lBFDSNsIENTR9B/view?usp=sharing
The Kindest People: Be Excellent to Each Other (Volume 2)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QWF5bRarJBauD7Qdb-_99K9UuQBL_fZ7/view?usp=sharing
The Kindest People: Be Excellent to Each Other (Volume 3)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gUUA4ms-CX7BvVlOaNmpYswPN-eBfKIa/view?usp=sharing
The Kindest People: Be Excellent to Each Other (Volume 4)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BXLhqmY1qOEaF4u5IMRpSCm7H6jy2mj_/view?usp=sharing
The Kindest People: Be Excellent to Each Other (Volume 5)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Pks6XXM4T-r_r4cBBSmUIlP0jARS8i-0/view?usp=sharing
The Kindest People: Be Excellent to Each Other (Volume 6)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ohXsEp79jwf8OdlIXI7I3nPIotjX5wWb/view?usp=sharing
The Kindest People: Be Excellent to Each Other (Volume 7)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_orz__RY0T3A-kpa7fpbS8koDwp0I91p/view?usp=sharing
***
The Kindest People: Heroes and Good Samaritans (Volume 1)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/13X4KOLTIvPVwSBo1ijX0aJABB8wbgZyT/view?usp=sharing
The Kindest People: Heroes and Good Samaritans (Volume 2)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wbRuc4G0EdFeM4UVWk6LwbxDKkF19T2s/view?usp=sharing
The Kindest People: Heroes and Good Samaritans (Volume 3)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ksyO9KnAJ6yGpK5CNMY12Ry9HTQ9vxm1/view?usp=sharing
The Kindest People: Heroes and Good Samaritans (Volume 4)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NuAM7qAb_XLRGHxUTMLrm2PhOfjU7Fk8/view?usp=sharing
The Kindest People: Heroes and Good Samaritans (Volume 5)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1T5HB-AwL4S61aj4lLK3K5Q0ulgQbarR7/view?usp=sharing
The Kindest People: Heroes and Good Samaritans (Volume 6)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PYx6MyYI9YY_RKCv3nUZnENwv0jIxfRn/view?usp=sharing
The Kindest People: Heroes and Good Samaritans (Volume 7)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I8aphNRXnok_slWALv8s8TjJ344sZVml/view?usp=sharing
***
IT’S A WONDERFUL WORLD SERIES (Stories and Anecdotes and Opinions)
It’s a Wonderful World: Volumes 1-7
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/its-a-wonderful-world-free-pdfs/
***
THE RELATIONSHIP BOOKS SERIES
The Relationship Books (Volumes 1-9)
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/the-relationship-books-free-pdfs/
***
BE KIND AND BE USEFUL SERIES (Stories and Anecdotes and Opinions)
Be Kind and Be Useful: Volumes 1-5)
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/be-kind-and-br-useful-free-pdfs/
***
BRUCE’S MUSIC RECOMMENDATIONS SERIES
Bruce’s Music Recommendations: Volumes 1-12
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/music-recommendations-free/
Bruce’s Music Recommendations: Volumes 1-12
https://anecdotesandmusic.wordpress.com/music-recommendations-free-pdfs/
Bruce’s Music Recommendations: Volume 9
https://anecdotesandmusic.wordpress.com/2022/05/16/bruces-music-recomendations-volume-9/
Bruce’s Music Recommendations: Volume 12
https://davidbruceblog43.wordpress.com/2023/06/06/bruces-music-recommendations-volume-12-free-pdf/
***
davidbruceblog #1
http://davidbruceblog.wordpress.com/
davidbruceblog #2
https://davidbrucemusic.wordpress.com
davidbruceblog #3
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com
davidbruceblog #4
https://davidbruceblog43.wordpress.com
David Bruce Books (Free PDFs)
https://davidbruceblog4.wordpress.com
davidbrucebooks: EDUCATE YOURSELF
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com
Anecdotes, Arts, Books, and Music
https://anecdotesandmusic.wordpress.com
George Peele: English Dramatist
https://georgepeeleenglishdramatist.wordpress.com
David Bruce’s Books at Blogspot
https://davidbrucebooks.blogspot.com
David Bruce’s Books at WIX
https://bruceb22.wixsite.com/website/blog
David Bruce’s Books at Smashwords
http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/bruceb
David Bruce’s Books at Apple Books
https://itunes.apple.com/ie/artist/david-bruce/id81470634
David Bruce’s Books at Kobo
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/search?query=david%20bruce&fcsearchfield=Author
David Bruce’s Books at Barnes and Noble
David Bruce’s Books at Lulu
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/brucebATohioDOTedu
TEACHING STUFF
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/composition-projects/
COMPOSITION PROJECTS
Composition Project: Writing an Autobiographical Essay
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1138445
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/composition-projects/
William Sleator’s Oddballs: A Discussion Guide
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/
Composition Project: Writing an Argument Paper with Research
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/
Composition Project: Writing an Employee Manual
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/
Composition Project: Writing an Evaluation or Review
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/
Composition Project: Writing a Famous-Plagiarist/Fabulist Report
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/
Composition Project: Writing a Hero-of-Human-Rights Essay
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/481598
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/
Composition Project: Interview About On-the-Job Writing
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/
Composition Project: Writing a Manual
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/
Composition Project: Writing a Media Opinion Essay
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/
Composition Project: Writing a Problem-Solving Letter
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1138745
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/
Composition Project: Writing a Progress Report
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/
Composition Project: Writing a Proposal for a Long Project
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/composition-projects/
Composition Project: Writing a Resume, List of References, and Job-Application Letter
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/composition-projects/
Composition Project: The Set of Instructions
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/
HOW DO I
How Do I Write Humor and Satire?
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/
How Do I Write the Introductory Memo Assignment?
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/
How Do I Write a Resume, List of References, and Job-Application Letter
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/
HOW TO TEACH
How to Teach the Autobiographical Essay Composition Project in 9 Classes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/487660
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/
How to Teach the Famous-Plagiarist Research Report Composition Project in 8 Classes
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/
How to Teach the Manual Composition Project in 8 Classes
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/
How to Teach the Resume, Job-Application Letter, and List of References Composition Project in 6 Classes
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/
FREE WRITING HANDOUTS
Free Writing Handouts with Anecdotes: Volume 1
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/
Free Writing Handouts with Anecdotes: Volume 2
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/
Free Writing Handouts with Anecdotes: Volume 3
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/
DANTE INFERNO HAIKU PDF
https://cosplayvideos.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/dante-inferno-haiku.pdf
DANTE PURGATORY HAIKU PDF
https://cosplayvideos.files.wordpress.com/2019/03/dante-purgatory-haiku-pdf.pdf
DANTE PARADISE HAIKU PDF
https://cosplayvideos.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/dante-paradise-haiku.pdf
davidbrucehaiku #1 through #10 (Free PDFs)
https://davidbruceblog.wordpress.com/patreon/
davidbrucehaiku #11
https://davidbrucemusic.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/davidbrucehaiku-11.pdf
davidbrucehaiku #12
https://cosplayvideos.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/davidbrucehaiku-12.pdf
davidbrucehaiku #13
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/2019/04/08/davidbrucehaiku-13/
https://cosplayvideos.files.wordpress.com/2019/04/davidbrucehaiku13.pdf
davidbrucehaiku #14
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/davidbrucehaiku/
davidbrucehaiku #15
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/davidbrucehaiku/
davidbrucehaiku #16
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/davidbrucehaiku/
Academic Writing
Bruce, David. “Teaching Problem-Solving Through Scenarios.” Classroom Notes Plus: A Quarterly of Teaching Ideas. April 2004.
Bruce, Bruce David, David Stewart, and H. Gene Blocker. Instructor’s Manual and Test Bank for Stewart and Blocker’s Fundamentals of Philosophy, 5th edition. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2001.
Bruce, Bruce David, and Michael Vengrin. Study Guide for Robert Paul Wolff’s About Philosophy, 8th edition. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2000.
Bruce, Bruce David, and Michael Vengrin. Study Guide for Robert Paul Wolff’s About Philosophy, 7th edition. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1998.
Bruce, Bruce David. Study Guide for David Stewart and H. Gene Blocker’s Fundamentals of Philosophy, 4th edition. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1996.
Humorous Quizzes
Bruce, David. “Quarterly Quiz.” The Opera Quarterly. Vol. 21. No. 2. Spring 2005.
Bruce, David. “Quarterly Quiz: Tenors.” The Opera Quarterly. Vol. 20. No. 4. Autumn 2004.
Bruce, David. “Quarterly Quiz: Sopranos.” The Opera Quarterly. Vol. 20. No. 3. Summer 2004.
Bruce, David. “Shakespeare Quiz.” The Shakespeare Newsletter. 52:1. No. 252. Spring 2002.
Bruce, David. “Quarterly Quiz: More Singer Anecdotes.” The Opera Quarterly. Vol. 18. No. 1. Winter 2002.
Bruce, David. “Mystery Quiz.” International Gymnast. March 2002.
Bruce, David. “Mystery Quiz.” International Gymnast. February 2002.
Bruce, David. “Mystery Quiz.” International Gymnast. November 2001.
Bruce, David. “Shakespeare Quiz.” The Shakespeare Newsletter. 51:1/2. Nos. 248-249. Spring/Summer 2001.
Bruce, David. “Mystery Quiz.” International Gymnast. June/July 2001.
Bruce, David. “Mystery Quiz.” International Gymnast. March 2001.
Bruce, David. “Quarterly Singer Quiz.” The Opera Quarterly. Vol. 16. No. 4. Autumn 2000.
Bruce, David. “Shakespeare Quiz.” The Shakespeare Newsletter. 50:1. No. 244. Spring 2000.
Bruce, David. “Dancer Quiz.” Attitude: The Dancers’ Magazine. Vol. 14, No. 3. Fall/Winter 1999.
Some Books by Brenda Kennedy (My Sister)
The Forgotten Trilogy
Book One: Forgetting the Past
Book Two: Living for Today
Book Three: Seeking the Future
The Learning to Live Trilogy
Book One: Learning to Live
Book Two: Learning to Trust
Book Three: Learning to Love
The Starting Over Trilogy
Book One: A New Beginning
Book Two: Saving Angel
Book Three: Destined to Love
The Freedom Trilogy
Book One: Shattered Dreams
Book Two: Broken Lives
Book Three: Mending Hearts
The Fighting to Survive Trilogy
Round One: A Life Worth Fighting
Round Two: Against the Odds
Round Three: One Last Fight
The Rose Farm Trilogy
Book One: Forever Country
Book Two: Country Life
Book Three: Country Love
Books in the Seashell Island Stand-alone Series
Book One: Home on Seashell Island (Free)
Book Two: Christmas on Seashell Island
Book Three: Living on Seashell Island
Book Four: Moving to Seashell Island
Book Five: Returning to Seashell Island
Books in the Pineapple Grove Cozy Murder Mystery Stand-alone Series
Book One: Murder Behind the Coffeehouse
Books in the Montgomery Wine Stand-alone Series
Book One: A Place to Call Home
Book Two: In Search of Happiness… coming soon
Stand-alone books in the “Another Round of Laughter Series” written by Brenda and some of her siblings: Carla Evans, Martha Farmer, Rosa Jones, and David Bruce.
Cupcakes Are Not a Diet Food (Free)
Kids Are Not Always Angels
Aging Is Not for Sissies
NOTE for below books: These books are the first books of series and end in cliffhangers.
FORGETTING THE PAST
Also free here:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/641664
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/641664
FOREVER COUNTRY
https://www.amazon.com/Forever-Country-Rose-Farm-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B017OMNPZS/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF
Also free here:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/591247
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/591247
A NEW BEGINNING
https://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Starting-Over-Trilogy-Book-ebook/dp/B00JHQC25Y/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
Also free here:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/426321
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/426321
LEARNING TO LIVE
https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Live-Trilogy-Book-ebook/dp/B01N0XZ0ZL/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
Also free here:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/694489
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/694489
A LIFE WORTH FIGHTING
https://www.amazon.com/Life-Worth-Fighting-Survive-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B00WY8OR4Q/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
Also free here:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/539553
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/539553
SHATTERED DREAMS
https://www.amazon.com/Shattered-Dreams-Freedom-Trilogy-Book-ebook/dp/B00PF0ROUY/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
Also free here:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/493939
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/493939
THIS IS A FREE STANDALONE BOOK: HOME ON SEASHELL ISLAND
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B076Y1VTCV/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i14
Also free here:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/755692
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/755692
SOME SOURCES FOR FREE EBOOKS
https://www.globalgreyebooks.com
http://www.classicallibrary.org/index.htm
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/
https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu
GEORGE ORWELL: 1984
This book is Public Domain in Canada. If you are in Canada, you may download it FREE here:
https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20120511
CAITLIN KRAUS at the 2020 Virtual Nelsonville Music Festival
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZJFIal2SyU
[1] Source: Barbara Ehrenreich, “Truck Drivers Block Freeway Traffic Across the U.S. to Protest Soaring Fuel Prices.” 8 April 2008 <http://www.alternet.org/story/81641/?page=entire>.
[2] Source: Kathleen Sharp, “The Woman Behind Arnold’s Defeat.” Pacific New Service. Posted on Alternet.org on 10 November 2005 <http://www.alternet.org/story/28058/>. Also: Robert Scheer, “Who’s the Girlie-Man Now?” The Huffington Post. 8 November 2005 <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-scheer/whos-the-girlieman-now_b_10373.html>.
[3] Source: Michelle Locke, “Calif. group proposes George W. Bush Sewage Plant.” Associated Press. 7 July 2008 <http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080707/ap_on_re_us/presidential_putdown;_ylt=AoGitxYCRdFhKdHvMtg62lwDW7oF>.
[4] Source: John Harris, “Hands off our music!” The Guardian. 18 March 2008 <http://music.guardian.co.uk/pop/story/0,,2266213,00.html>.
[5] Source: Allison Kilkenny, “Apathy Doesn’t Live in the Bronx.” Huffington Post. 23 May 2008 <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/allison-kilkenny/apathy-doesnt-live-in-the_b_103368.html>. Also: Juan Gonzalez, “Bronx 8th-graders boycott practice exam but teacher may get ax.” New York Daily News. 21 May 2008 <http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2008/05/21/2008-05-21_bronx_8thgraders_boycott_practice_exam_b-1.html>.
[6] Source: Michael A. Schuman, Martin Luther King: Leader for Civil Rights, pp. 82-86.
[7] Source: Jim Hightower, “A Very Personal Protest.” 5 November 2007 <http://www.jimhightower.com/node/6250>.
[8] Source: Ron L. Harmon, American Civil Rights Leaders, pp. 42-45.
[9] Source: Steve Jacobson, Carrying Jackie’s Torch, pp. 57-58.
[10] Source: Deanna Isaacs, “And All I Got Was This Lousy PhD.” Chicago Reader. 1 May 2008 <http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/thebusiness/080501/>.
[11] Source: Ron Jenkins, Acrobats of the Soul, pp. 44, 46.
[12] Source: Barbara O’Connor, Katherine Dunham: Pioneer of Black Dance, pp. 95-97.
[13] Source: Cynthia Salisbury, Phillis Wheatley: Legendary African-American Poet, p. 55.
[14] Source: Morris K. Udall, Too Funny to be President, p. 27.
[15] Source: Milton Meltzer, There Comes a Time: The Struggle for Civil Rights, p. 64.
[16] Source: Bernice Kanner, The 100 Best TV Commercials, pp. 71-73.
[17] Source: Alex Boese, “Taco Liberty Bell.” Museum of Hoaxes. 2008 <http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/Hoaxipedia/Taco_Liberty_Bell/>. See also <http://www.painepr.com/case_studies2.asp?nav=quicktime&content=tacolibertybell>.
[18] Source: Judith Pinkerton Josephson, Mother Jones: Fierce Fighter for Workers’ Rights, p. 75.
[19] Source: Goh Pei Ki, compiler, Popular Chinese Proverbs, pp. 126-127.
[20] Source: Nancy Shore, Amelia Earhart, p. 63.
[21] Source: Henry and Melissa Billings, Eccentrics: 21 Stories of Unusual and Remarkable People, pp. 118-120.
[22] Source: Brenda Scott Royce, Hogan’s Heroes, pp. 93, 115.
[23] Source: H. Allen Smith, People Named Smith, pp. 112-113.
[24] Source: Froma Harrop, “Long Hot Summer in Minnesota.” Creators Syndicate. 22 April 2008 <http://www.creators.com/opinion/froma-harrop/long-hot-summer-in-minnesota.html>.
[25] Source: Carl R. Green and William R. Sanford, Judge Roy Bean, pp. 31, 40.
[26] Source: Ellen Levine, Darkness Over Denmark: The Danish Resistance and the Rescue of the Jews, pp. 128-130.
[27] Source: Donald J. Sobol, Encyclopedia Brown’s Book of the Wacky Outdoors, pp. 37-39.
[28] Source: Nathan Aaseng, The Peace Seekers: The Nobel Peace Prize, pp. 61ff.
[29] Source: Bruce Laffey, Beatrice Lillie, pp. 59-60.
[30] Source: Kingsley Amis, On Drink, p. 30.
[31] Source: Andrea Stuart, Showgirls, pp. 33-34.
[32] Source: Judith Edwards, Lewis and Clark’s Journey of Discovery in American History, p. 39.
[33] Source: Ginger Wadsworth, Julia Morgan: Architect of Dreams, pp. 98-99.
[34] Source: Russell Roberts, Rulers of Ancient Egypt, pp. 48ff.
[35] Source: Trina Robbins, Eternally Bad: Goddesses with Attitude, pp. 83-84.
[36] Source: Alan Govenar, Extraordinary Ordinary People: Five American Masters of Traditional Arts, pp. 32-33, 42-45.
[37] Source: Esther Nisenthal Krinitz and Bernice Steinhardt, Memories of Survival, pp. 20-21.
[38] Source: Jill Krementz, How It Feels When Parents Divorce, pp. 81-83.
[39] Source: Maxine B. Rosenberg, Living with a Single Parent, pp. 68-69. (Some anecdotes, such as this one, are touching rather than funny.)
[40] Source: Sue Katz, “GLBT Youth Fight for the Right to Party at Prom.” AlterNet. 11 June 2008 <http://www.alternet.org/sex/87698/?page=entire>.
[41] Source: Yousuf Karsh, Faces of Our Time, pp. 89-91.
[42] Source: Richard Mackenzie, A Wee Nip at the 19th Hole, p. 39.
[43] Source: F.W. Rawding, Gandhi and the Struggle for India’s Independence, pp. 38-39.
[44] Source: Lewis C. Henry, Humorous Anecdotes About Famous People, p. 77.
[45] Source: Garrison Keillor, “At 96, the Wonder has plenty to say.” Chicago Tribune. 9 July 2008 <http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-oped0709keillorjul09,0,4802883.column>.
[46] Source: Kate Mostel and Madeline Gilford, 170 Years of Show Business, p. 106.
[47] Source: John Waters, Crackpot: The Obsessions of John Waters, p. 62.
[48] Source: Annalee Newitz, “Who’s Afraid of Grand Theft Auto?” 7 May 2008 <http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/84764/>.
[49] Source: Kenneth Williams, Acid Drops, p. 40.
[50] Source: Trudy Garfunkel, Letter to the World: The Life and Dances of Martha Graham, pp. 32, 40.
[51] Source: D. J. Herda, Thurgood Marshall: Civil Rights Champion, pp. 46ff.
[52] Source: Stuart Jeffries, “There’s humour in the darkest places.” The Guardian. 18 March 2008 <http://books.guardian.co.uk/interviews/story/0,,2266270,00.html>.
[53] Source: Milton Meltzer, Rescue: The Story of How Gentiles Saved Jews in the Holocaust, pp. 139-141.
[54] Source: Stuart Jeffries, ‘I struggle with evil.’ The Guardian. 6 March 2008 <http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,,2262443,00.html>. Also: “Kevin Carter – Photojournalist.” Created 3rd May 2007. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A22083301>. Viewed 6 March 2008.
[55] Source: Moira Davison Reynolds, Women Champions of Human Rights, pp. 69-70.
[56] Source: Judith Pinkerton Josephson, Mother Jones: Fierce Fighter for Workers’ Rights, pp. 116-119.
[57] Source: Molly Ivins, “She Sounded Like God.” Printed in this book: Beth Burch. Writing for Your Portfolio. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1999. 94-95.
[58] Source: Anne Schraff, Women of Peace: Nobel Peace Prize Winners, p. 35.
[59] Source: Kathy Pelta, Bridging the Golden Gate, pp. 60, 63, 67, 71.
[60] Source: Ohio University Emeriti Association, compilers, Ohio University Recollections for the Bicentennial Anniversary: 1804-2004, p. 72.
[61] Source: Jim Campbell, The Importance of Joe Louis, p. 75.
[62] Source: Linda Jacobs Altman, Genocide: The Systematic Killing of a People, pp. 71, 93.
[63] Source: Nick Del Calzo, creator and photographer, The Triumphant Spirit, pp. 54-55.
[64] Source: Susan Estrich, “What’s in the Air?” Creators Syndicate. 30 November 2007 <http://www.creators.com/opinion/susan-estrich.html>.
[65] Source: Whitney Stewart, Sir Edmund Hillary: To Everest and Beyond, pp. 38-39.
[66] Source: Kai Chang, “My Favorite Liar.” 24 February 2008 <http://copcodik.aksnews.ru/eviloverlord.html>.
[67] Source: Trina Robbins, Eternally Bad: Goddesses with Attitude, pp. 153-154.
[68] Source: David A. Adler, We Remember the Holocaust, pp. 58-59.
[69] Source: Len Righi, “’60s icon Melanie brings serious multifacted voice to her music.” The Morning Call (Allentown, PA). 5 August 2008 <http://www.popmatters.com/pm/article/61738/60s-icon-melanie-brings-serious-multifacted-voice-to-her-music/>.
[70] Source: Maxine B. Rosenberg, Living with a Single Parent, p. 87.
[71] Source: Lee Drutman, “BOOK REVIEW: ‘The Dumbest Generation’ by Mark Bauerlein.” Los Angeles Times. 5 July 2008 <http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-et-book5-2008jul05,0,3980465.story>.
[72] Source: Goh Pei Ki, compiler, Popular Chinese Proverbs, pp. 102-103.
[73] Source: Rabbi Shmuel Avidor Hacohen, compiler, Touching Heaven, Touching Earth: Hassidic Humor and Wit, p. 104.
[74] Source: Joe Franklin, Up Late with Joe Franklin, p. 49.
[75] Source: Michael Moore, Stupid White Men, p. 86.
[76] Source: Twyla Tharp, Push Comes to Shove, p. 44,
[77] Source: Michael Moore, Stupid White Men, p. 116.
[78] Source: David K. Fremon, The Great Depression in American History, p. 48.
[79] Source: Richard Mackenzie, A Wee Nip at the 19th Hole, p. 35.
[80] Source: Anne Schraff, Coretta Scott King: Striving for Civil Rights, p. 48.
[81] Source: Adam Sykes and Iain Sproat, compilers, The Wit of Westminster, p. 49.
[82] Source: Jonathan Flax, “A Roundtable Chat with Emily Mortimer, Co-Star of ‘Transsiberian.’” Bullz-eye.com. 25 July 2008 <http://www.bullz-eye.com/movies/interviews/2008/emily_mortimer.htm>.
[83] Source: David McKie, “The baron of bibliomania.” The Guardian. 5 May 2008 <http://books.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2277892,00.html>.
[84] Source: P. M. Zall, George Washington Laughing, pp. 40-41.
[85] Source: William P. Rayner, Wise Women, p. 209.
[86] Source: New York Times, 20 April 1962, p. 1.
[87] Source: Moira Davison Reynolds, Women Champions of Human Rights, pp. 16, 18, 22.
[88] Source: David K. Fremon, The Great Depression in American History, p. 30.
[89] Source: Hyam Maccoby, chooser and translator, The Day God Laughed: Sayings, Fables and Entertainments of the Jewish Sages, p. 36.
[90] Source: Ron L. Harmon, American Civil Rights Leaders, pp. 83-84.
[91] Source: Hal Marcovitz, Maurice Sendak, pp. 51-61.
[92] Source: Amy Sickels, Adrienne Rich, pp. viii-x. This anecdote comes from Lesléa Newman’s “Foreword” to this volume and to all the volume in Chelsea House’s series titled “Gay and Lesbian Writers.”
[93] Source: Christie Keith, “A Look Back at Jon Stewart’s Greatest Gay Moments.” 25 October 2007 <http://www.afterelton.com/TV/2007/10/thedailyshow>.
[94] Source: Stephanie Schoeder, Laurie K. Schenden, Lily-Rygh Glen, “Saving Our Herstory.” Curve Magazine. June 2008 <http://www.curvemag.com/Detailed/946.html>.
[95] Source: Deborah Kent, The American Revolution: “Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Death,” pp. 90-92.
[96] Source: Wang Xuanming, Six Strategies for War, pp. 126-128.
[97] Source: Nathan Aaseng, The Peace Seekers: The Nobel Peace Prize, pp. 19ff.
[98] Source: Eric Silver, The Book of the Just: The Unsung Heroes Who Rescued Jews from Hitler, pp. 50-55.
[99] Source: Anne Schraff, Women of Peace: Nobel Peace Prize Winners, p. 69.
[100] Source: David K. Fremon, The Holocaust Heroes, p. 30.
[101] Source: Hyam Maccoby, chooser and translator, The Day God Laughed: Sayings, Fables and Entertainments of the Jewish Sages, pp. 162, 164.
[102] Source: Eric Silver, The Book of the Just: The Unsung Heroes Who Rescued Jews from Hitler, pp. 147-154.
[103] Source: Nick Del Calzo, creator and photographer, The Triumphant Spirit, pp. 32-33.
[104] Source: Esther Nisenthal Krinitz and Bernice Steinhardt, Memories of Survival, pp. 34, 40-41, 53, 59.
[105] Source: Theodore Dalrymple, “The Pains of Memory.” New English Review. June 2008 <http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/21174/sec_id/21174>.
[106] Source: Milton Meltzer, Rescue: The Story of How Gentiles Saved Jews in the Holocaust, pp. 148-149.
[107] Source: David A. Adler, We Remember the Holocaust, p. viii.
[108] Source: Linda Jacobs Altman, Genocide: The Systematic Killing of a People, pp. 56-57.
[109] Source: Danny Newman, Tales of a Theatrical Guru, p. 3.
[110] Source: Brenda Scott Royce, Hogan’s Heroes, pp. 1, 3, 67-68.
[111] Source: Victoria Sherrow, The Righteous Gentiles, p. 46.
[112] Source: David K. Fremon, The Holocaust Heroes, p. 30.
[113] Source: Anne Schraff, Coretta Scott King: Striving for Civil Rights, p. 73.
[114] Source: Catherine Corley Anderson, Jackie Kennedy Onassis: Woman of Courage, pp. 26, 28.
[115] Source: JoAnn Bren Guernsey, Hillary Rodham Clinton: A New Kind of First Lady, p. 48.
[116] Source: Candace Savage, Born to Be a Cowgirl: A Spirited Ride Through the Old West, p. 49.
[117] Source: Christopher Farran, Animals to the Rescue!, pp. 37-41.
[118] Source: D. J. Herda, Thurgood Marshall: Civil Rights Champion, pp. 6, 8.
[119] Source: Silvia Anne Sheafer, Women in America’s Wars, pp. 56-57.
[120] Source: Chaim Topol, compiler, Topol’s Treasury of Jewish Humor, Wit and Wisdom, p. 214.
[121] Source: Diane Keaton, editor, Local News; Tabloid Pictures from the Los Angeles Herald Express 1936-1961, p. 6.
[122] Source: Kate Mostel and Madeline Gilford, 170 Years of Show Business, pp. 115, 140.
[123] Source: Mark Morford, “Totally Gay Happy Meals.” San Francisco Gate. 11 July 2008 <http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/07/11/notes071108.DTL>.
[124] Source: Susan Goldman Rubin, There Goes the Neighborhood: Ten Buildings People Loved to Hate, p. 27.
[125] Source: Milton Meltzer, There Comes a Time: The Struggle for Civil Rights, p. 41.
[126] Source: Catherine Corley Anderson, Jackie Kennedy Onassis: Woman of Courage, pp. 40-41.
[127] Source: Kermit Schafer, Best of Bloopers, p. 40.
[128] Source: Victoria Sherrow, Gideon v. Wainwright: Free Legal Counsel, pp. 7-13, 26, 52, 57-59, 72.
[129] Source: Lori Lee Wilson, The Salem Witch Trials, p. 33.
[130] Source: Katherine E. Krohn, Marcia Clark: Voice for the Victims, pp. 23-24, 27, 32-34.
[131] Source: Elizabeth Paterra, Gary Paulsen, pp. 15-16.
[132] Source: P. M. Zall, George Washington Laughing, p. 51.
[133] Source: Paul M. Zall, The Wit and Wisdom of the Founding Fathers, p. 37.
[134] Source: Robert Young, A Personal Tour of Mesa Verde, pp. 5, 8.
[135] Source: Robert Young, A Personal Tour of Monticello, pp. 5-6.
[136] Source: Paul M. Zall, The Wit and Wisdom of the Founding Fathers, p. 71.
[137] Source: Bernice Kanner, The 100 Best TV Commercials, pp. 89-90.
[138] Source: Jeff Savage, Gold Miners of the Old West, p. 42.
[139] Source: Betsy Kuhn, Angels of Mercy: The Army Nurses of World War II, pp. 5, 30.
[140] Source: Kermit Schafer, Best of Bloopers, p. 96.
[141] Source: Phyllis Shindler, collector, Raise Your Glasses, p. 121.
[142] Source: Sandra Tsing Loh, “Tales Out of School.” The Atlantic Monthly. March 2008 <http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/kozol>.
[143] Source: P. J. O’Rourke, “The Cleveland of Asia: A Journey Through China’s Rust Belt.” World Affairs Journal. Spring 2008 <http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/Spring-2008/full-PJ-China.html>.
[144] Source: Carl R. Green and William R. Sanford, Judge Roy Bean, pp. 7-8.
[145] Source: Toller Cranston, Zero Tollerance, pp. 251-252.
[146] Source: Margaret J. Anderson, Carl Linnaeus: Father of Classification, pp. 60-61.
[147] Source: Bill Adler, Jewish Wit and Wisdom, p. 96.
[148] Source: Jeff Savage, Gold Miners of the Old West, p. 17.
[149] Source: Mark Rowh, W.E.B. Du Bois: Champion of Civil Rights, p. 19.
[150] Source: Bill Adler, Jewish Wit and Wisdom, p. 22.
[151] Source: Jim Campbell, The Importance of Joe Louis, pp. 16-17, 31.
[152] Source: Christian John Wikane, “Saudade: A Conversation with Carly Simon.” Popmatters.com. 5 May 2008 <http://www.popmatters.com/pm/features/article/58157/saudade-a-conversation-with-carly-simon/>.
[153] Source: Amy Sickels, Adrienne Rich, p. 34.
[154] Source: Morris K. Udall, Too Funny to be President, pp. 77-78.
[155] Source: Silvia Anne Sheafer, Women in America’s Wars, pp. 9-11, 16.
[156] Source: Whitney Stewart, Sir Edmund Hillary: To Everest and Beyond, pp. 51, 53-54.
[157] Source: JoAnn Bren Guernsey, Hillary Rodham Clinton: A New Kind of First Lady, pp. 50-51.
[158] Source: Martin Hintz, Farewell, John Barleycorn: Prohibition in the United States, p. 70.
[159] Source: Kermit Schafer, All Time Great Bloopers, pp. 6, 10.
[160] Source: Brandon Voss, “Montana Margot.” The Advocate. 25 July 2008 <http://www.advocate.com/exclusive_detail_ektid58326.asp>.
[161] Source: H. Allen Smith, People Named Smith, p. 86.
[162] Source: Cynthia Salisbury, Phillis Wheatley: Legendary African-American Poet, p. 38.
[163] Source: Ekaterina Gordeeva, My Sergei, pp. 137-138.
[164] Source: William Oliver Stevens, Famous Humanitarians, p. 89.
[165] Source: Sylvia Whitman, Get Up and Go! The History of American Road Travel, p. 23.
[166] Source: Danny Newman, Tales of a Theatrical Guru, p. 10.
[167] Source: Robert Young, A Personal Tour of Mesa Verde, p. 25.
[168] Source: H. Allen Smith, The Compleat Practical Joker, p. 23.
[169] Source: Kermit Schafer, All Time Great Bloopers, p. 21.
[170] Source: Kieran Doherty, Congressional Medal of Honor Recipients, pp. 28ff.
[171] Source: Steve Jacobson, Carrying Jackie’s Torch, pp. 56-57.
[172] Source: Richard Kelly, The Andy Griffith Show, pp. 95-96.
[173] Source: Trudy Garfunkel, Letter to the World: The Life and Dances of Martha Graham, pp. 46, 77.
[174] Source: F.W. Rawding, Gandhi and the Struggle for India’s Independence, pp. 22-23.
[175] Source: J. Edward Evans, Freedom of Religion, pp. 14-15.
[176] Source: Michael A. Schuman, Martin Luther King: Leader for Civil Rights, pp. 20-21.
[177] Source: Tom Streissguth, Jesse Owens, p. 39.
[178] Source: Bill Moyers, “My Father and FDR.” 22 November 2007 <http://www.alternet.org/story/68638/>. This article originally appeared in The Nation.
[179] Source: Andrew Tobias, “What Ketchup and a Map of the United States Have in Common.” Andrewtobias.com. 6 June 2008 <http://www.andrewtobias.com/newcolumns/080606.html>.
[180] Source: John Waters, Crackpot: The Obsessions of John Waters, pp. 141-142.
[181] Source: Wang Xuanming, Three Strategies of Huang Shi Gong, pp. 112-117.
[182] Source: Kathy Pelta, Bridging the Golden Gate, pp. 23-24.
[183] Source: H. Allen Smith, The Compleat Practical Joker, p. 238.
[184] Source: Allison Stark Draper, Pastor André Trocmé: Spiritual Leader of the French Village Le Chambon, pp. 69-74.
[185] Source: Russell Roberts, Rulers of Ancient Egypt, p. 72.
[186] Source: Ginger Wadsworth, Julia Morgan: Architect of Dreams, pp. 81, 93.
[187] Source: Nick Paumgarten, “Up And Then Down.” The New Yorker. 21 April 2008 <http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/04/21/080421fa_fact_paumgarten?currentPage=all>.
[188] Source: William P. Rayner, Wise Women, p. 201.
[189] Source: Donald J. Sobol, Encyclopedia Brown’s Book of the Wacky Outdoors, p. 46.
[190] Source: Margaret J. Anderson and Karen F. Stephenson, Aristotle: Philosopher and Scientist, pp. 57-58.
[191] Source: Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh, p. 148.
[192] Source: Yousuf Karsh, Faces of Destiny: Portraits by Karsh, pp. 128-129.
[193] Source: Robert Young, A Personal Tour of Monticello, p. 41.
[194] Source: Marie Tennent Shephard, Maria Montessori: Teacher of Teachers, p. 23.
[195] Source: Phyllis Shindler, collector, Raise Your Glasses, p. 114.
[196] Source: Zachary Kent, The Civil War: “A House Divided,” p. 93.
[197] Source: Beverley Smith, Talking Figure Skating, p. 62.
[198] Source: Susan Goldman Rubin, There Goes the Neighborhood: Ten Buildings People Loved to Hate, pp. 20-21.
[199] Source: Judith Edwards, Lewis and Clark’s Journey of Discovery in American History, pp. 37, 39.
[200] Source: Zachary Kent, Andrew Carnegie: Steel King and Friends to Libraries, pp. 68-69.
[201] Source: Jack Mingo, The Juicy Parts, p. 40.
[202] Source: Susan Jacoby Sunday, “The Dumbing Of America: Call Me a Snob, but Really, We’re a Nation of Dunces.” Washington Post. 17 February 2008 <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/15/AR2008021502901_pf.html>.
[203] Source: Kenneth Williams, Acid Drops, p. 74.
[204] Source: Lewis C. Henry, Humorous Anecdotes About Famous People, pp. 46-47.
[205] Source: Marie Tennent Shephard, Maria Montessori: Teacher of Teachers, pp. 32-33.
[206] Source: Yousuf Karsh, Faces of Destiny: Portraits by Karsh, pp. 150-151.
[207] Source: Adam Sykes and Iain Sproat, compilers, The Wit of Westminster, p. 36.
[208] Source: William Oliver Stevens, Famous Humanitarians, p. 129.
[209] Source: Rabbi Shmuel Avidor Hacohen, compiler, Touching Heaven, Touching Earth: Hassidic Humor and Wit, p. 20.
[210] Source: Yousuf Karsh, Faces of Our Time, pp. 169-171.
[211] Source: Toby Axelrod, Hans and Sophie Scholl: German Resisters of the White Rose, pp. 92-94.
[212] Source: Allison Stark Draper, Pastor André Trocmé: Spiritual Leader of the French Village Le Chambon, pp. 41, 43.
[213] Source: Toby Axelrod, Hans and Sophie Scholl: German Resisters of the White Rose, pp. 77-78.
[214] Source: Ellen Levine, Darkness Over Denmark: The Danish Resistance and the Rescue of the Jews, pp. 22-23.
[215] Source: Victoria Sherrow, The Righteous Gentiles, p. 54.
[216] Source: Margaret J. Anderson and Karen F. Stephenson, Aristotle: Philosopher and Scientist, pp. 75-76.
[217] Source: Lois Lowry, Number the Stars, pp. 13-14, 134. Number the Stars is a novel, but this anecdote is one that is widely told.
[218] Source: Margaret J. Anderson, Carl Linnaeus: Father of Classification, pp. 63-65.
[219] Source: Mary Gow, Johannes Kepler: Exploring the Laws of Planetary Motion, pp. 5, 7.
[220] Source: Clive Stafford Smith, “Welcome to ‘the disco.’” The Guardian. 19 June 2008 <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/19/usa.guantanamo>.
[221] Source: Lori Lee Wilson, The Salem Witch Trials, pp. 37-39.
[222] Source: Nancy Shore, Amelia Earhart, p. 55.
[223] Source: Twyla Tharp, Push Comes to Shove, p. 102.
[224] Source: Sylvia Whitman, Get Up and Go! The History of American Road Travel, p. 23.
[225] Source: Barbara O’Connor, Katherine Dunham: Pioneer of Black Dance, p. 87.
[226] Source: Mary Gow, Johannes Kepler: Exploring the Laws of Planetary Motion, pp. 84-90.
[227] Source: Victoria Sherrow, Gideon v. Wainwright: Free Legal Counsel, pp. 59-60, 71-72.
[228] Source: Daniel N. Rolph, My Brother’s Keeper, pp. 34-37.
[229] Source: Kieran Doherty, Congressional Medal of Honor Recipients, pp. 18ff.
[230] Source: Betsy Kuhn, Angels of Mercy: The Army Nurses of World War II, pp. 53-54.
[231] Source: Zachary Kent, The Civil War: “A House Divided,” p. 37. Also: Deborah Kent, The American Revolution: “Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Death,” p. 83.
[232] Source: Francis Trevelyan Miller, Editor-in-chief, True Stories of the Great War, Vol. 6, p. 241.
[233] Source: Wang Xuanming, Three Strategies of Huang Shi Gong, pp. 137-142.
[234] Source: Christopher Farran, Animals to the Rescue!, pp. 87-88.
[235] Source: Mark Kurlansky, “Turn the other cheek, or pop him on the nose?” Los Angeles Times. 20 April 2008 <http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-kurlansky20apr20,0,3514037.story>.
[236] Source: Bruce Laffey, Beatrice Lillie, p. 127.
[237] Source: Ellen Seidler, “Interview With Kimberly Peirce.” 25 March 2008 <http://www.afterellen.com/people/2008/3/kimberlypeirce>.
[238] Source: John Waters, Shock Value, pp. 46-47.
[239] Source: Wang Xuanming, Six Strategies for War, pp. 37-40.
[240] Source: John Davenport, C.S. Lewis, p. 14.
[241] Source: Jack Mingo, The Juicy Parts, p. 229.
[242] Source: Tom Streissguth, Jesse Owens, p. 59.
[243] Source: Ron Jenkins, Acrobats of the Soul, p. 9.
[244] Source: Andrea Stuart, Showgirls, pp. 172-173.
[245] Source: Francis Trevelyan Miller, Editor-in-chief, True Stories of the Great War, Vol. 6, p. 245.
[246] Source: Candace Savage, Born to Be a Cowgirl: A Spirited Ride Through the Old West, pp. 27-29.
[247] Source: Martin Hintz, Farewell, John Barleycorn: Prohibition in the United States, pp. 67-68.
[248] Source: Katherine E. Krohn, Marcia Clark: Voice for the Victims, pp. 29-30, 34, 53.
[249] Source: Zachary Kent, Andrew Carnegie: Steel King and Friends to Libraries, p. 68.
[250] Source: Mark Rowh, W.E.B. Du Bois: Champion of Civil Rights, p. 10.
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