Jonathan Aitken To Revisit RN

One thing that becomes apparent if one’s followed the world of books for a while is that when the anniversary of a famed personality’s birth (or sometimes death) comes up, there are likely to be one or more volumes to mark the occasion. In the world of...

The Freeman Fracas

When President Obama, during his period of transition, announced that he was appointing onetime Nixon White House aide Leon Panetta to head the CIA, the former Clinton chief of staff’s appointment, after a few initial stirrings of dissatisfaction, sailed through...

“I’ve Really Come To Understand Him”

On March 12, the touring production of Peter Morgan’s play Frost/Nixon with Alan Cox and Stacy Keach in the title roles opens at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, and this weekend Keach talked about the experience of portraying RN with the Orange County...

The Chance That Ted Missed

Eleanor Clift, in a Newsweek article on Sen. Ted Kennedy’s effort to get a comprehensive health-insurance program through Congress, reminds readers that he once had a chance to help reach that goal but let it slip through his hands in the name of political...

A President’s Proud Legacy

On NPR’s weekly comedy —at least they claim it’s comedy— news-based quiz show Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me, the final segment is a round robin of the panelists making humorous predictions about the future. Today’s edition featured...

Lessons From Lyndon’s Successful Failure

When Lyndon Johnson was a boy growing up near the Pedernales River in the Texas hill country his parents would regularly play a record on their Victrola. But it wasn’t music. It was William Jennings Bryan, the Great Commoner, who was known for his charismatic oratory...