The Cuba/U.S. relationship: It's complicated
President Obama will be in Cuba for the Tampa Bay Rays’ exhibition baseball game against the Cuban National Team later this month. While that may not be the main reason for his trip, his visit will be...
View ArticleMonday Murder Mystery: Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba & Then Lost it...
Even when I was writing about mysteries every week, I never spent much time on non-fiction, true-crime, books. Unless they were also histories, like The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, by Kate Summerscale,...
View ArticleSomeone who looks like me
Perhaps we should consider women’s struggle for equality to be like the tides—or rather, like ocean waves hitting the shore. Each time we make progress up the beach, we carry away a little of the sand...
View ArticleMonday Murder Mystery: 2015 Agatha Award Nominees
This week’s diary, and the one that will follow next week on the Edgar Awards, are the most expensive diaries I write all year. It never fails, as I look up the nominees, there are always some that...
View ArticleAnd why is it that the GOP wants to stop Trump?
GOP leaders certainly talk a good game about not wanting Donald Trump to be their party’s standard bearer. They even reserve the right to select the Republican nominee, regardless of the voters’...
View ArticleThe 14th Amendment is not enough: We must have an Equal Rights Amendment
On January 29, 2009, President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law. The Act did not protect women from discriminatory pay, but only plugged a hole in the existing patchwork of...
View ArticleThe surefire plan for a Democratic sweep in November
We should just welcome anti-choice activists into our party. Make them the foundation of our march to majorities in statehouses across the nation. That is the laughable basis of Charles C. Camosy’s...
View ArticleMonday Murder Mystery: 2016 Edgar Award Nominees
On April 28, 2016, at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City, the Mystery Writers of America will present the 2016 Edgar Awards for works published during 2015. This year will mark the 70th annual...
View ArticleHow a Seventh-Day Adventist and peyote led to Supreme Court fights over...
In 1957, Adele Sherbert became a member of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church while she worked for a textile mill in South Carolina. The mill changed its work week from five days to six, extending it...
View ArticleHow much is a library worth?
How can anyone hate a library?For generations, my ancestors were lead miners in Wanlockhead, Scotland, which makes me proud. In addition to being the highest village in Scotland at 1,531 feet above sea...
View ArticleThe reality of rape: 'I Will Find You'
Joanna Connors is a winner of the 2008 Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism from Northwestern University, and Columbia University’s Dart Award for Excellence in Coverage of Trauma for “Beyond Rape: A...
View ArticleGender bias and the millennial generation
The folks over at FiveThirtyEight got together last week to ponder the question, “Do You Have To Be Manly To Be President?” And while they did not appear to reach a definitive conclusion, the...
View ArticleA look at Rebecca Traister's new book, 'All the Single Ladies'
Rebecca Traister’s new book, All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation, opens with an examination of the treatment of Anita Hill by the Senate Judiciary Committee...
View ArticleThank you for your concern, gentlemen.
Thank you for your concern, Gov. Pat McCrory of North Carolina, which you displayed by signing House Bill 2 into law. We know you only did it for the women and the children.The law, commonly called...
View ArticleMonday Murder Mystery: 'The Man On the Washing Machine'
Minotaur Books, part of St Martin’s Press which in turn, is part of the mammoth McMillan publishing empire, specializes in crime fiction, and is home to authors like Louise Penny, Rhys Bowen, M.C....
View ArticleThe high price of delegitimization.
Four years ago Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann published It’s Even Worse Than it Looks. In a 2013 review, I quoted from that book: “However awkward it may be for the traditional press and nonpartisan...
View ArticleBook review: Peggy Orenstein's 'Girls & Sex'
This nation must, abso-freaking-lutely, stop enshrining ignorance into law. From climate change to cunnilingus, as a nation we seem to take pride in not knowing what we are talking about.California,...
View ArticleWhat's the matter with Kansas? Republicans.
You have to feel some sympathy for the people of Kansas. They are so screwed. Their leaders created the perfect Republican state, one in which they provided tax breaks for the wealthy and repealed...
View ArticleTime to stop the bullying
You know, when you start bullying Darcy Burner, you should take a look at what it is that you are fighting for.
View ArticleMoney, politics, and death threats
It probably never occurred to Ann Ravel, when she accepted an appointment from Barack Obama to serve as a Commissioner on the Federal Elections Commission (FEC), that she would receive death threats....
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