Writing about books, hiking, the Battle of Tarawa and more
Note: The Backlist is a series of occasional reviews of worthy books published in years past. “It’s a hard world for animals,” says Rowf, one of the two canine narrators in Richard Adams’ 1977 novel “The Plague Dogs.” Indeed it is, and … [Continue reading]
It’s been a rough century so far for the controversial Church of Scientology. A religion — a reluctant Internal Revenue Service granted that status in 1993 in a truce to end a resource-gobbling hailstorm of lawsuits by the church — that seemed … [Continue reading]
While crossing the street in downtown Longmont one recent Friday night two guys of a hippie-ish mien approached me, wanting to know where they could buy cigarettes. I had to confess that, so far as I knew, there wasn’t a gas station or … [Continue reading]
Talk about crazy. In the state of Colorado, people with severe bipolar disorder, major depression or schizophrenia are four times more likely to end up in jail than in treatment. Police officers see more people with mental illness on a … [Continue reading]
In 2005, during those grinding days of the Iraq war when it had become apparent to all what a hornet’s nest the Bush administration had kicked in Mesopotamia, an explosives expert who had been there earnestly explained how to wrap up the … [Continue reading]