As the month of December 1980 began, John Lennon was riding a wave. His comeback album, Double Fantasy, was the number one selling album in the world, and it had two songs that went to number one on the singles charts. He was enjoying not only a resurgence, but his best record sales as a solo artist and since the break-up of the Beatles. He was happily married to Yoko Ono, and they had a five-year-old son named Sean.

On the evening of December 8, 1980, a demented young man named Mark David Chapman, who wanted to be famous, waited outside The Dakota, the famed Manhattan apartment building where the Lennons lived. John and Yoko had spent the evening …

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About a month ago, Erik Calonius contacted me to see whether I’d be interested in getting a review copy of his new book, The Wanderer: The Last American Slave Ship and the Conspiracy That Set Its Sails. I hadn’t heard of either Mr. Calonius or his book, so I looked it up on Amazon. After doing so, I said sure, I’d love to have a look at it.

Let me begin by saying that this is not a book that I would normally have any interest in reading. As a general rule, the topic of slavery is of almost no interest to me, and I tend to avoid the subject due to lack of interest. However, this particular …

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Well, the knee is blown no more. Susan had her reconstructive knee surgery today.

The doctor fully expected to have to remove the hardware from her first ACL reconstruction on that knee in 1989. Having to do so would be more work and would have caused more pain. Fortunately, he didn’t have to remove either of the old screws from her knee and was able to work around them. The transplant was completed successfully, and he repaired the damage to her meniscus. Everything was done arthroscopically and she is already able to put weight on the leg if she’s in her immobilizer.

Everything went fine. She’s upstairs asleep in percocet land at the moment, and will hoppefully be on the …

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Please join me in welcoming Michael C. Hardy to the blogosphere. I had no idea that Michael had launched a blog until he posted a comment here. Michael has written several excellent books, most recently, the first book-lengthy study of the May 1862 Battle of Hanover Court House.

Michael’s blog deals with his native North Carolina’s role in the Civil War. Those who know me know of my love of the Old North State, and my interest in those aspects of the Late Unpleasantness that occurred there. Michael apparently launched his blog in October and didn’t tell anyone about it.

Please join me in welcoming Michael to the blogosphere.

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Regarding the plethora of new biographies by historian Ed Longacre, Kevin Levin wrote: “I will say, however, that I tend to stay away from historians who pump out books at a high rate, especially in the area of biography. You can easily distinguish between those biographies that are the result of a careful reading of both the primary and relevant secondary sources. More importantly, you can easily pick out the studies whose authors spent the necessary time thinking about their subject and trying to generate the right questions to ask. When I pick up a biography I want to read a preface that reflects both a careful research and writing process and that involves interaction with fellow historians. In …

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Having grown up in the Philadelphia area, I have long maintained an interest in the American Revolution. Over the course of the past several years, I have stepped up my reading on the Revolutionary War, and have tried to round out my knowledge base.

Due the success of the CWDG forum boards, I decided to start a second set of forum boards, this time, dedicated to the Revolutionary War. Please check them out. They can be found here. I hope some of my regular readers will find the Revolutionary War as interesting as I do, and that some of you will register and post there.

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Susan was supposed to have her ACL reconstruction surgery today. If all had gone according to plan, I would be reporting on the surgery right now.

Unfortunately, the surgery got bumped for a week. Our orthopedist was on call this past weekend, and had a very difficult weekend. He had something like 17 serious fractures to deal with, a number of which required nearly immediate surgery in order to allow the patients to begin the healing process. Consequently, all of his non-essential surgeries for today–including Susan–had to be postponed.

Needless to say, this was NOT happy news. We both wanted to get it over with, so that Susan could be on the road back to having a normal and healthy …

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Ephrata, Pennsylvania lawyer Larry B. Maier wrote Gateway to Gettysburg: The Second Battle of Winchester, published by Burd Street Press in 2002.

Burd Street is an imprint of White Mane Publishing. For those unfamiliar with White Mane, it’s far from my favorite publisher. For every good book they publish, there are ten really awful ones that had no business being published in the first place. This company is known for using crappy materials (thin, poor quality paper), indifferent production values, and no editing. My biggest complaint about it is that they do nothing to ensure that there is no plagiarism or copyright infringement. I am aware of at least two instances where authors who are friends of mine had …

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Susan and I are particularly fond of Asian food. We have a favorite Chinese restaurant that we frequent. The couple who own the restaurant are from Taiwan, and they’re very nice folks. Tonight, after spending seven hours in the car, we decided to go there for dinner.

The owner’s daughter waited on us. She was born here in the United States, but she’s a very quiet, studious sort of girl. She just finished her first quarter of college. While we were ordering dinner, her mother, who also works at the restaurant hurried over to the table and informed us that she had told her daughter that I was an expert on the Battle of Gettysburg. I said that I knew …

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After a Thanksgiving trip to visit my parents in Reading, PA, Susan and I returned home this afternoon. We were supposed to be gone until tomorrow, but decided that a day to relax prior to her surgery was important, so we left a day early.

I hope everyone had an excellent Thanksgiving Day and that all overdosed on tryptophan.

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