The death of Karamchand Gandhi in 1885 would have momentous consequences. At the time, his son Mohandas was in his teens and already married. In the wake of his father’s death his mother Putlibai became the family’s matriarch. She must have been remarkabl ...
23 Sep 2014 - Joe Martin
Early in her life, author Lacy M. Johnson was made aware of her good looks. When she was only 7 years old, her mother entered her lovely blonde daughter into a beauty pageant: “In the pictures, I don’t look like a child of 7. I walk in that sashaying page ...
19 Nov 2014 - Joe Martin
Canadian musician Bruce Cockburn on singing in praise of nonviolence “I honour nonviolence as a way of being, and as a political tactic, but I am not a pacifist. As we continue to watch the world’s greatest military powers plunder weaker states and people ...
1 May 2015 - Joe Martin
Book review: Erik Larson's 'Dead Wake' presents a spectacular narrative of the Lusitania, sunk 100 years ago In the early stages of the first world war, the efficacy of submarines as powerful tools of war was lost on many, but not all. Shor ...
29 May 2015 - Joe Martin
Book review: 'Giant's Causeway' by Tom Chaffin Frederick Douglass is a colossal presence on America’s 19th-century stage. An impressive black man, his electrifying oratory excoriated the injustice of slavery polluting this nation’s avowed a ...
27 Aug 2015 - Joe Martin
The novel ‘At the Center’ portrays the vagaries of a bureaucratic system responsible for addressing society’s ills Sixty-year-old Sylvia Jensen is a veteran social worker and supervisor of a crucial program responsible for the placement of vulnerable chil ...
12 Nov 2015 - Joe Martin
COMMENTARY | During 22 months of incarceration, Joe Hill became an intrepid symbol of struggling workers On Nov. 19, 1915, an innocent man was killed by firing squad. The state of Utah determined that immigrant laborer Joe Hill had murdered two people. Wh ...
8 Mar 2016 - Joe Martin
BOOK REVIEW | 'The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government,' by David Talbot In 1947, President Harry Truman signed the National Security Act, creating the National Security Council and the CIA. Thu ...
20 Dec 2016 - Joe Martin
Book Review: “Demand the Impossible! A Radical Manifesto” by Bill Ayers and “Struggling for the Soul of Our Country” by Preston Browning Jr. It’s the stuff of daily news. Christian Parenti, author of 2011’s “Tropic of Chaos,” refers to the “catastrophic c ...
16 Feb 2017 - Joe Martin
John Edgar Wideman’s new book explores the injustice delivered to Emmett Till’s father The tragic story of Emmett Till still shocks the conscience of our nation. It was the summer of 1955. Fourteen years of age, Emmett was a good natured black adolescent ...
20 Apr 2017 - Joe Martin