When I was cleaning out my father’s home after he died, I came across a sweater box under his bed. In it were some of the short stories I had written in the third and fourth grade. For a few minutes I sat on the floor and read them, recalling the bedroom in Connecticut in […]
Category Archives: General
General, Good Reads
IN THE EMERGENCY ROOM, DOCTORS NEED DETECTIVE SKILLS—AND EMPATHY: Why I went looking for inspiration in the ER
18
Mar
Mar
A tenacious ER doctor is the heroine in my new thriller about a deadly pathogen, THE RED LOTUS. My time researching the novel with ER doctors left me gobsmacked and grateful. Thank God they are strong, empathetic, and courageous — and have great senses of humor. Here is an essay I wrote about them, and […]
04
Apr
Apr
When I was a boy, I had an uncle who married a flight attendant—or what we called back then a (forgive me) stewardess. It was his second marriage and I was too young to understand the enticing aroma of scandal that swirled around the divorce from his first wife, but even as an elementary school […]
Dear Friends Who Read and Readers Who Are Friends, To paraphrase a Chinese proverb – or, in some translators’ opinions, a Chinese curse – these are indeed interesting times. Either way, this has been a great year for satirists, comics, and survivalists. Also? It’s been a pretty good year for readers. When […]
27
Nov
Nov
If you’re reading this, it means you survived Black Friday. You think I’m kidding. I’m not. Black Friday can be terrifying. You don’t mess with someone who has stood in line for hours in the middle of the night to get a copy of the new “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3” for their Xbox. […]
02
Aug
Aug
It was well over 200 years ago now that Jeremy Bentham asked about animals, “The question is not, ‘Can they reason?’ nor ‘Can they talk?’ but ‘Can they suffer?’” It was a rhetorical question even then. Obviously animals can suffer; obviously animals feel pain. Last week the Internet, the news media, and Minnesotans publicly shamed […]
05
Jul
Jul
Here is today’s profound meaning-of-life question: Is it better to have a serious gastrointestinal meltdown at 35,000 feet in the rear bathroom of a 737 or be seated in the last row of the aircraft while the flight attendant is pounding on the bathroom door, begging the passenger to come out, and everyone in those […]
28
Jun
Jun
We all remember “Father Knows Best.” Okay, almost no one does, except for my late father’s friends in South Florida. Actually, even they don’t remember it anymore. But at least they did once. When Eisenhower was president. In any case, the show revolved around the Anderson family, and the paterfamilias — played by Robert Young […]
14
Jun
Jun
Earlier this month I gave a speech on Cape Cod, and I was struck by how much the elbow of the peninsula has fallen in love with the great white shark. In Chatham, there was a display of wooden sharks painted and designed by area artists on Main Street: “Sharks in the Park.” Signs along […]
31
May
May
The week before last I was in Manhattan and emerged alone on a Friday night from the subway station in Union Square. It was a little before eight. Instantly three young men surrounded me in desperate need of help: They said they had left their phones on the train in from New Jersey and were […]
