I have finally crossed enough off of my to-do list, and also resolved some things that other people wanted me to do, so I feel comfortable doing some gun book blogging.
I’m going to start out easy. Two duplicates of books I’ve already blogged (from the Springfield purchase) and two books that I didn’t previously have, but I’ve written about the authors previously.
After the jump…
Jim Bakker. NYT (share link, may require).
No offense intended, but I honestly thought he had died several years ago.
Jeffrey Archer, writer and convicted perjurer.
Sometimes, it seems like the judges in sketches on “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” are uncomfortably close to reality. “Fragrance”?
…another newspaper, The News of the World, reported allegations that Mr. Archer had committed perjury at the original libel trial in 1987, forcing him to withdraw from the mayoral race.
Those charges came to trial in September 2000, and in July 2001, he was given a four-year jail term for perjury and perverting the course of justice. After two years in a variety of correctional institutions, he was released, resuming his career as a prolific writer. He kept his title and retired from the House of Lords in 2024.
Mike the Musicologist and I were in the middle of a used bookstore in Springfield, Missouri, browsing the shelves. MtM came up to me and said “Let’s go.” in that tone of voice. You know the one I’m talking about: not mean, not angry, but that tone of voice that tells you “Some s–t has gone down and we need to leave right now.”
He told me in the parking lot as we were heading to the car. It was in a Signal group chat we both belong to, but I hadn’t been looking at my phone. It seems to me like we spent a couple of hours (but it may not have been that long) in the cafe at a Barnes and Noble making calls to other people and trying to figure out next steps.
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We had dinner with Lawrence and some other mutual friends of ours and Andrew’s on Monday night, the night we got back to Austin. I remember thinking to myself, “If ever there was an appropriate time for the ‘Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?’ joke, this would be it.” Then Lawrence walked in and made that joke.
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I’ve been running flat out for the past couple of days. I got up Tuesday morning, after a short sleep, to find out that I had to deal with an Internet outage (that Spectrum didn’t fix until Wednesday morning) and also with our trash. I paid someone to deal with the trash so I didn’t have to deal with it when I got back. They failed. Enough said.
So this is really my first chance to catch up and explain myself and my adventures last week. Of course, it has taken me a few days to write this.
“Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?”
–Sir Terry Pratchett, Going Postal
While I was trying to find that quote, I ran across another Pratchett quote:
“No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, until the clock wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone’s life is only the core of their actual existence.”
—Reaper Man
Annie Dillard, author. (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek)
…
…
I have several of her books, but haven’t really dipped into them. I feel like I need to be in the right place and right frame of mind for this kind of work. But I do find this quote (from For the Time Being) quite striking:
There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and so it has always been: A people busy and powerful, knowledgeable, ambivalent, important, fearful, and self-aware; a people who scheme, promote, deceive, and conquer; who pray for their loved ones, and long to flee misery and skip death. It is a weakening and discoloring idea, that rustic people knew God personally once upon a time– or even knew selflessness or courage or literature– but that it is too late for us. In fact, the absolute is available to everyone in every age. There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less.
While we were driving home on Monday, Mike mentioned a headline on his phone about the death of a “legendary” designer, and asked if any designer was truly “legendary”.
Bob Mackie. Even I have heard of Bob Mackie. Among his credits: Carol Burnett’s curtain dress.
Jay Maisel, photographer.
…
The “On Taking Pictures” podcast devoted much of an episode to Mr. Maisel. I think he was also featured prominently in the OTP drinking game, but I seem to have lost my copy of that.
Peter Max, 1960s “counterculture” artist.
His simple graphic images, brightly colored and infectiously happy, lent themselves to a long list of licensed commercial products, from sheets and glassware and shower curtains to airplanes and, on one occasion, a stamp for the Postal Service.
Incorporating Art Nouveau, Op Art and psychedelic motifs, Mr. Max’s designs offered instant visual gratification and a cheery endorsement of the generational politics of love, joy and universal consciousness. His “panopticon” images repeated visual elements in tight formation, producing a kaleidoscope effect that recalled Easter mandalas.
Roger Beasley, prominent Austin automotive dealer.
Wendell Berry, agrarian writer. NYT (share link, may require registration or an email address or something). I’ve never read any of his books, but he published articles in the old “Country Journal” back when my people subscribed to it. I thought he was an interesting guy, but frankly kind of a crank.
Not quite an obit, but:
First off, a matter of somewhat pecuniary interest, since I’d like to keep good relations with Jacob and the Widener’s blog folks.
Jacob was kind enough to send over a link to a recent post: “1986 VS 2026: Guns And Ammo Pricing“.
Jacob goes through and compares prices between 1986 and 2026, and does some historical and cultural analysis of the changes during that period (the rise of the Internet, regulatory factors, panic buying after certain events, etc.)
In 1986, a box of 9mm cost $22.50, or about $0.45 per round.
In 2026, it averages $10.00 per box, or $0.20 per round.
Even without adjusting for inflation, that’s a dramatic decrease. When adjusted for inflation, 9mm is significantly cheaper today than it was in the 1980s.
My main quibble with Jacob here is: that’s really the only place where he mentions “adjusted for inflation”. Though he does say:
Firearms: Moderately more expensive, but roughly in line with inflation
I would have liked to see more of a breakdown of this.
The two inflation calculators I use are: the US Inflation Calculator and the CPI Inflation Calculator from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
If we plug some of Jacob’s numbers into those calculators and compare 1986 to 2026 dollars:
That’s probably enough examples. I’ll leave additional analysis as an exercise for the reader. I’ll note that both of the calculators I use gave exactly the same numbers for the 1986-2026 comparisons: I suspect they draw from the same source. Generally, $1 in 1986 is equal to $3.05 today, so you can use that as a factor when doing your math.
I like Jacob’s post. I just think it would be worthwhile to do a direct 1986-2026 dollar value comparison as part of the analysis. Jacob (or anyone else, for that matter) is welcome to flame me in comments if they think I’m wrong.
After the jump, a couple of books, mostly because I’m done with them and would like to move them from the downstairs stack to the upstairs shelves.
Dolly Parton. NYT share link (may require registration or an email address or something).
Everyone was on this yesterday: I held off, per the policy of this blog, and I think pretty much everything that can be said has been, or will be. I only have two thoughts:
1. I know this isn’t original to Ms. Parton (it’s actually a cover of a Neil Young song, with a slightly modified lyric) but I find this to be incredibly haunting.
2. She was a zealous advocate of literacy. She wanted to put books in kid’s hands. I swear I read somewhere (but can’t find it now) that she believed books were the best way for kids to broaden their horizons and lift themselves up from poverty.
Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. You know, just in case you feel like tossing a few bucks in.
Dolly Parton’s letter to Eminem.
In other news: Jaye P. Morgan. Yes, from “The Gong Show”. (Kids, ask your parents about “The Gong Show”.)
I’ve been reading a fair number of books about shipwrecks recently. I owe everyone longer reviews, but The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald gets an unqualified rave from me, while Until the Sea Shall Free Them: Life, Death, and Survival in the Merchant Marine gets a slightly qualified endorsement.
I haven’t read this book yet, but when I saw the NYT obit for John Rousmaniere, I felt like I had to mention it. (Share link, may require you to register or put in an email address or something.)
He was an author and a sailing historian.
But his most famous book is probably Fastnet, Force 10: The Deadliest Storm in the History of Modern Sailing.
He was an experienced offshore sailor when he joined the crew of a 48-foot Swan sloop, one of 300 yachts entered in the Fastnet Race in August 1979, with a planned route of 605 miles from the Isle of Wight to Fastnet Rock off Ireland and back.
A freakish storm slammed the fleet with gale-force winds and 50-foot frothing waves. Mr. Rousmaniere was at the wheel of the vessel when the owner raised his head from monitoring radio traffic and said, “People are dying out here.”
Amid seas that flipped 35-foot yachts “like bathtub toys,” as Mr. Rousmaniere later wrote, 24 crews abandoned their vessels, and 15 sailors died. Helicopter crews and commercial and naval seamen rescued 136 sailors.
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Margo Howard, columnist. (NYT share link, you know the drill.) I used to read, and enjoy, “Dear Prudence” in Slate before they replaced her, and went off the deep end.
Noted fantasy and SF writer John Crowley passed away last Saturday. Michael Swanwick. Lawrence. And I will be sheep-dipped: NYT (share link, but they’re going to want you to create an account or put in your Google or Apple address or something).
The only Crowley work I’ve read is Great Work of Time and I agree with Lawrence: that is a fine novella.
Derrick Parker, former detective with the NYPD. He…
…was the former head of the NYPD’s rap intelligence unit when the city’s hip-hop scene exploded in popularity in the 1990s.
His work included monitoring high-profile artists and their entourages as they came and went from the Big Apple.
He said he shared his strategies to reduce violence in the music industry in other parts of the country, including in Miami and Atlanta.
He also served as a homicide and cold case detective during a career that spanned more than 20 years and worked alongside the US Marshals, the ATF, the DEA and the FBI, according to his website.
Burning in Hell watch: Ward Churchill, disgraced plagiarist university professor. (NYT share link, but they’re going to want you to create an account or put in your Google or Apple address or something).
When he was dismissed, Mr. Churchill had been a tenured professor at the university’s Boulder campus since 1991 and had served as chairman of its ethnic studies department. In 2007, a faculty panel found that he had plagiarized and falsified parts of his research on Native Americans, prompting his dismissal.
He filed a wrongful termination suit against the university, claiming that the real cause for his firing was to punish him for an essay he had written on Sept. 12, 2001, and published online a few days later, in which he argued that the United States had brought on itself the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
In the essay, he compared office workers who had been killed to Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi official whose later defense that he was merely “following orders” helped inspire the writer Hannah Arendt to develop the concept of “the banality of evil.”
In Mr. Churchill’s essay, titled “Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens,” he wrote that the financial workers who died at the World Trade Center were not innocent bystanders, but “little Eichmanns” who were part of “a technocratic corps at the very heart of America’s global financial empire.”
…
When the lawsuit went to trial in March 2009, Mr. Churchill’s lawyers described the university panel’s search for professional misconduct as a pretext for a foregone decision to dismiss him. Mr. Lane, his lawyer, said at the time that Mr. Churchill was the victim of a “howling mob” of university administrators, conservative media and politicians “falling over themselves” to secure his removal.
In April 2009, the jury found that Mr. Churchill had been wrongfully dismissed, awarding him a symbolic $1 in damages. It found that his political views had been a “substantial or motivating” factor in his dismissal, and that the university had not shown that he would have been dismissed anyway for his academic misconduct.
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First of all, I recommend you go over to the Revolver Guy blog and read Darren S.’s article, “The RevolverGuy’s Reading List“.
I think this is a pretty swell list. And yes, there were a few on there that I was not previously familiar with.
Changing gears a bit…I’ve found out some interesting information about this old Smith and Wesson. I have not received the actual history letter yet, and I want to wait on that before I post. I’ll update when I do get the history letter, and I’m hoping that my saying “I have not received the actual history letter yet” will cause the history letter to show up before the weekend. Because the fundamental perversity of the universe tends towards a maximum, as we like to say around here.
Changing gears a bit again…Jacob at the Widener’s Shooting, Hunting & Gun Blog sent me a nice email about their recent blog post: “Armor Piercing Rounds: 308 Winchester?” I swear that I had already seen this post and that it was linked somewhere else (maybe McThag linked to it?) but AP ammo is something I’m interested in, the email from Widener’s was flattering, and I might want to take Jacob up on his offer (“If you ever need a caliber or two sent your way, let me know.”) one of these days.
There’s also a YouTube video with Chad Finchum, who’s a NASCAR driver. I don’t follow NASCAR as much as I did when I was younger, but I do sort of keep an eye on it. Haven’t watched the video yet, but I’ll embed it anyway.
Changing gears a bit again (I feel like I’m driving an 18-wheeler. On the downhill side. Of Wolf Creek Pass.)…I’m not sure if this actually qualifies as “lazy”, but I did want to get this in. The moderately lazy part is that it ties back to a book I’ve previously written about, so I can cover it in a shorter post.
Dr. Roy G. Jinks passed away last night. I’m sorry that I don’t have anything to link to at the moment.
Dr. Jinks was a driving force in Smith and Wesson collecting. Arguably, he was the driving force. He was one of the founders of the Smith and Wesson Collector’s Association. He was a long time S&W employee, working in multiple positions within the company (including as their official historian for quite a while). He did more to preserve S&W history than any other person. And he wrote the definitive (though about 1980) history of S&W.
This is a great loss. I will perhaps have more to say about this in the coming days. I will say that we were (sort of) friends, in the sense that he could probably have picked me out of a police lineup, and we talked pretty regularly at the Symposiums.
Shirley Lord, writer.
Excuse me. That’s “bosomy dirty book writer Shirley Lord“, as the late lamented (by me, anyway) “SPY Magazine” used to refer to her.
Lawrence gave me copies of a couple of her books one year. I have to say, “steamy” is a pretty accurate description of those books. I also would accept “kinky”.
I’ve been tied up with various things and haven’t been able to book blog as much as I would like. Plus blogging with Bluehost is a constant struggle, and I really need to get on the stick about moving this blog.
But I had a three day weekend, and I had a little time, so I thought I’d blog some things from the backlog. It took a little longer than I expected, for the usual reasons.
This time, though, I’m not doing gun books. Oh, I have plenty of those to blog. But I wanted to do something different. So these are not “gun” books in the sense I would use. A couple of these are peripherally “gun” books, and a couple are completely not “gun” books.
So: weird Australian mammals, a cookbook, a history book, and Roy Chapman Andrews after the jump…
Another one of those “it got busy up in here” obit watches.
James Bradley, author (Flags of Our Fathers).
I haven’t read the book, but the Saturday Movie Group watched the movie. I can’t put it any better than Lawrence did: “I wanted to see a movie about the flag raising, not a movie about a bond drive.”
James Burrows, sitcom guy.
Mark Singer (paywall link: sorry), New Yorker writer. Among his works: the Ricky Jay profle.
Also among his works:
Mr. Singer is also the author of “Citizen K: The Deeply Weird American Journey of Brett Kimberlin” (1996), an expanded version of a New Yorker profile of a drug smuggler, murder suspect and media manipulator, that was a finalist for a National Magazine Award; and the collection “Somewhere in America: Under the Radar with Chicken Warriors, Left-Wing Patriots, Angry Nudists and Others” (2004).
Unmentioned in the obit: Brett Kimberlin is the guy who claimed to have sold marijuana to Dan Quayle.
Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve. WP.
Clive Davis, music guy.
NYT obit for Jane Yolen. (Previously.)
Anne Schedeen, actress. Credits other than one of the worst shows ever to air on television include “Ironside”, “Lanigan’s Rabbi”, and “The Six Million Dollar Man”.
William Smithers, actor. Other credits include “Quincy, M.E.”, “The Bold Ones: The New Doctors”, the good “Hawaii Five-0”, “The F.B.I.”, a minor SF TV series from the 1960s…
…and “Mannix”. (“Eight to Five, It’s a Miracle”, season 1, episode 21. He was “Salvatore Pucci”.)