By Dave Dentel
The wait is over! A new volume of original stories inspired by masters who wrote during a golden age of anthology fiction is now available on Kickstarter. This Do in Remembrance honors writers like Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, and Rod Serling by returning readers to an amazing dimension of remarkable characters, engaging plots, and crafted prose.
Read moreBundesarchiv, Bild 183-60015-0002 / Giso Löwe / CC-BY-SA 3.0 By Dave Dentel
History’s most notorious criminals compel a certain fascination, though we are well-advised not to become too enthralled.
St. Paul encouraged us to dwell on the true, just and lovely, a discipline no doubt meant to keep us from being enticed by the trappings of evil, the power it sometimes imbues (however briefly), or from forgetting that except for divine grace tyrants like Adolf Hitler might exist as the rule rather than the exception.
Then again, speaking the truth is always a defense against malevolence. And few have unveiled the utter depravity of Hitler’s regime in as meticulous detail as historian Richard J. Evans.
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By Dave Dentel
Encounter a new volume of original stories inspired by masters who wrote during a golden age of anthology fiction: writers like Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, and Rod Serling. This Do in Remembrance honors their tradition by returning readers to an amazing dimension of remarkable characters, engaging plots, and crafted prose.
Science fiction? Fantasy? You’ll find both here, as well as humor mixed with a hint of the supernatural. But most of all, you’ll discover that fiction can still be both fun and relevant.
Much like the classic Twilight Zone television series, This Do in Remembrance explores the fantastic in order to comment on issues that remain central to the human experience: love, war, ambition, identity.
Featuring seven stories by three experienced writers, This Do in Remembrance offers variety while remaining true to its overarching goal—to serve up great fiction that leaves the reader anxious for more.
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By Dave Dentel
In the past three hundred years, the kind of slavery that permits one human being to own another has gone from near universal acceptance to being all but eradicated.
Scholar David Brion Davis attempts to explain why this momentous transformation occurred in his dense and highly academic tome, Slavery and Human Progress.
Davis’s work is not so much a history of slavery and how it came to be (mostly) abolished as it is a recounting of what people have thought and said about the institution.
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Old World charm? Nicht! It’s New Glarus, Wis., the Swiss Capital of America.
Has COVID-19 canceled your dream trip to Europe?
Great news! There are pockets of Europe dotted across the United States. Small towns for the most part, inhabited by descendants of the immigrants who founded them. They celebrate the usual American holidays, but also celebrate their heritage in a big way.
Their buildings mimic European architecture, their restaurants feature ethnic dishes, and most of them hold festivals honoring their heritage.
Take a trip through an America you may not have noticed before, guided by Ruth Dentel—world traveler.
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The gold leaf is virtual, the black ink only as crisp as your pixelated screen can render it. But the twenty-first century has called, and we have left the scriptorium.
Half A League Onward Press, an independent publisher of unusual (and amazing!) books, is now on social media.
Follow us here for updates.
And be sure to catch upcoming announcements about a pair of new titles—a travel book and a volume of suspense stories.
Meanwhile, keep your nib sharp and your parchment smooth.
by Dave Dentel
Anyone who has read P.G. Wodehouse, or watched any of the copious film and television adaptions of his works, knows that the British wit is not just hilarious—he’s delightfully frivolous.
Though his stories and novels do represent some of the best humor writing of a certain era, it’s a stretch to say that they aspire to literary aims such as critiquing society or forwarding any sort of political agenda. For the most part, Wodehouse wrote with one overarching goal in mind—to give his readers a good laugh.
You can imagine how much it dismayed me, then, to learn that for a time Wodehouse’s reputation was tainted by a very serious allegation. This master of upper-class English mirth was actually accused of turning traitor by collaborating with the Nazis during World War II.
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By Dave Dentel
It may have been the dust jacket design that threw me off. The title is set in ornate lettering and illuminated with a medieval-style vine-and-serpent motif, which led me to think this was a book about the ancient origins of the Bible and how it emerged in its present form.
Instead, The Book That Made Your World examines a much more familiar theme—how the Bible influenced and accommodated the rise of Western civilization. But what makes it different, and unusually potent, is that its thesis is propounded by an Easterner who sees this historical influence as a good thing.
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By Bradley Weber—Night Paris Street
By Dave Dentel
When I picked up A Coffin for Dimitrios, I was expecting a light alternative to the nonfiction I had been plodding through.
Having seen the 1940s movie version, and being a fan of between-the-wars detective thrillers, I was all set for author Eric Ambler to sate my palate with an easily consumed tale of trench-coated protagonists tracking down international rogues and bringing them to justice.
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By Dave Dentel
Sure it’s crass, ill-timed, and verges on bigotry. But Katherine Stewart’s recent op-ed in the New York Times blaming Christians for the devastating severity of the COVID-19 outbreak doesn’t merit returning rancor for rancor.
For one thing, Christians are used to being scapegoated. They’ve been assailed for allegedly inspiring all sorts of calamities, from the collapse of Rome in the fifth century to the gruesome mass shooting at a Florida nightclub in 2016.
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