A few recent books fresh off the printing press:
If you are interested in the history of the wine grape in America, you will like The Wild Vine. Not California but rather Virginia is home to the first truly American wine grape, Vitis nortoni. The first American wine grape was called by the very poetic name, Norton! Ughh!
Another book just out is Parrot & Olivier. Olivier’s character is based on Alexis de Tocqueville during his travel to this new experiment in democracy called America. Parrot is the motherless son of an itinerant printer. Parrot and Olivier are thrown together when they set sail for America with Parrot as Olivier’s protector and servant.
If you are a hardcore Jane Austen fan, you will appreciate this little book by Peter Leithart. This blandly titled book, Jane Austen, is chock full of her family history and details of her life.
And the last is a new book by Christoper Hitchens, his autobiography, Hitch-22. I was not thrilled with the book but it is an insight into Hitchens’ mind.
Within minutes of posing my review of it an amazing amount of hatred and vitriol started spewing forth from atheists. I received personally targeted hate filled comments, all from atheists whose god was being attacked. It was pretty shocking. I deleted the review for awhile and then put it back up minus the hate- filled comments. Now another conversation is taking place in the comments which is much more civil.
Wow, nicely done with the discussion of the deepest questions man can ponder on this earth! Very interesting. I’m so struck by the contradictions of Cypress Green- why care that you are only a dot, if life isn’t fair and there is no point to your existance? Sounds to me like she/he really wants one of those “neat boxes” that she/he speaks against.