July, 2011 | Warren Adler

Month: July, 2011

Our Comic Book Culture

Posted on: July 25th, 2011 by Warren Adler 4 Comments

I’m not sure when I gave up my love for the comics. I suppose it was around thirteen or fourteen when I became far more interested in reading books for young boys, mostly in series like Bomba the Jungle Boy, The Boy Allies, the Hardy Boys, Tom Swift and others.

I would haunt the Stone Avenue Library in Brownsville, Brooklyn and walk home with as many books the library allowed, gobbling up the stories like popcorn. I suppose I still read the comics but with declining interest. Perhaps I preferred to imagine the characters instead of seeing them laid out for me with little balloons of dialogue.

Beyond Borders

Posted on: July 21st, 2011 by Warren Adler 1 Comment

After years of agony, the demise of Borders was as predictable as the sunset. It was like the horse and buggy murdered by the horseless carriage. It is sad and hurtful to many people who worked there but no crystal ball was needed. Its time had come.

The brick and mortar chain stores are probably doomed and what remains will contract and eventually succumb as more and more readers morph to screen reading on devices.

Death and Taxes

Posted on: July 16th, 2011 by Warren Adler 4 Comments

Whether wise old Ben Franklin said it or someone else, the idea that the only certainties in life are death and taxes appears to be the central dilemma of the modern age. The relationship is clouded with complexity. I will attempt to simplify it.

In our present budget crisis the relationship between the two are unassailable. Our health care programs, for example, are based on the assumption that we want to live as long as possible and spend whatever it takes to hold back the inevitability of a visit from the grim reaper.

A Confession

Posted on: July 8th, 2011 by Warren Adler 3 Comments

For more than thirty years people have asked if my book The War of the Roses, a story about the nasty breakup of a marriage with bizarre and fatal consequences, is autobiographical. It is not. I have been married to the same lovely lady for sixty years.

A Book Worth Reading

Posted on: July 7th, 2011 by Warren Adler No Comments

Just finished reading “In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin,” by Erik Larson. It deals with the life, trials and tribulations of the American Ambassador to Germany, William E. Dodd, in the crucial years of Hitler’s rise to power. In what must be a gargantuan feat of research, Larson has read everything he could gets his hands on in the period including memoirs from ex-Nazi’s, communists, family friends and lovers of the Ambassador’s flirtatious daughter Martha, to weave together a most remarkable tapestry.