by Jeff Stookey | Nov 3, 2024 | Uncategorized
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Here are my thoughts upon rereading Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, published in 1886. As the culmination of spooky season crept toward us, I wanted to reread this gothic classic. It’s been so long since I first read it...
by Jeff Stookey | Sep 1, 2022 | Uncategorized
Despite vast differences spanning some 400 years, the 17th century was in some ways like today in the 21st century. Kings and aristocrats, lower class male youth, and pirates all seemed to accept homosexual acts without the extreme aversion characteristic of the...
by Jeff Stookey | May 1, 2022 | Uncategorized
After reading Homer’s Iliad, I’m continuing with the theme of great war novels. I recently read Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine motivated me to finally read War...
by Jeff Stookey | Mar 1, 2022 | Uncategorized
War and Greek Mythology I was interested in male friendships in Homer’s Iliad, when I bought a copy of Madeline Miller’s recent bestseller The Song of Achilles, but I challenged myself to first read The Iliad of Homer. (I’ve long held a paperback...
by Jeff Stookey | Jan 3, 2022 | Uncategorized
As portrayed in Medicine For The Blues, fear and intimidation were tools of the KKK in the 1920s as they attempted to create a homogeneous society, but nothing on the scale of 1984 (published in 1949) and Brave New World (1932). Too much has been written about these...
by Jeff Stookey | Nov 1, 2021 | Uncategorized
It took me a long time to understand that my fascination with vampires resulted from elements of homosexuality in Dracula, which I first encountered at the movies as a kid. While doing research for Medicine For The Blues trilogy, I read a lot of footnotes and...
by Jeff Stookey | Sep 2, 2021 | Uncategorized
Legislative restrictions on teaching science and history can lead to anti-science attitudes and racism in voting laws. In my Medicine For The Blues trilogy I tried to give a full picture of the era of the early 1920s by including details about many aspects of the...
by Jeff Stookey | Jul 1, 2021 | Uncategorized
January 6th insurrection violence The coup d’etat by the violent mob of insurrectionists in Washington, DC, on January 6th, 2021, failed. Mark Danner’s article “Reality Rebellion” (in the July 1, 2021 issue of The New York Review of Books; see References below)...
by Jeff Stookey | May 1, 2021 | Uncategorized
Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix “Mayday! Mayday!” America and its democracy are in need of help. “Mayday!” as a distress signal was first used in 1923, when air traffic between England and France increased over the English Channel. Communications were...
by Jeff Stookey | Feb 4, 2021 | Uncategorized
Mary Trump’s book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man (2020) makes it clear that Donald Trump was emotionally abused by his father. Martin Pengelly’s review of this book [bold type indicates reference below] points...
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