My grandfather’s memoirs, The Best Times, always has surprises in store, even on my 44th reading (I don’t know how many readings I’m up to at this point, but it’s […]

It’s been nearly ten years since Walkin’ Lawton published! I will always look back fondly on the years I spent producing my biography of Florida icon Lawton Chiles. More than […]

Recently, the Cesare Pavese Foundation interviewed me about the John Dos Passos legacy of art and literature. Pavese (1908-1950) was an Italian translator who translated writers including Herman Melville, William […]

Last weekend, at the American Literature Association in Chicago, I presented on John Dos Passos and George Orwell–how their lives converged and their legacies diverged. They met once during the […]

Interesting reference to the painting style of John Dos Passos in The Guardian: “Yun Gee’s Street Scene is composed at a vertiginous angle, giving the piece an off-balanced sensation. Consisting […]

Author Jason Cannon has written a diverting, well-researched, comprehensive biography of Charlie Murphy (Publishing June 1, available for pre-order now), who owned the Chicago Cubs from 1906 to 1913 and […]

From John Dos Passos’s memoirs The Best Times: “For years a wooden box full of my father’s letters has stood on my mantel at Spence’s Point. It is a box […]

From Politico: “All right, you have won,” John Dos Passos wrote in his bitter U.S.A. trilogy passage about the death of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. “There is nothing left […]

My 2nd poem about my paternal grandfather, Rodney Marshall Coggin, went online today. “Papa” was a Marine aviator in the Pacific during World War II. Thanks to Cathexis Northwest Press […]

Did you know? In 1943, John Dos Passos wrote a lengthy, charming profile of New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia for Liberty magazine. Although Dos Passos was best known […]