I've ordered a book called The Texas Rangers and the Mexican Revolution: The Bloodiest Decade, 1910-1920. I guess it'll be next on my history reading list. https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51W6wKZbU3L._SX345_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg I thought I'd mention the book here because some time b...

I don't read many books on politics now, not since the advent of the internet. But I've read some good ones over the years. The first that truly impressed me was Theodore H. White's The Making of the President, 1960 . Excellent book, won the Pulitzer Prize. I read his other Making of the President b...

I just finished reading all of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories. I know they're not for everybody, but if any of you want to sample one, "The Tower of the Elephant" might be fairly painless. It's on all of the Best of Conan lists I've seen:

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0600831h.html

Just finished reading this one again. It's been years. I'd forgotten that O. Henry had such a knack for well-turned phrases. The story's great, of course, deserving its "classic" status, but on top of that O. Henry has a superb command of language. '...I tried to be faithful to our article...

I like the reversal in this story--machines (or at least non-meat sentient beings) thinking about humans the way that we think about machines. I also like the way it's told in dialogue. The lack of descriptive prose leaves you free to picture the conversationalists any way you want.

I enjoyed this story. For such a short piece it has a lot of threads to follow--the bears, the old woman, the preoccupation with tires. One of the writers for the original Twilight Zone TV series (Matheson, Bloch, one of those guys) said in an interview that most of the better fantasy stories change...

Thanks for pointing out the story mentioned in the endnote, "Bears Discover Fire." I just finished reading it: http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/bears-discover-fire/ Excellent story. Lots of aspects to it that could be discussed. Like the significance of fixing tires. Very nice sto...

Red Chief would be fine with me. I've read all of O'Henry's works but it's been a while. Everyone should become acquainted with the story because it's used as the basis for so many movies. You see the premise pop up quite often. Funny stuff. And here's a funny one I stumbled across yesterday. Sci-fi...

So is there a short story for August? I don't have one in mind...would like to read one that's new to me.

I've read a stack of comic books and Thomas Aquinas, and somewhere in there was the argument of the First Cause. If the world we see is the result of cause and effect, and if you go back far enough in time, tracing cause and effect, then what was the first cause? When the universe was at rest, forml...