The Long Reach

Poems deal with truth, religion, nature, thought, the role of poetry, death, visions, age, and the past.

"Americans often hear that Presidential elections are about "who controls" the Supreme Court. In The Long Reach of the Sixties, eminent legal historian Laura Kalman focuses on the period between 1965 and 1971, when Presidents Johnson and Nixon launched the most ambitious effort to do so since Franklin Roosevelt tried to pack it with additional justices. Those six years-- the apex of the Warren Court, often described as the most liberal in American history, and the dawn of the Burger Court--saw two successful Supreme Court nominations and two failed ones by LBJ, four successful nominations and two failed ones by Nixon, the first resignation of a Supreme Court justice as a result of White House pressure, and the attempted impeachment of another. Using LBJ and Nixon's telephone conversations and a wealth of archival collections, Kalman roots their efforts to mold the Court in their desire to protect their Presidencies, and she sets the contests over it within the broader context of a struggle between the executive, judicial and legislative branches of government. The battles that ensued transformed the meaning of the Warren Court in American memory. Despite the fact that the Court's work generally reflected public opinion, these fights calcified the image of the Warren Court as "activist" and "liberal" in one of the places that image hurts the most--the contemporary Supreme Court appointment process. To this day, the term "activist Warren Court" has totemic power among conservatives. Kalman has a second purpose as well: to explain how the battles of the sixties changed the Court itself as an institution in the long term and to trace the ways in which the 1965-71 period has haunted--indeed scarred--the Supreme Court appointments process"--

Once more the cursed warrior, The Voidal and his bizarre familiar, the incorrigible Elfloq, travel through the nightmare regions of the omniverse in search of a way to break the grip of the Dark Gods on their destiny, to free the Voidal from the will of the Oblivion Hand. They encounter even more mad gods and monstrous beings on their terrifying odyssey: Thunderhammer, smith of the gods; Scyllarza, half human half demoness; the Thief of Thieves, and the Preposterous Library among others. THE LONG REACH OF THE NIGHT, second volume of the Voidal Trilogy, is sword and sorcery in the grand tradition of Jack Vance and Michael Moorcock!

What we refer to as “modern man” sprang into existence some forty thousand years ago. These ancestors of ours entered a world dominated by Neanderthals, a hardy bunch, stronger than we and equally as smart. How we managed to survive and the Neanderthals did not is a story that has never been told. Until now. An ancient astronaut awakening from a 40-thousand-year sleep has no idea who he is or why he is floating naked in the middle of an empty ocean. Chance brings him to combine forces with a young woman on a passing sailboat about to be murdered by Bahamian drug runners. Driven by separate goals but increasingly attracted to one another, the two plot to turn the tables on a confused but determined mob. As the astronaut slowly recalls his ancient past, the gripping story of how he (and we) got here unfolds.

A new account of America's most controversial diplomat that moves beyond praise or condemnation to reveal Kissinger as the architect of America's current imperial stance In his fascinating new book Kissinger's Shadow, acclaimed historian Greg Grandin argues that to understand the crisis of contemporary America—its never-ending wars abroad and political polarization at home—we have to understand Henry Kissinger. Examining Kissinger's own writings, as well as a wealth of newly declassified documents, Grandin reveals how Richard Nixon's top foreign policy advisor, even as he was presiding over defeat in Vietnam and a disastrous, secret, and illegal war in Cambodia, was helping to revive a militarized version of American exceptionalism centered on an imperial presidency. Believing that reality could be bent to his will, insisting that intuition is more important in determining policy than hard facts, and vowing that past mistakes should never hinder future bold action, Kissinger anticipated, even enabled, the ascendance of the neoconservative idealists who took America into crippling wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Going beyond accounts focusing either on Kissinger's crimes or accomplishments, Grandin offers a compelling new interpretation of the diplomat's continuing influence on how the United States views its role in the world.