Thomas Sowell has a suggestion for young people heading off to college: Get an education while you’re there.

He’s even put together a reading list.

Sowell's introductory statement makes clear that he expects readers to question what they find, including his own arguments.

The economist and author, now 96, launched Facts Against Rhetoric last year to help people find arguments they might otherwise go through their entire schooling without encountering. It’s an extensive collection of books, essays, interviews, lectures, and online courses, organized by subject and available to anyone with the curiosity to start clicking.

Introducing the project in an April 2025 interview with Peter Robinson, Sowell described his purpose as “enabling students to get an education despite being in college.”

Parents paying the tuition may find something useful here too.

The site is a meticulously curated collection of educational resources on subjects ranging from “Intellectuals and Ideologies” and “Italians Around the World” to economics, education, and race. Alongside direct links to interviews, lectures, articles, and courses, Sowell provides extensive bibliographies pointing readers to books, specific chapters, and articles, often noting where and in what formats they’re available. You can click through to watch Sowell challenge claims about the “wage gap” for blacks and women on William F. Buckley Jr.’s “Firing Line” in 1981 or listen to Edward R. Murrow's 1943 account of a brush with death on an RAF bombing run over Berlin.

Although 96, Sowell is hardly taking a victory lap here. He is on a mission, the urgency of which he explains in his introductory statement. A college graduate has decades of life ahead of him, during which he will encounter questions his professors never anticipated. Even if everything they taught him were correct, memorizing their answers would leave him poorly prepared to think through those new problems.

He will need some practice disagreeing with people. Preferably before his livelihood depends on it.

A former Marxist’s reading list

In his long life, Sowell has had to revise a few convictions of his own.

Born in North Carolina in 1930 and raised partly in Harlem, he dropped out of Stuyvesant High School, worked a succession of jobs, and served in the Marine Corps. Eventually he earned degrees from Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Chicago. He went on to teach at Cornell, Amherst, and UCLA, among other institutions.

Along the way, he was a Marxist. Studying under legendary free-market economist Milton Friedman did not immediately cure him. In Sowell’s telling, a summer working at the Department of Labor in 1960 proved more effective. Investigating unemployment in Puerto Rico’s sugar industry, he wanted to test whether minimum-wage requirements were contributing to the problem. His colleagues’ lack of enthusiasm for an inquiry that might undermine their own department’s policy helped change his understanding of government.

Decades later, Facts Against Rhetoric gives readers plenty of opportunities to examine the conclusions he reached. His own books appear throughout, alongside work by economists, historians, journalists, and other scholars.

The selections plainly reflect his sympathies. Under socialism, for example, you’ll find Friedman's 1993 talk "The Rise of Socialism Is Absurd" as well as a reading list, including Joshua Muravchik’s “Heaven on Earth: The Rise, Fall, and Afterlife of Socialism" and Paul Hollander's "From Benito Mussolini to Hugo Chavez: Intellectuals and a Century of Political Hero Worship."Anyone hoping for encouragement to join the revolution will have to look elsewhere.

But there is considerably more here than a collection of arguments to deploy against your liberal brother-in-law.

Start anywhere

For a first visit, try the capitalism section, which links to Friedman’s 1979 appearance on “The Phil Donahue Show” and his lecture “Is Capitalism Humane?” Both offer a manageable introduction before you commit to the books listed below them, including Friedman’s “Capitalism and Freedom.”

Readers who prefer a more structured approach can follow the economics page to Hillsdale College’s online “Economics 101: Principles of Free Market Economics.” The same page points to Sowell’s “Basic Economics” and Walter E. Williams’ “Race and Economics,” along with shorter selections on subjects including affordability and unions.

Parents may want to begin with education. Here Sowell assembles material on schools, colleges, admissions, and academic performance. There’s an interview about his “Charter Schools and Their Enemies,” a discussion with Robert Pondiscio about Success Academy, and a link to Stanford’s 2023 National Charter School Study for readers who want to examine the research.

The college section also includes psychologist Steven Pinker’s interview with Reason’s Nick Gillespie, “What Went Wrong at Harvard.” Pinker discusses academic freedom, the policing of acceptable opinion, and why universities get into trouble when they pronounce on controversies their students and faculty should be free to debate.

For a longer excursion, the biographies page points to videos and articles on figures including Calvin Coolidge, Albert Einstein, and Frederick Douglass. Among a list of recommended books on John D. Rockefeller sits Ron Chernow’s “Titan"; readers considering Stephen Kotkin’s multivolume biography of Stalin — recommended here — can sample his work in the lecture “Stalin at War.”

Jemal Countess/Getty Images for MoveOn

The library card

One of the site’s biographical recommendations is an extended interview with Sowell himself, “Thomas Sowell: A Free Man.”

In it, he recalls arriving in Harlem as a child and being taken to a public library by another boy. Sowell had never seen so many books. He also couldn’t afford to buy one, which made the purpose of the visit somewhat mysterious.

His young guide persuaded him to get a library card. Sowell borrowed two books and began acquiring the reading habit that would occupy much of the rest of his life.

Now he has some suggestions for the rest of us. His introductory statement makes clear that he expects readers to question what they find, including his own arguments: “Whether you end up agreeing with me or with them is beside the point.”

Pick a subject, follow a link, track down a book. You can disagree with Professor Sowell — or not — after you’ve done the reading.

Oprah built an empire preaching the divinity within. It was Christ she turned to in her darkest hour.

Oprah Winfrey has spent roughly four decades helping Americans discover who they really are. Apparently, the job isn't finished.

Next April, the 72-year-old former talk-show queen will descend on the Las Vegas Sphere for "AHA," a four-performance extravaganza featuring music, poetry, storytelling, and what its promoters call the ultimate “aha” moment.

What happens when you look inside and don't find any light? What happens when your 'authentic self' turns out to be selfish, foolish, or cruel?

Winfrey calls the production the culmination of her life's work.

Culmination is an interesting word.

After 25 seasons of "The Oprah Winfrey Show," a magazine, a book club, her own television network, countless spiritual teachers, wellness programs, podcasts, and several decades of encouraging Americans to discover their authentic selves, one wonders what remains to be discovered.

Have Winfrey's followers finally accumulated enough wisdom? Will the great journey toward self-actualization at last be complete? Or is there another missing piece of the human soul that requires an enormous LED screen to locate?

Sphere of influence

This is familiar territory for Winfrey. As early as 2001, she was charging $185 for all-day Live Your Best Life workshops. Two years later, she brought the program to Seattle, where 2,700 admirers assembled for seven hours of inspirational instruction.

A reporter covering a 2003 session in Seattle described a spiritual revival, complete with a congregation and a preacher wearing diamonds and high heels.

In 2014 came an eight-city arena tour called "The Life You Want Weekend," with spiritual advisers, exercises in self-discovery, and corporate sponsors. Another arena wellness tour followed in 2020.

So there is nothing particularly surprising about Winfrey selling enlightenment in Las Vegas. The Sphere is a perfectly plausible venue for her particular brand of uplift.

Nor is there anything inherently hypocritical about charging people to help them improve themselves. The more interesting question is what Winfrey has been teaching all these years and whether her extraordinary life actually supports it.

The preacher girl

Oprah Winfrey is a remarkable American success story.

Born in rural Mississippi in 1954, she endured poverty, instability, and sexual abuse before becoming one of the most successful broadcasters in television history. Her rise required tremendous determination, but determination alone doesn't explain it.

Winfrey possessed an extraordinary gift for communication. She could listen to a stranger with such apparent concentration that millions of people watching at home felt included in the conversation. She understood instinctively where the emotional center of a story lay. She could coax a confession, recognize a moment of vulnerability, or make a famous person seem briefly ordinary.

The origins of that talent are worth examining.

Oprah grew up in the Baptist church. Her grandmother taught her to read, using the Bible among other texts. By the age of 3, Oprah was standing before congregations reciting verses about the Resurrection.

The women in the front pews told her grandmother that the little girl was gifted. Winfrey heard this often enough that she began to believe it.

Her Christianity was no casual inheritance. In a 2015 interview with AARP, Winfrey recalled being baptized around 8 years old, after agonizing for days over whether she was prepared to renounce sin.

"And, my God, did I take it seriously!" she recalled.

Indeed, she described herself as "a zealot who irritated every one of my third-grade friends." Her classmates had a nickname for her: "the preacher girl."

Soon she was performing poetry and sermons in churches around Nashville. In an interview with the Academy of Achievement, Winfrey traced her broadcasting career directly to those childhood performances.

But Christianity gave Winfrey more than her first audience.

A child of God

By her own account, Christianity gave Winfrey the confidence to imagine a future radically different from the one her circumstances seemed to promise.

At 14, after years of sexual abuse, Winfrey became pregnant. She has spoken about the shame and despair she experienced, including thoughts of ending her life. In that same AARP interview, she recalled turning to God in her desperation. If she was going to die, she reasoned, God would have to take her life. Otherwise, she would live and somehow find a way through.

She survived. Her baby, born prematurely, did not.

What stands out in her account is that she didn't describe suddenly discovering some unsuspected reservoir of inner strength. She described appealing to God.

Growing up without a father had made the preacher's assurance that God was her Father especially powerful. She took it literally. Jesus, she reasoned, was her brother.

In a 2015 podcast appearance, Winfrey explained that believing she was a child of God, and that she could do all things through Christ, gave her confidence even when she felt alone and unloved. She credited that relationship with God for helping make her the person she became.

From Christ to 'Christ consciousness'

Winfrey has never disavowed the Christian faith of her childhood. When explaining how she survived those early years and became who she is, she continues to credit the old-fashioned Christianity she grew up with.

But the eclectic, New Age-inflected spirituality of higher consciousness, personal truth, and divinity within the self that she has since built into a billion-dollar empire represents a very different theology from the one expressed in Philippians 4:13.

Perhaps its clearest expression came in 2008, when Winfrey hosted a series of online seminars with spiritual writer Eckhart Tolle, whose book "A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose" she had selected for her book club.

During the seminars, Winfrey recalled hearing a preacher describe God as jealous when she was in her late 20s. The idea troubled her. How could an all-loving, omnipresent God also be jealous? She said the experience began a search for something beyond doctrine. She had finally come to understand Jesus as a teacher of "Christ consciousness," a way of awakening to a divine presence within.

It's easy to see the appeal of this more accommodating Jesus. But one wonders how well such a theology would have served that desperate, lost 14-year-old.

Emma McIntyre | Getty Images

The gift of self

Transformation in Christ famously requires a kind of death. The ultimate victory comes at the price of surrender.

The gospel according to Oprah offers an altogether different revelation: You already possess everything you need to become your best self.

Winfrey was unusually well equipped to preach it. She knew the power of personal testimony and understood how a painful experience could become a story of transformation. Her television program had long featured confessions, reconciliations, and dramatic changes of heart. Increasingly, these became lessons in how to live.

And there is much to admire in her message. Self-examination, gratitude, and the effort to overcome destructive habits are worthwhile pursuits. Nor is there anything dishonest about charging for guidance.

But the promise of self-discovery has a peculiar problem: How do you know when you've discovered enough?

Somewhere within you is a truer, better, more fulfilled version of yourself. A book helps you glimpse it. A guru reveals another obstacle. A workshop uncovers another wound. You experience an awakening, only to discover that another breakthrough awaits.

There is always another aha moment.

The way and the truth

Christianity's central revelation, by contrast, concerns something that has already happened: Christ came, died, and rose. Believers may spend their lives struggling to understand and live according to it, but they aren't waiting for Christianity's next installment.

And Christianity makes demands that Winfrey's therapeutic spirituality tends to soften. It insists that truth exists independently of our preferences, and that some of our desires may be wrong.

What happens when you look inside and don't find any light? What happens when your "authentic self" turns out to be selfish, foolish, or cruel?

These questions are particularly awkward in Winfrey's case.

She knows where she found the strength to survive. What is less clear is whether the spirituality she now offers millions could have provided the same strength.

Perhaps Winfrey is a prophet who misunderstands herself.

She preaches the dignity of the individual, the possibility of redemption, the power of hope, and the conviction that suffering need not determine one's future. Her own life is persuasive evidence for these truths. Yet the faith she credits with making that life possible located its source outside herself.

For decades, Winfrey has told Americans that the answers are already inside them. Next April, they can finally discover those answers on one of the world's largest LED screens.

Tickets start at $145.

Peter Thiel has everything. Maybe he just wants to be 19 again.

I went to see Peter Thiel deliver one of his "Antichrist" lectures in Nashville, Tennessee, recently.

It was held in the Grand Lodge of the Masonic Temple of Freemasons, a beautiful old building just up the street from Nashville’s famous Broadway strip.

To my right were two enthusiastic Indian men in their mid-20s. I didn’t talk to them, but they seemed like girls at a Taylor Swift concert.

Doors opened at five, the lecture started at six. I wanted to be there early for maximum people-watching. I was curious who exactly was going to these lectures.

Peter Thiel was a member of the original “PayPal mafia," so he’s of obvious interest to techies. Since PayPal, he’s continued to build and invest in other tech projects, most recently Palantir, which has been controversial. (Some people worry about its surveillance possibilities.)

Thiel is also a notable conservative and has generously contributed to like-minded political and cultural causes. Rumors often swirl among right-leaning creatives and artists, who among them might be getting precious “Thiel bucks.”

Apocalypse-maxxing

But now, with his fortune made and his iconic status locked in, Thiel had branched out into a new area: religious and philosophical discourse.

In his "Antichrist" lectures, Thiel was discussing the philosophical ramifications of a world dictator — as described in the New Testament — who would inevitably rise up in a climate of constant fearmongering and societal decline.

So would the attendees of Thiel’s lectures be students of philosophy and biblical history? Well, probably not.

I suspected most Thiel fans were still mostly fascinated by his vast wealth and technological genius, his relationship with Elon Musk, his thoughts on late-Trumpism. Things like that.

But if he wanted to talk about Aristotle and biblical prophecy, well OK, they were willing to hear about that.

Young and conservative in America

I pulled up in my Uber in front of the Grand Lodge. Attendees were mingling on the steps outside, along with an impressive amount of security personnel.

As with most conservative events, there were a lot of young men dressed in coats and ties. They too were gathered on the front stairs, as cars and ride-shares pulled up, delivering more guests for the event. It looked a little like a movie premiere at times.

I passed through security and entered the building. Inside, there was more security and an airport-style screening machine. More young men in coats and ties were gathered there as well.

I noticed how happy everyone looked. For these guys, living under the constant weight of wokeism (even in Tennessee), tonight was a moment of unity and camaraderie.

You could see it in their faces. What a relief it was to come together like this. Especially around a figure like Peter Thiel, a shining example of conservative competence, excellence, and success.

VIP seating

I eventually made it to my seat in the VIP section. I introduced myself to the man on my left. He was a pastor and had recently run for governor in his state but lost in the Republican primary.

To my right were two enthusiastic Indian men in their mid-20s. I didn’t talk to them, but they seemed like girls at a Taylor Swift concert, anxious and impatient to see their hero in the flesh.

I have to admit, I was excited too. It was fun being in that room. I kept scanning the audience. Smart, good-looking people everywhere. Everyone buzzing with anticipation ...

White vs. black

Without fanfare, Thiel came to the podium and began his talk. People settled in. He mostly read his lecture, which wasn’t ideal, but he was engaging. And there were some funny bits.

I found his attire interesting. He was dressed all in white: white T-shirt, white skinny jeans, futuristic white sneakers. What does that mean? I wondered.

For that matter, why is the Antichrist such an important concept for Thiel? How does it relate to him?

Leftist critics say these lectures are a way for Thiel to strike back at those who would try to restrict Palantir. Others wonder if Thiel will become an “Antichrist” himself, if Palantir becomes an invasive surveillance apparatus.

Either way, if he’s dressing all in white, Thiel must think of himself as the “good guy.”

Remembrance of things past

Another thought I had: Peter Thiel was a philosophy major at Stanford as an undergrad, after which he went to Stanford Law School, where he began his pursuit of money, power, and influence.

What if now that he has achieved so much, he feels isolated and alone and nostalgic for his pre-celebrity youth?

What if the best memories of his life were those years at Stanford, where, while still a teenager, he spent late nights with his fellow philosophy students talking about “stoicism” and “ethics” and “the ultimate purpose of life”?

What if those undergrad days were the last moments of innocence and genuine intellectual curiosity he had before feeding himself into the capitalist technology machine?

Maybe this lecture series was his attempt to return to those carefree days, when he didn’t have to travel with a security detail, before he was forced into the technocratic hero/villain roles he will never escape.

Maybe Peter Thiel wants to be 19 again. A student. A lover of knowledge. Without all the baggage his fame and fortune have forced on him.

Europe is burning. Does anyone still care enough to save it?

We may be witnessing the beginning of the end of Europe.

It's October 18, 2026, as I write; who knows what more will have happened in European cities by the time you read this? Since yesterday, rioters have burned down much of the 143-year-old town hall in Limoges, France. In Milan, masked mobs have looted stores, set fires, and battled police in the square outside the magnificent Duomo cathedral.

It's like watching your cousins' house burn while the arsonists laugh and your cousins argue over whether to call the firefighters.

In Paris, cars burn and shops are ransacked. In some of the most chaotic footage, badly outnumbered police appear to be in retreat, their vehicles speeding through smoke-filled streets as masked rioters chase them and hurl objects at the cars.

Even Joan of Arc wasn't spared. In Paris, masked demonstrators climbed the statue of France's patron saint and plastered it with political stickers. In Toulouse, rioters draped another statue of Joan in a yellow vest and hung a Palestinian flag from it.

Nearly 2,400 people were arrested across France. Historic buildings have been torched, businesses looted, and hundreds of police officers injured. The authorities themselves have acknowledged that radical far-left groups and criminals are exploiting the unrest.

'C'est pas la cause!'

And what does the mainstream media call this spectacle? A "protest against the rising cost of living," or a show of frustration with educational inequality. The Guardian explains that the movement began with complaints about teacher shortages and deteriorating schools before expanding into nationwide demonstrations against inequality and falling living standards.

Perhaps that's how the protests began. But what does a shortage of teachers have to do with burning down a 19th-century town hall? How does smashing the windows of a luxury boutique improve conditions in a classroom?

Take a look at the footage of looters helping themselves to luxury goods. Whatever grievances brought people into the streets, there is nothing remotely political or principled about this. It's theft, vandalism, and destruction, committed by people who apparently believe that anything they can seize or smash is theirs for the taking.

One particularly miserable video from Paris shows a woman desperately trying to stop a group of looters from destroying a shop. "C'est pas la cause!" she cries repeatedly — roughly, "That's not what this cause is about!" The men ignore her, laughing as they continue ransacking the place. She seems genuinely bewildered that anyone claiming to protest injustice would behave this way.

Against civilization

The rioters aren't merely destroying property. They're attacking the physical inheritance of a civilization. In Limoges, the town hall survived two world wars before a mob set it ablaze. In Paris, monuments and public spaces that have belonged to generations of French citizens become stages for intimidation and disorder.

And France is hardly alone. This weekend, violent clashes have also erupted in Belgium and Italy, while student riots in Albania earlier in the week left government buildings in flames. The grievances vary, but the scenes have become disturbingly familiar: burning barricades, ransacked businesses, and police struggling to contain mobs that seem to regard every public grievance as an invitation to destruction.

As in the Black Lives Matter riots in America in 2020, "protest" has become an all-purpose excuse for criminality. We are expected to regard the wreckage as an unfortunate side effect of people demanding justice, rather than evidence of a society losing its ability to enforce the most basic rules of civilized life.

And what of Europe's leaders? French President Emmanuel Macron has condemned the rioters, promised arrests and punishment, and authorized additional security measures. Fine. But why were mobs able to overwhelm police, loot businesses, and burn public buildings in the first place? How is it possible that a historic town hall, with people still inside, could be invaded and deliberately set on fire?

Diversity's downside

The media does not like to mention this, but it's obvious to anyone with eyes: Watch these videos and you'll see crowds made up predominantly of young men who appear to be of sub-Saharan African, North African, or Middle Eastern descent. Which raises another question: To what extent is this failure of public order the result of years of unchecked mass immigration from third-world Muslim countries?

France's leaders have spent decades celebrating diversity and invoking the supposedly universal values of the French Republic. Macron has likened French culture to a river fed by many tributaries. But a river can only absorb so much before it changes course. French soil has no magical properties that automatically instill centuries of traditions and values in anyone who sets foot on it.

And the numbers are hardly trivial. France had 9.3 million foreign-born residents in 2024, up 21% from a decade earlier. A French Senate investigation this July identified nearly €2 billion (about $2.2 billion) in asylum-related spending last year, without counting certain health, education, and welfare expenses. The same report complained that failed asylum-seekers frequently remain in the country despite orders to leave. This is an enormous undertaking for a state already struggling to provide the services its citizens expect.

NurPhoto/Getty Images

'New' France

And why is it that so many of those who are supposed to be assimilating into French society seem instead to be embracing the politics of the global far left, with its loyalties and grievances extending far beyond France?

Jean-Luc Mélenchon's radical-left France Unbowed party has discovered a powerful constituency in the immigrant-heavy suburbs. In the 2024 European elections, the party made the Palestinian cause a centerpiece of its campaign, and 62% of Muslim voters backed its list. Mélenchon celebrated the emergence of what he called a "new France". But what holds this new France together? What shared loyalties, traditions, or obligations bind it to the old one? Those questions deserve more than another sermon about the virtues of diversity.

Time will tell, but it looks increasingly as though Europe's political leadership has lost the will to defend what it governs. Most of us have watched an elderly relative lose the will to live. When that happens, the person usually dies in short order. Something similar seems to have overtaken Europe's governing class.

Maybe it's too early to deliver a eulogy. But what is "too soon" today may be too late tomorrow.

Death in the family

How else but with rage and grief is one supposed to react to watching the world he knew being destroyed?

Europe and the United Kingdom are, in a sense, part of an American's patrimony and of any Westerner's. America is a descendant, now a cousin, of England. France lent us help in the American Revolution. Enlightenment ideas that built the modern West flowed between us.

To see the destruction in Europe is not like watching a distant star go supernova. It's like watching your cousins' house burn while the arsonists laugh and your cousins argue over whether to call the firefighters.

Are we witnessing the end of what the 20th century left us? That was an era in which we at least tried to preserve the best of our physical and political heritage, building on top of it as times progressed. We understood that civilization required active stewardship. Borders needed policing, laws needed enforcing, and the inheritance of previous generations needed protecting.

Now the police are struggling to hold the streets, and the guardians of Europe's cultural treasures appear powerless to stop their destruction.

I'm from the 20th century. No one in my cohort or above could ever have imagined we would live to see such times. We were foolish to believe that our first-world West would tick along without active stewardship, and now we're experiencing the sorrow of our folly.

Think of the final scene in the original "Planet of the Apes." Charlton Heston's character, believing himself stranded on an alien planet, comes upon the ruins of the Statue of Liberty, half-buried in the sand. He realizes he has been on Earth all along. Everything that made it home has been destroyed — by his own people.

"We finally really did it," he says, before collapsing to his knees and cursing those responsible.

Watching Europe today feels like living through that scene. Except this isn't a movie. And it's terrible.

My publisher thought my new thriller was too political. So I found another.

There are three high bars in the modern literary trade — writing a good novel, getting it published, and selling it to the public.

I’ve cleared the first two with my new political-thriller mystery, “The Camelot Trail,” which comes out November 17. Now I have to clear the third.

I committed another contemporary heresy in 'Paper Tigers': I gave the character I politically disagree with dignity and wit.

That last bar used to be lower once you cleared the first two. Publishers, even smaller ones, had a built-in promotional pipeline. They would set up radio interviews and nationwide book signings and send review galleys to genre-specific media like Analog for science fiction, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine for mysteries, and Romantic Times for, yes, romance novels.

But that was the 20th century, when reading was still commonplace and before the internet atomized audiences. The publishing business has changed in other ways too.

Heroes wanted

At the turn of the millennium, "Harry Potter" triggered a reading boom among young and old alike. J.K. Rowling established her fantasy universe with a strong male lead, and boys showed up in force. A 2006 Scholastic study found that 57% of boys ages 5 to 17 had read "Harry Potter," compared with 51% of girls.

The best-seller lists of the 2000s were also thick with male-driven thrillers and mysteries from Lee Child, Dan Brown, Vince Flynn, John Grisham, Harlan Coben, and others. Their readership was hardly confined to men. Men and traditional women still appreciate alpha males.

Yet over the next decade, publishing and Hollywood increasingly came to regard the traditional male hero as something requiring correction.

I noted the latter tendency eight years ago in my first article for the American Spectator. Marking the 10th anniversary of the action-thriller hit “Taken,” I wrote that a film about a heroic white father rescuing his kidnapped daughter from Albanian sex traffickers would never be greenlit in 2018. Radical feminists would reject the original story as patriarchal toxic masculinity.

Their “Taken” remake, I joked, would depict the father as a cretin while the minority-race mother kicks white male ass to save their mixed-race gay son from a white-supremacist Christian cult. Whether the resulting movie would be laughed off the screen would matter less than the message.

Male jail

Consider Rachel Zegler explaining Disney’s new “Snow White”:

“She’s not going to be saved by the prince,” Zegler said. “And she’s not going to be dreaming about true love. She’s dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be.”

So get with the program, all you silly girls dreaming about true love and Prince Charming, and you useless boys with no hero to emulate or damsel to rescue.

They can still find both archetypes in books from independent publishers.

Publishing itself is overwhelmingly female. The Association of American Literary Agents’ 2023 membership survey found 82.1% of respondents identified as "cis women," versus 14% as "cis men." The organization’s DEI committee explicitly describes agents as “gatekeepers” and says part of its mission is to advance AALA as an “anti-racist organization.”

The AALA does not, of course, publish a sign reading STRAIGHT WHITE MALE HEROES NEED NOT APPLY. But if you are a straight white male writing novels about masculine heroes and sexy women, you can draw your own conclusions.

I did.

Heretic's tale

I’ve written five books, including what I immodestly consider a Great American Novel, “Paper Tigers.” It’s about two copy aides at the Washington Post who discover that chemistry trumps ideology. My Christmas romantic fantasy, “The Christmas Spirit,” has become a Yuletide perennial among some readers.

So why haven’t you heard of either book?

Because they were put out by small independent publishers willing to offer readers things the majors increasingly seem embarrassed by — in my case, romantic tough guys and beautiful feminine women who appreciate the opposite sex.

By 2020, I had little expectation that those once-unremarkable elements would win me a top agent, let alone a mainstream publisher. And I committed another contemporary heresy in “Paper Tigers”: I gave the character I politically disagree with dignity and wit.

That’s rather important in a romantic comedy. It may also help explain why Hollywood has largely abandoned the kind of romantic comedy in which men and women are permitted to like one another.

The trade-off with boutique publishers is promotion. They simply don’t have the budgets and machinery of the majors.

Lou Aguilar

The thrill is gone

Which brings me back to “The Camelot Trail.”

It is book two of my political-thriller mystery series featuring young Washington private detectives Mark Tristan and Neil Cork. In “The Washington Trail,” they tackle what begins as the simple case of a beautiful UNC co-ed dumped by her D.C.-based fiancé. The intrigue escalates into a deadly political conspiracy.

A political thriller has to be timely.

“The Washington Trail” came out in August 2024, and the story takes place in February of that year. But I wrote it in 2023, when Donald Trump had what appeared to be a likelier future as a prisoner than as president. I had to anticipate the political situation a year ahead, knowing that a single contrary development could derail months of work.

I submitted the manuscript that October. Aethon Books accepted it and offered me a contract for two more novels in the series.

By the time “The Washington Trail” appeared the following summer, its plot was still on the cutting edge.

Then real life started behaving like a political thriller.

I turned in the second book, “The Camelot Trail,” last June, in time for what I hoped would be a lucrative pre-Christmas release.

The Aethon editors balked. They apparently considered the book too political to have broad commercial appeal — which I understood to mean too politically incorrect — and gave me a choice: Soften the politics or take back full rights to the series, including de-publication of “The Washington Trail.”

Blazing a 'Trail'

I had to weigh the two options carefully.

“The Camelot Trail” follows Tristan and Cork as they bodyguard an expatriate English literature professor forced to flee Britain in fear for his life. His Excalibur Movement, urging a return to Arthurian chivalry among young men, has drawn threats from Islamists, feminists, and a British government increasingly hostile to him. He finds refuge in America, but a massive Excalibur rally planned for the National Mall once again makes him a target.

Softening the politics would have required a full rewrite, with no chance of making the Christmas season.

Finding another publisher could cost me the same window.

I chose option two.

I contacted World Castle Publishing, the publisher of “The Christmas Spirit,” which has sold well for the company every Christmas. On the strength of that book, World Castle agreed to keep “The Camelot Trail” on the original schedule and republished “The Washington Trail” this summer.

“The Camelot Trail” comes out November 17.

Now I really have to clear that third bar.

I didn’t understand time until she died

My aunt recently passed away after a long, grueling battle with cancer. An incredibly decent woman, she spent her final years insisting that time is our only non-renewable asset and that the hands on the clock move faster every year you stay alive.

When I was younger, I dismissed this as little more than garden-variety elder sentimentality. Standing at her grave on a rainy Sunday morning, I finally understood what she meant.

We built the effortless paradise our ancestors could only dream of, only to discover that it can make life feel like one long weekend.

In the 19th century, a French philosopher named Paul Janet offered a mathematical explanation for the subjective acceleration of time. He argued that each passing year feels proportionally shorter for a very specific reason. To a 2-year-old child, twelve months equals 50% of all known reality. By the time a person hits 50, that same year accounts for a rather pathetic 2% of their personal timeline. Janet's arithmetic offers an elegant explanation for why the years seem to shrink, though it doesn't tell us much about what is happening inside our skulls.

Reeling in the years

A study published earlier this year offers a more complicated explanation. Researchers have long suggested that time seems to accelerate as we age because adulthood lacks the novelty of childhood and adolescence. When every day resembles the last, we have fewer distinctive memories to look back on, making entire years seem to disappear.

Researchers examined 120 adults, ranging in age from 20 to 91, and found no significant relationship between how quickly participants felt the previous decade had passed and either the number of personal memories they recalled or the importance they attached to those memories. Instead, the sensation of accelerating time was associated with poorer cognitive performance, particularly on a test of delayed memory recall.

The findings suggest that our ability to form new memories may help explain why time seems to speed up as we age. They also raise an uncomfortable question about how much of our lives we actually remember.

Wasted on the way

Consider the difference between stepping onto an airport shuttle in a strange city and making your daily commute to work. In the unfamiliar city, you notice everything: the smell of diesel, the strange angle of the streetlights, the driver's odd accent, and the dodgy-looking individual eyeing your wallet. Decades later, you may still remember that seven-minute ride.

Contrast that with your daily commute. You have driven that specific stretch of road thousands of times. The route is so familiar that you barely need to think about it. You arrive at your desk with 40 minutes missing from your conscious existence, unable to recall much of what happened between your driveway and the office.

Smartphones have given us another remarkably efficient way to make hours disappear. Tens, perhaps hundreds, of millions around the world spend their afternoons tapping on glass screens, watching short videos of strangers selling snake oil or arguing over trivial issues. The ultimate joke of the digital age involves paying hefty sums for a device that competes so relentlessly for our attention that we barely notice our own lives passing.

Even our attempts to preserve memories can interfere with forming them. In a 2014 study, psychologist Linda Henkel found that people who photographed objects during a museum tour subsequently remembered fewer details about them than people who simply observed them. The effect wasn't universal — taking more focused photographs produced different results — but the finding raises an interesting possibility. A parent filming a child's piano recital might come away with a beautiful MP4 file and surprisingly little memory of the performance itself.

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Where the time goes

Family life has its own peculiar relationship with time. Raising kids feels like an endless march through tedious chores — changing diapers, insisting that Legos not be put in one's mouth, packing lunch boxes, folding laundry, and driving to soccer practice. Yet parents, from Boston to Brisbane, are shocked by how quickly their toddlers turn into college freshmen.

Kids force constant novelty into a household through broken bones, lost teeth, spontaneous questions about death, and the unexpected introduction of garden creatures into the living area. Individual days can feel agonizingly long because every hour requires attention, yet the years somehow fly by in retrospect.

Modern society has, in many ways, made convenience the guiding principle of daily life. We tap an icon to order takeout. We stream movies dictated by predictive algorithms. We substitute memes and text messages for actual human voices. We built the effortless paradise our ancestors could only dream of, only to discover that it can make life feel like one long weekend.

And yet some of our most enduring memories come from doing the same things over and over again. Repeating specific holiday meals or annual camping trips may seem like a mindless, even pointless, routine to an outsider. It is not. Those moments become lasting markers in our memories. No one remembers a random Tuesday from six years ago, but everyone remembers the Thanksgiving when the oven exploded or the road trip when the radiator burst and Dad used some colorful language to convey his thoughts. Traditions give us memorable moments to return to as time moves on.

Now that my aunt is gone, I keep thinking about those Sundays at her house. I think of the roast dinners, the endless slices of cake, the hot tea, and her constant reminders to do something useful with my life.

At the time, I thought those Sundays would go on forever.

Not 'Those' Socialists!

Are there any leftists willing to condemn totalitarians? Paul Mason's new book shows there is at least one. Offering a selective, but not irresponsible, history of Communist and revolutionary ideas, Reds pleads with the author's fellow socialists not to repeat the mistakes that cost the lives of millions. Although he celebrates Marx, Mason summons his fellow leftists to contemplate Communist crimes so they are not repeated. How many failures does it take before the argument that real communism has not yet been tried ceases to work?

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