Tag Archives: memoir

Five Days in November

Posted on June 16, 2026 by smellincoffee

In his memoir of working in the Secret Service, Within Arm’s Reach, Dan Emmett said that he was inspired by seeing an agent on television jump onto the presidential convertible during the JFK assassination to join the service. That agent … Continue reading →

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A Time to Heal

Posted on June 11, 2026 by smellincoffee

What possesses a twenty-year old to read five hundred page biography of a president he knows nothing about? Evidently, I was impressed by his speechwriting. In December 2006, President Ford died, and I was honestly grieved. In my ‘memorial’ post … Continue reading →

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Decision Points

Posted on May 14, 2026 by smellincoffee

I have a ….complicated relationship with George W. Bush. He was the president when I was in high school, and most importantly during 9/11: his “I can hear you!” response still makes me want to find a table, stand on … Continue reading →

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Inside Camp David

Posted on April 23, 2026 by smellincoffee

President Herbert Hoover found himself homesick during his term in office in D.C, and decided to buy some land with his own money to develop as a mountain retreat. While security concerns did add some infrastructure, like telephone lines, the … Continue reading →

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The Sober Diaries

Posted on April 1, 2026 by smellincoffee

In the afterwords of The Authenticity of Project, author Clare Pooley noted that it was her attempt to capture in fiction something she’s done in fact: change her life through honesty. She’d done it by blogging her journey to sobriety, … Continue reading →

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Fresh Air with Terry Grosz

Posted on November 21, 2025 by smellincoffee

When it’s time for me to do my annual writeup in a month or so, I will have to mention the Black Swan event that was game warden-oriented books suddenly exploding onto the scene, bursting out of nowhere like a … Continue reading →

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Riding with Evil

Posted on September 19, 2025 by smellincoffee

Ken Croke spent two years living a double life, one in which the ATF agent’s suburbanite existence was increasingly overshadowed by his second life as a sergeant in arms for the notorious PAGANS motorcycle club. The story unfolds in the … Continue reading →

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From the Inside Out: Twin Tower Escapes

Posted on September 8, 2025 by smellincoffee

Erik Ronningen came close to death several times on 9/11 as he made his way from the heights above Manhattan to the relative safety of the sidewalks below. The day after, while comparing notes with his wife, Ronningen was struck … Continue reading →

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Short rounds: Fawlty Towers, Samuel Adams, and John Dickinson

Posted on July 21, 2025 by smellincoffee

I’m not sure that posting something about this here is altogether appropriate given that it’s not an audiobook, despite being listed on Audible. This is the audio recordings of Fawlty Towers, the award-winning British comedy from the 1970s, made available … Continue reading →

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Reckoning with the Public Library

Posted on July 16, 2025 by smellincoffee

Recently an article at The Free Press which attributed the decline of the public library to the fact that they’ve become homeless shelters has been causing some chatter in some online librarian communities. While looking into it, this book was … Continue reading →

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