Oddments (2) Year-End 2025

 For a definition of "oddments" see "Oddments (1) where you will also learn about the CASTRATI and how pickleball has contributed to noise pollution. 

Local Headline of the Year
   In "Survival of the Weakest" I suggest that there seems to be a surge in psychological issues (and the acronyms required to describe them), and that we are all increasingly mentally unstable. More proof is found in this headline: "LHSC Ending Unlimited Mental Health Benefits Saying Popularity Made It Too Expensive," Matthew Trevithick, CBC News, Dec. 5, 2025.
"London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) is getting rid of unlimited mental health benefits for staff, blaming ballooning costs and former administrators for implementing it without proper due diligence or oversight....Two years on, the man tasked with overhauling LHSC argues it was just one of several bad decisions made by those no longer in charge at southwestern Ontario's largest hospital network."
   Given that most of the headlines this year were depressing ones, here are some that are funny: HEADLINES. 

TV ADS
   

Those who don't believe in MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying) are generally only those who have not seen, over and over, the Trivago ad in which that guy appears, or those who have not watched all the ads "ON BETTING."

New Technological Developments
   The year was not a total loss. There was this, whatever it is.

A Quote or Two
 "Nevertheless, a world in which all citizens are free to compete in the marketplace of ideas, even if they hold views accurately deemed absurd and hateful by establishment elites, is better than one in which such elites control who can speak. Although it’s important not to downplay the dangers and harms associated with some of today’s most popular social media pundits—Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Tommy Robinson, Russell Brand, Nick Fuentes, and so on—we should not aim for a world in which they are prevented from advocating those views to audiences who want to hear them....Dan Williams in his cleverly named substack: Conspicuous Cognition. 

   "Reading Searle’s review, though, it struck me that very few of the many contemporary writings on the university concern its revitalization as a place to pursue excellence. We stress instead the avoidance of homogeneity, perhaps precisely because we no longer believe that we can teach people to think hard on their own. By Oliver Traldi, "John Searle's Campus War" in Fusion, Dec. 23, 2025.

    "The idea that in my discipline, philosophy, there are hundreds of fine-grained dogmas (many of them concerning “social justice”) that one must accept is entirely destructive. To do philosophy effectively, you’d better be ready to say what you believe to be true and can somehow substantiate. In my more than 30-year career, I saw many failures of this sort, for understandable reasons. If you did not recite the dogma, your kids could lose their health insurance.
   I think the period of my career (roughly 1990 to 2023) corresponded to a collapse in the quality of research and publication in philosophy and other humanities and social science disciplines. In 1980, there were big, distinctive and idiosyncratic philosophers such as Michel Foucault, Richard Rorty, W.V.O. Quine, Arthur Danto and Judith Jarvis Thomson. By 2010, their voices had been muted, and perhaps no one as bold as they were could have survived grad school. My impression is that many practitioners of other disciplines feel roughly the same. Academic production is more homogenous, blander, safer and less sincere."
Fro: "As A Professor, I've Seen Woke and MAGA Censorship. Which Is Worse?", by Crispin Sartwell, The Washington Post, Oct. 13, 2025.

Wikipedia
  Recently I did a post relating to Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive, which are two projects to be highly valued. Back in 2019, I did this post about Wikipedia, "Wikipedia - Happy Birthday" which you use daily and which should also be highly valued, even if you think only AI is important. 
  Today in the Globe and Mail, they re-published an article by Simon Garfield, who you are more likely to believe: "An Encyclopedia Like No Other: How Wikipedia Became One of the Greatest Achievements of the Modern Age," July 11, 2025. Here is just a bit from it. Make one of your year-end donations to WIKIPEDIA (I have no relationship to it, but, like you, I use it all the time and do donate when they ask for help, which is fairly rare, unlike most other entities, especially at this time of year.)

   "Wikipedia, which launched Jan. 15, 2001, has remained true to its original intention, the establishment of a volunteer-edited, free, live encyclopedia, a resource able to respond immediately and predominantly accurately to changing events. Exceptionally for such a popular resource, Wikipedia does not track you or sell any of your search information. It does not carry advertisements or monetize itself beyond regular appeals to users for small donations. It is fully accountable, with every keystroke credited and dated to a specific user. It is continually trying to improve its accuracy, reach, diversity of content and contributors. And beyond all this, it is a thing relentlessly and reliably useful.
  Being both intellectually rigorous and shamelessly trivial, it reflects the world as it sees itself. Its anniversary should be a cause for celebration, an overdue confirmation, I think (due perhaps even from its many early critics), that it has become one of the greatest things online, a rare representative of the internet for good. It is also, I suggest, one of the greatest inventions of our modern age."

HAVE A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Photos - 2025

 Sunrise in the East

Sunset On the West

Credits:
1. The top two photographs are by Daniel Pullen and there are more in this article:
"Battling The Sea On The Outer Banks,' Bill McKibben, The New Yorker, Nov.12, 2025.
2. The third photo is from: "2025: The Year in Pictures - Reflections of Turbulent Times," NYT, Dec.31, 2025. The caption:

Jan. 9 Los Angeles

"A house destroyed by the Palisades fire, which killed 12 people and engulfed thousands of homes. Once known for its stunning views, the Pacific Palisades area was left unrecognizable by the blaze." Kyle Grillot for The New York Times

3.The photo of the ICE posters is from: "ICE Plans to Spend $100 Million on Influencer-Driven 'Wartime' Recruitment Campaign," The Washington Post, Drew Harwell & Joyce Sohyun Lee, Dec. 31, 2025.
  "An internal ICE document shared among immigration officials details plans to use influencers and geo-targeted ads to rapidly hire thousands of deportation officers."
4.The picture of the rubble of the East Wing is from" "New Images Offer Closer Look at Demolition For the White House Ballroom," Jonathan Edwards, The Washington Post, Dec. 31, 2025. Also lost were many old trees. 

   Pictures Are Worth Thousands of Words, But These Sum It Up For 2025

"Donald Trump’s Golden Age of Awful: A damage assessment of the President’s first year back in the White House", By Susan B. Glasser, The Atlantic, Dec.31, 2025

  "No matter how low one’s expectations were for 2025, the most striking thing about the year when Donald Trump became President again is how much worse it turned out to be.

   Did we anticipate that Trump would come back to office wanting to rule as a king, consumed by revenge and retribution, and encouraged by sycophants and yes-men who would insure that he faced few of the constraints that hampered him in his first term? Yes, but now we know that bracing for the worst did not make the inevitable any less painful. In the future, historians will struggle to describe that feeling, particular to this Trump era, of being prepared for the bad, crazy, and disruptive things that he would do, and yet also totally, utterly shocked by them."

Cashiers

 High Living in the High Country
   Cashiers is a very small town located in the mountains of North Carolina, southwest of Asheville. To pronounce the name properly say "KASH-erz" or "Cash-ERS." I suppose the demonym applied to the residents would be simply, "Cashiers." 
   The derivation of the name for the town apparently is related to the fact that those who founded it, often acted as cashiers for the gold miners in the area. Curiously enough, Cashiers is still a good name for the town, since some of those who now have homes there, handle large amounts of cash.
   There are now over 1,000 billionaires in the U.S. and Cashiers has more than its fair share. These Hillbillionaires were drawn to the area for the same reason the Vanderbilts went to Asheville;  the natural beauty, cool and clean air and peace and tranquility.
   You will likely not spot many in the town square since they tend to congregate close-by in clubs with names like "Chattooga" and "Cullasaja." A house at the latter club just sold for $12 million. At the Mountaintop Golf & Lake Club, the initiation fee will be $275,000 starting on Jan.1, which is about $375,000 Canadian if I have aroused your interest. 
  I don't think many of the rich are residing in those huge mountain homes at this time of year and I doubt if they have to cover the costs by putting them on VRBO.  Visit in the summer and fall when you can mingle with the families that provide us with Tabasco and Russell Stover candies, or perhaps play a round of golf with the Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. 
  For more information see these two articles: 
"What We Know About America's 1,135 Billionaires --- Exclusive, up-close Look at the Richest people in the U.S..." by Theo Francis and Inti Pacheco, Wall Street Journal, Sept. 6, 2025.
"The North Carolina Village Where America’s Wealthiest Go to Fly Under the Radar: Home to at least four billionaires, the low-key, ‘no frills’ enclave of Cashiers has one of the country’s highest concentrations of wealth," E.B. Solomont, Wall Street Journal, Nov. 26, 2025.
  "In the Blue Ridge Mountains, the unincorporated village has no mayor, no local police force and no central public water supply. There is a limited public sewer system, just a handful of sidewalks and one Ingles supermarket, affectionately known as "Mingles" because it is where locals tend to socialize. But what Cashiers does have is uber-wealthy homeowners who have been coming to the area for more than a century. With a full-time population of just 825 -- and at least four billionaires with homes in Cashiers -- the unincorporated village has one of the highest concentrations of wealth in the country, according to data from Altrata, a wealth-intelligence firm. It also remains one of the most under-the-radar -- by design." [Now you know where they are.]
   For 'normal' tourist information, see "Cashiers Valley, N.C. 

   For a more upscale view, see, The Laurel Magazine
If you are just curious about demonyms see: "Unobvious Demonyms." 
The Bonus:
A recent film has a demonym in the title: The Baltimorons: A Christmas Movie. That is a joke, of course, since those from that city are "Baltimoreans."

Geraldine Brook's Library

    At the beginning of the month I wrote about the library of Louise Penny. I will end it by focusing on the books in Geraldine Brook's barn. Apart from showing another collection of books in a private library, you will learn about some books you may want to acquire for your own.

   I recognized the name "Geraldine Brooks", most likely because of her journalism. An Aussie, she was a foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and contributed articles to other magazines. She has also written many books and one of them, March, resulted in a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
   Her husband was Tony Horwitz, who won a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting and passed away in 2019. He also wrote books and both of them published works of fiction, as well as non-fiction. In short, if you look up either author you will have enough reading material to take you deep into 2026. 

   Ms. Brook's books are found in a 1740s farmhouse on Martha's Vineyard. Many of Mr. Horwitz's were also there, but some were donated to libraries after his death. 

   The books are generally segregated in the categories of fiction and non-fiction. 

   

The books found between these windows are ones written by authors who have visited and stayed at the house on Martha's Vineyard. 

Sources:
  The pictures and the information are from this article: "Geraldine Brooks Takes Us On A Tour of Her Home Library: The bestselling author's collection isn't focused on fancy editions - it's full of small treasures from a literary life,' Jacob Brogan, Washington Post, Dec.20, 2025.

  The Wikipedia entries for both of them are entertaining in and of themselves. One of her books, Foreign Correspondence, is based on her attempts to track down old penpals across the world. She was born in Australia because her father " was an American big-band singer who was stranded in Adelaide on a tour of Australia when his manager absconded with the band's pay." 
  Mr. Horwitz was born in Washington. His father was the neurosurgeon who operated on the D.C. policeman, wounded during the assassination attempt on President Reagan. Mr. Horwitz collapsed while on a walk in 2019. 
  The London Public Library has several Brook's books, including the recent, Memorial Days. You will also find there, Spying on the South, the book that Horwitz was working on when he died. They also have his, Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War. 
The Bonus: 
  If you still need more to read, see the Wikipedia entry for their son, Nathaniel Horwitz, or the entry for the company "Hunterbrook." He founded it with his college friend, Sam Koppleman. All of what follows looks very interesting, but I will leave it up to you to investigate it.
   Hunterbrook is a "media company and a hedge fund that asks a question that spits in the face of old-school journalism rules: What if an investigative journalism outfit could profit directly off of the malfeasance that it uncovers?"      
   "Koppelman and Horwitz’s company is called Hunterbrook — a portmanteau between Koppelman’s middle name Hunter (after Hunter S. Thompson) and Horwitz’s Brooks (after his mother, the author Geraldine Brooks). The idea is simple, if surprising to industry insiders: They have two companies — the media company does financial investigative journalism. The financial company invests based on that work, taking short positions on a company that the newsroom is about to skewer publicly or taking long positions on its competitors.
   Based on this elevator pitch, Hunterbrook the hedge fund raised $100 million in seed cash all within the past year to invest based on the work of Hunterbrook the newsroom." For more see: "This Hedge Fund Wants to Save Investigative Journalism — By Using It to Game the Market," by By Calder McHugh, Politico Magazine,05/25/2024.

Greg Newby (R.I.P. 1965 - 2025)

 Project Gutenberg
   Over 50 years ago the American, Michael Hart began assembling a digital library of eBooks which would be freely available to everyone. There are now over 75,000 works in the collection which can be accessed by anyone with a computer. Thousands of volunteers are involved and one of the major ones was the Canadian, Greg Newby who was born in Montreal. He died in Whitehorse on Oct. 21, 2025 and his passing is worth noting.
   A thorough obituary by John Last is found in The Globe and Mail, Oct. 31, 2025: "Project Gutenberg CEO Greg Newby Helped Put a Trove of Literature Online." It begins this way:
   "Greg Newby was eight years old when he wrote a letter to Santa Claus and finished it with a simple request: “Make sure other people get things too.” 
   It was that spirit of generosity that drove Mr. Newby throughout his life as he helped spearhead one of the most significant public service projects in modern internet history: Project Gutenberg, a massive online library of more than 75,000 free, public domain texts....
   He is remembered by his colleagues at the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the non-profit overseeing the Project Gutenberg collection, as a “Fourth Industrial Revolution visionary,” who helped marshal the chaotic, creative forces of the early internet to help serve the public interest....
   Mr. Newby quickly became “undoubtedly the most consequential volunteer” in the history of the project, according to Simon Rowberry, a historian and author of The Early Development of Project Gutenberg, c.1970-2000. "
   

   He was clearly an interesting fellow, who ended up in the very far north.
  "The following year, Mr. Newby relocated to the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where he soon swapped his massive collection of science fiction books for a collection of altogether different type: retired sled dogs. Always animal lovers, Mr. Newby and Ms. Kingsley already owned five dogs when they moved into a house with eight retired huskies onsite. “All of a sudden, we had 13 dogs,” Ms. Kingsley recalls.“
   At first … we had a ‘no more than seven dogs in the house’ rule,” she said. But Mr. Newby could not resist a puppy dog stare, sneaking more and more dogs into the house while Ms. Kingsley was away. “Soon, we had 16 dogs in the house.” His family says he cared for more than 80 dogs over his lifetime.Mr. Newby’s time in the North also saw him develop his passion for outdoor pursuits, nurtured throughout a childhood of family camping trips and Boy Scout excursions. While he participated in his first ultramarathon as early as 1998, he later competed in several 100-mile sled races and Arctic ultramarathons – resulting in frostbite to his toes.
   Mr. Newby cycled through several other jobs in his last few years: a stint at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia, where he oversaw the purchase of a $100-million supercomputer; a role with Compute Canada, a national research group; and finally, a period as eServices manager at the Government of Yukon. He and Ms. Kingsley have called an off-grid cabin on the shore of Lake Laberge their home for the past five years. 
   But this remoteness did not isolate him from the community of internet pioneers he had helped nurture. On message boards across the internet, news of his passing was greeted with great sadness by former students and collaborators, who admired his stoic nature and steady leadership. His final years with Project Gutenberg saw the pioneering use of new artificial intelligence technology to convert thousands of public domain texts into audiobooks, in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Microsoft. The technology was made publicly available, for free. In 2023, Time magazine named it one of the best inventions of the year."
Sources: 
   Mr. Newby's website is here: "Greg Newby's Personal Pages."
   See the Wikipedia entry: "Gregory B. Newby." 
   More is found on the Gutenberg.org website. 
   For Canada, see also, Gutenberg Canada. 
The Bonus:
   Remember also, another massive volunteer project - INTERNET ARCHIVE.
"Closing the Book on 2025
   As another year comes to a close, we are so grateful to share all of the achievements and projects that 2025 brought us, with all of you—our amazing supporters and patrons. See below for some of our most significant moments from this year, none of which would be possible without your continued support. 
What We’ve Achieved
1 Trillion Web Pages Archive
   This year, the Wayback Machine archived its 1 trillionth webpage—making us the largest publicly available repository of web history. These web pages represent more than just numbers; they have a real impact on people's lives, research, and memory. Since 1996, the Internet Archive has worked with libraries and partners around the world to build a shared digital library of humanity’s online history: capturing websites large and small—from breaking news to forgotten personal pages—so they remain accessible for future generations. Details are provided here."

Mainstream of America - Book Series

Introduction:
   For those who have resolved to read more in 2026, here is another book series. It consists of twenty 'popular' histories relating to a country that is, as of this writing, rather unpopular. Some of the authors of these works were also 'popular', for example, Dos Passos, C.S Forester (Horatio Hornblower), Irving Stone (Van Gogh & Michelangelo) and Stewart Holbrook, known for his books about the Northwest, including Canada. The name, "Hodding Carter" will be recognized by those who are old enough to remember the presidency of Jimmy Carter.
   Reviews are provided to assist you with your decision-making and all 20 of the books are available in the Western Libraries. Even though the books were published during the 1950s-60s, some are fully available in the Internet Archive. 

   When introducing the "Mainstream of America Series" Doubleday "noted that each volume would present the past “in terms of people and their stories” without “dull dates, dim figures, lists of battles,” and vowed that the series would make history “as moving and lively as the finest fiction.” The series encompasses a vast range of American history, from the European discovery of America and early exploration to the American Revolution, westward expansion, and industrial development." Enjoy.

                    The Mainstream of America, Lewis Gannett, Editor. 1953-1966

The Age of Fighting Sail: The Story of the Naval War of 1812, Forester, C.S.
"Like the other volumes of this series, this book lacks the formal parapher-

nalia of learning with which scholars usually buttress their findings, and to which it is popularly supposed the average reader objects. This may be forgiven; what cannot be pardoned is the absence of suitable maps and charts other than the two inadequate end maps. If the reader is interested in the larger picture of the War of 1812 and the relation of sea power to the history of the age, he will go directly to Mahan, or perhaps even to Roosevelt, rather than dally with Forester; but if he wants sheer enjoyment, he can do no better than renew acquaintance with his old friend Captain Hornblower speaking with a Yankee accent and sailing Joshua Humphreys' frigates.” George F. G. Stanley, The Canadian Historical Review, Volume 38, Number 3, September, 1957, pp. 248-249.

The Age of The Moguls, Holbrook, Stewart H.
"This work by Oregon journalist and historian Stewart Holbrook (1893-1964) profiles various capitalist tycoons of the late 1800s and early 1900s, including John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, Charles Schwab, Thomas Mellon, Samuel Insull, and more, focusing primarily on how they managed to acquire their vast fortunes. Holbrook professes to using "neither gilt nor whitewash. Nor tar" in his discussions, but does argue that "no matter how these men accumulated their fortunes, their total activities were of the greatest influence in bringing the United States to its present incomparable position in the world of business and industry."
Reference & Research Book News,(Vol. 25, Issue 3).

The Angry Scar: The Story of Reconstruction, Carter, Hodding.

"Bad Times Not Forgotten; THE ANGRY SCAR: The Story of Reconstruction. By Hodding Carter. Mainstream of America Series. 425 pp. New York: Doubleday & Co. $5.95. NYT By C. Vann Woodward, Feb. 1, 1959

" Hodding Carter does not charge like a bull into this china shop of myth and history, but he is clearly not disposed to preserve all its contents uncritically. Although he lives in Mississippi and edits a newspaper in Greenville, he thinks of himself as a liberal and a moderate. Alert to the uses his opponents have made of Reconstruction legend, he is on guard against their stereotypes and their unconscious bias. It is his purpose, he writes, “to separate truth from myth and to link significant past events with the present legacies of those events." This is surely a praise worthy undertaking, but it is also a most difficult one."

Dreamers of the American Dream, Holbrook, Stewart H.

This is available in the Internet Archive.

   "Stewart Holbrook, who wrote the 2nd in the Mainstream of America Series books, The Age of Moguls, has added a 10th volume with his assembly of personalities who left their mark on America. Visionaries, crackpots, fanatics, dreamers, suffragettes, temperance workers, be-sloganned devotees of betterment in marriage, religion, sex, alcohol, labor relations, penal codes & the treatment of mental illness rub shoulders in a book which encompasses the American dream of Utopia, sobriety & the pursuit of happiness. The shouting & axe-swinging reformer, Carrie Nation, splintered saloon mirrors. At Sherrill, NY, John Humphrey Noyes, founder of the Putney Corporation of Perfectionists, fostered "complex marriage"--an apt description, since fidelity & exclusiveness in matrimony were frowned upon. Laura Bridgman, Louis Dwight, Dorothea Dix, Susan B. Anthony & Mrs Stanton fought their mercurial & protracted battles--usually in defense of the rights of others: the deaf, the blind, the insane & the weaker sex. Holbrook's summation of these prophets of Excelsior should interest anyone with even a flickering interest in the history of the country & the evolution of the society we know.--Kirkus

Experience of War: The United States in World War II ,Davis, Kenneth S.
“In his prefatory note, Davis writes that his book is "not designed to be

a formal academic history, though every effort has been made to assure

its factual accuracy. Rather, its essential purpose is literary in that it attempts to rescue from the erosions and abstractions of time something of what Webster's Dictionary, in the definition of 'experience,' calls the, 'actual living through an event or events; actual enjoyment or suffering.' "Review by: A. Russell Buchanan. Source: The Journal of American History, Vol. 52, No. 4 (Mar., 1966), pp. 862-863

The French and Indian Wars: The Story of Battles and Forts in the Wilderness 
Hamilton, Edward Pierce
This is in the Internet Archive

"Colonel Hamilton is the first to bring to these colonial wars a full understanding of the technology and to combine with it a felicity of expression. His descriptions of the colonial militia and the European armies does much to correct the erroneous impression that Englishmen never learned the lesson of fighting in the woods and does something to deflate thereputation of the militiamen as the superiors of the regulars. Robert Rogers and his rangers, too, come in for some sound re-evaluation. From these pages, there comes a much clearer appreciation of the ways in which colonial wars were fought, the hardships involved, and the real magnitude of the Anglo-American accomplishment in driving France from the continent”. Review by: Lawrence H. Leder, Source: New York History, Vol. 44, No. 1 (January, 1963), pp. 82-84.

From Lexington to Liberty: The Story of the American Revolution, Lancaster,    Bruce.
This is available in the Internet Archive

Glory, God and Gold: A Narrative History, Wellman, Paul I.
"The publishers announce Mr. Wellman's book as an informal history of the Southwest. At least the term "informal" seems to be applicable and it may be conceded at once that this is a pleasantly readable volume, whatever may be its shortcomings." Review by: Rufus Kay Wyllys. Source: Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Feb., 1955), pp. 80-81.

The House Divides: The Age of Jackson and Lincoln: From the War of  to the Civil War, Wellman, Paul I. 
This is available in the Internet Archive.

Land of Giants: The Drive to the Pacific Northwest, 1750-1950, Lavender, David
"DAVID LAVENDER'S Land of Giants will not disappoint those acquainted with his earlier works, such as Bent's Fort. As a popular, readable, generally accurate, one-volume account of the Pacific Northwest it meets a definite need."
Review by Kenneth Wiggins, Oregon Historical Quarterly, Vol.60.

The Land They Fought For: The Story of the South as the Confederacy 1832-1865, Dowdey, Clifford.
"The author's insight into human nature and adeptness at portraiture enable him in a few pithy sentences to characterize discerningly and vividly such diverse personalities as John Brown, William L. Yancey, Robert Toombs…”

Review in the New York Times, by Bell Wiley, June 12, 1955.

Land Where Our Fathers Died: The Settling of the Eastern-Shores: 1607-1735, Starkey, Marion L.

The Lonesome Road: The Story of the Negro’s Part in America, Redding, J. Saunders
This is available in the Internet Archive.

Men to Match My Mountains: The Opening of the Far West -1840-1900, Stone, Irving.

This is available in the Internet Archive.

The Men Who Made the Nation: Architects of the Young Republic ‒1782-1802, Dos Passos, John.

“For this history, Dos Passos returns to the American colonial period and early nationhood, exploring the personalities who won the nation’s independence from England: Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Adams, and George Washington."Originally called The World Turned Upside Down, The Men Who Made the Nation covers the period from 1781 to Hamilton’s death in 1804. The work crystallizes the author’s fascination with the psychology of the colonial freedom fighter and presents lessons for current American policymakers."

Mr. Wilson’s War, Dos Passos, John
“Mr. Dos Passos is well known for his ability, in fiction, to maintain at once a clear panoramic sweep of an entire era and an intimate understanding of his individual characters; this ability is a salient feature of his handling of fact in the present volume. The politics, the warfare, the social questions, the doubts and dreams and distinctive flavor of the times, everything is treated with a thrillingly readable ""you-are-there"" feeling which, however, does not detract in the least from the tolerant and knowledgeable perspective maintained from start to finish. This should stand with the finest works of Mr. Dos Passos' long and highly distinguished literary career, and is certainly a valuable contribution to the distinguished Mainstream of America Series. In fact, it would be difficult to imagine a better single-volume survey of this multifarious epoch. From Kirkus Reviews.

New Found World: How North America Was Discovered and Explored , Lamb, Harold.
“Fifth in an excellent series, this is chronologically first as it sets the stage for the subsequent volumes. The pageant of discovery Journeys to the New World with Columbus, Verrazano, Vespucci, DeSoto, Cabot, Champlain, and carries as ballast the personal dreams and natural aims which inspired all these and their fellow adventurers. Then continuing on into the 16th century, when discoverers replaced explorers flashing back to pre-history and the dawn-age hunter- ranging from the Inca civilization to the French in Canada, the book has a welcome expansiveness. It probes skillfully the economical and political causes of conquest, particularly in Italy, Spain, Portugal, France and England. It explores the development of primitive astrolabes and sextants; principles of Mercator projection and improved cartography; Hakluyt's chronicles and the published accounts of returning explorers; the intellectual forces of every type that helped shape the course of empire. The pageant of discovery is brought down to its crudest motives. Senseless warfare with the natives stemmed out of senseless quests for El Dorado. Explorers turned into ghouls and slave traders, they burned a village because a silver cup was missing, they used the seductive manners of the court to connive to get the pearls off the neck of a princess. The narrative, rich with incident, detail and quotation from primary sources deliberately individualizes history and puts it on its most instructive level. Adult readers will relish what adolescents newly awakened to their heritage will cherish.” Kirkus Reviews.

The Shackles of Power: Three Jeffersonian Decades, Dos Passos, John

"Shackles of Power completes Dos Passos’s lengthy inquiry into early American political thought with a final tribute to Thomas Jefferson, full of the lyrical passages that typify the author’s fast-paced histories. Rounding out his portrait of America’s “golden age” are treatments of James Madison, James Monroe, and John Quincy Adams.”

This Hallowed Ground: The Story of the Union Side of the Civil War , Catton, Bruce.
This is in the Internet Archive.
“...his history of the American Civil War chronicles the entire war to preserve the Union - from the Northern point of view, but in terms of the men from both sides who lived and died in glory on the fields.”

The Time Between the Wars: Armistice to Pearl Harbor, Daniels, Jonathan.
This is available on the Internet Archive.

Source:

  For more details about the "Mainstream of America" book series see:

Series Americana: Post Depression-Era Regional Literature, 1938-1980: A Descriptive Bibliography: Including Biographies of the Authors, Illustrators, and Editors, by Carol Fitzgerald.

Reading Tastes

 

London Public Library
   I received on Dec.16, from the LPL a list of the "25 most-borrowed Books of 2025". It came under the heading, "Best Books of 2025" and the sub-heading, "This Year's Hottest Books" and I will add that apparently these are "The Most Popular Books" requested by borrowers this year. (I discussed the issue of "good books" and "popular books" in: A Branch Library For Good Books. )
   What I noticed was the large number of readers waiting for books and the large number of books that have to be ordered. It appears that around 500 copies of these 25 books were purchased and that was really not enough to satisfy the demand. (These would include books in a various formats - print, large print, e-books and audio ones.) All of this translates into a considerable amount of work that has to be done by librarians, and the people delivering your "Hold" to the library of your choice. 
  I admit that I don't follow popular reading trends or authors (who are excluded here from my cut & paste job), but I did notice that a few of the books were featured on Oprah and Reese's Book Clubs, which probably accounts for some of the popularity. Fiction (F) appears to be more popular than non-fiction (N) and there are more women authors than men. (I had to check and learned that both Taylor Jenkins Reid and Mel Robbins are female.) When checking, I learned that Mel, the author of ,The Let Them Theory is also the author of The 5 Second Rule and The High 5 Habit, while Taylor also has produced some titles with numbers, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones & the Six. What this all means, I am not sure, but if you aspire to be a popular author, perhaps you should include a number in the title. As for titles, I think that, The Book Club for Troublesome Women..." is a clever one, which is likely to be chosen by many book clubs.

   Two of the non-fiction titles are about food and another is by our Prime Minister. I was surprised by the "Tuberculosis" title, but learned that the author is also a popular Y.A. novelist.
    One of the fictional works is by an author who lives in London, but has an international following. 

   Below this list, you will find another, indicating what they are reading, or waiting to read in Toronto.  (My apologies for the wobbly columns.)

                                                                                   HOLDS COPIES Alchemised (F) 80      10 All the Way to the River Love, Loss, and…(N)   75        12 Atmosphere a love story (F)    148         26 A truce that is not peace (N)    35        13 Careless people a cautionary tale of power…(N)    28         13 Don't let him in (F) 80 39 Every salad ever : from grains to greens…(N)…. 81 18 Everything is tuberculosis the history and (N) 51 7 Great big beautiful life (F) 70 30 Hello, Juliet (F) 2 15 Katabasis a novel (F) 28 13 Mother Mary comes to me (N) 88 12 My friends a novel (F) 162 25 Nightshade a novel (F) 26 25 One day, everyone will have always been against (N) 35 10 One golden summer (F) 57 27 She didn't see it coming (F) 116 25 The book club for troublesome women a novel(F) 51 11 The essential cottage cookbook simply delicious…(N) 11 8 The let them theory a life-changing tool that …(N) 126 40 The Paris Express a novel (F) 122 31 The river is waiting a novel (F) 176 25 The tenant (F) 17 23 Value(s) building a better world for all (N) 53 13 Whistle a novel (F) 0 22   

Toronto Public Libraries
   The TPL list is under the title, "What Toronto Read in 2025." It includes only the Top 10, and shows that almost 3000 copies of just those 10 books were ordered. Fiction is again more popular and it is noted that: "Torontonians went genre hopping: fantasy (Onyx Storm), romance (Great Big Beautiful Life), thriller (The God of the Woods), dark humour (The Wedding People), historical fiction (The Women) and literary fiction (Intermezzo). Nonfiction hits (The Let Them Theory, Atomic Habits, The Anxious Generation) show a desire for self-improvement and calm amid modern life’s stresses. Together, these titles were borrowed over 195,000 times.

 

                                                                               Holds      Copies

1. Onyx Storm (F) 84 191

2. The Let Them Theory (N) 851 333

3. The Women (F) 197         221
4. The Wedding People (F) 247 189

5. The God of the Woods (F) 310 146
6. Great Big Beautiful Life (F) 127 286
7. Funny Story (F) 100 192
8. Atomic Habits (N) 476    210

9. Intermezzo (F) 167 369

10. The Anxious Generation (N) 209 193

New York Public Libraries Here are the most checked out books in New York City and Mel is again the author of one of them.

1.James by Percival Everett

2.The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

3.Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros

4.Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

5.All Fours by Miranda July

6.The Let Them Theory: A Life-Changing Tool That Millions of People Can't Stop Talking About by Mel Robbins

7.Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros

8.The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

9.Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

10. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver The Bonus

I had never heard of Ms. Yarros, but learned this: "She is best known for the Empyrean fantasy book series, which will be adapted into a television series with Amazon; Yarros will serve as a non-writing executive producer. In July 2023, Waterstones indicated that it became the "fastest selling pre-order title in a single day on [the] website with [the] special edition selling out in just seven hours".The third book, Onyx Storm, was released in 2025. Yarros has indicated that the series will ultimately include five books." Don't begrudge her popularity. I also learned this: "Rebecca Yarros is disabled. She has hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (hEDS), which causes chronic pain, joint instability, and other connective tissue-related challenges."

U.S Bestsellers - 100 Years Ago

1925

Source:

Making the List: A Cultural History of the American Bestseller, 1900-1999. Michael Korda, p.49.