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.

A Tribute to Telnaes

    [Before I move back to the past, where I belong and where we all now wish to be, excuse me again for writing about the present and the THING many of us wish to avoid. But, as newspapers cease publishing and good journalists disappear to subterranean places like Substack, it is worth taking some time to tell you about Telnaes who now resides there.]

Democracy Dies in Darkness and Irony

   The Washington Post just won a couple of Pulitzers. Credit for one of them should go to Ann Telnaes who is no longer with The Post. She also won a Pulitzer in 2001 for editorial cartooning and this one is for "Illustrated Reporting and Commentary." The Pulitzer people say it was "For delivering piercing commentary on powerful people and institutions with deftness, creativity – and a fearlessness that led to her departure from the news organization after 17 years."
   While The Post still gets the credit for the Pulitzer which is based on her work, it should be noted that she felt it necessary to leave that paper after another of her editorial cartoons was 'spiked.' It "showed a group of media executives bowing before then President-elect Donald Trump while offering him bags of money, including Post owner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos." She has indicated that it was not published because of what it portrayed. Her editor, David Shipley, said that it was not published because it was somewhat redundant, in that there had already been too many illustrating similar themes. Redundancy in Washington is hard to avoid these days.
   Mr. Shipley himself later resigned after Mr. Bezos indicated that subjects in the "Opinion Section" needed to be restricted in favour of those emphasizing free markets and personal liberties.
   Ruth Marcus left after "she said the newspaper’s management decided not to run her commentary critical of Bezos’ policy." Others left after Mr. Bezos would not allow the Post  to endorse Kamala Harris. Perhaps the Post's slogan, "Democracy Dies in Darkness" needs to be re-evaluated by the marketing folks at that publication. 
   I have kept my subscription because the Washington Post still produces good pieces and writers like Ron Charles need to be supported.
 
   So do the people who have left. The work of Ann Telnaes, along with an archive of her cartoons is found at "Open Windows"(https://anntelnaes.com/") which offers  "A view into an uncertain time of isolation and frustrations, but also one of the resiliency of the human spirit."
   Among the writings on her Substack one finds an article which illustrates that cartoons are important and that one can be even more severely punished for publishing them. Remember Charlie Hebdo? She published a story about that atrocity in the Washington Post and she deserves the credit for it, not the Post. Here is a portion from, "Charlie Hebdo, One Year Later," Jan. 7, 2016:

  "One year ago today two masked gunman entered the Paris offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and gunned down twelve people, including five cartoonists. The murderers claimed they were avenging the prophet Muhammed and by the end of two days of terror, five more people were dead.
   In the days immediately after the attack I did hold on to one hope. Surely now that people had been brutally murdered the world would finally and unequivocally support the universal right to freedom of expression, including cartoonists. But it didn’t happen. Support and solidarity quickly turned to questioning the motives of the attacked cartoonists....
   So attacks continued on cartoonists and bloggers who dare to criticize governments, challenge institutions and traditional thinking. It seems like the quantified support for Charlie Hebdo has only allowed for repressive governments and humorless dictators to establish their own list of offensive images, mainly any criticism which ridicules them and threatens their power....
   The only protection these brave cartoonists have is for the world to speak loudly for their right to freely express themselves....
   Banning offensive images either officially or through intimidation will only end up allowing intolerant individuals and institutions to change drawing a red line for cartoonists into drawing an enclosure for them."

   That the cartoonists were criticized more than the killers was surprising as I noted in this post: The Delicate Subject of Cartoons.

Sources: 
  The Post can be given a little credit for reporting this story about a journalist who chose to leave the paper after being censored. See: 
" Ann Telnaes, Who Quit Washington Post in Protest, Wins Pulitzer for 'fearlessness' in Commentary: A longtime editorial cartoonist for The Washington Post who quit in protest after editors killed her sketch of the newspaper’s owner and other media executives bowing before President Donald Trump, has won the Pulitzer Prize for illustrated reporting and commentary," Lisa Baumann, May 5, 2025. 
  "A longtime editorial cartoonist for The Washington Post who quit in protest early this year after editors killed her sketch criticizing the Post owner and other media chief executives working to curry favor with Trump has won the Pulitzer Prize for illustrated reporting and commentary."