By Dale King Vocalist, actress and now author Toni Tennille knows a lot about love, such things as muskrat love and love that will keep us together, about touching your lover the way you want them to touch you and about doing loving things to paramours one more time. Alabama-born Cathryn Antoinette Tennille and husband, Daryl Dragon, the captain’s hat-wearing, usually … [Read more...]
Survey of global prison practices illuminating, if short on solutions
Baz Dreisinger is an associate professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in the City University of New York, where she founded the Prison-to-College Pipeline program. In this new book, she recounts her travels to nine nations to examine their prison systems and compare them with U.S. incarceration practices. Dreisinger joins a growing chorus of U.S. leaders who … [Read more...]
‘Evicted’: A numbing look at the nexus of housing and poverty
Matthew Desmond was in college when he learned that a bank had taken his boyhood home, forcing his parents to move. “I remember being deeply sad and embarrassed,” he writes. He began building houses with Habitat for Humanity, while studying poverty and visiting homeless people. In 2008 he moved into a trailer park in a poor Milwaukee neighborhood to learn more about landlords, … [Read more...]
‘Evicted’: A numbing look at the nexus of housing and poverty
Matthew Desmond was in college when he learned that a bank had taken his boyhood home, forcing his parents to move. “I remember being deeply sad and embarrassed,” he writes. He began building houses with Habitat for Humanity, while studying poverty and visiting homeless people. In 2008 he moved into a trailer park in a poor Milwaukee neighborhood to learn more about … [Read more...]
Prosecutor Martinez tells book fest about Arias trial
Juan Martinez signing his book at the Palm Beach Book Festival. (Photo by Dale King) By Dale King Maricopa County, Ariz., Prosecutor Juan Martinez is a diminutive man with a hint of gray in his closely coiffed hair. He seems comfortable in a dark suit and tie, or in shirtsleeves, speaking to a crowd, where he displays his vast knowledge of criminal law and talks of his … [Read more...]
Comic Carlin’s daughter to discuss growing up with George
By Dale King The last time a famed Carlin family member walked a stage at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in West Palm Beach was 2002. The performer was George Carlin, by that time a bearded, white-haired comic legend still packed with the pith, fire and vinegar that had driven him to skewer popular and unpopular causes throughout his 40-year career. He continued … [Read more...]
Lalami at Boca fest: History, as seen through the eyes of the Other
By Myles Ludwig The cultural construct of the Other is a convenient paradox. On the one hand, the Other allows us to individuate ourselves and stake a personal claim on our own identity. One the other hand, in the best Talmudic tradition, it’s a pretty handy hat rack for our top-of-the-mind hates, prejudices, laments of every kind and description based on race, class, hair … [Read more...]
The war that never ends: Historian Winter to discuss WWI at Festival of the Arts Boca
French soldiers in the trenches during World War I. Imagine a world in which Great Britain and Germany are the major powers, and the United States and Russia are only minor players on the global scene. It’s a world of relatively conservative politics, where there was no World War II, no Holocaust, and no one but their families had ever heard of Adolf Hitler or Vladimir … [Read more...]
Beyond the pills: A look at mind over the matter of illness
Placebo-controlled medical trials “have been one of the most important developments in medicine, allowing us to determine scientifically which medicines work and which don’t, saving countless lives in the process,” writes Jo Marchant in this compelling new book. Researchers commonly test the efficacy of new drugs by dividing patients into two groups. One group receives … [Read more...]