Pirates Ahoy!

I don’t think these pirates look much like Captain Jack Sparrow, though it might be more entertaining if they did. Nah, it wouldn’t. I was blown away by a recent notice from Simon & Schuster, publisher of my three books to date, reporting the number of pirated e-copies of my books that they have bullied off the Internet. What’s…

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Reading Madison's Mail

Bulletins from the frontiers of research: When it came to negotiating the Louisiana Purchase, American diplomats James Monroe and Robert Livingston sewed up the deal in a couple of weeks.  When it came to squabbling over credit, the two diplomats spent eighteen months writing backbiting letters to James Madison (Secretary of State) explaining in excrutiating detail…

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