Is is better to be married or a "crap artist" a bit off his rocker? Dick tries to answer this question in his splendid mainstream novel CONFESSIONS OF A CRAP ARTIST. In this episode I finish off my analysis of this book.

Part two of my review of Alexis de Tocqueville's DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA. Here we focus on his views of local and state governments in American democracy.

In part 3 of my review of CONFESSIONS OF A CRAP ARTIST, we watch was one family collapses and another emerges in its wake. The horror of the eternal return of married life is the theme of this splendid novel. 

This novel (CONFESSIONS OF A CRAP ARTIST) is so good. Prove me wrong. Philip K. Dick is at his best when he is writing about marriage and the strangers who sleep next to us.

In this episode, I start an eight-part series on Alexis de Tocqueville's DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA. What is the importance of the general equality of conditions in the creation of American democracy? What is the future of American democracy when this equality of conditions has been replaced with oligarchy?

We come to the end of this series on the writings of Thomas Jefferson with the letters written during the last decade of his life. His lack of growth of race is striking, but his commitment to democracy did not seem to waver. This contradiction will forever shape how we look at him.

In this episode we start to look at Philip K. Dick's CONFESSIONS OF A CRAP ARTIST, written in the late 1950s. It was a mainstream novel that explores some interesting themes of family and new religious movements.

Philip K. Dick has been writing obliquely about Malthus since some of his earliest stories. In the "Pre-Persons" Dick takes on these issues again, and along the way angered the feminists. Is this story just his response to Roe v. Wade or does it have a more significant place in his argument against gerontocracy?

The highlight of Thomas Jefferson's retirement letters are those he wrote to John Adams. In this episode, we look at some of those and some other important and interesting letters he wrote in 1813, 1814, and 1815.

In this set of letters, I look at Jefferson's last years in public life and the interests he pursued after retirement. Much of his work in this period involves education, culminating in his work on the University of Virginia.