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It’s been 80 years since the bloodiest battle of World War II, the Battle of the Bulge, a five-week struggle that started during the Christmas season of 1944 that took 19,000 American lives in fighting in the densely wooded Ardennes region of Germany.

It was Germany’s last stand, said O’Connor, who drew on considerable research of that battle in Jeep Show, a novel that focuses on the U.S. Army’s troupe of performers who put on small variety acts for combat infantry just behind the front lines. 

While the USO entertained troops throughout the war in larger productions with stars such as Bob Hope, the Andrews Sisters and Dinah Shore, the Jeep shows, so named because performers often arrived in a Jeep, were smaller affairs designed to reach the fighting men on the front line or at air bases. 

It was entertainment in a hurry and sometimes risky. Jeep shows performed in forward areas too dangerous for USO shows or the Red Cross. The war also demanded a lot from the entertainers. Sometimes Jeep show teams would put on as many as 11 shows in a day, said O’Connor.

Mickey Rooney, one of the central figures in O’Connor’s story, was a real-life Jeep show squad leader during the war, earning a Bronze Star for his service. Other Jeep show performers, not all well-known at the time, who went on to stardom included Mel Brooks, Red Buttons, Burt Lancaster, Dick Van Dyke, and Sammy Davis Jr., said O’Connor.

“Sammy Davis Jr. may have been the first black man to integrate the U.S. Army since the service was still segregated at the time,” O’Connor noted.

“(Jeep show) performances served as more than just entertainment. They were beacons of hope bringing moments of song, dance and laughter to weary troops, letting them know they weren’t forgotten,” said the author.

O’Connor said he originally planned a non-fiction account on Jim Hetzer, a West Virginia dance instructor assigned to the Army's Morale Corps as an Entertainment Specialist. Attached to a Jeep show squad in Europe, Hetzer often worked with Private Mickey Rooney.

With access to dozens of letters Hetzer wrote during the war that described the Jeep show experience, O'Connor said he opted for the historical novel approach in order to engage younger readers.

“It seems odd to call a World War II novel 'delightful,' but that's exactly what you get with O'Connor's mix of history and fiction as battles rage on and enlisted men entertain the troops,” cited Kirkus Reviews. 

Dr. Jordan Grumet is a hospice doctor as well as a podcaster at The Earn & Invest Podcast. He’s also an author whose new book is The Purpose Code, a follow-up Taking Stock: A Hospice Doctor’s Advice on Financial Independence, Building Wealth, and Living a Regret-Free Life, published in 2022.

Grumet describes his own battle to find purpose in life, relinquishing a job as a full-time medical doctor in 2014. While he didn’t want to give up being a hospice physician, he got rid of everything else to hold onto those things he enjoyed: encouraging people to find financial independence, podcasting, and writing.

You don’t find purpose, you create it, he said, using the example of Julia Child in his book. “(Child) didn’t want to be famous. That was never her goal. She was out with her husband at a French restaurant one day and something burst in her brain. She said this is what I want to do,” said Grumet, noting that Child loved the process of learning about French cooking, a fact that sustained her in the 10 years it took for her first book to be published.

“Purpose consists of those activities we engage in that light us up and fulfill us,” said Grumet. There’s even a health benefit: Having a sense of purpose in life leads to health, longevity, and happiness, he said. 

Grumet makes a distinction between “small p” purpose and “big P” purpose. The “small p” purpose is simpler, smaller, and more understandable—things you can do on an everyday basis. “But when we set goals that we can't meet, it’s frustrating,” he said.

Purpose, as consequential as it may be, also can be toxic. Purpose becomes toxic when it goes from ‘little p’ purpose to ‘big P’ purpose,” said Grumet, giving the example of his own love for podcasting. “I love podcasting. When I sit in front of a microphone those are the greatest hours of my life. Even if I lose the audio and never post it. Even if I post it and no one downloads it. This is ‘little p’ purpose for me. It connects me to other people. Those people become my collaborators and friends. This feels like living a good life that makes me happy,” he said.

But setting what might be an unrealistic goal even doing something one loves can lead to anxiety, he said. “Let’s say I had success with my podcast. I’m going to put out this goal, this big, huge goal of a million downloads a month,” said Grumet. To try to achieve that, he stated he’d have to go on social media, make TikTok videos, and spend time more marketing the podcast—things Grumet said he doesn’t like doing.

As a hospice doctor who’s spoken with many people in their final days, Grumet says he’s never heard anyone say they should have spent more time working or making money. In The Purpose Code, the author cites a long-term study that noted when it came to happiness, it was not money, achievement, career choice, exercise, or a healthy diet that made respondents happy. It was positive social relationships. Those who felt more connected to others lived longer and happier. 

Books that seek to help you understand the world of finance probably aren’t viewed as the most engaging of literary categories. Consumers, after all, hold that book in their hands for a specific reason: to understand policy rates better or inflation-linked bonds not for a ripsnorting reading adventure.

Paul Podolsky, a former equity partner at Bridgewater Associates and the founder and CIO of Kate Capital, an investment management firm, however, has tried to make his advice on the subject accessible. The Uncomfortable Truth About Money carries a subtitle: How to live with uncertainty and think for yourself.

Uncertainty may be the order of the day, after all. “As I write this, it is less than 100 years since a hyper-developed country, Germany, lined up behind a maniac. He created hell on earth, obliterating lives and wealth. Millions of people enthusiastically followed him, both in Germany and elsewhere. In the years since, People haven’t changed. If it can happen in Germany, it can happen anywhere and it has—Chile (1970s), Rwanda (1990s), Italy (1930s) and Russia (1930s and 2020s),” wrote Podolsky in his first chapter.

On that cheery note, we’re off and running. “If you don’t want to get wiped out, study how things work,” Podolsky suggests. But the author isn’t coming at his subject from on high. A former newspaper reporter, he’s also served as a bartender, carpenter, teacher, and even a mountain guide in addition to serving as a banker and investor.

“I got my money education in real time, out of necessity, piece by piece,” stated Podolsky who lived in Moscow in his twenties working as a journalist. The Soviet Union (as it was known then) taught him a lesson about pricing. “The Soviet Union sought to pay a doctor roughly the same as a coal miner,” he said. Supply and demand—you knew that you’d be hearing the importance of that sooner or later.

Podolsky doesn’t try to steer readers in a specific direction other than to get a better understanding of terms and options that are out there. “If you decide to learn how to invest, recognize that there are sharply different approaches about how to do so, almost like different religions,” he stated.

Podolsky concludes his 200-page book with two slogans: Health is wealth; Be wary of sages--there aren’t any (including me).

You’re a Japanese American living in Nebraska in 1941. The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, sending the United States into war. What do you do?

At 24 when war broke out, Nebraskan Ben Kuroki enlisted to fight for his country. Ben joined the Army Air Force along with his brother. 

In Most Honorable Son by Gregg Jones, Kuroki’s unique wartime experience is related.

Ben Kuroki not only flew a staggering 58 combat missions as a gunner on Army Air Force bombers but battled racism and resentment on the home front.

Despite anti-Japanese sentiment running rampant in America, Kuroki not only persevered in his desire to serve but also challenged the U.S. policy of forcing some 100,000 Japanese Americans into internment camps during the war.

After his 30th mission—a raid on Munich, Germany that was nearly his last when shrapnel from an enemy shell barely missed his head—Kuroki was dispatched to three of the internment camps to encourage enlistment in the service. By 1944, Jones said, the U.S. military was seeking Japanese Americans to serve in the all-Nisei 442nd Regimental Combat Team in Italy.

In a series of speeches at the Heart Mountain camp in Wyoming, Kuroki urged Nisei men to enlist but his message fell flat with the camp's growing draft resistance movement. Camp supporters demanded the restoration of constitutional and civil rights for all camp residents before submitting to military service.

Ben also spoke at the Topaz War Relocation Center in Delta, Utah, and the Minidoka Relocation Center near Hunt, Idaho. Before these speaking engagements, Kuroki had only a vague notion about the fate that had befallen West Coast residents of Japanese descent.

He came away shaken by the sight of men, women, and children who looked like him packed into flimsy wooden barracks in wilderness areas guarded by rifle-toting Army soldiers. Kuroki became aware of the deep divisions within the camp when Heart Mountain hecklers interrupted him during his speeches.

But even after flying 30 missions in Europe, Ben wasn’t through with the war. His next stop was the Pacific where he joined the 505th Bomb Group. The mission? To bomb Japan. 

Like others whose job it was to drop bombs on targets during the war, Jones said individuals often “compartmentalized” their actions, not thinking of the damage being done down below. But the author said Kuroki had reservations after seeing the orange glow of Tokyo receding in the background after an intense incendiary raid on the Japanese capital. 

Kuroki suffered his most serious injury of the war—not on a plane—but at the hands of a fellow soldier in August of 1945. When good-natured banter turned ugly, Ben’s head was slashed open with a knife. 

U.S. medics saved his life as Kuroki recuperated on Tinian, the tiny Pacific isle that U.S. forces had used as a launching pad for bombing runs over Japan—including the mission flown by the Enola Gay that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Kuroki was still recovering from his injuries when Japan’s surrender was announced.

After the war, Kuroki returned to making speeches—opposing discrimination in all forms. He later turned to journalism. The shy Nebraska farm boy became a progressive crusader who came to terms with the fact that the same country he defended had rounded up and imprisoned Japanese Americans during WWII.

“Kuroki once said he looked Japanese but had the heart of an American,” said Kevin Maurer, author of No Easy Day, the inside story of the Bin Laden raid, co-written with former Navy SEAL Mark Owen. Kuroki’s story “reminds us that America is everyone,” noted Maurer.

So many images represent Walt Disney. There’s that mouse, of course, and all those movies. There’s so much music, countless cartoons, and aisles of toys Once there were even comic books. Characters like Donald Duck operated across many different media. We know about the cartoons starring an exasperated duck with a funny voice. But there was also an adventure series with Donald, his nephews, and a miserly Uncle Scrooge in comic books created by cartoonist Carl Barks.

Barks, who worked for Disney from 1942 to 1966, is now singled out for his comic-book creations. Other people have depicted Disney’s duck but they don’t have their stories being reprinted in full-color hardbound books from Fantagraphics (the complete Barks series is slated to be completed by 2026).

What sets Barks apart are his stories, said Peter Schilling, Jr., whose book, Carl Barks’ Duck, was published in 2014. “It’s the writing as well as the art,” he said.

Schilling discovered Barks as a kid when he and his brother were avid comic-book readers. What Schilling discovered was that the comics that Barks created—anonymously under the Walt Disney umbrella—were different from those drawn by other artists. “We read other Donald Duck comics but they weren’t the same. They weren’t from that guy,” he said.

That guy—Barks—toiled in anonymity until late in his career but the secret’s out now. “I look at his comics like little movies with Donald Duck as Cary Grant, whose career ran from comedy to serious drama,” said Schilling.

Along with his wide-ranging stories and explosive artwork, Barks was a creator of characters. He came up with Uncle Scrooge, Gyro Gearloose, the Woodchuck Manual, and the Beagle Boys, said Schilling.

As for a favorite story, Schilling cited several in his book but called “Vacation Time” “a forgotten masterpiece.”

“The End of Baseball: A Novel” by Peter Schilling Jr.

Another Schilling book, The End of Baseball—A Novel (2008), is a baseball novel of what might have been. Schilling writes a story featuring Bill Veeck, the real-life maverick promoter, who reportedly had a plan in 1944: buy the struggling Philadelphia Athletics franchise and replace the existing squad, a woeful bunch made up of players either too young or too old (World War II had depleted rosters for all teams) and replace them with star players from the Negro leagues.

Veeck was a baseball man, through and through. His father, William Sr., was a Chicago sportswriter who became president of the Chicago Cubs. After his father died in 1933, Veeck became treasurer of the Cubs. In 1941, he bought the Milwaukee Brewers, then a Cub minor league property. Veeck raised attendance with promotions by giving away live animals or scheduling morning games with free breakfast for overnight workers. 

When it came to baseball promotions, no one could hold a candle to Veeck who, in 1951, sent Eddie Gaedel—all 3-foot-7 of him, up to the plate for one of the most famous one-day careers in baseball (he walked). Veeckis is also given credit for growing the ivy that still grows in Wrigley Field and introducing scoreboards that could dispense fireworks. 

That was reality. In his book, Schilling related that Veeck, back from WWII service where he was injured while serving in the Marines, shared his revolutionary plan to integrate baseball with then-commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis. The baseball establishment then then thwarted the deal by having another buyer take over the Philadelphia franchise. 

Did Veeck actually plan such a move three years before Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier? Schilling thinks so and his book imagines the season that might have followed, raising awareness of some of the great players in the Negro leagues as well as anticipating some of the problems such a team would have faced.

In real life, Veeck headed a syndicate that bought the Cleveland India

Pickleball has become the fastest-growing sport in America. Ilana Long, author of Pickleballers, a debut romantic comedy set in Seattle, noted that as many as 50 million individuals are expected to play the sport in 2024.
The game, which Long calls multigenerational, serves as the backdrop for a story about a young woman who, on the rebound of a breakup, finds solace and redemption on the pickleball court.
Long, who said the sport gave her life during the pandemic, says she's met folks on the pickleball court she'd never have run into otherwise. 
The pickleballer in Long's book is a newbie to the sport looking to recover from life’s swings and misses. Meg Bloomberg is in a pickle: What to do now that boyfriend Vance has left?
She finds hope on the ferry between Seattle and Bainbridge Island. That's where she meets Ethan Fine. The relationship gets off to an inauspicious start when his seatbelt locks up in her car. But Meg rises to the occasion to cut him loose.
"Maybe this was the new Meg Bloomberg. Bouncing on a strange man's lap, wielding a knife, and talking like a crustacean in a Disney movie," noted Long.
Fine, described as "a charismatic environmental consultant," is a resident of  Bainbridge Island. Things look promising until Meg discovers that Ethan is sabotaging her home court. She decides the match is over. Or is it?



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About Ilana Long
Ilana Long first heard about pickleball when her sporty friend confessed that she was addicted to a game that was “like ping-pong but standing on the table.” Shortly after, Long joined the pickleball craze despite her utter lack of hand-eye… More about Ilana Long

Whenever the Jurassic Park/World franchise launches another movie entry, the national media runs to quote “a dinosaur guy” for a professional analysis. One of the guys they call is David Hone, a zoologist at Queen Mary University in London and the author of How Fast Did T.rex Run? and the Tyrannosaur Chronicles.

Hone’s latest book, Uncovering Dinosaur Behavior (Princeton University Press), seeks to provide answers as to how dinosaurs may have moved, fed, grew, and reproduced.

Deducing dinosaur behavior isn’t easy when all you’ve got to go on are a few bones but Hone believes it’s possible. His book uses comparisons to living species as well as referencing the latest studies on prehistoric behavior. Uncovering Dinosaur Behavior uses diagrams, photographs, and the artwork of Florida artist Gabriel Ugueto to flesh out the dinosaur behavior picture.

Hone said discoveries from two centuries of research have expanded our view of life on the planet 70 million years ago. “We’ve been in a golden age of dinosaur discovery for the past 30 or 40 years and I don’t see it stopping anytime soon. Dinosaurs are no longer considered the cold-blooded, tail-dragging, stupid, lizard-like monsters of the Victorian age, but are instead recognized as animals that were upright, active, fast-growing, and if not especially intelligent, certainly not stupid,” he said.

Hone's a critic when it comes to the latest Jurassic Park movies. “The first ones (starting in 1993) were fine but the last few have been really woeful—both as movies and as a dinosaur spectacle,” he said. Dinosaurs depicted in recent films are less accurate than the Jurassic Park movies of 30 years ago, noted Hone.

As a scientist and writer whose first two books focused on the Tyrannosaurus rex, Hone is in a good position to comment on the creature he classifies as one of a kind. “Take an orca (killer whale) and put it on legs and you’ve got an extraordinary predator. Probably more scientific papers have been written about T.rex than any other dinosaur,” he said.

As for how fast a T.rex run can run, Hone said a beast that could reach a weight of seven tons could make 15 mph--not enough to challenge a Jeep as depicted in the first Jurassic Park movie but it could definitely outrun a man, he said. 

The T.rex  may have lost a battle with a Spinosaurus in Jurassic Park 3 but the author, whose next book will focus on Spinosaurus research, says that outcome would have been unlikely. T.rex had a decided size advantage, said Hone, comparing the confrontation as combat between a lion and a cheetah.

Figuring out how creatures behaved millions of years ago remains an ongoing challenge for scientists but Hone said it’s worth remembering that “the sum total of the behaviors of dinosaurs across 1,500 species and 170 million years were much more complex and interesting than we can ever know.”

A plaque standing in downtown Bloomington, Ill. pays tribute to that city’s circus heritage:

“In the era before movies, television, and the internet, it was the circus that entertained us…For more than 80 years, spanning the 1870s until the 1950s, countless numbers of brave Bloomington men and women risked their lives to entertain massive crowds by performing aerial tricks high up on the flying trapeze.” 

After two local brothers, Howard and Fred Green installed a trapeze rigging in a Bloomington building in 1875, the town became known as a center for trapeze artists. When the Green brothers went on to international fame, others were inspired to perform. 

Bloomington became the center of activity for aerialist training and trapeze act recruitment in the United States. More than 200 people from the Bloomington area became circus performers, according to the McLean County Historical Society.

Charting that history today is Maureen Brunsdale, a Special Collections Librarian at Illinois State University’s Milner Library since 2008.

Brunsdale has published dozens of articles and, in 2013, wrote her first circus book, The Bloomington-Normal Circus Legacy with co-author Mark Schmitt. In the Shadow of the Big Top: The Life of Ringling's Unlikely Circus Savior (2023) is Brunsdale’s second book on the circus. 

In the Shadow tells the story of Art Concello, a trapeze artist who trained at the Bloomington YMCA and in a fabled barn on Bloomington’s Emerson Street. Concello became known for performing the triple somersault, “the killer trick,” as it was called because so many trapeze artists had died trying to perform it, said Brunsdale.

With wife Antoinette, they became known as the Flying Concellos, charting circus history with their circus. Antoinette, a trapeze pioneer in her own right, Brunsdale noted, later became the first woman to perform the triple somersault. 

But Art went on to perform amazing feats on the ground, she said. He demonstrated the same skill as an executive as he did on the flying trapeze “after hanging up his tights as a performer,” noted Brunsdale. Concello handled the crushing task of transporting circus acts (that usually only stayed in the same place for two days) with hundreds of people plus animals and equipment from town to town with remarkable efficiency, she said.

Concello is credited with later working out the logistics of transitioning circus acts from tents to indoor arenas, enabling circus acts to reach the public in the 20th century.

Concello also played a major role in the making of The Greatest Show on Earth, the Cecil B. DeMille film made in 1952. Concello trained Betty Hutton on the trapeze for the movie while Charlton Heston’s role as circus manager is a character reportedly based on Concello, himself.

“Once the biggest moneymaker in the world of entertainment, the circus may not have the elevated status it once did but it’s still with us,” said Brunsdale, citing circus acts still performed on television, the success of the Cirque du Soleil, and a revived Ringling Brothers touring show.

Bloomington-Normal’s circus heritage is celebrated every April when the Gamma Phi Circus performs on the Illinois State University campus, a tradition since 1929, Brunsdale noted.

Decades before the Civil War, Illinois meant freedom for those seeking to escape slavery.  Larry McClellan’s Onward to Chicago: Freedom Seekers and the Underground Railroad in Northeastern Illinois is his third book exploring the phenomenon known as the Underground Railroad.

McClellan, a resident of Crete, Illinois, some 35 miles south of Chicago, served as a professor of sociology at Governors State University, the Chicago school he helped found 54 years ago.

“It was neither underground nor a railroad,” said McClellan. The Underground Railroad was a freedom movement that depended on a fundamental human situation, he said. “When people on the run showed up at the door, the folks who lived on a farm had to make a human decision: are we going to help these folks?”

“The thing most striking to me is how ordinarily human this all becomes. There were people running for their freedom and other people saying, my gosh, we have to help,” said McClellan.

“Perhaps the stories of secret hiding places, tunnels, and other collaborations kept deeply hidden were experienced in other parts of Illinois and other states,” noted McClellan. “However in Chicago and northern Illinois, in large part because of broad-based abolitionist sentiments by the 1850s, activists needed to be discrete but not totally secretive.”

That doesn’t mean there weren’t dangers for those who sought to help people find freedom. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 strengthened penalties on those who assisted freedom seekers. “Its passage terrorized Black people across the northern states, creating fear for settled families as well as for freedom seekers traveling toward Canada. The new law meant that places such as Chicago and other places in northeastern Illinois were no longer outside the reach of slave catchers and kidnappers,” he said. 

Illinois was classified as a free state but that label could be misleading, he said. “In southern Illinois, the population was overwhelmingly pro-slavery. When we get to central Illinois—places like Springfield and Peoria where folks followed the Illinois River—sentiment is mixed with a substantially larger number of people who are anti-slavery (compared to southern Illinois),” said McClellan.

The Underground Railroad operated through Peoria and neighboring communities, he said. “On both sides of the Illinois River, you literally had hundreds of people who were walking on their way to freedom. They were coming through,” said McClellan. 

The number of people who actually “ran” the Underground Railroad was very small, he said. Within the general population, there may have been a majority that considered themselves opposed to slavery but only a minority of those were abolitionists, individuals calling for the repeal of slavery. Smaller still within the abolitionist group were those people willing to break the law and help people escape, said McClellan.

McClellan, whose research on the Underground Railroad spans three decades, estimates that 3,000 to 4,500- freedom seekers came through northeastern Illinois. The total number of people who sought freedom across the country through the Underground Railroad is estimated to be between 30,000 to 50,000, he said.

“We have great journey stories and, in addition, we have a great set of location stories, places where freedom seekers found help and places that began to be identified as places of refuge. Here in Illinois, we can document at least 200 places where freedom seekers found help. In my research some 60 sites in northeastern Illinois alone have been identified,” said McClellan.

McClellan said information on the operation of the Underground Railroad throughout the state will soon be submitted to the Illinois Legislature. He also announced that work is underway on documenting the Chicago to Detroit Freedom Trail, a route taken by many freedom seekers who sought refuge in Canada.

The comics page has long been a place for cars and energy. Comic strips like Otto Auto, Toonerville Folks, and Gasoline Alley related a nation that happily motored about in a car-centric world.

Daniel Worden, an art professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, relates that history in Petrochemical Fantasies: The Art and Energy of American Comics.

“This book analyzes how comics represented this transition to fossil fuels from the late nineteenth century to the present, a transition that shaped the comics medium itself,” wrote Worden, who teaches a course on comics at RIT.

“I write this book during an ongoing climate crisis, and comics are relevant to this crisis because the medium both shaped fossil fuel culture and offers ways of making, reading, seeing, and belonging that pull away from the time and space of fossil fuel culture,” he noted.

Comic artists in magazines and newspapers chronicled America’s oil industry, comparing the growth of Standard Oil to an octopus reaching out across the country. One of Worden’s favorite examples is Oil John, the Detective, a strip by Gus Mager that caricatured the oil trust. Oily John is a lanky John D. Rockefeller who captures small dealers, “a ridiculous miser out to get the little guy,” noted Worden.

Along with being the focus of comic art, oil companies were also comic enablers, distributing their own four-page funnies in the 1930s before traditional stapled comic books were produced, said Worden.

“The media landscape has changed. Comics are everywhere now,” he said, adding that the traditional printed comics in newspapers and magazines have migrated to the internet and graphic novels.

Worden’s Rochester class focuses more on “serious” comics such as the work of Joe Sacco whose comics have focused on subjects such as the Bosnian War and the conflict between Israel and Palestine than superhero exploits, he said.

“There have been a number of good non-fiction comics about climate change,” said Worden, citing examples such Science comics that detail the origin and impact of climate change in its “Wild Weather” series.

Worden sees comics as becoming a regional asset. He organizes the Rochester Indie Comics Festival every spring that brings 60 to 80 comic book artists to the town where they can sell their comics to the public.

Having just attended a similar festival in Columbus, Ohio, Worden said he sees comics not only becoming more of a regional issue but serving as a tool to help educate the public.