Curmudgeons Corner
Random thoughts on politics, current events, popular culture, and whatever else interests me.
Friday, March 13, 2026
On a December day in 1967, a pilot whose jet fighter is in the process of cracking up ejects a moment sooner and therefore lives when he otherwise might have died. A life that would have ended on the tarmac at Edwards Air Force Base continues on. Six years later, Major Robert Lawrence, United States Air Force, becomes the first black American to walk on the Moon.
Having survived World War II and returned to America, General George S. Patton is given a new assignment by President Harry Truman. He is to travel to the British Mandate of Palestine, where a bloody war is brewing between Jews and Arabs, and give his evaluation to the President. But Patton's tendency to exceed his orders may prove a problem for the United States government. Moreover, a dark secret from his past will threaten to derail his mission entirely.
A stunning work of alternate history that places one of the 20th Century's greatest soldiers in the midst of the founding of the State of Israel.
Tom Fischer thought he had seen every horror imaginable while covering the war in Europe. Embedded with British and Canadian troops, he had seen the effects of battle from Normandy to the abortive Operation Market-Garden to the final assault on Nazi Germany.
But when he entered the newly liberated Bergen Belsen concentration camp, Fischer knew that he had come to a new kind of man-made hell that was unimaginable in the history of the world. Thousands of people had been left to die of starvation and disease. Despite the best efforts of the allies, thousands more would die during the days after the liberation. A month later, Fischer decided to interview one of the survivors of Bergen Belsen, a young, teenage girl who had been found on the brink of death but was now on the road to recovery.
Her name was Anne Frank.
In this work of alternate history, the girl whose diary gave a voice to the Holocaust survives to put her mark on history from war-torn Europe to an ancient land convulsed in the birth pangs of a nation both ancient and modern called Israel.
Thursday, March 12, 2026
Wednesday, March 11, 2026
Tuesday, March 10, 2026
Monday, March 09, 2026
Sunday, March 08, 2026
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman recently announced a revamping of the Artemis program that will take Americans back to the moon. The new plan includes a new mission to take place between the upcoming Artemis II voyage around the moon and the eventual first crewed moon landing in over 55 years.