Operation Jawbreaker: A Look Back At The CIA's Bin Laden Hunters

A while back I covered Gary Berntsen, the former CIA field commander in Afghanistan at the start of the war, and Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIA's bin Laden unit, for Counterterrorism magazine when they came to speak at the Philadelphia Free Library.

I later contacted Gary Berntsen and interviewed him for the piece.

You can read my piece below:

Note: You can click on the above to enlarge.

Return To Elmoreland: A Look Back At The Great Crime Writer Elmore Leonard

I was saddened to hear that the great crime novelist Elmore Leonard passed away. He was 87.

 

I briefly met Elmore Leonard when he came to Philadelphia for a reading and answers questions from the audience at the Philadelphia Free Library.

I went to the event with my friend and former editor, Frank Wilson, the retired book editor for the Philadelphia Inquirer, who introduced Elmore Leonard to the audience that night.

You can read about that night with Elmore Leonard in my column via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2009/05/return-to-elmoreland-elmore-leonards.html

And you can visit Frank Wilson's popular literary blog Books, Inq via the below link:

http://booksinq.blogspot.com

Grip, The Raven Who Inspired Dickens and Poe, Is Stuffed And Stored At The Philadelphia Free Library

Phillymag.com offers an interesting piece about how Charles Dickens' pet raven, called Grip, was the inspiration for the raven in Dicken's novel Barnaby Rudge, and later served to inspire Edgar Allen Poe when he wrote The Raven in Philadelphia.

Grip, the raven who influenced two of the 19th Century's greatest authors, is now stuffed and on displayed at the Philadelphia Free Library.

You can read the piece via the below link:

http://blogs.phillymag.com/the_philly_post/2011/10/31/poes-raven-stuffed-free-library/

On Hemingway: Paul Hendrickson and William Kennedy Talk About Their Books On Ernest Hemingway

 

I'm a huge admirer of Ernest Hemingway's novels and short stories, so I was sorry that I was unable to hear William Kennedy, author of Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes, and Paul Hendrickson, author of Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934-1961, discuss Hemingway and their books about the late great writer at the Philadelphia Free Library earlier this month.

Fortunately, I was able to listen to the two authors via the library's audio podcast.

You can listen to the MP3 audio of the author event via the below link:

http://libwww.freelibrary.org/authorevents/podcast.cfm?podcastID=690

Frank Wilson, my friend and former Philadelphia Inquirer editor, did a fine job of introducing the two authors.

I read Hemingway's Boat and I found Paul Hendrickson's book to be interesting and insightful and William Kennedy's Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes is next on my list of books to read.