Lane Willson

Wonder No More

Revisado: 10-25-24

Ever wonder what it would be like if the Brady Bunch went to school with the Mean Grils and lived with Nurse Ratched and her charges? Wonder no more.

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Should Have Read First

Revisado: 08-05-24

There was little new to be learned in Toland’s biography of Hitler, but I suspect as he is considered one of the great historians of World War 2, much I read in other histories and biographies relied on his work.

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Front Row Reality is Never Real

Revisado: 08-13-21

The “Front Row Joe's,” those everyday folks devoted to attending Trump rallies with a passion and tenacity that would impress the most storied Dead Head, are the threads Michael Bender uses to show the connection Trump created with the Losers, suckers, and unworthy he ignored his entire life before his infamous 2015 escalator descent. It's easy to write them off as infuriating, uninformed, or uneducated. Still, the biggest tragedy in the creation and ascension of Trump World is that it could not have happened had we not treated these folks with disdain first.

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To Not Quote Dante, "Damn!"

Revisado: 07-06-21

I made a bet with a friend in high school about who would be the first of us to finish Durant's series telling The Story of Civilization. I believe the challenge was conceived after seeing the movie Reds and fueled by the bourbon we both became serious about as college freshmen. Sadly, suicide prevented my friend from ever starting our adventure, and my start would not begin only after a couple of decades spent battling addiction and fighting for recovery. To be sure, these volumes have often made me wonder if the bog people of Denmark felt this way as the cold, damp peat consumed and so precisely preserved their medieval corpses. But this volume, The Age of Faith, was at times fascinating and did far more to kindle life's spark rather than continue the embalming we associate with the "dark ages." Though I'm pretty sure that each time I become consumed in Durant's story, I can hear John's faint laugh.

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I Wonder

Revisado: 01-13-21

I wonder if she considered another ending, a final destination different and defiant of the one she chose. I wonder, but I am so grateful for the gift of the story she has given us.

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The Battle for Home

Revisado: 11-07-20

Tyranny and greed are two of the most destructive elements of man’s character; determination and compassion their antidote. In his new book, The Fighting Bunch: The Battle of Athens and How WWII Veterans Won the Only Successful Armed Rebellion Since the Revolution, Chris DeRose masterfully recounts the clash of character that culminated on August 1, 1946, in the streets of Athens, Tennessee, and countryside of McMinn County.

With a political machine that would make Robert Penn Warren drool, Tennessee spent the depression and WWII years in the shadow of Memphian E.H. Crump. Evidence of Crump’s hand in East Tennessee, and especially McMinn County, was Paul Cantrell. During those years, Tennessee was a predominately Democratic state. However, much of East Tennessee was solidly Republican. Athens, halfway between Knoxville and Chattanooga, serves as the county seat for McMinn County, which was and remains to this day, one of Tennessee’s most heavily Republican counties.

DeRose begins quite simply by giving us a list of players. Tracing their days as children and teenagers, he provides insight into how they became the men whose lives would converge on August 1, 1946. With this, we learn they were not strangers that history drew together in place and time to create a life-changing event. Most knew or were acquainted with one another. Some had known each other their entire lives. DeRose’s telling of the months leading up to the election of 1946 pulls the reader back like the hammer of a pistol.

DeRose bookends his telling of the Battle of Athens between two poignant quotes.

“Yes, we broke the law. And so did George Washington.” – Felix Harrod

Growing in Athens, I knew Mr. Harrod, one of the veterans returning to Athens after WWII, as a very humble and mild-mannered man who I saw in church or around town with never than anything less than a smile and kind word to offer. I held him akin to Mr. Rogers, who premiered when I was six.

“The real story of the Battle of Athens is about reconciliation, thankfully.” – Paul Willson

The grandson of Paul Cantrell, Paul Willson, is also my distant cousin as well as someone who is and has been so incredibly supportive of so many over the years.

Chris DeRose pulls no punches in his telling of the Battle of Athens. For me, it erased the often-heard mantra that these were just good old boys whose argument got out of hand. Thousands of rounds fired, a few sticks of dynamite tossed, and a mason jar or two of moonshine consumed. Still, no one was killed, and in the end, this was just another story of McMinn County boys being McMinn County boys. You could expect no less from men whose grandfathers had declared war on Spain a week before the United States of America instigated the Spanish American War. Erasing this dismissive pasha version of history, DeRose makes room for the most prominent outcome of the Battle of Athens. On August 2, 1946, these men and their families who had been opponents and enemies for so long began working together on a new project. They constructed a community and way of life we proudly call home.

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A Recipe for WOW!

Revisado: 08-23-20

Who knew WOW had a recipe? Apparently, taking the most classic tales of the Western tradition, seasoning them with moderate erudition, and basting the whole thing in humor is chef Stephen Fry’s delightful concoction-WOW.

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Never Forget His Unchanged Core

Revisado: 07-16-20

Nathan Bedford Forrest was at his core a man willing to subjugate others for his own profit. The fortune he made before the war was in the slave trade. After the war, he used the labor of prisoners to his profit. In between those shameful bookends, Forrest helped create arguably our nation’s most violent and hate-filled vigilante organization, the KKK. Hurst seems to constantly seek some balance in the general’s life, good with evil, but there is none. More than a century after his death we still battle the contagious disease of prejudice. Forest was not patient zero of America’s evil infection, but like so many of his current admirers, including President Trump, he made damn sure the disease lived on.

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Warm Indeed

Revisado: 07-13-20

I don't know that I've ever read a book that made tangible such a wide array of emotions. The story’s weaving and the connections of generations are masterful. Sport Coat’s declaration of warmth is the truth of the novel's foundation.

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Metamorphosis Sans Orange

Revisado: 07-10-20

Bolton starts his memoir as an outsider who, with a raised eyebrow or slight snicker, recounts being lauded and loved by the newly elected Donald Trump. Joining the reality show that is the Trump administration, Bolton believed himself to be among the adults protecting America from Trump, along with his children and cronies, from tearing up the Presidency like a group of high school kids whose parents are out of town. By the end of his time in the administration, and as reflected by the end of this memoir, Bolton is reduced to a whining clown whining about a whining clown. Thankfully one is orange, and the other wears a geriatric caterpillar under his nose, making one distinguishable from the others.

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