The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcom Gladwell asks, How do many little things add up to change the course of a business (the makers of Hush Puppies shoes) or a health epidemic (syphilis in Baltimore during the 1990s), crime in NYC, or literacy among the underprivileged (Sesame Street)? Gladwell says if we think of a major change in the direction of some given subject in terms of the way the flu spreads, we find the building blocks for how to rethink waves of cultural change. What makes Gladwell so entertaining to read is his revisionist tendency to take something we think we know and reframe it. In April of 1775 there was news … Continue reading →

The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, A Temptation and The Longest Night of the Second World War by Malcom Gladwell begins just before WWII. Back then, the US Airforce was actually part of the Army…but the Army brass didn’t really know how to think about airplanes. Their ideas were still locked in the WWI model of dogfights: pilots trying to shoot down other pilots. But in the mid-to-late 1930s, as the USA was observing Hitler’s move to power, there was a small band of pilots who were thinking very differently. What if airpower could change the course of how war was fought? What if we stopped thinking about leveling cities with bombs and instead trying to only bomb infrastructure, bridges, power … Continue reading →

Before Pearl Harbor, the USA was still in denial that WWII was going to truly affect us. We have the Pacific and Atlantic oceans as massive buffers. But the government was already working toward the idea of rearming the USA in preparation. In 2013 the author Charles Hyde wrote a wonderful book, The Arsenal of Democracy, about the American auto industry moving from car and truck production to tanks, planes, and other necessities of war. (I am considering carrying that book at a future time.) But while he was researching that book, he came across a treasure trove of images from the late 1930s and especially the 1940s of the automotive industry changing direction to help with the war effort. … Continue reading →

Eric Sloane’s pen and ink style is unforgettable and his knowledge of early American know-how (that includes, all tools, wood, milling, road construction, the list goes on) is hard to believe. Growing up with a number of his books on the shelf, I reached for them often and in these times particularly, there is something so comforting in reading how all the different types of axes were used, or how to date a building by the types of nails, screws or fasteners used. Sloane’s style (both in illustration and in word) is lyrical and attentive to detail, but also straightforward with just a touch of flourish. A Museum of Early American Tools at $11.95 is fascinating. You really need at … Continue reading →

Eric Sloane was an artist, draftsman, sign painter, author, but most of all, a historian of early American know-how. His pen and ink images that illustrate all of his books are captivating and highly informative. Sloane was born in 1905 and after studying art and lettering, he set out across the US as a painter working road signs and barn sides. Eventually he settled back east and began a career as an author, illustrator meteorologist and mentor to many. As a kid growing up in Connecticut, A Reverence For Wood (arguably his most noted book) was always sitting near the reading chair, ready to be cracked open. In fact, when I asked my father for his copy to flip through, … Continue reading →

It has literally been years since we have seen a new Ford tractor book be published. The far majority of them have been out of print. Motorbooks International (owned by Quarto) has held the rights to the books that Robert Pripps and Andrew Morland did together in the 1990s. The N-News has written many a letter over the years asking for some of the Pripps Ford tractor books to be reprinted, or to let the rights fall back to the authors so something could be done. Well, something finally has happened. Bob Pripps alerted me in late 2020 that something was in the works. Quarto has combined three of the earlier Pripps/Moreland books, The Big Book of Ford Tractors, The … Continue reading →