by Richard Subber | Jun 28, 2025 | American history, History, Human Nature, Politics, Power and inequality, Theater and play reviews
power brokers aren’t good guys…
Movie review:
All the President’s Men
It’s a good guess that you watched All the President’s Men (1976, rated PG, 138 min) a long time ago.
Now’s a good time to watch it again. You get to see Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford at work in their younger years, and you get to see the good guys win.
Bob Woodward (Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Hoffman) give workmanlike performances as they grind through the often mind-numbing work of bringing down a corrupt president and his corrupt henchmen. I don’t think any women were involved in the really bad Watergate business.
The drama is created as the “Woodstein” duo and Deep Throat and dubious/credulous Washington Post editors relentlessly push for the boring investigative legwork that ultimately reveals the frightening cabal of power brokers who will do close to anything to keep Nixon in office.
The good guys win. Mostly they didn’t fear for their own safety. Mostly they didn’t think they were heroic. Mostly they didn’t think the job was hopeless. Mostly they wanted to do the right thing.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Old Friends (book review)
Tracy Kidder tells truth about old age…
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As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Jun 26, 2025 | Language, My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
say it again
Poetry is…
Poetry is what I see and hear and feel,
it is the life force of my sensations,
it is my potent thinking,
it is my surrender to the beauty of words
that leap together in my mind,
and spill onto my page,
and wait to pass your lips.
September 17, 2024
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
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Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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by Richard Subber | Jun 24, 2025 | American history, Book reviews, Books, Democracy, History, Politics, Power and inequality
Drucker thought he had time to think about it…
Book review:
Concept of the Corporation
by Peter F. Drucker (1909-2005)
Educator, business guru
New York: The John Day Company, 1946
1972 edition with new Preface and new Epilogue by author
It’s almost eerie to read insightful critiques of big business written 80 and 55 years ago. Drucker’s commentary is artful, candid, deeply informed, and instructive—but far less so now than it was in the past.
Serious rumination about the role of the corporation is less in vogue now than it was two generations ago, much to our detriment.
Drucker was too early to feel the ill wind that blows when the corporation imposes its awesome power on its employees and society as a whole.
Concept of the Corporation is an historical gem, but it doesn’t touch the hot nerves that drive the destructive role that big business has created for itself.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
1491 by Charles Mann (book review)
…lost American legacies
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As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Jun 22, 2025 | Language, My poetry, Poetry
it’s OK to stand there…
gâteau
My glance adds nothing
to the moment of this sky,
I know so well
it will not stay,
it holds my eye
for seconds more,
this sweet stack
of layered night,
this icing on the evening.
March 23, 2025
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
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My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 53 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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by Richard Subber | Jun 19, 2025 | Book reviews, Books, Joys of reading, Language
Moby-Dick and stuff….
I know whale tales aren’t for everyone.
If you’re still with me, you might be interested to know that Herman Melville’s iconic whale story was published 174 years ago in London, and then, a month later, in New York.
The original title is Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. Melville actually went to sea as a crewman on a whaling vessel, and based his novel in part on a real sperm whale named Mocha Dick, known to South Pacific sailors in the 1840s.
Early in his career Melville was briefly acclaimed for some of his South Pacific stories, such as Typee, but he was obscure during the last 30 years of his life. He earned only $1,200 or so from the sale of about 3,200 copies of Moby-Dick, which was out of print when he died in 1891.
A first American edition of the book can easily be secured if you have about $80,000 to spend.
Melville wrote in a variety of genres—again, not for all tastes. I’m a big fan of Moby-Dick, and I’m also an advocate for Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street. Nothing of the South Pacific in this one. The circumstances of this desiccated short story are curious, even eccentric, incredulous. The withered and aloof Bartleby is presented, examined and disdained, until his very dispirited isolation makes him the object of the narrator’s genuine but increasingly troubled caretaking.
Don’t overlook Billy Budd, Sailor. It’s a searing morality play.
You may be surprised to know that Melville also wrote poetry. One critic has somewhat ponderously suggested that Moby-Dick is filled with Melville’s incipient poetry. I certainly believe that a story can contain a poem, but I don’t see anything like that in Moby-Dick.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
A Farewell to Arms (book review)
classic Ernest Hemingway
with relentlessly realistic dialogue…
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Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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