William Marvel

Well, That Mystery is Finally Solved…

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It’s about damn time. What has it been, now…57 years? “Lee Harvey Oswald was a KGB associate who was personally instructed by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to assassinate President Kennedy. Sometime shortly thereafter, the Soviets changed their minds, and Oswald was told to drop the plan. But Oswald, harboring a blinding love for all things USSR, refused.” At least, so say the authors of Operation Dragon: Inside the Kremlin’s secret war against the United States, according to a write-up about the book in Monday’s New York Post. “Well,” you may well say, “that assertion seems rather bold. What evidence do the authors have have to …

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Echoes of 1942

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Somewhere in my house is an envelope containing my grandfather’s World War II certificate for a Class C gas-rationing sticker. I last saw it a quarter of a century ago, before my father tucked it away again, probably in one of the trunks in the upstairs closets. Gasoline was one of the first commodities rationed by the Office of Price Administration after the attack on Pearl Harbor. They called it “mileage” rationing, and gasoline was not the item they were saving. What we were lacking was rubber, since the Japanese had taken early control of the rubber plantations of Southeast Asia. Metal soon became scarce, …

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Calling Toody and Muldoon

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Thirty-odd years ago I got a phone call out of the blue from Mike Cavanaugh, a retired Philadelphia policeman. I didn’t know him, but he had a four-year contract to write a book about the Civil War battle of the “Crater,” and the contract was barely 90 days away from the deadline. He had done all the research, but had written only half a page, and wanted to know if I would be interested in co-authoring the book with him. At the time I was writing the biography of the Union general who lost that battle, so it seemed like an easy transition, and a …

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Revelations 2020

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Responses to the spread of the coronavirus vary considerably in different jurisdictions. In states of the U.S. that are dominated by massive cities, health constraints have tended to be severe, subjecting rural counties to the same crippling strictures as urban ghettoes. Relief from such broad-brush diktats often depends on discretionary enforcement by police, who can usually judge local needs better than governors. Here in New Hampshire, the outbreak has thus far struck a fairly light blow, perhaps because the Governor’s order fell a little more on the strict side than the situation originally seemed to warrant. He didn’t close the borders, but this time last …

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Kitchen Table University

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Somewhere in my house must still be the cartoon my mother clipped out of a popular magazine from about 1950 and tucked into my baby album. It depicts a man just coming home from work in the traditional grey business suit, wearing a fedora and carrying a briefcase. He stands in the open doorway of a kitchen that looks as though a tornado has just passed through. Cooking utensils clutter the counters and dishes fill the sink, while baby spoons and cups and rattles lie scattered about. In the middle of the room stands an empty highchair, the tray of which is smeared and dripping. …

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Educating Billy

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Early in the spring of 1963, we eighth-graders at Conway Junior High traipsed down Main Street to Kennett High School to sign up for our freshman programs. It did not occur to me, or perhaps to many of my classmates, that this event could have a significant impact on the future course of our lives. We saw the guidance counselor, who asked us a few questions and filled out some 5×7 cards before signing us up for a program. There were three general courses of instruction at Kennett. College prep consisted mainly of academic studies. General education began with fundamental English, math, history, and science, …

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