Posted: Jul 3, 08 10:50am

I'm reading two books. The first is "Home Country" by Ernie Pyle. Pyle was famous as a WWII front-line combat writer, but was known even before the war as a traveling correspondent who was syndicated in newspapers across America. "Home Country" is a collection of his writing between 1935 and 1940. Pyle wrote about the America that had not been attacked at Pearl Harbor but was still fighting the Depression. Pyle had a beautiful narrative style and a wonderful touch with people and places and moments of life in the 1930s. Ernie Pyle was killed on Ie Shima, a small island near Okinawa, on April 18, 1945. "Home Country" was published in 1947. The picture below is Ernie Pyle.

My second book is "The Twelve Caesars" by Suetonius. It is the basic book for the "I, Claudius" series on PBS. "I,Claudius" was written by Robert Graves, the translator for "The Twelve Caesars." It's great, gossipy reading of events from 2,000 years ago. The history of the Caesars and Rome make the politics of today look like child's play.