A previous post (‘Novel Words – fictional pronouns for the actual future.’ *) explored the concept of a non-gendered singular pronoun, ‘e’, to supplement our familiar ‘he’ and ‘she.’ Fortuitously, a recent article on the perils of AI suggested another way to frame the case.
With ‘he’ and ‘she’ as our English language’s only widely-accepted singular pronouns (‘they’ carrying the stain of wokeness upon its back in addition to its confusion with the plural and ‘it’ being generally received as an insult whether or not intended as such), alongside the predominant conversational practice of using gender terms (‘man’ and ‘woman’) as if they were synonymous with the bio-sexual (‘male‘ and ‘female’), any inquisitive consideration of gender is pre-emptively shipwrecked on the issue of whether each particular individual carries around a penis or a vagina.
Thus, perhaps the simplest and most cogent reason to encourage the use of a gender free singular pronoun such as ‘e’: it enables us to discuss gender issues without the need to pin-down (ouch!) anyone’s genitalia.
P. S.: E Unum Pluribus is a new speculative fiction with its own take on where the current culture wars may be leading our nation, and how even tragic events can spawn new possibilities for the future. The novel is currently being serialized on this site and you can be among the first to read its opening pages in the post titled ‘E Unum Pluribus.’
Having recently read The Mission, Tim Weiner’s history of the 21st Century CIA, which naturally contains many references to our nation’s Special Forces, it felt appropriate to check out this more populist look at one aspect of those forces.
Based on his own reporting for Rolling Stone magazine and other outlets, Harp gives us an abundance of anecdote; the parade of murders, suicides and drug- and alcohol-fueled behaviors on or adjacent to the Fort is head-spinning. He provides a substantial ‘Notes’ section as well, though, oddly, these notes are not called out in the text; one has to read them at the back of the book and then, if interested in a particular one, go to the page indicated and search for a key phrase to find the relevant text. Then too, many of these notes are not attributions. Better than no back-up at all, but less than totally convincing and perilously like the growth pattern of social-media conspiracy theories; a self-referential circle of fingers all pointing to one another with no object at its center. Regardless there is plenty of evidence here that things are not copasetic.
As its title suggests, the book contends that there has existed for many years some sort of organized smuggling operation centered on the Fort Bragg premises and that this operation is at least tolerated – if not actually headed – by unknown persons higher up in the chain of command than the various Special Forces operatives, support personnel and hangers-on who are directly involved in the book’s incidents. The argument in favor of this contention is largely of the ‘it seems too likely to not be true’ variety. At several dramatic points we hear about a thumb drive left behind by one of the murdered smugglers who claimed it documented crimes and criminals significant enough to act as his insurance policy – or to get him killed. Supposedly still held in evidence by one of several law enforcement agencies which have themselves been repeatedly painted as shielding military miscreants out of ‘blue line’ solidarity with the ‘green line,’ the closest we get to a big reveal of the drive’s contents is when one source tells Harp it actually contains no data, though whether that is because the crucial data was erased by some double- or triple-agent in the ranks or because it never existed at all is left unresolved. In other words, a big nothing-burger.
Regardless whether or not the actual Cartel exists, it seems undeniable that armed forces by their profession accustom some of their members to use of force and violence. That they groom some personnel, especially strength-proud young males, to believe themselves unbound by the moral and legal codes that constrain civilian life, and that these tendencies are strongest at the ‘tip of the spear,’ units like Rangers, Green Berets, Seals and Delta Force who are increasingly deployed to do the dirtiest ‘wet work’ of our national defense. Over the decades those ranks have shifted from short term citizen-soldiers to longer-serving career professionals at the same time their assignments have moved farther from ‘regular’ infantry tactics to special operations – small scale infiltrations, espionage, resistance support, sabotage, assassinations and other covert acts sometimes difficult to distinguish from the tactics of the terrorists they now spend much of their time hunting – or from those of hard core criminality. When soldiers are intensively selected and schooled for the attitudes required by that work, and that training is reinforced by months/years of ultra-high stress and pressure while surrounded by a culture that reveres and rewards self-reliance, cold-calculation and tolerance for brutality (while loosely dispensing powerful and addictive drugs to deal with the fallout), it should not surprise that some of those reflexes continue to direct behavior after their deployments are over or even after their careers have ended.
On the evidence in this book, military leadership cannot be trusted to thwart drug activity and the violence that accompanies it. Nor can they be relied upon to care for those service persons affected by it, much less to protect service families and the rest of us from the dangers which a few operators – even some who served honorably and heroically – present. As in so much lately, it is law enforcement agencies and the courts we must rely upon but unfortunately, if Harp’s reporting is accurate, the fraternal bond between military and the law sometimes precludes that, so we are left with a continuing tragedy of broken and deceased servicepersons, wives, families and communities.
As if that were not enough, The Fort Bragg Cartel’s greatest revelation, to these eyes, is not about drug activities in the U. S. but in Afghanistan. According to Harp’s reporting, prior to the U. S. invasion there the Taliban had, out of religious convictions, reduced poppy cultivation to near zero with corresponding impact on the flood of heroin and other drugs to users in ‘more developed’ nations. By itself, a clearly desirable outcome. Once the U. S. and its War on Terror allies took control though, cultivation began again due both to inattention (by U. S. leadership) and financial incentive (of those allied forces and perhaps also some of ‘our’ people). Once the U. S. pulled out and the Taliban resumed control, the production of poppies and heroin was again shut down! In Latin America as well, Harp reports, U. S. political objectives have sometimes led to cooperation and even support of narco-traffickers in exchange for their cooperation with U. S. political goals. Not a pretty picture, and one further negative consequence of how the War on Terror has been prosecuted and profited off of.
Despite trending more toward the true crime genre than the academic history line, The Fort Bragg Cartel is a useful summary of events worth considering. It raises worthwhile questions about our government’s role in the drug trade, and that makes it, at the end of the day, a Book Worth Keeping.
P. S.: E Unum Pluribus is a new speculative fiction about another time, another place and another government serving its own interests rather than those of its people. A draft of the novel is currently being serialized here at robinandrew.net and you can be among the first to read it, beginning with the post titled ‘E Unum Pluribus’ or by clicking on that same title in the home page’s Top Menu.
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“… you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world…that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.”
Where commentator Leighton Woodhouse rightly sees those words of Trump-whisperer Stephen Miller as a retreat from Christian values*, they also suggest a tragic misread of our nation’s history.
As Ken Burns’ recent documentary, The American Revolution vividly reminds, the story of the USA has never been that of the strongest and most powerful singlehandedly dominating those around them. Rather, the founding generations were wise enough to see that their thirteen colonies must work together- despite very significant differences around religion, economics, politics and, perhaps most profoundly, the pernicious institution of slavery – in order for any among them to have a hope of breaking free from British tyranny.
Once the colonists united – a unity as messy, tenuous and frustrating as any representative system tends to be – even their combined numbers and resources did not assure success; from its start, the colonial coalition actively sought the support of other nations. Ultimately, after six long years of brutal fighting, it was direct French participation (along with the indirect assistance of other nations and peoples who further taxed the Britain’s resources by opposing it in other parts of the world), that enabled Washington’s forces to triumph at Yorktown, turning the tide of attrition and so winning our independence.
Power, strength and force, yes, but born of compromise, cooperation and alliance; that is what allowed a band of ragged upstarts to defeat the British Empire, which was, at that time, the greatest exemplar of Mr. Miller’s professed ‘laws’ of existence.
Similarly, the decades which established America as a superpower were never about the U.S. going it alone, even if we were by some measures the most powerful single nation. Both World Wars were won by alliances in which we participated, sometimes as leaders sometimes not (Russia’s defeat of Nazi forces on the Eastern Front set the stage for Hitler’s eventual defeat which was, until then, far from a certain outcome). Nor was the Cold War ‘won’ by unilateral American action; we could not have strained the Soviet economy to the point of failure without the economic cooperation and military participation of our allies in Europe and elsewhere – including Japan and Germany, two one-time conquerors whose defeat in war was accomplished through force but whose rehabilitation and future contributions as allies were made possible by reason, cooperation and patient hard work.
Yes, the qualities Miller cites – strength force and power – play a role in life and international relations. And yes, there are ruthless players in the world today against whom we must defend our nation and civilization. But coming from a cadre dedicated to belligerent unilateralism, who have employed military force, willful brutality and a single-minded claim of their own superiority against not only other nations but many of their fellow citizens as well, his proclamation smacks not of wisdom but of hubris. If he and his ilk won’t take the word of American history for that, let them consider how few of history’s most famous strong, forceful and powerful tyrants – Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Bismark, Napoleon, Alexander, Julius Caeser, et al – established or continued any institution which lasted nearly as long as the 250 years which our more measured nation celebrates this year.
Perhaps a dog-eat-dog America such as Mr. Miller envisions can temporarily proclaim itself a bigger fish by shrinking its pond to just the western hemisphere and consigning the rest of the world to their own fate. But the USA is and always has been a part of the world and will eventually be affected by the fate of other nations. If we wish truly to fulfill the promise of its founding, to honor that era’s sacrifices and to deserve the bounties we all continue to enjoy thanks to them, we must relearn the value of building alliances and collaborating with like-minded forces wherever they reside.
America First has never been America Alone
(And if, as it sometimes seems, Mr. Miller’s and Mr. Trump’s real goal is to forge an alliance between the USA and Vladimir Putin’s Russia, one need only look at the quality of life, rule of law and economic vitality of Russia today to see where that road leads.)
*Donald Trump, Pagan King, by Leighton Woodhouse, New York Times online, 2026-01-11
P.S. – For another vision of how our current politics may play out, try E Unum Pluribus, currently available free of charge to Beta Test readers. Click the box below to access its first installment:
What Richard Powers’ The Overstory (2018) did for the astounding canopy of trees above our heads, Playground does for the super-abundance of seawaters that surround us.
Part letter of appreciation, part eulogy, each novel employs intriguing characters to weave a scrim upon which to embroider an abundance of colorful facts and observations about the environment which gives those characters and all of us life, purpose and – if our eyes are at all open – a measure of sorrow for how carelessly we are diminishing our descendants’ futures.
Where The Overstory was structured around a tale of eco-warriors campaigning to stop forest destruction, here it is Silicon Valley’s takeover of our time and imaginations that drives the plot. Powers braids together the lives of a poet, an explorer, an artist and a social media software tycoon to create both compelling mystery and satisfying conclusion. With thirteen previous novels to his credit, it should be no surprise the product feels mostly effortless and ordained. What does startle though, is how the few moments which do feel effortful – when the wealth of scientific detail seems to veer into pedantry or showing-off – are cast in an entirely different light once it dawns on the reader just who has been narrating the story. Suffice to say that that realization brings into focus yet another level of questions the novel is raising, about memory and knowledge, about fact versus fiction, brain vs. whatever, and about whether the answers to those questions will diminish the stories we read, hear and watch in future eras as greatly as we are currently diminishing our own and only habitat.
(As angry as Powers clearly is about our destruction of species and environment, he is wise enough to include reminders that nature itself will hardly notice our waste. For as many species as we destroy and cry over, natural processes will someday create new ones. Perhaps not as photogenic as the old or perhaps more so – nature has other things to worry about – but either way, new habitats will spring up and new species with them. Long after mankind departs the scene in whatever fashion we do, natural processes will continue creating and embellishing, erring and correcting. Only cosmic forces and events can end that process, and those will operate on their own scales regardless of human activities. It is only we and our descendants who will be injured by our carelessness; to the rest, we are irrelevant – as is whether we find that fact reassuring or insulting.)
Heartfelt, informative, moving and timely; the evidence of this outstanding novel suggests that individual human minds will continue to create entertaining and enlightening stories for many generations to come.
One aspect of our future, at least, to which we can look forward with eagerness.
If you like what you read here or at robinandrew.net, please share any posts as widely as possible – and consider subscribing: it’s totally free!
P. S.: E Unum Pluribus is a new novel that explores multiple themes – language and gender, identity, guilt and even the origins of faith and belief – but speaks loudest in its vision of a post-USA future.
The manuscript is available in six instalments, starting at:
Starting with early Zionist writings, Rashid Khalidi takes the reader step by step through the intricacies of Israel’s founding and expansion – and the parallel displacements of the families which once called the same ground their home (aka, the ‘non-Jewish residents’, to those by whom the label ‘Palestinians’ is taken as an affront). No doubt there are some who will say his history is biased – despite being heavily referenced and filled with quotes from actual participants and documents – but then, what historian’s account is not shaped by their education and values?
The overall impression one gets from reading The Hundred Years War… is of a disorganized and unsophisticated populace whose interests have repeatedly and consistently been subordinated by stronger forces to those of the Jewish persons who chose to emigrate to the region starting in the late 19th century for the purpose of establishing a nation of, by and for Jewish people. It further claims that the colonial powers with the most control in those parts chose to favor the Zionists for a variety of geopolitical reasons, some about the Jewish people, some not, but which they hoped conveniently to sweep under the same geographic carpet.
After recounting events from 1917 to 2017, Khalidi (writing sometime between 2017 and 2020), completed his history on a note of strained optimism. Admitting that the year 2017 “… might seem an opportune moment for Israel and the United States to collude with their autocratic Arab partners to bury the Palestine question, dispose of the Palestinians and declare victory,” he cautioned that “It is not likely to be quite so simple.” In explanation, he offered the possibility that shifting popular opinion around the world combined with a U. S. government tight-focused on Mr. Trumps avowed ‘America First’ reorientation might “allow Palestinians and others to craft a different trajectory than that of oppression of one people by another.” Despite generations of poverty and virtual imprisonment in their ghetto territories, despite Mr. Trump’s obvious sympathies toward Netanyahu and his methods (which are after all, ones Mr. Trump would dearly love to emulate in dealing with any who do not genuflect to him) Khalidi at that time held out a slender hope that the balance of events might shift just enough to allow the non-Jewish inhabitants of the contested lands some form of self-determination and self-rule.
Reading today, we know that the years since 2017 have not been kind to that hope. The bright promise of 2011’s Arab Spring petered out, leaving autocracy the rule and cutthroat capitalism the guiding principle for much of the Middle East. Despite Biden’s election in 2020, progress toward any just solution was impeded by the fact so many interested parties bought the line that Jared Kushner’s so-called Abaham Accords meant peace was fully under way, rather than seeing them for the callous money-for-silence racket they actually represented.
Most tragically, the brutal Hamas attack on Israel beginning October 7, 2023 dashed whatever hopes remained by giving Netanyahu and his conservative buttresses the perfect pretext for what they may have wanted all along – the virtual elimination of a non-Jewish ‘people’ in the Palestinian region, paving the way for total and permanent Israeli control of all the lands once referred to as Palestine. Even avoiding the wilder conspiracy theories,* it is still possible to say that Israel has since taken full advantage of the attack as justification to bury any possible path to Palestinian self-determination. The U. S., far from becoming less of a player, has been drawn by Mr. Trump’s greed and ego into proposing a ‘Peace’ plan which is anything but, consisting of removing the non-Jewish indigenous people while his cronies rebuild their homeland (at significant profit) into a luxury resort wherein, if the original inhabitants are allowed to return at all it will be only to fill dead-end service jobs in the venture-capitalist’s high-dollar playground by the sea.
For over one hundred years, The Hundred Years War on Palestine… shows us, repression has generated pushback, military tactics have generated militant responses and violent repression has been met with more violence. There is, unfortunately, little reason to imagine that cycle will stop now – unless the result of Mr. Trump’s ‘Peace’ plan is that there will simply are no longer any ‘Palestinians’ in Palestine to remember that their ancestors once occupied those lands. In that case, this book may well be crucial in reminding future generations of how they were disappeared, and why, and by whom.
If you like what you read here or at robinandrew.net, please share any posts as widely as possible –and consider subscribing: it’s totally free!
P. S.: E Unum Pluribus is a new novel that considers the enormity of what the U.S.A’s current leadership may cost our nation, and how even tragedy of that magnitude may yet spawn new possibilities for the future. It is currently being serialized and you can be among the first to read its opening pages here by opening the post titled ‘E Unum Pluribus.’
* Among the conspiracy suggestions I’ve read are: Did Israel (and Netanyahu specifically) allow/encourag the Gulf States to provide many millions in funds to Hamas over the years because that would keep the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and other factions at one another’s throats, preventing the PA from unite the populace and so becoming more effective at dealing with Israel? Was it not obvious to Isreal and the U. S that the Abraham Accords, by leaving the Palestinians virtually no peaceful means of advancing their legitimate interests, would result in the most radical among them resorting to non-peaceful means? Did Israeli leadership in fact turn a blind eye to warning signs leading up to the Oct 7 attack because they were willing to risk some losses in order to have a pretext for their desired cleansing and achievement of the greater Zionist vision? And, if none of those claims are true, why has Netanyahu never allowed any substantive inquiry into the intelligence failures surrounding Oct. 7, when his entire administration is predicated on the claim that he and only he can keep Israel safe from exactly that sort of attack?
In the historical/political realm, the word ‘revolution’ is commonly applied to a singular event of momentous change. In the realms of physics and mechanics, as Fareed Zakaria reminds us early in this very timely political history, ‘revolution’ means movement of an object or a system around its center, in which any point other than that exact center moves in a circle, initially getting farther away from where it once was but eventually returning to that same point before repeating the cycle.
With that in mind, the author cogently and persuasively recounts several significant revolutions of the past 500 years, considering each as a cycle driven by some changed circumstances (new knowledge, new inventions, ravaging disease, etc.) and shaped by human choices (often with crucial contributions by extraordinary individuals). Most importantly, he points out how in each case, the great upheaval we tend to best remember was followed by counter-revolution, a complimentary (in the geometric sense, that is, not the conversational) effort by those not in favor of that revolution’s effects to roll back the cycle of history.
A second crucial point of Zakaria’s is visible in his choice of ‘revolutions’ on which to focus: not only the political (England’s supposedly ‘Glorious Revolution,’ France’s admittedly horrific one) but also technological, economic and social revolutions. Innovations in navigation and ship building lead to wider trade which brings different cultures into contact, at the same time it finances urbanization and thus greater education and innovation. Industrialization creates new occupations and allows leisure for intellectual pursuits while also allowing wealth to be generated with less reliance on slavery, conquest or serfdom. The printing press disseminates knowledge faster and wider than ever before, fostering ideals of personal choice and expectations that government should be a protector of freedom rather than an instrument of domination. Paper and print in turn are overtaken by an electronic information revolution leading – well, we’re not yet sure where this one is taking us.
Less bloody than overt political ‘Revolutions’, it is arguably these knowledge revolutions which played the greatest role in enabling most humans today to live healthier, more comfortable and perhaps more satisfying lives than any who came before us, even as they present our greatest challenges for the future.
That’s the bulk of the book as finished in late 2023, and it’s an engrossing and valuable analysis. Given how long it takes for even a veteran author’s work to navigate the publishing gauntlet, though, Zakaria has added an Afterword composed in the wake of Mr. Trump’s 2025 re-ascent to the highest office in our land.
This crucial update begins by recounting China’s ‘Cultural Revolution’(1966-1976), a backward-facing assault on what Mao perceived as the threat of modernization and ‘liberal’ thought among his subjects. Tellingly, the excesses and destruction of Mao’s minions soon led to their own counterrevolution; an opening up and partial shift toward capitalism and entrepreneurism resulting in tremendous economic progress for the people of the PRC (though far less on social fronts). This history serves as a lamp under which Zakaria examines the USA’s current leadership and direction, bringing to mind another observation about ‘revolutions’ in classical mechanics: that when a revolving object or system is simultaneously moving along a larger axis – a wheel, say, revolving around its axle as a cart moves along a road, or humankind’s cycle of innovation/reaction/regression/innovation as it moves along the axis of time, for another – what results is not an endless repetition of the same events, but a sine curve of events rising up and then sinking down before beginning to rise up again. At any given moment, in fact, some specific parts of the revolving system are moving ‘forward,’ others rising up or dropping down and some are even, for an equal moment, moving backward, despite the entire system continuing its overall progress along its axis of road or time.
Do not mistake one moment’s regression for permanence, Zakaria’s text reminds. Humanity throughout known history has been incessantly creative and innovative in seeking betterment. For all recorded history, despite individual points upon civilization’s wheel moving upward, downward or backward, the overall motion of us all has been forward, in the direction of greater equality, greater freedom and greater physical wellbeing for more and more of us. If we can avoid the greatest catastrophe of total self-destruction, there is every reason to believe that future revolutions of time’s wheel will see us our fitful history continuing to move in those directions.
A reassuring conclusion in this very daunting moment…
P. S.: E Unum Pluribus is a new novel that considers where our current divisiveness may lead in the near term, and how even tragic events can spawn possibilities for better futures. It is currently being serialized at robinandrew.net and you can be among the first to read its opening pages there in the post titled ‘E Unum Pluribus.’
If you like what you read here or at robinandrew.net, please share any posts as widely as possible – and consider subscribing: it’s totally free!
E Unum Pluribus – a tale of The Big Diss, imagines the United States of America dissolving into chaos because its elected representatives ceased to work together for the common good. While the novel is fiction, its premise is plausible, which begs the question – what can an individual do to avoid such a tragic outcome?
Plenty of folks more knowledgeable than I have commented that we’ve all gotten so isolated into our own bubbles – republicans/democrats, conservatives/liberals, red states/blue states, urban/rural, blue collar/elitist; however one summarizes it – that it’s easy to dismiss everyone on ‘the other side’ as unreasonable, unapproachable, unsalvageable or worse.
If (like me) you fear there is some truth to that description, and if (like me) you think forever encouraging division is a dead end – if you’ve ever felt the impulse to disagree when you’ve heard someone say the ‘X’ party is corrupt and they’re all a bunch of ‘z#fqt*^k!s,’ – how about switching your voter registration: to the X Party!
WTF?
First off, once you switch, you will know for certain that there is at least one reasonable person in the X Party – one grain of sand to begin a beachfront of unification.
Second, you may (depending on your state) gain the opportunity to vote in the X party’s primary and improve the chances of their most reasonable candidate. If enough of us do that, we could all have a better set of candidates to choose between in the actual election, instead of one we cannot stomach and one we can support if we have to, but only by holding our collective noses.
Third, although there is no need for any else to know about your switch, should you ever hear someone thoughtlessly badmouthing either party, you might choose to respond by pointing out your agreement or disagreement “even though I’m a registered X!” A single brick pulled out of a wall can improve communication between the two sides.
For whatever it’s worth: I switched to ‘the other party’ over a decade ago. Since that time, I have found myself much more open to hearing ‘other party’ statements and proposals. I certainly do not dismiss all members of my new party out of hand – I am one of them, after all! And I still do not always agree with their (our?) positions, but I feel obliged to at least listen, and much less resistance to acknowledging when a representative of my new party has proposed something worthwhile or productive.
Changing your party doesn’t mean voting for candidates you don’t support. It does mean choosing a future where each side is not so committed to smashing and trashing the other side that it’s virtually impossible to accomplish anything constructive.
Government of the people, by the people and for the people should not be a cage-fight; it should be – and it can be – a mission in which we all share, together.
Through half a dozen novels I’ve read since 2014, Furst has never disappointed. In a deceptively quiet voice he portrays the complexity of life in situations too often cartooned as ‘dramatic’, ‘heroic,’ or ‘epic.’ Heroes are not sprung from the loins of goddesses, he shows us, but grown from the soil of ordinariness, seeded by terrible circumstances, watered by relationships with other decent human beings and nourished by the force of life itself as they seek the paths which will allow them to go on for another day, a week or if they are very lucky, even longer.
For Red Gold, we travel in the company of one Jean Casson, a Parisian film producer trying to survive under the Nazi occupation. Having once been picked up by German intelligence and escaped their clutches, he must now hide in plain sight, growing a mustache and dressing poorly as he adopts a false in hopes of not being recognized contacts from his old life. Learning to watch in every direction at every moment Casson, who is himself no socialist, drifts into contact with Communist resistance fighters, directed and bankrolled by the Soviet Union. They in turn find his character and connections useful, loosely employing him as liaison to other factions – free French disruptors, conflicted Vichy collaborators and anti-Communist nationalists partially directed and intermittently supported by the Allies’ military for their own ends. All of these, and also the Nazis, of course, are quite willing to sacrifice any individual at any time, if it serves their particular ‘greater purpose.’
As always, Furst paints a convincing and absorbing picture of life under occupation: the drabness, the cold, shortages and unexpected moments of plenty. Casson’s inner voice is witty enough to entertain and resourceful enough to keep him and the reader out of the worst trouble, at the same time he manages to find enough minimalist romance to leaven the despair. These characters have no foreknowledge of how the war will turn out; at any moment this depressing moment in history may take their life and so define it – a tragedy deeper and more painful than the destructive result of any brilliant explosion or dramatic car chase.
Life goes on, even under the heavy hand of war, and as much as some persons may fight for glory or principle, what most really want is simply to keep on living, with perhaps a bit of food, a sip of drink, a smoke or a hint of love to make it worth the effort.
Definitely an author to return to, and with around fifteen novels focused on the war years in Europe (published between 1988 and 2019 and collectively referred to as ‘The Night Soldiers series’) there’s plenty of opportunity to keep Alan Furst on the shelf.
(Note: Furst’s The World at Night (1996) shares a common plot and protagonist with Red Gold, so other readers may benefit from reading that volume first. His three earliest novels, published in ’76, ’80 and ’81, concern drugs and crime in the U. S. I’ve not sampled them but hope one day to do so).
My own latest novel is currently being serialized on this site. You can read the first installment in the recent post titled E Unum Pluribus.
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Wondering where our nation’s increasingly divisive politics may lead us? E Unum Pluribus is a new novel which explores one very real possibility:
Amid feudal chaos following the USA’s collapse, one city-state seems promising, until an amateur’s murder investigation exposes its weaknesses and the conspiracies threatening to destroy it.
In order to receive community input, I’m serializing a Beta Test draft of E Unum Pluribus free of charge. (So I can track interest, the final installment may be posted only to subscribers, but even that subscription will be totally free of charge or obligation.) A .pdf of Installment One is included below and may also be downloaded for a more comfortable reading experience. Either way, you get to explore this new novel at absolutely no expense!
Succeeding installments are available at robinandrew.net by selecting the ‘E Unum Pluribus’ button in the home page’s top-menu.
In addition to posting the manuscript, I will be sharing thoughts about the novel’s themes and objectives in future posts on both this website and on Substack at nobodysays2025.substack.com
If you find E Unum Pluribus of interest – or if you simply support the concept of authors sharing their work without reliance upon commercial publishing corporations – please share this post as widely as possible.
RobinAndrew 