Bienville revisited: Winston Groom's 'Gone the Sun' still hits close to home

After Vietnam, Groom began a career at the Washington Star. If it is nothing else, "Gone the Sun" is a tender and intimately detailed love letter to the newsroom. Gunn's journalism career starts with a fortuitous social encounter with the editor of the Washington Times-Examiner. The chapter ends thusly:

"Beau stood for a moment pondering this stroke of fortune. He must be telling the truth, Beau thought, because he remembered glancing down at T.Y. Miller's feet and noticing he was wearing brown shoes with his tuxedo. Only a newspaperman would do that."

Full article: Gone The Sun

Sandra McElwaine Interview With Winston Groom

Winston Groom may be best known as the author of ‘Forrest Gump,’ but he’s also an astute and entertaining military historian. He talks about three key figures in World War II.
Interviewing Winston Groom is not really an interview. It is a genial conversation filled with witty asides and delicious anecdotes delivered in a honeyed Southern accent by a master storyteller from his home in Point Clear, Alabama.


Celebrated for his iconic novel, Forrest Gump, the 72-year-old author, historian, and journalist talks about his 20th book, The Generals, a compelling work of nonfiction encompassing the lives of three extraordinary men: Douglas MacArthur, George Patton and George C. Marshall.

I first was interested in fiction in the great war novels of WWII, and I had the distinct honor to know those guys—James Jones who wrote From Here to Eternity, Irwin Shaw who wrote The Young Lions, Kurt Vonnegut who wrote several pieces, Joseph Heller who wrote Catch-22. They were neighbors of mine in the Hamptons, and friends.

Full article: Interview

The Art of Lily Spandorf - George Washington University Museum, Nov 21 2015 – Dec 31 2016

Lily Spandorf (1914-2000), was born in Vienna, Austria around 1910. After attending art school in Vienna, she moved to London, and traveled to Italy. While traveling in Europe, her work in watercolor and gouache met with popular acclaim.
In 1959, she moved to the United States, and showed her Italian works in New York and Washington, DC, again to critical and popular acclaim.
From 1960 to 1981, she worked for the Washington Star newspaper as a contributing artist, giving readers artistic interpretations of events such as the 1968 Democratic National Convention and White House Easter Egg Rolls.
Lily Spandorf said of her Advise and Consent drawings, "I combined the action on both sides of the camera with the setting of the U.S. Capitol and Washington. The images capture the events surrounding this unique filming–the only time the interior of the Capitol has been used as a movie set."

Spandorf's work attracted the attention of director Otto Preminger, and at his request the images were displayed at the Washington premier of Advise and Consent, at the Trans-Lux theater on 14th St., NW. When the movie was re-released in 1987, many of the drawings were again exhibited at the National Press Club.
Many of Spandorf's other works are showcased in Lily Spandorf's Washington Never More by Mark G. Griffin and Ellen M. McCloskey, which is a collection of sketches depicting Washington, DC neighborhoods and buildings. This work is particularly significant because many of the buildings illustrated in the book are no longer standing today.

Her work will be displayed at the George Washington University Museum (Nov 21 2015 – Dec 31 2016), along with her celebrated depictions of 19th-century buildings in urban DC as they faced demolition.

Source: http://www.homeanddesign.com/datebook

Where Are They Now - John Hanrahan, ExposeFacts Editorial Board

John Hanrahan is a former executive director of The Fund for Investigative Journalism and reporter for The Washington Post, The Washington Star, UPI and other news organizations. He also has extensive experience as a legal investigator. Hanrahan is the author of Government by Contract and co-author of Lost Frontier: The Marketing of Alaska. He recently worked on special assignment as a media analyst for NiemanWatchdog.org, a project of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

Source: ExposeFacts

Manhattan Institute hires John Tierney as contributing editor to City Journal

The Manhattan Institute is pleased to welcome best-selling author and columnist John Tierney as contributing editor to its quarterly publication, City Journal.

Tierney brings with him significant experience in print and media, joining City Journal after more than two decades as a reporter and columnist with the New York Times. He wrote about urban politics, economics, and culture in his column, "The Big City," which appeared in the New York Times Magazine and in the paper's Metro section, and which won the New York State Publishers Association Award. He has also written columns in the Times about national politics and science.

Prior to joining the Times, Tierney was a contributing editor to Discover and Health magazines, a staff writer at Science 81-85 magazine, a reporter for the Washington Star and the Bergen Record, and a freelance writer whose reporting took him to all seven continents. His work has been widely published, including in The Atlantic, Esquire, New York Magazine, Reader's Digest, Vogue, The Chicago Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.

Full article - Tierney