The Runaway Corpse of Abraham Lincoln
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The Case of the Runaway Corpse is a perennial favorite of Perry Mason mystery fans. Written by Erle Stanley Gardner, it features fraud, murder, alcoholism and a traveling corpse as key story elements. How is it that the burial of President Abraham Lincoln contains all of these sordid components plus a ring of unscrupulous counterfeiters? […]
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Edgar Lee Masters Awakens Voices of the Dead
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“All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.” That is a refrain from Spoon River Anthology, the epic poem Edgar Lee Masters published in 1915. The hill referenced is the cemetery in the fictional town of Spoon River. Although it is written in free verse, Spoon River reads like a novel. It consists of […]
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Beyond Blue: Depression Can Be Fatal
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Depression has been called the common cold of psychiatric disorders. At any given time, as many as 20 million Americans may be suffering from it. Estimates for worldwide numbers top 300 million. Recent surveys indicate that less than 40 percent of the population consider themselves to be “happy.” Last year’s 47,000 suicides and 70,000 fatal drug […]
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Twas the Night of a Christmas Mystery
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Not many poems could provoke a quarrel that would last more than a century. But “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” more popularly known by its first line, “Twas the Night Before Christmas,” is not just any poem. It is arguably the most famous American verse ever composed. Since it was first published, anonymously, on December […]
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The Real Story Behind “It’s a Wonderful Life”
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It’s a Wonderful Life, the Frank Capra holiday classic, began as a story on a Christmas card. Respected civil war historian and novelist Philip Van Doren Stern came up with the basic idea one morning while shaving. He immediately wrote a two page outline that, remarkably, resembles the final screenplay of the film. A small town […]
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