On a recent flight from Austin, I watched as my seatmate threw her bag in the overhead, snapped on her seat belt, and dove into a book. It was a well-loved copy of Memoirs of a Geisha, the mesmerizing tale of a fisherman’s daughter whose beautiful face and natural grace propels her to the upper [...]
Category Archives: Books
Notes on a Book Cover
July 5, 2010 – 5:09 am
The reading public rarely suspects the blood, sweat, and tears that go into designing a book cover. Creating a cover that will entice bookstore browsers to pick up the book and visually convey its essence (in a glance) is ultimately more of an art than a science. The fine online journal Ancora Imparo ran the [...]
October 15, 2008 – 12:09 pm
Inspirational speaker Nicole Johnson uses my book, Churches, to deliver a powerful message of hope for everyone who feels invisible and taken for granted. I don’t know Nicole, but what she took away from Churches and how she brought the lessons of the Gothic cathedral builders to bear on today’s problems, blew me away. Watch, [...]
The I-35W Bridge!
September 15, 2008 – 4:45 pm
Building a bridge is a monumental undertaking, and there is something inherent in projects of this size and scope that makes people want to participate in their creation. In the case of the sleek, new I-35W crossing over the Mississippi that opened in Minneapolis this week, Twin City residents engaged in a day-long discussion that [...]
Amistad Returns
June 24, 2008 – 10:44 am
One thrill of the writing life is receiving pictures of one’s “babies” taken in faraway places. Bill Pinkney, the visionary behind the recreation of the Amistad schooner as a floating, living memorial to civil rights, presented a copy of Monuments, which tells Amistad’s story, to Josephine Kargbo of the Monuments and Relics Commission of Sierra [...]