This is a bit tangential to anything, but it’s almost Patriot’s Day when we remember Paul Revere and once again forget William Dawes, the other guy who went to warn Sam Adams in Concord of the Redcoats. I just heard this amazing story by Don Was about a song composed by Charles Dawes, a descendent…
by James McManusOkay, so I’m a little late getting into the poker phenomenon. (Or was I early? I did buy that poker table with Pete, although we tend to play dumb games that favor luck and not the new “official” poker game, no-limit hold ’em.) When I was working on the American Experience Las Vegas…
Andrew Smith is a British magazine writer. Naturally, his writing is self-deprecating and full of pop cultures references. He was also born in New York and grew up in California in the 1960s and got caught up in the space race, especially the Apollo program. His non-fiction book Moon Dust has a terrific premise. After…
This Wednesday I was the guest speaker at Joey Schotland’s World History class. Joey teaches at Another Course to College, a charter school in Brighton. In fact, it’s located at 20 Warren Street, about 150 yards from the house where I lived with Kelly and Gavin (104 Warren) and across the street from St Elizabeth’s…
The latest web site I wrote for American Experience is for the film “Race to the Moon” about the Apollo 8 mission that was the first to send me out of earth’s orbit and around the moon. The film premieres on Halloween, Monday October 31, 2005 and is really good. Here’s a photo taken by…
“Las Vegas: An Unconventional History” is an American Experience 2-part film premiering on PBS November 14 and 15, 2005. Here’s the site. It’s a fun story about a place that seems like a shallow joke. But the beauty of the film is that while there is plenty of goofy kitsch–Rat Pack, 1970s tourism commercials–these segments…
A number of recent books have been published about the history and culture of Iraq, in large part a response to the 2003 invasion and current military situation there. Here’s the link to my review in the Nov/Dec 2005 Archaeology Magazine. I had limited space so was unable to give more props to perhaps my…
So, The point of this blog is to create links to various professional works of mine. As I have time, I’ll also being posting stuff that I’d written before and is floating out there. The justification of this blog is that when people ask me what I “do” I can point them here and then…
Jack Cheng, PhD 