Showing results by author "Tom Nichols" in All Categories

People are now exposed to more information than ever before, provided both by technology and by increasing access to every level of education. These societal gains, however, have also helped fuel a surge in narcissistic and misguided intellectual egalitarianism that has crippled informed debates on any number of issues. Today, everyone knows everything and all voices demand to be taken with equal seriousness, and any claim to the contrary is dismissed as undemocratic elitism.

The 15th century saw the evolution of a distinct and powerfully influential European artistic culture. But what does the familiar phrase “Renaissance Art” actually refer to? Through engaging discussion of timeless works by artists such as Jan van Eyck, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo, Tom Nichols offers a masterpiece of his own as he explores the truly original and diverse character of the art of the Renaissance.

We are moving beyond a natural skepticism regarding expert claims to the death of the ideal of expertise itself. This is a bad thing. If trust in experts dissipates, expertise will serve not the public interest, but the interest of whatever clique is paying its bills. And such an outcome is already perilously near.

John Whyte, the estranged, youngest brother of the Duke of Bransworth, and late Colonel of the First Brigade, Michigan Volunteer Cavalry during the Civil War, is at loose ends. The war has ended and he has tragically lost his fiancée to a needless attack by a wayward confederate soldier. He decides to visit to his friend, General Phil Sheridan, in Chicago, where the Civil War hero has been assigned as Commander of the Western Territories.

John Whyte arrives in America just in time for the Civil War and joins the Union side working directly for Abe Lincoln. His first assignment is with Alan Pinkerton who is trying to breakup a Confederate spy ring in the north. Lincoln is so impressed with John that he sends him out to work with General Grant and report to Lincoln whether the bad press Grant has been getting as a drunk and a butcher is justified.

John Whyte, Pinkerton detective, war hero, and banished son of an English Earl, undertakes the difficult assignment of discovering who is responsible for a series of deadly gold shipment robberies. Along with his faithful servant and companion, Kahm Singh, a retired Sikh warrior, and assisted by Curly Bill Williams, a happy-go-lucky Texan, John travels to Denver in the company of Rafe Wallace, the man who hired the Pinkerton's in a desperate attempt to save his gold operations from a vicious gang of cutthroats.

John helped smash a Confederate spy ring and was rewarded with command of his own cavalry brigade. To his amazement, his old junior officer Lieutenant, George Custer, shows up as his commanding General. In the desperate fight at Gettysburg, John grudgingly accepts Custer for the military genius that he is. After mortally wounding the Grey Cavalier of the South Jeb Stuart at the battle of Yellow Tavern, John is also wounded. For his actions, he is awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Here is a marvelous story of a Texas doctor on the Confederate side of the Civil War. It's the story of his experience as a prisoner of the Union Army during the last six months of the Civil War, his escape and adventurous return to his home in Texas. During his trek back to Texas he teams up with a female Confederate spy to get him past the Union Army. She learns he knows the location of a cache of gold stolen from the Union Army. He wants to keep it to rebuild his war-torn ranch in Texas, she wants it for the Confederacy.