Showing results by narrator "Patrick Cullen" in All Categories

Rodgers vividly recreates Mencken's era: the glittering tapestry of turn-of-the-century America, the roaring twenties, depressed thirties, and the home front during World War II. But the heart of the book is Mencken.

In just a few years early in the 20th century, the federal government grew from one tiny cog in the machinery of American life into a colossus, controlling the behavior of every individual. Paranoia, suspicion, and hatred of foreigners took hold, forming the mind-set with which the nation made its first acquaintance with communism in 1918. It was a seminal period in the history of the United States and the world, but the American side of the story has remained largely untold.

Getting It Right is set in the upheaval of the 1960's. The Cuban missile crisis has brought the Communist threat to within miles of the United States, and extremist movements roil the American Right.

An editor is popular only if he can keep a secret, and Sam Flint’s new home of Oro Blanco has more than its share. Flint chooses this small frontier town, the site of the richest gold strike in the New Mexico Territory, to launch his newest weekly newspaper, the Oro Blanco Nugget. As soon as he hits town, however, Flint can tell that something is not right, as the atmosphere in Oro Blanco is thick with signs of corruption and injustice.

Sam Flint is a dedicated frontier journalist whose only weapon is the truth. But when he pulls into Silver City to set up his crusading weekly newspaper, he fears he's made a mistake. The over-populated town is being run into the ground by the corrupt editor of the Silver City Democrat, Digby Westminster. A friend of merchants and flatterer of politicians, the manipulative scoundrel has grown fat ridiculing the miners and working girls while making sure they are ruthlessly taxed into destitution.