Articles by Mark Mantel

Well, the #Me Too movement has made Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. It seems the land of the Salem Witch Trials and the McCarthy Hearings has done it again. And this time the inquisition is better than ever, for in Salem, there was that needling formality of a trial. How dull, when the good lynching spirit, so inextricable part … [Read on]

It was late afternoon and once again I sat in the shade of the black trees and watched the crackling autumn leaves. With extraordinary caution I lit a cigarette, hoping no scandal would follow. But soon as I took a few puffs a sour-faced woman wearing tattered pig moccasins perched on a bench directly across, so I reluctantly tossed it … [Read on]

Is Mr. Trump great-souled or small? Can he be ruffled by a tweet? Is he subject to the whisperings of an Iago? Does Washington need such an outsider? Might the qualities that make Trump good in business prove a tragic liability in the political world? All the above. Trump is both larger and smaller than most of our recent presidents. … [Read on]

Churchill in his address to Congress on the 26th December 1941, most likely after a brandy or two, declared, ‘If my father had been American and my mother British, instead of the other way around, I might have got here on my own…I may confess, however, that I do not feel quite like a fish out of water in a … [Read on]