Books, Sports, Rhymes & Life
Each month, I send a newsletter that is a collection of all new random thoughts and scribblings on a variety of subjects, including some things I enjoyed that month – books, TV shows, films, sports, articles, whatever, as well as quick reviews of books I read. It’s free and it goes right to your inbox!
Continue reading “Please Do Me a Favor — Subscribe to My Monthly Newsletter”
This month will mark the seventh anniversary of the release of my first — and still highest-selling — book.
It was a niche book and it made some minor waves in that space, to the point where it even climbed all the way to #2 in that category on Amazon. It didn’t stay there long, however, and my name never cracked the “Wealthiest Writers” listicles.
It never will.
Continue reading “I’ll Never Make a Living from My Writing”
“I am but an ordinary Man. The Times alone have destined me to Fame — and even these have not been able to give me, much…Yet some great Events, some cutting Expressions, some mean Hypocrisies, have at Times, thrown this Assemblage of Sloth, Sleep, and littleness into Rage a little like a Lion.”
John Adams
I have a vivid memory – so clear that it’s like a snapshot – of sitting in an American Revolution class junior year as my professor, a brilliant man and a wonderful teacher, kept extolling the virtues of George Washington and juxtaposing them with John Adams, whom he referred to as “curmudgeonly” and “acerbic.”
That’s all I needed to hear.
Continue reading “The Best Books on John Adams”
April 2019’s newsletter is now out!
Continue reading “The Pierznik Monthly Newsletter Volume 54 (April 2019)”
“He saw the whole of a subject at a single glance, and by a happy union of the powers of reasoning and persuasion often succeeded in carrying measures which were at first sight of an unpopular nature.”
–Benjamin Rush
I imagine writing a book about John Adams in the 2010’s would be a daunting task.
At first glance, it appears that there is significant difficulty in writing about a member of a revered, almost mythical, group that died nearly two centuries ago.
Continue reading “A Beautiful Book about a Beautiful Mind – “John Adams’s Republic: The One, the Few, and the Many” Reviewed”
“Life is a long lesson in humility.”
— James Barrie
It’s a cliché that having a child changes your life forever, but things become clichés because they’re true, and one of the biggest adjustments is just how much stuff children come with and how difficult it is to keep it all organized.
Continue reading “My Children Help Me Battle My OCD (Just By Being Themselves)”
Grieve not that I die young. Is it not well to pass away ere life hath lost its brightness?
– Lady Flora Hastings
He was different.
It wasn’t just the $100 Crenshaw mixtape or the Marathon Clothing store or the work he did to quell gang violence and promote his beloved neighborhood’s art and culture.
It was all of that – and so much more.
Ermias Asghedom, known to the rest of us as Nipsey Hussle, was shot and killed at the age of thirty-three in his hometown of Los Angeles. In the days since his shocking death, the phrase that has come up over and over again about the man is, “he was so much more than just rap.”
Continue reading “So Much More Than Rap: The Life and Legacy of Nipsey Hussle”
The March 2019 edition of my newsletter just dropped.
Continue reading “The Pierznik Monthly Newsletter Volume 53 (March 2019)”
It’s no secret that I’m a Wu-Tang Clan superfan.
I know obscure trivia about the group. I have their logo on my coffee mug. I own old issues of The Source and XXL with the group on the cover. I also own items like the “Protect Ya Neck” cassette single, the “C.R.E.A.M.” single on vinyl, and the actual Purple Tape (the cassette version of Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…).
One of the more obscure Wu-related items I own is a copy of
The World According to Pretty Toney, a 2007 book by Ghostface Killah with J. Brightly.
