In 2016, Bob Gasche joked about besting fellow World War II veteran and former President George H.W. Bush. They had both went skydiving in old age, “but he was on his 90th birthday,” Gasche told me in an interview that summer shortly after his jump. “I jumped at 91. I [...]

Songbirds Guitar Museum — opened in 2017 in downtown Chattanooga, Tennessee — has more than 1,700 fretted instruments in its collection, touted as the world’s largest private one specifically of rare and vintage guitars. The collection’s value: more than $200 million. I recently visited the museum’s main showroom ($15.95 at [...]

Bob Gasche, a Marine corporal who served in World War II, including in the Battle of Iwo Jima, and later in the Korean War, died July 30 at age 94. He was a private in the 5th Marine Division when he landed on Iwo Jima during the battle’s first day. [...]

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ 1938 classic “The Yearling” tells of the small Baxter family living off land and animal in rural, forested Florida, long before today’s development, comforts, or conveniences. Around them are (mostly) amiable neighbors, the elements, a country doctor, the community of Volusia, and animal foes and friends, including [...]

John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” centers on the Joads, a family of poor farmers suffering in the Dust Bowl of the 1930s who are lured to California by hopes of a better life and a handbill advertising work there. Their journey is filled with peril, hunger, loss, police persecution, [...]

Tom Clancy’s “The Hunt for Red October” tells of a group of Soviet naval officers attempting to defect to the U.S. via the Atlantic Ocean in a highly advanced nuclear-powered submarine, as the Soviet Union gives chase with the intent to destroy and the U.S. attempts to secretly capture for study. [...]