Missive #824 Published 5 Nov 2026

Gunfighter Nation completes Richard Slotkin’s trilogy, begun in Regeneration Through Violence and continued in Fatal Environment, on the myth of the American frontier. Slotkin examines an impressive array of sources - fiction, Hollywood westerns, and the writings of Hollywood figures and Washington leaders - to show how the racialist theory of Anglo-Saxon ascendance and superiority (embodied in Theodore Roosevelt’s The Winning of the West), rather than Frederick Jackson Turner’s thesis of the closing of the frontier, exerted the most influence in popular culture and government policy making in the twentieth century. He argues that Roosevelt’s view of the frontier myth provided the justification for most of America’s expansionist policies, from Roosevelt’s own Rough Riders to Kennedy’s counterinsurgency and Johnson’s war in Vietnam.

Missive #816 Published 20 Oct 2026

In spite of what the book promo claims I did not like this book as much as the travel books that Twain wrote. As I understand the differences in this book he has used Juvenalian satire whereas in his travel books he used Horatian satire. As the promo says it is one of the first works to feature time travel and it is one of Twain's most unique.

Missive #815 Published 19 Oct 2026

This book was first published in France in 2007 and was translated by George Miller for its 2010 English release by Bloomsbury. This was de Vigan’s first novel to be translated into English, there are a few more that I will try to find and read when time permits.