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Recent Posts
- “Song Sung Blue” Makes Kate Hudson Oscar Worthy
- On Randall K. Wilson’s “A Place Called Yellowstone”: Award-Winning History of Yellowstone National Park
- On Candice Millard’s “River of Doubt” and “River of the Gods”: Bugs, Snakes, and Disease Aplenty
- More Alone than “Alone”: On Adam Shoalts’s “Vanished Beyond the Map: The Mystery of Lost Explorer Hubert Darrell” (2025)
- Rachel McAdams film “Send Help” (2026) Makes Comic Gold Out of “Survivor” and “Alone” Audition Videos
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Author Archives: williamjcobb
"The Blood People": On Horror Creeping in Netflix, With Nods to "Night of the Demons," "Primal," and the Awful "The Awakening"
So the other morning my five-year-old daughter wakes up and the first thing she says to me is, “People are made of blood.” She’s right, actually. And I kind of like the poetry of the line, although the way her … Continue reading
Posted in Film
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On Thomas Friedman's "Hot, Flat, and Crowded 2.0": A Disturbing Vision of the Future
So I must first confess that I am NOT a Thomas Friedman fan, which I think makes my enthusiasm more authentic for his nonfiction book Hot, Flat, and Crowded 2.0: Why We Need a Green Revolution—And How It Can Renew … Continue reading
Posted in books, Climate Change, Politics
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On Werner Herzog's New Film, "Into the Abyss," and the One Currently Opening Wide Its Maw at Penn State
So I teach at Penn State, a position which will be uncomfortable to admit for some time. Suffice to say it’s been one bizarre, disheartening week. I’ll let others shout bromides about the charges and the conduct of officials, but … Continue reading
Posted in books/film, Education, Politics
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Christo's Next Art Project, "Over the River," Gets Approved, and Will Be in My Backyard
So there’s good news for art lovers of the world: Installation-art guru Christo has finally got approval for his project titled “Over the River,” which will be located about twenty short miles north of my Colorado home, on the Arkansas … Continue reading
Posted in Art, The West
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The Goy Crisis
So the other day I was discussing (perhaps ‘talking at’ would be a more accurate description) the Boy Crisis issue with my class of (rather sleepy, uncommunicative) undergraduate students in an Intro to Creative Writing class, and it was something … Continue reading
Posted in Education, Film
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On Paul Gilding's "The Great Disruption," With a Nod to Eugene Linden's "The Future in Plain Sight"
So I’m a sucker for ‘big vision’ books about the future and the myriad problems we face with climate change and resource depletion, and right now I’m reading Paul Gilding’s The Great Disruption. It manages to be at once peppy … Continue reading
Posted in books, Climate Change, The West
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A Great Divide: Attitudes About Climate Change Remarkably Different Around the U.S., With Sharp Divide Along East/West
So one thing I’ve noticed the last few years in my peripatetic life of inhabiting both the Eastern and the Western U.S. is a noticeable division in attitudes about Climate Change. In a nutshell, it seems as though the West … Continue reading
Posted in Climate Change, The West
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On the Illegal Immigration Debate, Tim Egan's Savvy Op-Ed, and How It Appears in Novels
So Tim Egan has a blistering attack on the scapegoating of Latinos in the latest Republican presidential debates, and the whole issue of illegal immigration and migrant workers, here: I grew up in a predominantly Latino area of South Texas … Continue reading
Posted in books, Politics, The West
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In Praise of "Boardwalk Empire," Season 2, & Bad Horror Movies on Netflix, Like "The Awakening"
So I’m home sick today, and one of the few pleasures for a working stiff on these sick days is catching up on mindless TV. It beats trying to figure out why in the world so many people are transfixed … Continue reading
Posted in Bad TV, Good TV
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On Prophecies in "The Bird Saviors": Dust Storms in Texas
So my forthcoming novel, The Bird Saviors—due out in (what’s left of) bookstores in May/June—opens with a dust storm in southern Colorado, and when I began writing it some five years ago, I imagined it set in a fuzzy ‘near … Continue reading
Posted in books, Climate Change, Politics, The West
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