Metaphysical Image

Since you have already found this website, you can quickly discover most of what is worth knowing about me. I have a background in law (Georgetown University Law Center, Class of 1979) but I have worked most of my life as an editor and writer. Sometimes that has been as a legal editor, sometimes as a polemicist, and sometimes as an unaffiliated but not wholly unrespectable scholar.

After long thought, I realized that the most important thing in life is to be helpful. So, I have taken to explaining things, carefully and empathetically, and often at very great length. For the many kind people who ask: yes, I suppose the writings on this site do hang together, after a fashion. "Spengler with a Smile" is how I usually characterize the organizing principle.

Most of what I have written, and almost all that I have published, has been archived here. The exception is a column on airline regulation I wrote for many years, called The Federal Papers. Only a few columns are online, the ones I judged to be of general interest. Anyone interested in seeing my full publishing history may examine my Curriculum Vitae.

Readers who visit my website seem to enjoy the book reviews best, and I enjoy writing them. I enjoy writing them best of all, however, when I am being paid for the exercise. Readers who are also publishers are invited to commission book reviews and other items. I am also interested in writing a column, on legal issues or on any of the several topics with which my website deals. Consult my blog, and make a proposal.