Justin’s Newsletter: February 2024
Justin’s Newsletter: February 2024
Vol. 4, Issue 2
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What’s Up With Me
Read my article about former Congressmember Liz Cheney’s talk in Pasadena in Local News Pasadena, “Liz Cheney’s Last Stand.”
Watch this month’s episode of “Pasadena Monthly with Justin Chapman,” featuring an interview with Joel Sheldon, long-time owner of Vroman’s Bookstore, which is going up for sale. Watch the full episode here.
I'm quoted in this Pasadena Now story about my old mentor and former Pasadena Weekly editor Kevin Uhrich's book about a brutal and still-unsolved 1968 murder in Pennsylvania, Death in the House of Broken Hearts. Order a copy!
Thank you to the Pasadena Media Foundation for your continued support.
Around Town
Stories to Keep an Eye On
International: RIP Alexei Navalny. Shocked but not surprised. His fate was sealed the minute he flew back to Russia. I understood why he did that, but I also don’t. Hats off to his wife Yulia Navalnaya who has decided to step up and take his place and continue the fight at great personal risk to herself, when she just as easily and understandably could have laid low. She needs everyone’s support.
National: Jon Stewart’s back at “The Daily Show”! At least on Mondays. Never thought I’d see the day. It feels like he picked up right where he left off in summer 2015. We need him now more than ever. It’s not all chuckles and zingers, though: if you need a good cry, watch his segment this week about his beloved dog Dipper passing away. Heartbreaking.
California: Some folks are actually trying to launch a recall election for Governor Newsom—again. They didn’t learn their lesson the first time (or the other six failed efforts), or the other two times the people elected him. Gluttons for punishment.
Local: Vroman’s Bookstore is going up for sale. It’s the end of an era. Just about everybody (including the owner, Joel Sheldon) wants to see it remain an independent bookstore and community gathering place and author event space. But as Sheldon told me in this month’s episode of “Pasadena Monthly,” “never say never.” Founded in 1894 by Adam Clark Vroman, the store is a Pasadena institution. Sheldon’s family has been running the business since 1916, when Vroman died and left the store to his long-time employees including Sheldon’s great-grandfather Alan Sheldon, who was also Vroman’s godson. The Sheldons have shepherded Vroman’s through numerous challenges over many decades—including the Great Depression, two world wars, the Covid pandemic, changes in the publishing industry, and the shift to Amazon and other online booksellers, to name a few. The store has hosted author events for everyone from President Jimmy Carter to Upton Sinclair to Hillary Clinton to Ray Bradbury to Jonathan Lethem to yours truly, among many others.
Great Reads
Here are some recommendations for interesting books I’ve read recently:
American Carnage: On the Frontlines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump—Tim Alberta
Published in 2019, this book by Tim Alberta, one of the best journalists of our time, thoroughly documents the Republican Party’s descent from conservative/fiscal hawks/military adventurers/Reaganites to unprincipled/corrupt/Russia apologists/Trump toadies, from George W. Bush (“compassionate conservative”? Get lost, Chomsky!) to John McCain to John Boehner to Mitt Romney to Paul Ryan and then to Sarah Palin to Jim Jordan to Kevin McCarthy to Mark Meadows. Alberta shows how the Republican Party was already spiraling and changing into something completely unrecognizable to Republican faithful just a few years before Trump came along, but also that Trump was not the cause of this change—though he was its catalyst and accelerant. Written before the events of January 6 and the 2020 election, it was already a damning portrayal of Republicanism in the first 20 years of the 21st century. Lots of important lessons in here as we gear up to watch the Republican Party debase itself even further at the altar of Trump.
Ian Fleming: The Complete Man—Nicholas Shakespeare
The new biography of Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond. The first authorized biography since 1966, this book is an excellent and very thorough examination of such a fascinating personality. Even if he hadn’t written the Bond books, we would still want to know about Fleming’s life. He served in naval intelligence during World War II and we’re just learning the extent to which he actually played a significant role during the war. I’ve studied Fleming quite extensively, and there was so much information in this book that I wasn’t aware of. I was bowled away at the very end of the book when Shakespeare recounts an anecdote in which, after Fleming’s son Caspar killed himself, Caspar’s friend was going through his things and found a completed, unpublished Bond manuscript and brought it to Ann Fleming, Ian’s wife—with whom he had a very complicated and mutually destructive relationship—and showed her what he found, and Ann promptly took the manuscript and chucked it on the fire.
Spotlight on My Past Stories
Following the theme of my Liz Cheney article, here are some of my other stories about the Distinguished Speaker Series: Joe Biden, James Comey, Bob Woodward, and John Cleese.
And read all of my journalism here.