My new historical novel Dawn of Darkness has been published by Scribd.

….. The Roman Empire is crumbling. As church and state grow increasingly hostile to women, Glenys a Celtic herbalist/healer and Hypatia, librarian of Alexandria’s great library, mathematician, teacher and philosopher, wage a relentless defense of women’s traditional rights. Their heroic struggles culminate in the cataclysm events of Lenten Week, 415 A.D. that ushered in the Dark Ages.

You can download it FREE until July 23, 2009 by going to www.Scribd.com and typing in the title or you can Google it. Follow the website instructions to download it. Comments are gratefully accepted.

If you are interested in learning Barry’s background as an attorney just click on the “Read more” tag. Read more

By Barry S. Willdorf (2009)

So, if the People are going to come to the aid of capitalism, is that socialism? The Republicans think so. Let’s say they are right. Let’s say it is socialism. Okay. Fine. I say, let’s raise the red flag. Let’s sing the Internationale. Let’s take those shares in those debt-besotted companies that we’re going to get for the bail out and put some People on the boards. (I’m not saying Palin-people. I mean Krugman type people.)

Let’s invest the money in retooling and research and development of improved products. Let’s relieve those businesses of the burdens of health plans by creating the biggest pool of people that there can be — all of us. In the process, we can take all that money we already spend on health care, one way of the other, and use it to subsidize the system. And let’s restructure all that debt that industries have. Let’s cram it down the financiers’ throats. (After all, that’s one industry that can’t move offshore anymore than it already has. Where are they going to move to?)  Read more

Fifty years ago, when the time came for my bar mitzvah, I was not given the opportunity to spout off from the bimah at the local synagogue like my contemporaries. My mother held that religion was the opiate of the masses and, determined to maintain a drug-free household, she contrived something she called a “socialist bar mitzvah.” What she had in mind was to show me that, when push came to shove, the captains of industry were still willing to grind their iron heels into the sons and daughters of our original pioneers. And so she cooked up a road trip into lands where, by her accounts, there yet dwelt original American serfs. We’d travel to Appalachia. Read more

Once upon a time, there was a country that lost an imperial war. The people’s national pride was wounded so they elected a doddering war hero who had no statecraft skills. Soon the country experienced a dire financial crisis. The old man was flummoxed. He struggled mightily to maintain the confidence of the people but was on the verge of failure. An election was rapidly approaching and things didn’t look good.

In his heart of hearts, the old hero preferred one of his cronies as a running mate, but his supporters saw that more of the same was a recipe for electoral disaster. Looming on the horizon though was a young, charismatic figure who, while bombastic, simplistic, hateful and ignorant, controlled a following of zealots and damn, if he couldn’t rile up the base with his blame-laying and simplistic solutions to complex problems.

The war hero was uncomfortable even associating with this crude fellow but his inner circle assured the dodderer that they could control this young upstart. Just then though they needed some new blood to invigorate their worn out and bankrupt followers. They urged an accommodation and they got it. The geezer was reelected. Within months Paul von Hindenburg was dead and Hitler came to power.

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