Charles Johnson is a renowned novelist, essayist and writer of short stories. His novel Middle Passage won the 1990 National Book Award. He is also a cartoonist and a Buddhist (his article"Dharma for a Dangerous Time" appears in the September issue of the Buddhist publication Shambala Sun.) Lately, his own reading has been focused again on what history has to teach us: A Study of History by Arnold J. Toynbee; The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler; An Outline of History by H.G. Wells; The Twilight of American Culture and Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire by Morris Berman.