Remember the opening of Al Capone's safe?

A non-news event on Friday reminded me of the big foofaraw on 21 April 1986 when Al Capone's vault, walled off for decades in the old Lexington Hotel in Chicago, was opened live on national TV. Remember that?

Millions of viewers watched as Geraldo Rivera (who else?) pioneered the "no-news news" format. Instead of reporting on news, he devoted entire programs to possible and hypothetical news. News channels like CNN (who else?) speculated on what would be found inside the safe. When the big day came, it turned out to be empty except for debris.

The Friday non-news event which reminded me of Geraldo's spectacular misfire was the FBI's forced disclosure of what they seized in their midnight raid on Mar-a-Lago, the Florida residence of President Donald Trump.

American presidents are required, on leaving office, to transfer all of their documents and emails to the National Archives. In an effort to keep the Dumbocrats from getting thrased in the 2022 mid-term elections, the Department of Justice is searching desperately for evidence that Mr Trump improperly handled records by taking them from the White House to Mar-a-Lago. 

As nearly as we can infer -- the document was so heavily reacted that we can only guess -- the affidavit on the basis of which the raid was authorized by an Obama-appointed judge alleged that Mr Trump and his lawyers failed to provide relevant documents voluntarily, and "likely concealed or removed" records as part of an effort to obstruct the investigation.

On Friday, the FBI filed a list of what they found in the 33 boxes of papers etc -- note the "etc" -- they took away. They seized more than 11,000 government documents in total, including:

* 3 (count `em, three) documents marked "confidential"

* 17 documents marked "secret"

* 7 documents marked "top secret"

* 43 empty folders with "classified" banners

* 28 empty folders labelled "Return to staff secretary/military aide" 

The court filing also confirms previous reports that many records were mixed with personal effects, including clothes -- Melania's underwear? -- books and newspapers. 

A spokesman for President Trump, said the unsealed document showed the government's actions were "not some surgical, confined search and retrieval" but "a smash and grab." IMHO, if anything has been proven, it's just that the Donald, like most of us, doesn't stay on top of his filing!

Further reading: "After Using FBI To Suppress Son’s Crimes And Raid Political Rival’s Home, Biden Warns Democracy In Danger", in the Babylon Bee (where else?), 3/9/22. I can't resist sharing this excerpt:

President Biden went on to call for the expulsion from democratic society anyone who questioned the integrity of an American election. "If you question an election's fairness because our intel communities told media companies to bury damaging stories about me, or because COVID was used as an excuse to illegally change voting practices without legislative input, or because the FBI spied on Trump's campaign after Democrats gave them a bogus dossier - then you have no place in civil society," said Biden. "In fact, while we are at it, if you don't support abortion through nine months, or the genital mutilation of children, you are an enemy of the state. And we will foment violent protests and assassination attempts to intimidate you - to save democracy."

Book review: Bill Bryson's latest pleases and amazes

"It was one hell of a summer." So begins the last clause of the last sentence of the last chapter (bar the epilogue) of Bill Bryson's latest tour de force, One Summer: America 1927 (Doubleday 2013), which Walt recommends most highly.

Bill Bryson is one of my favourite writers. But it must be said that the quality and "interest quotient" of his earlier works (especially his travel books) is more consistently good than that of his more recent writing. Of all his books, I can think of only three that I haven't particularly enjoyed. Two of those -- A Short History of Nearly Everything and At Home -- are among the more recent.

So it was with a bit of doubt that I laid out the spondulix (Bryson would love that word) for One Summer, wondering if I might later suffer from buyer's remorse. I didn't.

Although the dust jacket illustration of the Spirit of St. Louis, a baseball player and a flapper should have tipped me off, I also wondered what happened in the summer of 1927 that merited a whole long(ish) book. Here, from the last chapter (bar the epilogue) is the answer.

Babe Ruth hit sixty home runs. The Federal Reserve made the mistake that precipitated the stock market crash. Al Capone enjoyed his last summer of eminence. The Jazz Singer was filmed. Television was created. Radio came of age. Sacco and Vanzetti were executed. President Coolidge chose not to run. Work began on Mount Rushmore. The Mississippi flooded as it never had before. A madman in Michigan blew up a school and killed forty-four people in the worst slaughter of children in American history. Henry Ford stopped making the Model T and promised to stop insulting Jews. And a kid from Minnesota flew across an ocean and captivated the planet in a way it had never been captivated before.

The kid, of course, was Charles Lindbergh. One Summer begins and ends with him. In between, Mr. Bryson manages -- this is the amazing part -- to tie together all of the events and personalities mentioned above, as well as countless others of lesser note. The depth and detail of his narrative is astounding. Besides being a voracious reader, I believe he must have had at least one very good research assistant. [Hey! Is that a dig at me? Ed.]

It is a tribute to Bill Bryson's skill as a writer that, although One Summer runs to 458 pages -- plus notes, suggestions for further reading, a bibliography and index! -- I found it a fast-paced and entertaining read. It's part social history, part biography, and part pure story-telling. And, as they say, the whole is much more than the sum of its parts. Best new book I've read this year.

Post scriptum et caveat: It must be said that some fairly large chunks of One Summer -- particularly the story of Charles Lindbergh -- have been, errr, recycled from Made in America (Martin Secker & Warburg, 1994). But since Made in America antedates the travel books that made Bill Bryson famous, many of you may not have read it. And even if you did, Mr. Bryson is such a good storyteller that you won't mind a rerun.