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South Dakota governor includes bloody tale in campaign volume – and admits ‘a better politician … wouldn’t tell the story here’In 1952, as a Republican candidate for vice-president, Richard Nixon famously stirred criticism by admitting receiving a dog, Checkers, as a political gift.In 2012, as the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney was pilloried for tying a dog, Seamus, to the roof of the family...

Despite his lack of faith, the author believes ‘something happened that was not supposed to happen’ on the day he was attackedSalman Rushdie has revealed an abiding sense that his survival after a brutal knife attack two years ago was a miracle, in spite of his lack of spiritual faith. “I do feel that something happened that was not supposed to happen and I...

The author of Giles Goat-Boy and The Sot-Weed Factor was part of a wave of writers in the 1960s who challenged standards of language and plotJohn Barth, the playfully erudite author whose darkly comic and complicated novels revolved around the art of literature and launched countless debates over the art of fiction, has died aged 93.Johns Hopkins University, where Barth was an emeritus professor...

Former president sells Trump-endorsed Bible in concert with Lee Greenwood, country singer whose music is played at his ralliesPatriotic, prayerful and rightwing Americans are being offered the chance to purchase – for a mere $59.99 – a Bible endorsed by Donald Trump, in the latest example of the former US president touting wares to the American public.In a post to his Truth Social platform...

The Internationalists details how the president was determined to leave a country in which 2,324 US troops were killed since 2001Joe Biden is “privately defiant” that he made the right calls on the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in summer 2021, a new book reportedly says, even as the chaos and carnage that unfolded continues to be investigated in Congress.“No one offered to resign” over...

Announcing her untitled book, set to be published in 2025, Emma Heming Willis recalls having ‘close to no resources or support’ after her husband’s diagnosisBruce Willis’ wife Emma Heming Willis is set to publish a book about her experience as a caregiver to her husband after he was disagnosed with frontotemporal dementia.The untitled book, which will be published in 2025 by Maria Shriver’s publishing...

The Kiowa tribe member’s debut House Made of Dawn is credited as the starting point for contemporary Native American literatureN Scott Momaday, a Pulitzer prize-winning storyteller, poet, educator and folklorist whose debut novel House Made of Dawn is widely credited as the starting point for contemporary Native American literature, has died. He was 89.Momaday died Wednesday at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico,...

Hunter Walker and Luppe B Luppen, authors of The Truce, quote former staffers to vice-president in scathing assessmentConsidering Kamala Harris’s fitness to take over from Joe Biden should the need arise, a top aide to the former California senator’s 2020 campaign said: “This person should not be president of the United States.”The withering assessment, given after Harris was picked for vice-president in 2020, is...