Richard Bissell: 12 books

“Because I myself write books about the Mississippi River, because I used to be a pilot on the Mississippi River . . . the critics for twenty-three years have been calling me ‘a modern Mark Twain.’ Now is this fair?”  So begins a skillful, and frequently hilarious, comparison...

Richard Bissell's advice is to “Go anyplace. . . . To travel, to move around ― that's the thing. No matter where.” Be prepared to laugh and guffaw and hold your sides and, perhaps, depending on your age,  reminisce a bit (How Many Miles to Galena was first published in 1965) as you ride along...

Author Richard Bissell worked on the Mississippi most of his life and from the very first page, A Stretch on the River sweeps the reader along much like the river that runs through it – gripping our attention, burbling and chortling, and inspiring wonder.  The narrator joins the crew...

New superintendent, Sid Sorokin, arrives at the Sleep Tite Pajama Factor in Junction City, Iowa, to find himself knee deep in complaints about fans in the pants section, boiling over boilers, nutty letters demanding responses, uncooperative sewing machines, and disgruntled employees who are about...

If anyone had told me I’d be entranced by a book about coal boats moving thirty million tons of coal down the Monongahela River during the 1940’s, well, I would have thought you’d lost your coal stones. I guffawed my way through the first chapter and was pinned to the pages from thereon in....

A riotous story about an Indiana author who packs up his family and moves 900 miles (by car in a heat wave with four children) to take up residence in Connecticut where he commutes to New York City to work with a team to transform his book into a musical comedy.  Adjustment to city life is frazzling...

America’s Revolutionary War heroes caught in the spotlight by a novelist, humorist, and playwright. Come back stage and find out more about the events of the war and our leaders as the whole show is, ahem, un-costumed. Written with great wit and academic authority (no rube, Mr. Bissell was a Harvard...

“A river, a very big and powerful river, is the only natural force that can wholly determine the course of human peregrination.” T. S.Eliot Duke Snyder found his first job on “a dirty old cinder-throwing stern-wheeler” when he was sixteen years old with just sixty-five cents left in...

A riotous parade of historical facts and antidotes about the formation and evolution of Harvard from 1636 – 1962.  Always successful in finding an obscure point or contributing a twist in perception, Bissell tells the story of Harvard's presidents, student life, curriculum, the campus and its...

Frank Blanchard loves houseboats and lives on one along with such things as “cartons, papers, boards, lube oil cans, vinegar jugs, shingles, shoes, branches, busted oars, busted window sash, railroad ties, oil drums, oak wedges from the shipyard, bushel baskets, orange crates, watermelon rind, two...

  Although fiction, Julia Harrington in a strange and wonderful way is more real than recorded history. Julia is aged twelve-going-on-thirteen in the year 1913. She tells her own story through her memories, impressions, heart and mind and in her own special language, direct, honest, and...

Wallace Dixon (Wally) is anything but happy. Life is the same old same old and, in spite of his endless successes and financial genius, his dream destination eludes him. Now approaching 50, he can't give up hope that life is more than, well, as an airline stewardess tells him, "the rejected broccoli...