Richard Balmert is a native of Maryland and a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University. After graduation and residing along the East Coast—in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York...vizualizați mai multeRichard Balmert is a native of Maryland and a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University. After graduation and residing along the East Coast—in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York—he was drawn to the early history of the United States and the wide diversity of the old immigrant populations of Baltimore, Philadelphia, northern New Jersey, and New York City.
Later, calling South Bend, Indiana; Fort Madison, Iowa; and Colorado Springs home provided the opportunity to observe the interests of a different, diverse population, piquing an interest in people in foreign lands that were immigrants here but who now call English their language and inculcating a desire to travel.
Visiting almost every country in Europe produced a fervor for art, which always remains. As with his characters in his book, the urge to understand people expands, resulting in extended visits to Asia (China, India, Southeast Asia), Fiji Islands, Australia, and New Zealand. He finds the Middle East—from Turkey to Israel to Egypt to Morocco—especially fascinating because of its ancient history.
Now having visited all fifty states and residing around our country, he discovered California, lecturing on art and history and becoming a docent at a museum of fine art in San Diego, where he now resides.
Richard Balmert writes with an ease and intuitive understanding that appeals to a wide swath of readers. His book, Why Americans Speak English, is designed not as a boring history but as a fascinating study of human nature, tainted with wit, attraction of men to women, love, and the suffering and hardship experienced by those who travel far to find a better life in America.
For Americans who never really learned their history, this new book ties together the threads to an understanding on how peoples could come together, throw off their allegiances to a former nationality, and produce a new nation with a common language—even if it took the fickle finger of fate.vizualizați mai puține