The Elbert Files

My friend K.C. was admiring artist Richard Serra’s “Five Plate Pentagon” in the southeast corner of the John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park.

As I approached, he mumbled something about the Legislature needing to grow …

If you wonder why we have not had a recession lately, or if we will have one sometime this year, economist Jim Paulsen has an interesting answer.

Before retiring in 2022, Paulsen wrote a deeply …

The modern era of UFO sightings began midyear 1947, shortly after I was born, which helps explain my lifelong fascination with unidentified flying objects and why I was drawn to a new book by technology …

Sports betting, like cancer rates and bad water, is a growing problem in Iowa.

There’s a relatively simple solution – limiting advertising – which I’ll get to in a minute. But first, some background.

Sports …

What’s happened to Iowa?

I’ve been asked many versions of that question in recent months. Typically, but not exclusively, by Democrats who can’t understand how a middle-of-the-road state like Iowa could, almost overnight, become a …

It was a bright winter day when I saw my friend K.C. deep in thought at the John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park. He was looking at Dutch artist Willem de Kooning’s “Reclining Figure” sculpture.…

It has become fashionable to denigrate old people, or at least old politicians.

Before Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, died last fall at age 90, her apparent dementia had become a punchline for comedians and …

Like most historic events, it will take years, maybe decades, to truly appreciate what happened at this month’s Iowa Republican caucuses. But here are some takeaways from ground zero.

This year’s winners include:

Iowa’s economy improved in 2023 but not as much as the rest of the country.

Iowa’s 2.1% increase in personal income during the third quarter – the most recent period for data – was the …

In 2023, I met Edith Wilson, Sarah Polk, Jennie Jerome Churchill and Sara Delano Roosevelt courtesy of their biographers Rebecca Boggs Roberts, Amy S. Greenberg and Charlotte Gray.

Women have written books as far back …