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Ken Follett’s monumental saga of the First World War

Ken Follett’s monumental saga of the First World War

No one is still alive with any adult memory of World War I, which ended a century ago. So when we think of the events that have shaped the world we live in today it's likely World War II looms large. But its antecedent three decades earlier may have had greater long-term...

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Explore My “BEST OF the category” selections

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE BOOK?

When people ask me that question, I never know what to say. In a lifetime of reading, I’ve read many thousands of books. And I’ve reviewed well over 2,000 of them on this site. Picking just one as a “favorite,” or even a handful of them, makes no sense to me.

The problem is, I read for many different reasons. Perhaps you do, too. And I read many different sorts of books. Mysteries and thrillers. Popular fiction, especially historical fiction. Science fiction.

And nonfiction, history in particular. You’ll find hundreds of reviews in every one of those categories on this site.

Look to the right for a rotating random selection culled from throughout this site.

Happy reading!

 

Hitler's Spy Chief is an account of the secret history of World War II.

The secret history of World War II

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes Most histories of World War II give the impression that the conflict was a straightforward affair. Whether recounting the story of battles (Stalingrad, Normandy, Midway) or the tales of spies and saboteurs (Britain's SOE, America's OSS, Germany's Abwehr), they...
Guns, Germs, and Steel helps in gaining a global perspective

Gaining a global perspective on the world around us

I’m sure you’ve found this, too: It’s damnably hard to get a handle on things. Every day, we’re inundated by thousands of bits and pieces of information—online, by mail, on our phones and laptops, and everywhere we walk on the streets of a city or the aisles of a grocery store. How does all this...
Cover image of "Dark Matter," a novel about the multiverse

A journey into the multiverse

Imagine that every decision you make throughout your life creates a new universe: the old one representing the path you actually take, the new universe conforming to the alternate path. Over the years, then, your life branches into innumerable possible universes. So does the life of everyone else...
The Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson

The Walter Isaacson biography of Steve Jobs

A review of Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson. @@@@@ (5 out of 5). This is an authorized biography, but one unlike any other I’ve encountered, since Isaacson leavened his obvious admiration for Jobs as a creative genius and a gifted business leader with unvarnished and seemingly endless anecdotes about his subject’s notoriously difficult personality.

From Ian Rankin, a thoroughly enjoyable novel of suspense

Let us count the ways that Ian Rankin's anti-social Scottish police detective, John Rebus, is worth following, book after book (Saints of the Shadow Bible is the 19th in the Rebus series): He is delightfully contrarian, always finding openings to new perspectives in the cracks between revealed...
Troubled Blood

A forty-year-old cold case powers this doorstopper novel

So, what could justify writing a detective novel of nearly 1,000 pages? At first glance, the story seems simple enough. An attractive young woman doctor goes missing one evening and is never seen again. Almost forty years later, the doctor's daughter enlists private detectives Cormoran Strike and...
Cover image of "Victoria, the Queen,"

An eye-opening biography of Queen Victoria

When we think today of an English Queen, we tend to conjure up the benevolent figure of Elizabeth II, waving from the balcony at Buckingham Palace or from the back seat of a car. Of course, if we read English history—or if we've watched the popular Netflix series, The Crown—we know more than that....
Cover image of "Saving Capitalism," a book about how to make capitalism work

Robert Reich explains how to make capitalism work for the middle class

If you've ever been exposed to Robert Reich's "Wealth and Poverty" course at UC Berkeley, perhaps through the film Inequality for All, or heard him speak in public, you know that there are few people alive today who are his equal in the ability to explain complex economic and social issues so...
Cover image of "Need to Know," an account of the rise of American intelligence

The rise of American intelligence in World War II

World War II began for the United States with a catastrophic intelligence failure at Pearl Harbor. Two decades earlier, during the First World War, the US military had begun building capacity in signals and communications intelligence. But little was left in place by 1941. Yet, just four years...
In the Enemy's House is about the unmasking of the Soviet atomic spies.

How the Soviet atomic spies were caught

When I was growing up in Ohio in the 1950s, one of the biggest stories in the news was the execution of the Soviet atomic spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. They had been convicted of helping spirit scientific details about the construction of the atomic bomb from American scientists and engineers...

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Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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Mal Warwick

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