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A brilliant novel of love, hope, and the Rwanda genocide

A brilliant novel of love, hope, and the Rwanda genocide

Today, Rwanda is one of the brightest lights in Africa. The economy is booming. Corruption is rare. Government delivers services. The streets of Kigali, the capital, are clean. It's even easy to open a business. Thirty years ago the country was in chaos, as this award-winning...

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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!

 

A Burning is about the consequences of Hindu nationalism.

Terrorism, corruption, and Hindu nationalism in India today

Few of us who live in comfortable circumstances—or just about anyone else, in fact—in the Global North can fully appreciate the impact of poverty and official corruption that runs rampant in so many of the nations clustered in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. This is the reality the debut novelist...
The Wrong Stars is a space travel tale.

This space travel tale is just so-so

What sets apart a great science fiction novel from one that's just so-so? By so-so, I mean a story that works reasonably well, smoothly moving from beginning to end and creating suspense along the way. But that so-so novel doesn't stand out in any particular way — not by demonstrating exceptional...
Cover image of "Ancillary Justice," a peculiar book.

Why did this peculiar book win both the Nebula and Hugo Awards?

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie was the first novel ever to win the Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke Awards. I'm trying to figure out why. Let's see if we can suss out what's going on in the story. For starters, every character is referred to as "she" or "her" regardless of whether they...
Cover image of "Cobalt Red," a book about the virtual slavery in the mining of cobalt

How our cell phones and electric cars depend on virtual slavery

You may have come across reports about the violence surrounding the mining of the rare mineral coltan in Central Africa. It's a source of the element tantalum, which is essential in the manufacture of cell phones and laptops. And about eighty percent of the world's supply comes from the Democratic...
Cover image of "The Summit," a book about Bretton Woods

Bretton Woods: clashing personalities determined our economic history

It's unlikely that a general reader would pick up a book about Bretton Woods, and this one -- with a bland main title and not one but two off-putting subtitles -- would appear to be a work that only an economist could love. It's not. The dramatic interplay of personalities that Ed Conway brings to...
child pornography: Cockroaches by Jo Nesbo

Harry Hole investigates child pornography and pedophilia in Bangkok

Norway's ambassador to Thailand is found lying dead with a knife in his back in a Bangkok brothel. To ensure that the investigation is fumbled and the episode covered up, the politicians who govern the Norwegian police arrange to send an alcoholic detective to take charge of the case. They fully...
Cover image of "Smoke and Ashes," a new history of opium

A new history of opium as addictive as the drug

Part history, part memoir, part travelogue, Smoke and Ashes is the latest work by acclaimed Indian author Amitav Ghosh. Grounded in the extensive research he conducted in writing his extraordinary Ibis Trilogy, this new history of opium traces the story of the drug from its earliest known use six...
Bad Blood is a cautionary tale about corporate power in Silicon Valley.

A cautionary tale about corporate power in Silicon Valley

Bad Blood is a cautionary tale about the corrosive effects of corporate power in Silicon Valley. It's also vivid evidence for the invaluable role played by investigative journalists, whose work constitutes one of the few checks available in our society on corporate misbehavior. The...
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 "Every Spy a Traitor," an unfunny farce

A farcical story about Soviet moles in MI6

Does a farce need to be funny? Wikipedia defines farce as "comedy that seeks to entertain an audience through situations that are highly exaggerated, extravagant, ridiculous, absurd, and improbable." To me, it seems doubtful that Alex Gerlis set out to create a farce when he wrote Every Spy a...

My Most Popular Reviews

Weekly Reviews Delivered to You!

Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

Weekly book reviews to match your taste!

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Mal Warwick

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