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Were British double agents the key to the Normandy invasion?

Were British double agents the key to the Normandy invasion?

Americans' views of the Second World War have been dominated by films, books, and television specials about the role that U.S. troops played in the fighting. Even today, more than three-quarters of a century after the war ended, we tend to believe that it was our ingenuity and...

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Popular Fiction

British explorers risk death in forbidden Tibet in 1869

British explorers risk death in forbidden Tibet in 1869

Explorers today plumb the oceans' trenches and the vast reaches of solar space. For the truly adventurous who seek to cross humanity's last frontiers, few if any big challenges remain on land. But a century and a half ago, the opportunities for Western explorers to make their...

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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!

 

Cover image of 'The Predicament,"

Cold War intrigue turns violent. A reluctant MI6 agent is a target.

We first met Gabriel Dax in William Boyd's 2024 novel, Gabriel's Moon. Then, the itinerant travel-writer-turned-MI6-agent became ensnared in the intrigue surrounding the overthrow and murder of Patrice Lumumba, the first elected Prime Minister in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Now, three...
Cover image of "Americanah," a book about race without blinders on.

Race, without blinders on

Like practically everyone I know, I'm uncomfortable talking about race. Given the unsteady dynamics of relations between Jews and African-Americans, the subject has been particularly fraught with tension for me. From the time in eighth grade when I was ridiculed for befriending a black classmate,...
The Code of the Woosters is a classic comic novel.

From P. G. Wodehouse, a classic comic novel that’s still funny today

If there's a list somewhere of the top comic novelists of the 20th century, I haven't found it. But if somebody ever puts one together, P. G. Wodehouse is sure to be near the top. Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse KBE was born in 1881 and lived to the age of 94. He is best known for his many short...
Cover image of "The Man Who Went Up in Smoke," a great example of early Scandinavian noir

They invented Scandinavian noir

Some mystery novelists trace the origins of their craft to any one of several nineteenth century writers: Edgar Allen Poe, Willkie Collins, Arthur Conan Doyle, and others. But there appears to be a consensus among contemporary writers—at least among those who are partial to police procedurals—that...
Cover image of "Nicked,"

A satirical 11th century heist story

M. T. Anderson won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature for one novel and was a finalist for two others. But he writes for adults too, and brilliantly, as his most recent work makes clear. Nicked is historical fiction. But it's also fantasy. And it blurs the line into folk tales...
American conservatives - Republican Gomorrah - Max Blumenthal

When religion dominated the views of American conservatives

A review of Republican Gomorra: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party, by Max Blumenthal. @@@@ (4 out of 5). This is a lively and fascinating book based on five years of interviews with the luminaries of the Religious Right, and it’s worth reading today despite the fact that its narrative ends with the election of Barack Obama. The Religious Right may no longer hog the headlines, but there’s no mistaking its continuing hold on so many of the levers of power.

Cover image of "All the King's Men," a novel about the Great Depression

Was politics during the Great Depression really like this?

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes Robert Penn Warren's 1946 novel, All the King's Men, is widely regarded as one of the best American novels ever written. Seventy years after its publication, it appears on high school and college reading lists throughout the country. Partly because of the Academy...
Tuxedo Park shows how radar helped win World War II.

The amateur scientist who helped deliver radar and the atomic bomb

Radar helped win World War II, and one little-remembered man was the key to developing it. He was a privileged young man, a product of Andover, Yale, and Harvard Law and a first cousin and protegé of Henry L. Stimson (who was variously Secretary of State and War under Presidents Herbert Hoover and...
Jimmy the Kid is a comic caper novel.

A kidnapping tale from the master of the comic caper novel

In the course of his 75 years, Donald E. Westlake (1933-2008) published more than 100 novels and nonfiction books. He's best known for his comic stories about crime capers, especially the fourteen books in the Dortmunder series about (to crib a phrase from Jimmy Breslin) a "gang that couldn't...
Cover image of "The German Client,"

An outstanding novel about the Italian Resistance in World War II

The French Resistance dominates accounts written in English about irregular warfare in World War II. But the most effective Resistance efforts may well have been in Poland, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union. And there was anti-Nazi activity everywhere in occupied Europe. Italy was no different....

My Most Popular Reviews

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Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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Mal Warwick

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