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SCIENCE FICTION

MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

Porfiry Rostnikov’s last case

Porfiry Rostnikov’s last case

Before his death in 2009, the prolific detective novelist Stuart Kaminsky wrote 16 police procedurals featuring a Moscow investigator named Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov. The books span the years 1981 to 2008. They encompass the final years of Communist rule and the first two...

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NONFICTION

20 top nonfiction books about World War II

20 top nonfiction books about World War II

If you've been reading my reviews for very long, you're aware that the World War II era holds special fascination for me. This might have something to do with the fact that I was born then—in fact, about six months before the USA entered the war. Or maybe it's just because it...

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Popular Fiction

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!

 

Landfall presents a sympathetic portrait of George W. Bush.

A novelist’s sympathetic portrait of George W. Bush

George W. Bush served in the Oval Office from 2001 to 2009. His two terms in office encompassed 9/11, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, and the global financial collapse that set off the Great Recession—surely, the most consequential sequence of events in any eight years in...
Cold Storage is a biological thriller.

A biological thriller that may keep you up at night

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes Warning: this novel is a biological thriller that might keep you up at night. You'll meet a lot of people in Cold Storage, but four are key. The first two you'll encounter are officers in the U. S. Air Force. Lt. Col. Trini Romano and Major Roberto Diaz are on...
Cover image of "The Attention Merchants," a novel about pop-up ads and other advertising techniques

The penny press, Amos ‘n Andy, and pop-up ads

If you've been paying attention, you can't have missed the changes in the character of advertising over the course of your life. Certainly, I have. Chances are, you were born in the age of radio, at the earliest. If so, you've witnessed a string of new technologies enter the realm of news and...
AI Superpowers is the best book about artificial intelligence I've read.

The best book about artificial intelligence I’ve read so far

Google "books about artificial intelligence," and you'll find a slew of them. Amazon lists 286. Computer scientists, journalists, science fiction authors, and other observers have written on the topic, sometimes insightfully, sometimes not. I've read nearly two dozen of these books. But AI...
First Contact

Peter Cawdron’s insightful First Contact book series

First Contact has been in the science fiction lexicon since 1935. According to the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, Murray Leinster first employed the term in his story "Proxima" that appeared in Astounding Stories in March 1935. In the following decades, Clifford Simak, Arthur C. Clarke,...
Cover image of "The Ask," a novel by Sam Lipsyte about a career in fundraising

Fundraising and fundraisers come off poorly in “The Ask”

Meet Milo Burke, as inept, unstable, and self-doubting as any anti-hero who's ever walked the earth. A failed painter whose sophomoric delusions of grandeur have long since drowned in waves of self-pity, Milo is employed in fundraising at what he insists on calling Mediocre University in New York...
Cover image of "The Fifties,"

They fought for change in the 1950s

We look upon the 1950s as a decade of conformity when little of consequence happened in the United States. But sweeping generalizations about any period in history are misleading at best, and none more so than about the Fifties. Because the period from the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950...
Jack of Spies by David Downing

David Downing’s “Jack of Spies” was no James Bond

Jack McColl is a young Scotsman bored with selling luxury automobiles, so it's no wonder that he opts for a life of intrigue and adventure when an offer comes along from the Admiralty to do a little spying on the side while on a sales trip to China. All he need do is nose around the German enclave...
Cover image of "The Increment" by David Ignatius, a gripping novel

From David Ignatius, a gripping novel about Iran and the CIA

Washington Post columnist and editor David Ignatius has covered wars, diplomacy, and the intelligence community in a long journalistic career. His reporting infuses the ten suspense and espionage novels he has written over the past thirty years. The Increment, published in 2009,...
Cover image of "Wake Up and Dream," an alternate history of Hollywood

This thriller is an alternate history of Hollywood

Hollywood, June 1944. Europe is still at war, with England about to fall to Hitler's legions. In the United States, FDR readies a run for a third term as the fascist Liberty League gains ground across the land. Everywhere, people are flocking to the theaters to take in the newest "feelies,"...

My Most Popular Reviews

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Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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Mal Warwick

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