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MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

Fact vs fiction in the story of an outrageous WWII deception

Fact vs fiction in the story of an outrageous WWII deception

When we think of Allied operations in World War II designed to fool the Nazis, most of us think "Normandy." After all, the elaborate efforts to conceal the time and place of D-Day famously included a fake army and hundreds of inflatable tanks, airplanes, and artillery pieces....

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NONFICTION

Fact vs fiction in the story of an outrageous WWII deception

Fact vs fiction in the story of an outrageous WWII deception

When we think of Allied operations in World War II designed to fool the Nazis, most of us think "Normandy." After all, the elaborate efforts to conceal the time and place of D-Day famously included a fake army and hundreds of inflatable tanks, airplanes, and artillery pieces....

read more

Popular Fiction

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!

 

Cover image of "Death and Judgment," a novel about corruption in Italy

A detective novel that highlights corruption in Italy

Though she has lived in Venice for more than a quarter-century, Donna Leon has insisted that the Commissario Brunetti series of detective novels she sets in Venice not be translated from English into Italian. There's no mystery here. Leon's picture of Italian society is merciless. In numerous...
WWII's most highly decorated spy is the subject of Code Name Lise.

A woman was World War II’s most highly decorated spy

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes She was the most decorated spy in World War II of either gender. Her name was Odette Sansom (later Odette Hallowes). From 1942 to 1945, she served as an officer of Britain's Special Operations Executive. From November 1942 to April 1943, she worked in southern...
Cover image of "The Double Comfort Safari Club," a novel about two African detectives who are women

About cakes, cattle, and the passing of the old ways

For any reader looking for respite from the unrelenting violence of the world we live in, The Double Comfort Safari Club is a worthy antidote. It's nominally a novel about two African detectives who are women, but author Alexander McCall Smith's subject is Africa as he knows it. The characters in...
Cover image of "Strangers in Their Own Land," a book about Trump voters

What Trump voters believe: a Berkeley sociologist goes to the source

In her ninth book, UC Berkeley sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild confronts her alarm "at the increasingly hostile split in our nation between two political camps." Strangers in Their Own Land, a Finalist for the National Book Award, reflects five years of Hochschild's field research in...
Cover image of "The Postmistress of Paris," a novel about rescuing Jewish refugees

Rescuing anti-Nazi refugee artists from WWII France

Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany crowded into France in the years leading up to World War II. Among them were a great many prominent intellectuals and artists, including the painter Max Ernst and the novelist Lion Feuchtwanger. In France, they congregated with Anti-Nazi French artists including...
In The Moroccan Girl, a spy novelist turns to espionage.

A spy novelist turns to espionage in Charles Cumming’s excellent new novel

In today's volatile political climate, both in the United States and in Europe, violence might break out at any time. Certainly, there is ample evidence that nationalist and xenophobic forces on the Right are ready to take up arms. On the Left, too, antifa and other militant anti-fascist groups...
Cover image of "The Last Kings of Shanghai,"

The foreign businessmen who helped build modern China

Ever since the close of World War II eight decades ago, stories have been surfacing about heroic men and women who saved Jews from certain death in the Holocaust at great risk to their own lives. Names such as Oskar Schindler, who saved 1,200, and Raoul Wallenberg, who saved several thousand,...
Add Post ‹ Mal Warwick on Books: Insightful Reviews and Recommendations — WordPress

How tea shaped empires and became the world’s favorite beverage

The world is divided between tea drinkers and coffee drinkers. Google Gemini says, "Tea is overwhelmingly preferred in most of Asia, Africa, and parts of Europe (e.g., UK, Turkey). Coffee is the preferred hot beverage in the Nordics, Brazil, Canada, and parts of Europe." But in its impact on the...
Cover image of "Freedom's Forge,"a book about how America united in common purpose in World War II

World War II: when America was united in common purpose

Since I was born six months before the U.S. entry into World War II, I grew up familiar with a long list of names — little-heard now, more than half a century later — that were associated with the U.S. role in the war. Remember, this was the war that seized hold of Planet Earth for a half-dozen...
Damascus Station

A spellbinding novel about espionage in Syria

Few world leaders in recent decades have proven themselves to be more savage than Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The Syrian Civil War he launched against peaceful protestors in 2011 as the Arab Spring swirled throughout the Middle East has cost as many as 600,000 lives, more than one of every...

My Most Popular Reviews

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Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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Mal Warwick

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…includes summaries and links to all the previous week’s three to five book reviews, including some that don’t appear in any of the other newsletters.

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