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SCIENCE FICTION

MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

A brilliant addition to a long-running thriller series

A brilliant addition to a long-running thriller series

Leonard Summers; his wife, Martha; and son, Bernard, are moving into a remote cabin in Minnesota. But his name isn't Leonard Summers. It's Leonid Sokolov. And "he was in some kind of enforcement branch of the Russian spy agency," Lucas Davenport explains to fellow US Marshal...

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NONFICTION

How Adolf Hitler raised the money to finance his rise

How Adolf Hitler raised the money to finance his rise

From its early days following World War I, what Hitler later renamed the Nazi Party had a powerful political sponsor behind the scenes: the Thule Society. Hitler biographer Ian Kershaw notes that the organization's "membership list ... reads like a Who's Who of early Nazi...

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Popular Fiction

She was a pioneering astronomer. In the 18th century.

She was a pioneering astronomer. In the 18th century.

Women did not begin to gain any measure of equality with men until sometime in the 20th century. So it is always inspiring to read about women whose accomplishments were so outstanding that even under the most egregious pressure of misogyny they made their mark on history. One...

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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!

 

An Expensive Education is about Special Forces operators and the CIA.

Special Forces are up to no good in Somalia

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes Somewhere in the world, and probably in a dozen countries or more throughout the Global South, American Special Forces operators are engaged in action. Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, and other, less-well-known units, operating in small groups on top-secret missions,...
Cover image of "The Innovator's Dilemma"

The Innovator’s Dilemma: why do successful firms fail?

Chances are, you're reading this review on an example of disruptive technology. An iPhone or other smartphone. An iPad or a notebook computer. Or simply a laptop. Every one of these devices turned its industry upside down when it was introduced, driving established companies to the brink of...
Cover image of "Gathering Prey," a novel about psychotic serial killers

Psychotic serial killers on the loose!

Now, 25 novels into John Sandford's excellent Lucas Davenport series, I'm beginning to wonder whether the population of Minnesota includes a wildly disproportionate number of psychotic serial killers. Of course, that's the case only in the author's fevered imagination -- which might lead me to...
11/22/63 is one of the best recent alternate history novels.

Great alternate history novels

Historians don’t have a lot of fun. Usually, the field requires countless hours of slogging through dusty old archives in search of that magical key to historical truth: a primary source. It’s taken for granted that original, contemporaneous materials are superior to anything that might have been...
Cover image of "Extraordinary Powers," a standout among espionage thrillers

A standout among espionage thrillers from Joseph Finder

Ben Ellison is a Boston patent lawyer who is a former CIA agent who had lost his first wife to an explosion engineered by the KGB. He possesses an eidetic memory and, after an unusually powerful MRI, the ability to read minds -- and, yes, through his second wife, he is now the son-in-law of the...
Cover image of "True Confessions," a classic novel

A classic novel of guilt and corruption

True Confessions, first published in 1977, is widely regarded as a American classic novel. Set in Los Angeles in 1948 and based on the notorious, never-solved Black Dahlia murder case, the story plumbs the depths of guilt and corruption -- in the L.A.P.D., the Catholic Church, the construction...
Cover image of "Big History" by Cynthia Stokes Brown, with broad-perspective on world history.

New perspectives on world history

Less than three decades ago an American historian named David Christian who was teaching at an Australian university at the time offered new perspective on world history. His unique take on the subject took the discipline far beyond the limits of the written word. Calling it Big History, Christian...
The Gods of Gotham is a thrilling historical novel.

The first cops in old New York star in a thrilling historical novel

It's 1845. The US Congress has approved the annexation of Texas and admitted Florida to statehood. The New York Evening Mirror has just published "The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe. The Great Famine is raging in Ireland, driving hundreds of thousands of emigrants to US shores. The American...
business history

My 10 favorite books about business history

I've spent more than half my life in business, engaged in founding or leading a number of small companies. So it's only natural that I should read a good deal about economic and business history. Here, I've listed more than sixty of the best books about the history of business that I've read and...
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...

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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