Here's a memoir of one soldier's year of service in Iraq that masquerades as a light-weight tale, crammed with humor. Though the book is funny at times, hilarious even, and the author's voice reflects little of the tragic reality of that misbegotten conflict, it's revealing nonetheless. You'll...

A century ago, they called themselves anarchists. But we today would think of them as terrorists. After all, they had shocked the world again and again with their bombs and bullets. Anarchists had assassinated Tsar Alexander II of Russia in 1881, Empress Elisabeth of Austria in 1898, King Umberto...

Pick up a book about the Troubles in Ireland, and you're likely to find a great deal about the Irish Republican Army and the atrocities Catholics committed. Chances are you'll see less (at least here in the United States) about the violent actions of the Protestant Unionist forces. The IRA has...

A review of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain. @@@@@ (5 out of 5). A lively, popular discussion of the contrast between introverts and extroverts in America, with numerous references to social icons and extensive citations of the scientific literature exploring the psychology of personality.

The first Jew arrived in the future United States in 1621. But Jewish history in America didn't start in any meaningful way until 1654, when 23 bedraggled and impoverished Portuguese Jews arrived in New Amsterdam. They had been wealthy merchants in Brazil forced to flee their homes when the...

A review of Incendiary, by Chris Cleave. @@@@ (4 out of 5). Incendiary is structured as an open letter to Osama bin Laden from a devastated young mother whose husband and young son have died in a massive terrorist attack on a soccer game in London. The book’s four sections cover events in the spring, when the attack occurs, and in the succeeding summer, fall, and winter of one terrible year, perhaps the worst in London’s history.

Wuraola is the daughter of a wealthy and privileged medical family in a major provincial Nigerian town. She's now in her first year of practice as a physician. Her mother, a physician herself, is pressuring her to marry because she is nearing thirty. And Wuraola is, in fact, in love with Kunle,...

Take a walk with Gary Shteyngart in the USA 10 or 15 years down the road. The dollar is pegged to the yuan, and a tyrannical right-wing government is in power. The divide between High Net Worth Individuals and Low is a chasm that cannot be spanned. The country is bogged down in a losing war in...

World War II began for the United States with a catastrophic intelligence failure at Pearl Harbor. Two decades earlier, during the First World War, the US military had begun building capacity in signals and communications intelligence. But little was left in place by 1941. Yet, just four years...

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes Adrian Tchaikovsky is one of the more prolific and successful science fiction authors of the twenty-first century. And the voters at the World Science Fiction Convention confirmed his status as one of the best when they granted his Children of Time Trilogy the...