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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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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 "Crook Manifesto," the second book of Colson Whitehead's Harlem trilogy

Colson Whitehead’s Harlem trilogy continues

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes Ray Carney owns and operates a successful furniture store in Harlem. But the luxurious house where he lives with his wife and children in Strivers' Row didn't come from the store's earnings. Because, for years, Ray was a fence for diamonds and other high-end...
The Forge of God is Greg Bear's powerful tale of interstellar conflict.

Greg Bear’s powerful tale of interstellar conflict

The first sign that anything's amiss comes to light when three young geologists stumble across an anomaly in Death Valley. A cinder cone some 500 feet tall has turned up where no map shows it ought to be. But the mystery deepens profoundly when they come across a large creature resembling a...
Cover image of "Children of Ruin," the second book in an award-winning series

An award-winning series continues

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes Stories of First Contact abound in science fiction. One author, Australian Peter Cawdron, alone is writing a total of twenty-five standalone novels on the theme—and he's close to his goal as I write. But the British phenomenon Adrian Tchaikovsky has done them all...
Eisenhower

An illuminating portrayal of President Eisenhower

The earthshaking events of the 1960s and the cataclysm of World War II have led many of us to think about the 1950s as a boring period when little of importance happened. It was a time between epochal events. And as Jim Newton explains in his superb biography of Dwight Eisenhower during his eight...
Cover image of "Hot Time," a Gilded Age mystery novel

Teddy Roosevelt at the NYPD during the 1896 election

Revolutionaries have rarely risen to positions of power in the United States, but Teddy Roosevelt was an exception. Everywhere he went, and every job he took, from the US Civil Service Commission to the New York Police Department to the Navy Department and the White House, he shook the walls to...
Cover image of "The Historical Atlas of World War II," a collection depicting World War II in maps

World War II in full-color maps and photos

When I was very young, World War II was underway. I'd been born six months before Pearl Harbor and thus was three in 1944 when I developed a fascination for the maps on the pages of the newspaper my father read at the dinner table each evening. They showed troop movements in Europe and the paths...
Blind Lake is by Robert Charles Wilson, an award-winning sci-fi novelist.

An award-winning sci-fi novelist writes a disappointing book

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes I should have guessed. The signs were all there. A strangely troubled 11-year-old girl who talks to an imaginary twin. A retired professor of religion who's written a bestselling book about God's connection to quantum physics. Yes, I should have known this book...
Cover image of "Munich," a novel in which Robert Harris explains the Munich Pact

Robert Harris explains why Neville Chamberlain went to Munich

Mention Neville Chamberlain and Munich in the same breath today, and you're likely to elicit a grimace. The agreement in 1938 between the British Prime Minister and Adolf Hitler to dismember Czechoslovakia was one of the most shameful and tragic events of the 20th century. But is it fair to...
The Dispossessed

Ursula Le Guin explores anarchism and capitalism

The eight novels of Ursula Le Guin's Hainish Cycle don't read like science fiction. They're set on make-believe worlds, and the technology was in place in the mid-20th century. And the characters might have stepped out of an historical novel. The upshot is that the stories come across as more...
Cover image of "The Tattooist of Auschwitz," a book about Holocaust memories

Holocaust memories: A deeply moving love story set at Auschwitz

Holocaust memories continue to haunt millions of Jews worldwide. For many, like myself, this is true even if we have no family connection to those who perished. But in my case the words "Holocaust" and "Auschwitz" have special resonance. As a young man in 1965, I visited the site of Auschwitz II -...

My Most Popular Reviews

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Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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Mal Warwick

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