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SCIENCE FICTION

MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

NONFICTION

A true story of high finance and murder in Putin’s Russia

A true story of high finance and murder in Putin’s Russia

Even if you follow international news only casually, you're likely to be aware that Putin's Russia is a kleptocracy. Two dozen oligarchs effectively run the country. Some, including President Vladimir Putin himself, hold government office. Others are private "bankers" and...

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Popular Fiction

A sprawling Indian family in Delhi confronts its demons

A sprawling Indian family in Delhi confronts its demons

Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi died at the hands of her Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984. Violence erupted immediately. Anti-Sikh riots raged for four days, resulting in the deaths of thousands of Sikhs. Eight years later, in December 1992, an organized mob of 70,000...

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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 "Trinity," a novel that's not about the first nuclear weapons test

Don’t be fooled. This novel is not about Oppenheimer.

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes The cover and the title of this peculiar novel suggest that its subject is J. Robert Oppenheimer and the long shadow he cast following the first nuclear weapons test at Los Alamos. In any case, that's why I chose to read it. And I was disappointed, to say the...
Cover image of "Homegoing," the successor to Roots

African Roots through African eyes

Yaa Gyasi's extraordinary debut novel, Homegoing, traces the story of a Ghanaian family over more than two centuries through the lives of two branches of its descendants, one in Ghana, the other in the United States. It's a worthy successor to Roots, the bestselling book that opened eyes in the...
Serial entrepreneur: Raising Eyebrows by Dal LaMagna

A serial entrepreneur tells his story, and it’s hilarious

A review of Raising Eyebrows: A Failed Entrepreneur Finally Gets It Right, by Dal LaMagna. @@@@@ (5 out of 5). This book is not just instructive and insightful about how business entrepreneurs really work. It’s also fun to read.

How Donald Trump corrupts democracy is the subject of "Trumpocracy" by David Frum

A conservative explains how Donald Trump corrupts democracy

"Trumpocracy has left Americans less safe against foreign dangers, has diverted their money from its proper purposes to improper pockets, has worked to bias law enforcement in favor of the powerful, and has sought to intimidate media lest they report things the public most needs to know." Thus...
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...

A true-life account of a spectacular WWII prison camp rescue

Early in 1945, as the Nazi regime began to crumble and American soldiers, marines, and sailors relentlessly pushed ever closer toward the Japanese home islands, two thousand civilian prisoners of war, mostly Americans, suffered indescribable deprivation at the hands of a sadistic prison camp...
Timescape

An ingenious twist on time travel

Physics can drive you crazy. Solid matter isn't solid. Black holes don't just make matter and light disappear; they suck up information, too. And Schrödinger's cat is both alive and dead at the same time. Go figure. And if paradoxes like these rattle your nerves, you may want to avoid reading...
Image of shelved books with the headline book publishing

10 Awful Truths about Book Publishing

Some years ago my friend and publisher Steven Piersanti, founder and senior editor of San Francisco’s Berrett-Koehler Publishers, wrote an article entitled “10 Awful Truths about Book Publishing.” He has updated the piece from time to time with the latest data. Here’s the most recent version,...
Cover image of "Moscow X," a novel about a CIA plot to destabilize the Russian government

A CIA plot to destabilize the Russian government

You don't need a career in the CIA or MI6 to write a great spy novel, but it helps. And former CIA analyst David McCloskey put his expertise on display two years ago in Damascus Station, his terrific debut in the genre. Now he's done it again with a dramatic new story about a CIA operation to...
Cover image of "A Short History of Nearly Everything," which refutes a myth about Charles Darwin

How Charles Darwin REALLY came to develop the theory of evolution

If you think you know the salient facts about Charles Darwin and evolution, prepare to be surprised when you read A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson. For starters, Charles Darwin was by no means the first person to posit a theory of evolution. His own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin,...

My Most Popular Reviews

Weekly Reviews Delivered to You!

Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

Weekly book reviews to match your taste!

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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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