The Latest

SCIENCE FICTION

MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

The Lincoln Lawyer takes AI to court

The Lincoln Lawyer takes AI to court

As I write, more than 20 lawsuits have been filed against the company OpenAI over the alleged misbehavior of its chatbot, ChatGPT. (I could find none against Anthropic's Claude.) Doubtless, more will surface as time goes on, especially in the face of fast-growing reports that...

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NONFICTION

A soldier helped build America’s Empire. Then he spoke out.

A soldier helped build America’s Empire. Then he spoke out.

Few know his name today. But over a 34-year military career, Marine officer Smedley Butler (1881-1940) was for long America's most famous soldier. He fought in the Philippine–American War, the Boxer Rebellion, the Mexican Revolution, World War I, and all of the USA's imperial...

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Popular Fiction

Laughs in sci-fi? P. G. Wodehouse did humor better.

Laughs in sci-fi? P. G. Wodehouse did humor better.

The legendary English humorist Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (1881-1975), known to readers as P. G., wrote about 100 books in a career that spanned much of the 20th century. His output included 71 novels, 24 collections of short stories, 42 plays, three memoirs, and a lot...

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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.

Check out our rotating random selection here, culled from throughout this site.

Happy reading!

 

Cover image of "Escape from Camp 14,"

A survivor’s eye-opening tale of life in the North Korean gulag

A review of Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West, by Blaine Harden. @@@@@ (5 out of 5). Chronicles the life of Shin Dong-hyuk, only of only three people ever known to have escaped from a North Korean labor camp and made it to the West. A harrowing account of one of the world’s most widespread and most egregious human rights violations.

Cover image of "Artificial Wisdom,"

When the world votes on a dictator, an AI is a candidate

Recent years have seen an increasing volume of science fiction on environmental themes, and no wonder. Of course, the world has known about global warming for decades. But it's only in the past decade that the trend has become obvious to millions. And scientists who have dedicated themselves to...
Cover image of "The Con Man," the fourth book in a series of realistic police procedurals

Challenging cases bedevil the cops of the 87th Precinct

Nearly 70 years ago, the celebrated author of the bestselling novel The Blackboard Jungle launched America's first series of realistic police procedurals. Evan Hunter, writing in 1956 under the pseudonym Ed McBain, published the first of what became a series of 52 short crime novels. He drilled...
Cover image of "The Fixer," Joseph Finder's latest crime novel

Joseph Finder’s latest crime novel is not terrific

For years I've been a big fan of Joseph Finder's work. He has written a slew of excellent crime novels over the years. (Buried Secrets and Paranoia were two of my favorites.) But Finder's latest crime novel, The Fixer doesn't measure up—it's good, but far from great. The story begins...
Cover image of "Being Mortal," a book by Atul Gawande

From Atul Gawande: How to deal with death and dying

Like a lot of Americans, I do my utmost to avoid talking, or even thinking, about death and dying. Maybe I'm just too close to the inevitable at 73 years of age as I write. Atul Gawande, the brilliant Indian-American physician and New Yorker writer, is clearly nowhere near my age, but in Being...
The Hot Country by Robert Olen Butler involves American vs German spies.

American vs German spies in the Mexican Revolution

The early years of the twentieth century were a time of extraordinary upheaval. In China, first the Boxer Rebellion, then the 1911 Chinese Revolution. In South Africa, the Second Boer War (1899-02) and, across the globe, the Philippine-American War (1899-02) that came on the heels of the...
Surveillance Valley reveals the secret military history of the Internet.

Shocking revelations: the secret military history of the Internet

The secret military history of the Internet comes to light in a powerful new book. It's well known that the Internet was birthed by the Pentagon. Originally called the ARPANET, the name reflected its origin in the military's Advanced Research Projects Agency created late in the Eisenhower...
Cover image of "The Return of Faraz Ali," a novel that illuminates Pakistani history

A murder and a cover-up in 1960s Pakistan

Pakistan was bathed in blood at its inception in 1947 and has rarely known peace ever since. Partition. Four wars and numerous border conflicts with India. The Bangladesh Liberation War, when East Pakistan split from the west. Numerous military coups throughout Pakistani history beginning in 1951,...
Cover image of "This Town" by Mark Leibovich, a book of satire about Washington DC

Washington, DC, served up on the skewer of satire

Here is Washington, DC, laid bare by the discerning eye and poison pen of The New York Times Magazine’s chief national correspondent there. If you think most of what takes place in the nation’s capital has little or nothing to do with anything outside the District of Columbia, well, it turns out...
Cover image of "The Red Scare Murders,"

A PI battles witch-hunters, gangsters, and Communists

Mick Mulligan "went to meetings with Communists and ate lunch with Communists. He agreed with Communists on certain things." And that got him fired from his job as a cartoonist and animator at the Disney studio. Which won him a place on the Hollywood blacklist. Which in turn brought him back to...

My Most Popular Reviews

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Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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Mal Warwick

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