What can history teach us? We know, of course, that history doesn’t repeat itself, at least never exactly. But some, perhaps nearly all, of the most successful leaders of the past were ardent students of history. Surely, they learned something from their predecessors, if only how to make their own mistakes that would be different […]
Continue Reading...Across the Moscow River from the Kremlin lies the House on the Embankment. Built from 1928 to 1931, as Joseph Stalin was cementing his power at the helm of the Soviet Union, the building housed the nation’s elite. Top Party aparatchiks. Leading scientists. Artists. Writers. Journalists. Sports stars. Generals. Spies. Thus, during the purges of […]
Continue Reading...From 1927 to 1931, cultural anthropologist and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston interviewed the last living former slave in the United States and prepared an account of his life for publication. The manuscript never found a taker until 2018, when acclaimed novelist Alice Walker arranged for it to be brought into the light of day. We’re […]
Continue Reading...Joe Country is Mick Herron’s latest spy thriller, but why should you care? That’s easy. Think of today’s leading spy novelists, and the usual suspects will come up. John le Carré leads the list, of course (although sadly he recently died). Of those who are still living and writing, Joseph Kanon and Alan Furst surely […]
Continue Reading...Three enormous starships depart Earth on a mission of galactic exploration in the twenty-fourth century. Each harbors a crew of two hundred highly trained specialists. None of them is armed. “The Serengeti had gone north, above the galactic plane in search of intelligent life in other galaxies, and the Savannah had been commissioned to explore […]
Continue Reading...The four dozen novels cited here may not be the very best novels written about World War II. But they are the best ones I’ve read and reviewed here since January 2010. I’ve given every one of them a rating of @@@@ or @@@@@ (4 or 5 out of 5), eliminating a substantial number I […]
Continue Reading...In the 19th century, as the nations of Europe rushed to grab ever-larger expanses of territory there, Africa was known as the Dark Continent. That label is still apt, but not for the same reason. Everywhere else—Europe, Asia, the Americas—understanding of Africa and Africans is limited, and far too often wildly distorted. It’s time to […]
Continue Reading...The events of the years 1937 through 1941 appear fixed in time. It seems foreordained that Britain, France, the US, and the USSR would have gone to war with Nazi Germany under any circumstances. But that was assuredly not the case, as historian Benjamin Carter Hett makes abundantly clear in his illuminating portrayal of the […]
Continue Reading...From the 1950s through the 1970s, the American intelligence establishment ran amok. Until brought up short in 1975 by the Church Committee hearings, the CIA roamed the planet, eliminating “Communist” leaders through assassination and economic sabotage from Iran to Guatemala to the Congo. Domestically, the FBI undermined activist movements both Black-led and white with undercover […]
Continue Reading...Kurt Vonnegut didn’t write science fiction, or so he always insisted. So, why would Kilgore Trout keep showing up in his books? Trout is the author of more than 117 science fiction novels and 2,000 short stories, none of which received the approval of either the critics or the reading public. And why would that […]
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