The tale of the princes in the Tower may well be the most heart-rending story in English history. It’s certainly one of the most famous. Less celebrated, but equally engaging, is the history of their mother, Elizabeth Woodville, queen to King Edward IV. Historical novelist Philippa Gregory...
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Why was Ivan the Terrible so terrible? Why did Napoleon lose the Battle of Waterloo? What did Queen Victoria have to do with the fall of Russia’s last tsar? These are among the intriguing questions Frederick Cartwright and Michael Biddiss answer in Disease and History. The book, first...
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Estimated reading time: 6 minutes Americans are sometimes surprised to learn just how many Russian oligarchs have gravitated to the UK. A March 2022 article in The New Yorker is entitled, “How Putin’s Oligarchs Bought London,” and it’s not too wide off the mark. As a local...
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Estimated reading time: 6 minutes Don’t be misled by the book’s title. The “daemon” of Daniel Suarez’s novel isn’t an evil spirit. That evil-sounding word is a term of art in computer science and not at all diabolical. Wikipedia defines it as...
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Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace is sometimes called the greatest novel ever written. But I’m not sure why. For its time—the first edition appeared in 1869—it must have been remarkable for the stark realism of its depiction of soldiers at war. But War and Peace isn’t a novel in the...
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Mysteries & Thrillers Tuesday includes my latest mystery and thriller book review,
with links to other science fiction content.
Nonfiction Wednesday includes my latest nonfiction book review,
with links to other nonfiction content.
The Weekly 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.
Mysteries & Thrillers Tuesday includes my latest mystery and thriller book review, with links to other science fiction content.
Nonfiction Wednesday includes my latest nonfiction book review, with links to other nonfiction content.
The Weekly 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.