Although I tend to favor fictional rather than factual stories about crime, I’ve read many of the most widely admired true crime books. Some, I read years before I began posting reviews in 2010. But I’ve devoured many since. And below I’m listing the best of them. You’ll...
Read MoreToday, the CIA lies at the center of a vast complex of eighteen intelligence agencies. The so-called “intelligence community” boasts a combined budget of more than $100 billion annually. That’s one million dollars 100,000 times over. And though the Central Intelligence Agency...
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Over the past fourteen years, since I began posting book reviews, I’ve read and reviewed more than 450 mysteries and thrillers. A fair number are set in Asia, principally (but not exclusively) in India or China. Some, of course, are standalone efforts. But most are entries in series. And when I...
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Police procedurals differ from other stories about investigations by police detectives in one fundamental way. The lead detective is not a lone wolf but a member of a team and often draws upon the resources of the whole department. In most detective novels, the central figure emerges as a hero,...
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Clichés abound in descriptions of World War II. After all, it was the greatest cataclysm in the history of the human race. And books about the events of 1937 to 1945 crowd library shelves throughout the English-speaking world. Amazon lists more than 6,000 titles, though that’s surely an...
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Estimated reading time: 9 minutes Over the past fifteen years, I’ve reviewed more than 600 nonfiction books. Out of those I’ve selected ten that significantly changed my mind with new information and new insight—plus thirteen more that did so a little less. They cover a wide swath of territory,...
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Over the past 15 years or so, I’ve reviewed more than 800 mysteries and thrillers. Naturally, I’ve got my favorites. Dozens of them. But most of those stand out for me because they illuminate fascinating places or historic events. Of course, they’re all fun to read. But only a handful are...
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Estimated reading time: 7 minutes As you’ll be aware if you subscribe to one of my newsletters, I post lists of recommended books from time to time. Here, I’m including the 10 lists of reading recommendations that have attracted the most readers. They cover a broad range of subject matter,...
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You may want to know what I mean by promising the “10 best historical novels set in America.” So, allow me to disclose here at the outset that I don’t claim this is a list of the best such novels ever published. Or even the best published in recent years. These books represent the best historical...
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Image: NBC News Estimated reading time: 4 minutes When you read books, what floats your boat? If you’re among the 54 percent of Americans who have read one or more books in the past year, chances are you read mysteries and crime stories. Or so we learn from a recent post on YouGov (December...
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Thoughts while reading Why the West Rules – for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future, by Ian Morris. Ian Morris’ extraordinary book has led me to a surprising conclusion: that climate change has been one of the most profound determinants of the course of human history.
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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,...
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Japanese officials arriving onboard the USS Missouri, September 2, 1945, to sign the instrument of unconditional surrender. Image credit: Stars and Stripes. For many years, I’ve been reading a great deal about World War II, both fiction and nonfiction. And that reading is reflected in the reviews...
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China played a huge role in World War II, if only because it occupied millions of Japanese soldiers in a futile attempt to subdue one of the biggest countries in the world. The virtue of history is that it affords us perspective—not just the distance that the passage of time occasions but the...
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If you’re a bibliophile, you may visit the website of Lit Hub or read one of its newsletters. I do. I get my fix of literary comment and criticism on a daily basis from Lit Hub. And I rushed to click through to The Ultimate Best Books of 2019 List by Emily Temple (Lit Hub, December 11,...
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What follows is my best effort to list (in no particular order) the eleven biggest issues Washington ignores – issues Congress should be addressing, but hasn’t – and maybe never will despite what the Biden Adminisration might try to achieve. Table of contents1. The climate crisis2. Public...
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We all know some writers make it, and some don’t. In fact, most people who are gripped with the obsession to write a book never make a dime from it, if they can even get it into print. (Even self-publishing isn’t all that easy for the technologically challenged, as it turns out.) But...
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Classic authors, most of them bestsellers in their time. You’re gonna love this. Once upon a time, back in the distant reaches of the twentieth century—well, actually it was 1984—one of my clients assigned me to ghostwrite a fundraising letter that Isaac Asimov had agreed to sign. I approached the...
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After the inauguration of Donald Trump as President of the US, The Handmaid’s Tale, 1984, and Brave New World returned to the bestseller lists. The reemergence of these classic dystopian novels prompted me to take a closer look at the genre. In the months that followed, I refreshed my memory...
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In a guest post here on October 4, 2016 (“10 awful truths about book publishing”), publisher Steven Piersanti remarked on the huge numbers of books being published today. Here’s what he wrote: According to the latest Bowker Report (September 7, 2016), more than 700,000 books were self-published in...
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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.
Science Fiction Monday includes my latest SF book review, with links to other science fiction content.
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.
Science Fiction Monday includes my latest SF book review, with links to other science fiction content.
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.