When future historians tally the most consequential revolutionary movements of the modern era, the choices will be obvious. The Russian Revolution re-set the balance of power almost throughout the 20th century. In China, the Communists set the world’s most populous nation on a dramatic new...
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Brace yourself. Much of what you believe about why the Allies won World War II may not be true. British historian Richard Overy challenges the received wisdom in his eye-opening revisionist interpretation of the six-year ordeal, titled simply Why the Allies Won. For most historians, that question...
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Today we speak of “the imperial presidency” to reflect the staggering breadth of the power that the White House has amassed over the past century. And the term is more apt than ever today under the expansive view of presidential power that has motivated the Roberts Supreme Court to...
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For some unfathomable reason, Antony Beevor is one of Britain’s most popular and widely read military historians. It’s true that he knows a great deal about military matters. He’s a former army officer and teaches at military staff colleges in Britain, the US, and other...
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Among the most momentous events in world history, World War I stands out for the breadth and depth of its consequences. The fighting was a principal cause of the Russian Revolution. The German, Austro-Hungarian, Turkish, and Russian empires disintegrated, their monarchs deposed. The United States...
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When we think about the CIA, we tend to conjure up images of brush passes, dead drops, codes and ciphers, counter-surveilliance techniques, and so forth—all the trappings of spycraft we’ve picked up from the work of John le Carré, Graham Greene, Ian Fleming, and their latter-day descendants....
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A handful of rich white men played leading roles in the American independence movement and the early years of the republic they created. You know their names: George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison. Others—John Jay and Aaron...
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Chances are, you’d never come across the term “artificial intelligence” as recently as a decade ago. And even if you had, it was probably either in reading science fiction or working in the tech industry. For the rest of us, AI was far off the radar screen. Yet today, you...
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For many Americans today, the daily mail is a nuisance rather than a cherished service. Most advertising matter (and many bills) go straight into the trash. It’s been years since we wrote letters to one another. In fact, when we read how frequently authors, public officials, and family...
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A review of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander. ★★★★★. The United States now has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, dwarfing the rates of nearly every developed country, even surpassing those in highly repressive regimes like Russia, China, and Iran. The number of prisoners of African-American and Latino descent is wildly out of proportion to their share of the general population, and the War on Drugs accounts for the lion’s share of the difference.
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A review of The Self-Made Myth, and the Truth About How Government Helps Individuals and Businesses Succeed, by Brian Miller and Mike Lapham. @@@@@ (5 out of 5). One of the freshest and most important contributions in many years to the public discourse about the future of the United States.
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The history we learn in school often bears little resemblance to what really happened. We know, of course, that George Washington never chopped down that cherry tree or tossed a dollar across the Potomac. But what we believe about more consequential events frequently turns out to be wrong, too....
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Throughout its eight-decade history, the Central Intelligence Agency has racked up an extraordinary number of clandestine operations gone wrong. Of course, the agency’s defenders assert we don’t know about the many successes that have never seen the light of day as well as a few that...
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Close observers could see signs of President Joe Biden’s physical and neurological decline even before he took office in January 2021. But, as journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson detail in their explosive new book, Original Sin, “what was going on in private was worse.” Far...
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Jessica Mitford was one of the greatest wits of the 20th century, and perhaps of any century. Her books, most famously The American Way of Death, eviscerated the American funeral industry, our prison system, and obstetrical care in the United States. But to those in Britain, where she was born in...
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Famous generals proliferate in American history. After all, ours is a story of conquest and almost unceasing warfare from the earliest days of European settlement on the North American continent well into the 21st century. The names of George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, John J. Pershing, Douglas...
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In high school civics classes or college courses in political science, many of us in the United States have learned a little about the Red Scare of the 1940s and 50s. A few keywords surface in memory. The Army-McCarthy hearings. HUAC. The Hollywood Blacklist. Richard Nixon’s smear tactics....
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It’s well known that Thomas Carlyle, a 19th century British historian, is credited with first calling economics “the dismal science.” What’s much less widely appreciated is that this derogatory label was well justified when he set the phrase down on paper in 1849. During...
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The pundits Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson describe themselves as liberals, and the public looks on them that way. But conservatives will find the two men subscribe to many of their long-held beliefs. That’s the message in Abundance, Klein and Thompson’s thought-provoking new book. And...
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No major country, with the possible exception of Russia, has undergone such tumultuous change over the past century as has China. The Japanese invasion and occupation (1931-45). Civil war (1927-49). The Chinese Revolution (1949). Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward (1958-60). The Cultural...
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...includes my latest nonfiction book review, with links to other nonfiction 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.
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.