Category: Nonfiction

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...

Both Democrats and Republicans have lost their way

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...

How wrenching change in China affects the lives of its average citizens

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...

Sexology from A to Z, and it’s hilarious

by Mal Warwick | Nonfiction, Science

A review of Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, by Mary Roach. @@@@ (4 out of 5). Mary Roach is a very funny person. There may be no other writer on the planet, including Woody Allen, who could delve so deeply into the mechanics, the chemistry, and the psychology of sex while managing to unleash laughter out loud on just about every other page.

When six million Americans left home behind

For 70,000 years or more, homo sapiens has been on the move. First, within Africa, when changing climate forced whole communities to move across the continent. Then, when a venturesome few slipped across the land bridges joining Africa and Asia to begin our species’ dispersal throughout the...

Shocking revelations about a turning point in World War II

World War II might have ended six months earlier if General Bernard Montgomery’s Operation Market Garden had worked. The plan called for American, British, and Polish paratroopers to drop behind German lines in the Netherlands in September 1944. Its objective was to capture the one remaining...

A history of Britain’s special forces through four remarkable men

The subtitle of Shannon Monaghan’s book, A Quiet Company of Dangerous Men: The Forgotten British Special Operations Soldiers of World War II, gave fair warning. Unfortunately, I missed the point. In no way could the men of Britain’s SOE, SAS, Commando, and other World War II special...

Pope Francis’ battle against corruption in the Vatican

It’s well known that the history of the Catholic Church is rife with tales of corruption and murder—and that internal conflicts roiling the Church continue today over pedophile priests, the role of women, divorce, and gay marriage as well as theology. What’s less well known are the...

A dramatic hostage crisis in London Americans overlooked

Six months after fanatical Iranian students seized the US Embassy in Tehran, holding 52 Americans hostage, another group invaded the Iranian Embassy in London. This kicked off a tense six-day standoff between London police and hostage-takers that dominated the news in Britain and the Continent....

They fought for change in the 1950s

We look upon the 1950s as a decade of conformity when little of consequence happened in the United States. But sweeping generalizations about any period in history are misleading at best, and none more so than about the Fifties. Because the period from the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950...

They were Europe’s most effective anti-Nazi Resistance

Version 1.0.0 Millions of words have been published in English about the French Resistance. Readers, especially American readers, can get the impression that the French effort to resist the Nazis was the best (or even the only one) in Europe. But that’s not true. Underground armies in...

The first robber baron and the emergence of the corporation

Version 1.0.0 He was the first robber baron. Other familiar names from the nineteenth century—John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan—were young men in the early days of their careers when he was at the peak of his fame. Following the Civil War, he became the richest person in American...

The shaky new world order we didn’t envision

Remember the Peace Dividend? The Berlin Wall had fallen, the Soviet Union was no more, history had come to an end, and the United States had won the Cold War—right? Well, if only it were so simple. Here we are, three decades later, and relations among the world’s most powerful countries now...

The contrasting stories of two British secret agents in WWII France

At least four books are in print under the title They Fought Alone. The best-known was the work of Col. Maurice Buckmaster, who led the French section of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) from March 1941 to the end of World War II. Journalist and broadcaster Charles Glass, author of the most...

Was this tank battle the turning point of World War II?

If you read a lot about World War II, you’ll come across not one but several battles mentioned as the “turning point.” Focusing only on Europe, five events surface. Moscow (January 1942). Stalingrad (February 1943). Kursk (August 1943). Operation Bagration (August 1944). And, of...

Adventures and mishaps of the original special forces

When Winston Churchill launched the storied Special Operations Executive (SOE) on June 13, 1940, just a month had passed since he moved into 10 Downing Street. Yet France had fallen to Hitler’s minions and the British Expeditionary Force had barely escaped annihilation at Dunkirk. But the...

Winston Churchill, Britain’s warlord for six years

You might expect, if you’ve read a little about Winston Churchill, that only during World War II did he become deeply engaged with the military. But that’s far from true. From the time he enlisted in the British Army as a second lieutenant in 1895, Churchill was almost continuously...

Dictatorship is not a lonely profession

Most news media in the United States, and probably everywhere else, report on world affairs country by country with only occasional forays into regional reports. We learn about events piecemeal. In China. In Russia. And in every other country where something newsworthy has proven to be dramatic or...

Untangling America’s diverse past through genetics