Every country has its foundation myth, and the United States no less than any other. Here, settlers fleeing religious persecution and poverty in Europe flooded our shores. They founded thriving colonies on the Eastern seaboard dedicated to freedom. After gaining their independence, they drove...
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The surprises start on page three. “If one of our distant ancestors hadn’t been infected by a virus hundreds of millions of years ago,” Jonathan Kennedy writes, “humans would reproduce by laying eggs.” In Pathogenesis, Professor Kennedy sketches the often-decisive...
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The seemingly unstoppable orgy of murder called the Holocaust probably didn’t end when or how you thought it did. What really happened has come to light in mutually inconsistent accounts in some of the books written about World War II’s final months. But, as best I can tell, none of...
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The surprises start on page three. “If one of our distant ancestors hadn’t been infected by a virus hundreds of millions of years ago,” Jonathan Kennedy writes, “humans would reproduce by laying eggs.” In Pathogenesis, Professor Kennedy sketches the often-decisive...
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Thousands of books and millions of words have been written about the tit-for-tat battle of the KGB and the CIA during the more than four decades of the Cold War. Some factual accounts and a smattering of novels offer genuine perspective on the two spy agencies and their interaction. But only...
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You might expect a book with the title Nazi Billionaires to feature the Krupp family, who manufactured steel and armaments for the Third Reich, and the men behind the chemicals giant I G Farben, notorious for producing the Zyklon B gas used to murder millions in the death camps. But both firms had...
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Odds are strong that you first became fully aware of the term “Western Civilization” through an introductory survey course in college or AP history in high school. And you’ve lived your life since then believing that “the West” boasts “a common origin resulting...
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Most Western historians view the years between about 500 CE and 1500 CE as the Middle Ages, and they typically divide the period into three sections of 500 years each. The bookmarks for the period are the collapse of the Roman Empire and the “discovery” of the Americas. But this is a...
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If you wonder who wrote the playbook for the lunatic fringe in today’s Republican Party, look no further than the John Birch Society. Established in 1958, the Society terrorized moderate and liberal Republicans as well as Democrats in the 1960s and early 70s. Its founder, Robert Welch...
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Military leaders famously protest that they love peace, not war. But the evidence suggests otherwise, as David Vine’s explosive book, The United States of War, makes abundantly clear. His book updates and sets in historical context the case laid out nearly twenty years ago in Blowback by...
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Historians debate whether Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) had a material effect on the outcome of World War II. After all, they operated on the margins, behind enemy lines, never capable of mounting strategically significant...
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Even in today’s multipolar world, the President of the United States is often referred to as the most powerful person on the planet. Understandably, then, the news media and politicians worldwide scrutinize his actions with ferocious attention to detail. And they double down during an...
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World War II began for the United States with a catastrophic intelligence failure at Pearl Harbor. Two decades earlier, during the First World War, the US military had begun building capacity in signals and communications intelligence. But little was left in place by 1941. Yet, just four years...
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Resistance to Hitler was notoriously weak. After all, he had ended unemployment and restored Germany’s stature in the world. His regime kept spirits afloat with adroit public pageantry and incessant propaganda. And official terror reigned, imprisoning those who spoke out in opposition and...
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Over the past decade, beginning with the police murders that triggered the Black Lives Matter movement, discussion of reparations for slavery has surfaced in public discourse across the United States. After all, some four million African-Americans were enslaved in 1860. And their descendants, the...
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Romanticized accounts of the World War II codebreakers at Bletchley Park convey the impression of a cozy community of brainy people with Oxford and Cambridge degrees laboring in isolation in the countryside. And there is some truth in this picture during the first two years of the war. But that...
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When the idea surfaced in 1857, scholars thought it was impossible. A comprehensive, historical dictionary of the English language encompassing every word ever repeatedly used in print for a thousand years? Nonsense! It would take years for a team of hundreds of lexicographers to make even a dent...
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Consider the Pacific Ocean. It’s the largest expanse of territory on the planet, spanning 63.8 million square miles. That’s seventeen times the territory of the United States, and ten times that of Russia, by far the largest nation on Earth. Should we wonder, then, why fleets of...
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Since the middle of the nineteenth century, people we now call Asian Americans have made major contributions to American society. You have only to look around you in a hospital, where Philippine American nurses work in huge numbers. Or to glance at the headlines about the CEOs of high-tech...
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Histories of the US role in World War II frequently mention the famous Tuskegee Airmen, a segregated African-American fighter squadron that distinguished itself in the European Theater. Sometimes they also cite the 92nd Infantry Division (“Buffalo Soldiers”), which breached the Gothic...
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Nonfiction Wednesday includes my latest nonfiction book review, with links to other nonfiction content.
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.