It’s difficult to imagine how any single American over the past 100 years could have done more damage to our country than Roy Cohn. Even Senator Joseph McCarthy and Donald Trump may bear less responsibility for the harm they’ve done to millions of lives, because to a great degree...
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When we read history, we tend to compartmentalize. For example, Americans may read about the Red Scare of the McCarthy era and lose sight of the fact that the Korean War was raging at the same time. And that’s important because the two affected each other. Similarly, we may think of...
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On the morning of September 11, 2001, Shiya Ribowsky walked to work. It was a beautiful day, and he was in no hurry. As director of identifications at New York City’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME), he knew death keeps its own schedule. Then the first plane struck the North Tower....
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Few know his name today. But over a 34-year military career, Marine officer Smedley Butler (1881-1940) was for long America’s most famous soldier. He fought in the Philippine–American War, the Boxer Rebellion, the Mexican Revolution, World War I, and all of the USA’s imperial...
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Is it too much to say that World War II “changed everything?” In The Fear and the Freedom, author Keith Lowe makes a strong case to justify the claim. As many as 80 million people died of a global population barely 30 times that number in 1939. Perhaps an equal number became refugees...
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Thousands of books memorialize the story of World War II in Europe. Every aspect of the conflict has received its due, from the fighting itself, to the deprivations on the home front, to the role of intelligence and the personalities of the civilian and military leadership on both sides. But, at...
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For more than a century, the country we now know as Russia has trained carefully selected citizens in espionage and language skills and sent them as secret agents to dozens of other countries.
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Myths and legends swirl around the life of George Washington. Remember that cherry tree? The wooden teeth? Throwing a coin across a wide river? The white wig? All of these widely accepted beliefs about our founding President are flatly untrue. And, just for the record, he was neither a winning...
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Just so you know at the outset, the author of The Secret History of Gold comes to the task with a pronounced set of biases. He is a gold bug who believes that shiny, indestructible element is the ultimate store of value. He believes governments in the past erred by taking nations off the gold...
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Former World Bank economist Liaquat Ahamed earned the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for History for Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World. His book explored the causes of the Great Depression and made a compelling argument that central bankers’ stubborn adherence to the gold standard had...
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Crime in its innumerable manifestations has always been with us. But organized crime, American style—commanding the attention of government at the highest level—only came into existence in the US in the years leading up to the First World War. Then, immigrants on New York City’s Lower East...
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As a teenager growing up in the 1950s in Lima, Ohio, (population 50,000 then), I learned that our local daily, The Lima News, had been purchased by a man named R. C. Hoiles. Hoiles lived in Orange County, California, and was a member of the John Birch Society. He owned a chain of small-town...
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Most of what appears in print today about the OSS in World War II dwells on the heroic men and women it infiltrated into France to sabotage the Nazis or in the China-Burma-India theater. Of course, “Wild Bill” Donovan’s brief as head of the Office of Strategic Services was much...
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A review of The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin, by Masha Gessen. ★★★★☆. A critical biography of the three-term Russian President by a skilled Moscow reporter with personal knowledge of the people and events of the time since the fall of Communism.
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Some of us, schooled in idealized portraits of ancient civilizations such as Rome and Greece and China, jump to conclusions about how history is repeating itself when we see superficial similarities to what we think took place thousands of years ago. Of course, we do know that history...
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Obviously, I’m some kind of masochist. To date I’ve read and reviewed 25 books about Donald Trump. I’d sworn off subjecting myself to any others until Maggie Haberman’s account of Trump’s first year back in office. She’s been on point on Donald Trump for the New...
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Twenty-nine-year-old Richard Newhall was teaching history at Harvard. Younger at 22, George Haydock, a Quaker, was a recent graduate, as was Alexander McKinlock a wealthy football hero. Younger still, William Morgan was an undergraduate there. By contrast, graduate George Redwood was a celerated...
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Biologically modern humans have roamed the Earth for some 300,000 years. Yet what we refer to as history dwells on the past 5,000 years or so, since writing was invented in ancient Sumer. Prehistory—what took place before then—was largely the subject of speculation until recently. But advances in...
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You may have the impression that Winston Churchill stood alone in warning England of the rising Nazi menace. Many histories of the period paint that picture. But it’s not accurate. In fact, a group of younger Conservative MPs were vocal opponents of the Tory Establishment’s policy of...
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Three decades ago an American historian named David Christian who was teaching at an Australian university at the time offered a new perspective on world history. His unique take on the subject took the discipline far beyond the limits of the written word. Calling it Big History, Christian started...
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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.