A review of River of Smoke, by Amitav Ghosh. @@@@ (4 out of 5). The second book in Amitav Ghosh’s planned Ibis trilogy set among the momentous events of the massive 19th-Century opium trade between India and China. Details the life at sea and in the foreign enclave in Canton of the immensely rich men who dominated the trade, principally Britons and Americans.
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Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi died at the hands of her Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984. Violence erupted immediately. Anti-Sikh riots raged for four days, resulting in the deaths of thousands of Sikhs. Eight years later, in December 1992, an organized mob of 70,000 Hindu nationalists...
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Three big things happened in America in March 1933. On the fourth day of the month, Franklin Delano Roosevelt took the oath of office as President. He immediately declared a national banking holiday, temporarily closing every bank in the US and freezing financial transactions. And on March 10, a...
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A review of They Eat Puppies, Don’t They?, by Christopher Buckley. It’s political satire of the highest order. I found myself laughing hysterically, sometimes for pages at a time. But, like all superior satire, this book isn’t just funny—it’s spot on target.
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Women did not begin to gain any measure of equality with men until sometime in the 20th century. So it is always inspiring to read about women whose accomplishments were so outstanding that even under the most egregious pressure of misogyny they made their mark on history. One exceptional woman,...
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Today, Rwanda is one of the brightest lights in Africa. The economy is booming. Corruption is rare. Government delivers services. The streets of Kigali, the capital, are clean. It’s even easy to open a business. Thirty years ago the country was in chaos, as this award-winning book about the...
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Explorers today plumb the oceans’ trenches and the vast reaches of solar space. For the truly adventurous who seek to cross humanity’s last frontiers, few if any big challenges remain on land. But a century and a half ago, the opportunities for Western explorers to make their mark were...
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No one is still alive with any adult memory of World War I, which ended a century ago. So when we think of the events that have shaped the world we live in today it’s likely World War II looms large. But its antecedent three decades earlier may have had greater long-term impact. The...
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The young Indo-American author Megha Majumdar made a splash with her award-winning debut, A Burning. This powerful New York Times bestseller painted a searing portrait of life in India today, with a focus on corruption, terrorism, and Hindu nationalism. Now, in her second novel, she ventures into...
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Over the course of two decades late in the 18th century, the neighbors of what was then called the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth progressively seized portions of its territory on three occasions. History records those actions as the three Partitions of Poland. The result was to eliminate...
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Truth to tell, I don’t know whether the 26 books I’ve listed below are, in fact, the “best” books of the year 2025. All I know is that they’re the best books I’ve read and reviewed during the past 12 months. In fact, a few of them were published in earlier years. I just didn’t discover them until...
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If you’ve read The Prince, you probably think you know the work of Niccolo Machiavelli. Chances are, you think of him—as I always did—as the Renaissance propagandist who lionized a lying, cheating, brutal scoundrel as the ideal political and military leader. Having read The Malice of...
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More than half a century ago, Elmore Leonard was eking out a living writing pulp Western novels. He was about to take a sharp turn into crafting the crime novels that would establish his reputation as one of the most brilliant stylists in the genre and earn him both wide recognition and a lot of...
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Most of Carl Hiaasen’s 16 previous adult novels have centered on the destruction of Florida’s natural beauty. He has skewered corrupt developers, crooked politicians, and rapacious billionaires as well as assorted low-life scumbags and con men. The man’s body of work opens a...
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American writer Anthony Marra began winning major literary awards when he was still in his 20s. He won seven for A Constellation of Vital Phenomena. But he deserves another one simply for having the guts to write it. The book’s setting is the Caucasus, no less, and during the worst of...
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England’s Tudor Dynasty (1485-1603) encompassed the reign of five monarchs. But just three of them ruled for a combined total of more than a century: Henry VII (reigned 1485-1509), Henry VIII (1509-47), and Elizabeth I (1558–1603) They ushered in unprecedented change in England’s fortunes,...
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Only once in the past 15 years since I began reviewing books have I written about anything without reading it to the end. But I’m about to break that rule for a second time. I’m doing so to convey some of what I’ve learned about the use of artificial intelligence as it might...
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Version 1.0.0 You might not think a biographical novel about a glamorous Hollywood star could figure in the history of World War II. But then you wouldn’t reckon with the Austrian American actress Hedy Lamarr (1914-2000). Born Hedwig Kiesler in Vienna to a nonobservant Jewish father and...
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The tagline on the cover is tantalizing. “A young man uncovers a hidden past,” it reads, “while another becomes its echo.” The resulting dual-timeline story, grounded in 1957 and 1941-45, traces the experiences of two German teenagers and their families. One seeks 12 years...
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For the first two decades in the reign of England’s notorious King Henry VIII a Catholic priest loomed large behind the throne. Named the king’s almoner in 1509, the year Henry’s father died, he ascended over the years from the priesthood to a cardinal’s hat as Henry named...
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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.