One of the lessons I learned very early in my three-decade-long career writing and editing fundraising appeals was that statistics numb the brain while a gripping tale of one individual can unlock torrents of emotion in the reader. So it was no surprise to me that the story of one young refugee...
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Malcolm Gladwell is right. In his introduction to the 2023 reissue of Bomber, Len Deighton’s portrayal of a single RAF Bomber Command mission in World War II, he refers to the book as “one of the greatest British anti-war novels ever written.” I might go further. Surely, Bomber...
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History shows us that true military genius is rare. Some who are credited with it—George Washington, for example—clearly didn’t possess it. Even Napoleon, who blundered into the Russian winter and then compounded the error by overstaying in Moscow, fell short. Perhaps only a handful qualify....
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Yes, there was, indeed, a Soviet female sniper who gained fame in World War II. You may have come across mentions of her if you’ve read a lot about the war. She was Ukrainian, a fourth-year history student at Kiev University, and her name was Lyudmila Mikhailovich Pavlichenko (1916-74). She...
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Charles Belfoure’s 2013 novel, The Paris Architect, is the story of a reluctant hero in WWII. The publisher’s own promotional copy for the novel calls him “unlikely and unlikable,” and so he is. Lucien Bernard is a French modernist architect who is manipulated into...
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Nearly a century and a half ago, the northern African nation of Sudan was in turmoil. Like much of the Middle East and North Africa, the people of the country were restive under the increasingly weak rule of the Ottoman Empire. The Khedive of Egypt, who administered Sudan for the sultan in...
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Some three million people of Indian origin live today in the nations of southeast Africa. Although trade and migration between India and Africa reach as far back as the first millennium, much larger numbers arrived there late in the nineteenth century as indentured laborers under the British. One...
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Many of the French authors I’ve read don’t follow the rules. They blithely mix fiction and nonfiction, change perspective and verb tense from one chapter to the next, and leap from present to past without warning. Such a book is author and actress Anne Berest’s award-winning...
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No country on Earth can boast a more tumultuous history than Russia. Born in the clash of marauding nomadic tribes nearly 2,000 years ago, this sprawling Euro-Asiatic nation has witnessed repeated bouts of foreign incursions, ethnic conflict, revolution, and a millennium of autocratic, and often...
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How do you humanize a monster? Perhaps if you dig deeply into his early years, when he was a young revolutionary. As a thug, a bank robber, a killer, to be sure. But decades before he became the all-powerful mass murderer who starved millions of Ukrainians to death, sent millions more to the gulag...
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Demography is destiny. Viewed from the broadest perspective, history chronicles the growth and spread of the human race throughout the most distant points on the globe. Over time, we observe the shifting ethnic boundaries, the accretion of knowledge, the building of ever-larger settlements, and...
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Conspirata tells the tale of the immortal Roman orator, politician, and lawyer Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 – 43 BCE) at the key inflection point of his long career. During the fateful year 63 BCE, he served as Roman consul (a sort of co-president). In the following years tragic consequences...
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A review of The Debba, by Avner Mandelman. @@@@@@ (5 out of 5). David Starkman, a naturalized Canadian citizen, was a trained killer for the Israeli armed forces who carried out black missions in Arab capitals in the 1960s. When he learns of his father’s murder in Tel Aviv, Starkman is suddenly pulled back into the ethically murky environment he had fled seven years earlier.
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On October 7, 1944, some 250 members of the Sonderkommando at Crematorium IV, nearly all of them Jews, staged an uprising at Auschwitz. They had been hand-picked by their SS guards to manage the flow of doomed prisoners, Jews like themselves, herding them into the gas chambers and moving...
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We remember Sherman’s March largely because of the dramatic scene portraying the burning of Atlanta in the blockbuster 1939 film Gone With the Wind. It was the top-grossing film of all time when adjusted for inflation, and it’s still popular online. But that horrific scene when the...
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A review of Caleb’s Crossing, by Geraldine Brooks. @@@@@ (5 out of 5). Caleb’s Crossing is history told as it should always be: vivid, engrossing, and emotionally honest. In relating Caleb’s story, Brooks paints an indelible picture of the early decades of colonial life in Eastern Massachusetts. She casts a bright light on the troubled, and eventually tragic, relationship between the colonists and the Indians, and explores an aspect of that history much less commonly discussed: the rebellion of so many colonists against the rigid, narrow-minded regime of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
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Ask American college graduates to name any of the kings of England before Charles III, and if they can cite any at all they’ll probably come up with a single example. Henry VIII. Few stories in the English-speaking world are more familiar than that of Henry and his six wives. Amazon lists...
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Aravind Adiga is one of India’s most refreshing contributions to the world of books in recent years. His first novel, a wildly original story of near-mythic proportions, The White Tiger, won the UK’s prestigious Man Booker Prize. His second artfully highlights India’s diversity....
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Scandalous. Notorious. Brilliant. But always entertaining. They were the Mitford sisters, and you could hardly pick up a newspaper in England in the 1930s without coming across them. Still, it was just three of the six who drew the most attention, and the most rumors. Unity, Adolf Hitler’s...
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The tale of the princes in the Tower may well be the most heart-rending story in English history. It’s certainly one of the most famous. Less celebrated, but equally engaging, is the history of their mother, Elizabeth Woodville, queen to King Edward IV. Historical novelist Philippa Gregory...
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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.
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.