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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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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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...
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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....
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Although I tend to favor fictional rather than factual stories about crime, I’ve read many of the most widely admired true crime books. Some, I read years before I began posting reviews in 2010. But I’ve devoured many since. And below I’m listing the best of them. You’ll...
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She ran a modest haberdashery shop on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Fredericka Mandelbaum, an “upright widow, philanthropic synagogue-goer, [and] doting mother of four,” was also the boss of the country’s most notorious crime syndicate. And when Pinkerton detectives finally staged a...
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History books can be dull and difficult to read, but they don’t have to be—and David Grann’s Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder is proof positive. In The Wager, he’s woven the facts into an engrossing story that held my attention to the last page. As he’d proved in his...
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When Christopher Columbus arrived in the New World, an estimated 50 million people lived in the Hemisphere. Somewhere between seven and 18 million of them inhabited North America. By 1890, the population of indigenous people in the United States had been reduced to 248,000. Countless millions had...
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How good is The Library Book? It’s unquestionably one of the most enjoyable books I’ve read in recent years. Susan Orlean has a magical way with prose, and she turns what could easily be a monumentally boring subject into a captivating tale. Even if you’re not a passionate...
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If, like me, you were alive and aware on November 22, 1963, you’ve never forgotten the day. It was mid-afternoon in New York, and I had just arrived for a graduate course in international relations at Columbia University, only to discover a small number of my classmates aimlessly milling...
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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is known to most of us as the author of the sixty Sherlock Holmes tales. But Conan Doyle was a truly remarkable man in many other ways as well. He was an accomplished physician specializing in ophthalmology. He was knighted not because of his writing talent but because he...
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As a child, she was known as Mary Grace Winterton, one of three daughters of a wealthy New York family. After gaining a law degree from NYU and being admitted to the bar in 1904, she set up the People’s Law Firm to offer affordable legal services to low-income New Yorkers, especially...
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Look around carefully. Find three despicable human beings. Start with a confused and weak-willed young man, a male model with no other marketable skills who is helpless in the face of authority. Then find a lay preacher whose oratorical skills have gotten him a seat in Parliament despite a...
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Journalist Misha Glenny’s exploration of criminal gangs in Rio de Janeiro focuses on one favela (slum) and one drug lord. It’s a fascinating and surprising book about drug trafficking that pokes under the covers of the broad generalizations that dominate news coverage both of poverty...
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In early 1974, the United States was in turmoil. Richard Nixon was about to be impeached, the Vietnam War was still grinding on, the OPEC Oil Embargo was underway, and an average of 2,000 bombs had been exploded in the country in each of the three preceding years. Then, on February 4, a...
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Americans who take their first trip from country to country in Latin America and the Caribbean are often astounded by the region’s diversity. From Argentina, which is more heavily influenced by Italy and Spain than by any country to its north; to the polyglot island-states of the Caribbean;...
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Future Crimes is the scariest book I’ve read in years. You’re almost certainly reading this review on a device powered by microprocessors. Do you know who’s looking over your shoulder as you read? I’m betting you don’t. Let’s say you’re reading this by...
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Misconceptions abound in the public perception of corruption in Africa. Tom Burgis’ incisive new analysis of corruption on the continent, The Looting Machine, dispels these dangerous myths. For starters, corruption is mistakenly believed to reign supreme in every country on...
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In this timely and important book, veteran Los Angeles Times homicide reporter Jill Leovy drills down to the political and cultural realities that explain what she calls “a plague of murders among black men . . . [who represent] just 6 percent of the country’s population but nearly 40...
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If you’re among the four out of five Americans who decry Citizens United as a tragic misstep, law professor Zephyr Teachout will show you just how far outside the bounds of precedent and tradition the Supreme Court stepped when it produced this ruling. Her book about Citizens United surveys...
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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.