Book Review: The Riviera at War by George G. Kundahl

The Riviera at War: World War II on the Côte D'Azur
by George G. Kundahl
IB Tauris, 2017

Even the title of George Kundahl's impressive new book, The Riviera at War, sounds fundamentally odd to modern ears; the gorgeous, sybaritic glories of southeastern France almost always strike their visitors as inviolable parts of the place, like the sea and the sunlight – the very idea that war could mar such a place seems untenable.

Published in Open Letters Weekly, August 22, 2017

Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World

Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World
by Laura Spinney
Public Affairs, 2017

Science journalist Laura Spinney's new book Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World details what she refers to as “the greatest massacre of the twentieth century”: [2] the wave of influenza commonly dubbed “Spanish flu” that swept across the entire planet in 1918, infecting one-third of Earth's population at the time, 500 million people, and killing somewhere in the range of 100 million of the infected before it began to abate in 1920.

Published in The National, July 25th, 2017