Book Review: Man of Destiny
/If a gushing new biography is any warrant, that's the wrong Roosevelt up on Mount Rushmore.
Read MoreBook Review: India at War
/When the Second World War erupted, the British Empire expected all its client states to do their duty for the Crown; but in India, as a sharp new book details, that duty was deeply complicated
Read MoreAkhenaten: King of Egypt!
/Our book today is a big fat thing called Akhenaten: King of Egypt by Cyril Aldred (when reading pretty much any history on pretty much any subject, you should, if possible, hold out for a historian named Cyril Aldred), and in addition to being a fantastic soup-to-nuts historical and archaeological account of ancient Egypt’s infamous […]
Read MoreBook Review: The Conquering Tide
/The fierce, epic height of WWII's Pacific War is the subject of Ian Toll's gripping new volume
Read MoreBook Review: A Little History of the United States
/The latest volume in Yale University Press's series of short histories is a quick yet authoritative overview of United States history
Read MoreBook Review: Bosworth 1485
/A taut new history of Richard III and the battle in which he lost everything - and the new Tudor dynasty gained everything
Read MoreBook Review: Among the Bone Eaters
/In the Ethiopian city of Harar, spotted hyenas roam the streets at night, cleaning up the day's garbage better than any human crew could do. A fascinating new book tells the story.
Read MoreBook Review: The Spirit of '74
/Long before the famous date of the Declaration, Boston was breaking the King's Peace and warning other towns and colonies to do likewise - a lively new book tells the story
Read MoreBook Review: The Double Life of Liliane
/National Book Award-winner Lily Tuck's latest book attempts an experiment at dramatizing her memories of her early years
Read MoreBook Review: Afghan Modern
/A Stanford history professor attempts to make a positive case for one of the most benighted countries on the planet
Read MoreThe Burgess Shakespeare!
/Our book today is Shakespeare, which Anthony Burgess wrote one morning in 1970 after a 40-pint evening. The morning was raw and scratchy, one imagines, and our author, not at his best, needed some task to distract him before his four-course breakfast and pick-me-up whiskey was ready. The afternoon was already planned: a TV show […]
Read MoreBook Review: Building Art
/The world's most famous architect gets his first full-length biography
Read MoreBook Review: The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
/They slit throats; the bombed churches; they were none too mentally stable - and these were the GOOD guys
Read MoreThe Aventine Leaves of Grass!
/Our book today is Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass – and only Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, here presented in a hefty green-jacketed 1931 hardcover from the old Aventine Press, whose editors decided to present the author’s 1892 edition of his great work entirely without critical apparatus of any kind. I found this Aventine volume […]
Read MoreIn Paperback: Walden's Shore
/Now in paperback: a thorough - and thoroughly interesting - study of the actual physical dimensions of the little pond whose name Henry David Thoreau made immortal
Read MoreBook Review: Ralph Waldo Emerson - The Major Poetry
/A thorough new study of the poetry of the great transcendentalist writer Ralph Waldo Emerson
Read MoreBook Review: Renishaw Hall
/The great home of generations of the Sitwell family, Renishaw Hall, is the subject of Desmond Seward's latest book
Read MoreBook Review: The Storms of War
/In historian Kate Williams' new novel, a wealthy family in England confronts the realities of the First World War
Read MoreBook Review: Monsters
/The bad science behind the Hindenburg was made tragically obvious by its explosion in 1937; a new book warns that other miracles of science may be equally dangerous
Read MoreBook Review: Word by Word
/A new book assembles and studies the scattered writings of American slaves
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