Category: History

September 25, 2016

Children of the Arbat *** (of 4) by Anatoli Rybakov

The Arbat is a Moscow neighborhood; its children are the teens and twenty-somethings caught up in Stalin’s increasingly repressive communism of the 1930s. These youth...

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August 1, 2016

The Lazarus Project by Aleksander Hemon *** (of 5)

In 1908 a Jewish immigrant named Lazarus Averbuch knocked on the door of Chicago’s police chief. After handing the Chief Shippy a letter (we never learn...

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May 29, 2016

The Immortal Irishman by Timothy Egan **** (of 5)

The immortal Irishman is Robert Meagher, surely the most famous and interesting person I’ve never heard of. Meagher (pronounced Mar) was an incomparably gifted nineteenth...

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May 1, 2016

The Incarnations by Susan Barker *** (of 4)

China, despite its rocket launch into modernity, is still a country of five thousand years of history. As Americans, a people that at best can only recall...

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April 8, 2016

Redeployment by Phil Klay *** (of 4)

Phil Klay’s short stories about Marine Corps life in Iraq and after Iraq begin so realistically that I had to check to confirm I was...

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March 25, 2016

Black Flags by Joby Warrick *** (of 4)

Sadly, so much of the terror that has become ISIS in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, the countries of North Africa and the attacks in Europe are a...

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February 19, 2016

Lafayette in the Somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell ** (of 4)

I love Sarah Vowell’s hip hop style of writing and she is hooked on an interesting fellow. The Marquis de Lafayette arrived in the American...

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February 7, 2016

So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell **** (of 4)

This is a tale both microscopic in scope and biblical in scale. The scene is 1920s Illinois before the age of machines and corporations when...

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January 4, 2016

Negroland by Margo Jefferson *** (of 4)

Margo Jefferson is nearing the end of a successful career as an English professor and brings all of her skill as a cultural analyst and...

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December 24, 2015

Dead Wake by Erik Larson *** (of 4)

In 1915 the largest, fastest, and most luxurious ship on the ocean was the Lusitania. Crossing the Atlantic by ship was the only way to...

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