Category: History

February 10, 2015

The Alienist by Caleb Carr ** (of 4)

In the 1890s, Theodore Roosevelt did not yet have presidential ambitions. As a young man he was trying to sweep corruption from the halls of New...

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January 5, 2015

My Promised Land by Ari Shavit **** (of 4)

Israel is threatened, and always has been, from within and without. Beyond its borders are hundreds of millions of Arabs, and 1.5 billion Muslims, most of...

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December 14, 2014

Warburg in Rome by James Carroll *** (of 4)

I learned a lot about the plight of European Jews in the years 1944 to 1947. American Jews knew of the death camps, but widespread...

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November 26, 2014

Yiddishkeit by Harvey Pekar and Paul Buhle *** (of 4)

Even the title of the book isn’t really translatable, encompassing as it does more than a language. Yiddishkeit is a people, it’s culture, and an...

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October 28, 2014

Agent Zigzag by Ben McIntyre *** (of 4)

Prior to the outbreak of WWII, the British citizen Eddie Chapman spent his youth blowing safes and robbing banks. Passing in and out of jails, Chapman...

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October 7, 2014

The Good Lord Bird by James McBride *** (of 4)

Of course I’ve heard of John Brown, the abolitionist, who tried to start an insurrection and free the slaves by himself. But, truth is, that...

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August 11, 2014

All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr **** (of 4)

Two parallel stories. In France, a teenage girl, blind since the age of five, has her life turned upside down when the Germans invade Paris....

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June 7, 2014

An Army at Dawn by Rick Atkinson **** (of 4)

The year is 1942. Axis powers have taken control of Europe, east Asia and the Pacific, North Africa, and are threatening to consume Russia. Britain,...

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May 5, 2014

Life after Life by Kate Atkinson **** (of 5)

On the first page, Ursala Todd has the opportunity to shoot Hitler in 1930 and does so. No wait. A few pages later Ursula is...

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April 25, 2014

Hitler’s Furies by Wendy Lower *** (of 4)

Contemporary research on Nazi war crimes suggests most Nazis were Ordinary Men. Neither crazed nor fanatical killers, Christopher Browning’s landmark book in 1992 discovered that most...

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