Category: History

April 16, 2014

One Summer: America 1927 by Bill Bryson **** (of 4)

The summer of 1927 begins with the worst rains the United States has endured in a century or more. The Mississippi has flooded millions of...

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March 30, 2014

Frozen in Time by Mitchell Zuckoff *** (of 4)

To ferry supplies, munitions, and personnel to the European front in WW II required skipping across allied airfields in Canada, Greenland, and Iceland. The major...

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March 19, 2014

An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris *** (of 4)

Robert Harris makes his living fictionalizing famous historical events (see Pompeii). In this case, it is the end of the nineteenth century, and the French...

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March 9, 2014

In an Antique Land by Amitav Ghosh *** (of 4)

Ghosh recounts the life of a Medieval Jewish trader, Ben Yiyu, who transported goods by ship from India to Egypt. Evidence of his trader emerge...

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January 1, 2014

The Guns at Last Light by Rick Atkinson **** (of 4)

Like a great general, not a good one, but a great one, Rick Atkinson tracks the final battles for European supremacy as the Second World...

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December 6, 2013

Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking by Anya von Bremzen *** (of 5)

What an interesting idea. Mix together a memoir of family history in the old Soviet Union with some Soviet history and the signature foods of...

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October 10, 2013

The Gods of Gotham by Lindsay Faye *** (of 4)

The year is 1845. The city of New York has grown a little too quickly from 50,000 to half a million. The potato blight has...

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September 30, 2013

Zealot by Reza Aslan *** (of 4)

Before Jesus was the Christ (Savior), he was Jesus of Nazareth. This book does its best to set the scene in First Century Palestine. The...

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September 3, 2013

Iron Curtain by Anne Applebaum ** (of 4)

World War II came to an end in large measure because the Russian Army came to the aid of the Allied Forces. Irate at having...

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August 18, 2013

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens *** (of 4)

Roughly sixty years after the event, Charles Dickens takes his hand to historical fiction, doing his best to recount the French Revolution. Simultaneously ambitious, and...

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