Category: History

June 17, 2010

1491 by Charles C. Mann *** (of 4)

Mann skewers nearly every myth I learned in K- College about Native Americans. They didn’t walk across the Bering Strait to settle the Americas. They’ve...

Book Reviews

0 Comments

June 17, 2010

Fifty Miles from Tomorrow by William L. Iggiagruk Hensley ** (of 4)

The life story of a native Inupiaq from the early 40s when native Alaskans were virtually untouched by Westerners, except missionaries, through statehood and the...

Book Reviews

0 Comments

June 17, 2010

Confederates in the Attic: America’s Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz *** (of 4)

A nice Jewish boy from the D.C. suburbs treks across the south meeting Civil War re-enactors, Daughters of the Confederate States of America, poor-whites with...

Book Reviews

0 Comments

June 17, 2010

The Civil War by Bruce Catton **** of 4

I listened to it on tape. It’s a short history of the Civil War. Gettysburg takes about six minutes. The Monitor and Merrimack about two....

Book Reviews

0 Comments

June 17, 2010

A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam by Neil Sheehan **** (of 4)

This book is a commitment. It contains seven interior books, 150 pages apiece. It is worthwhile, however, for anyone who cares about the hubris of...

Book Reviews

0 Comments

June 16, 2010

The Billionaire’s Vinegar by Benjamin Wallace *** (of 4)

I had no idea there were still bottles of wine worth drinking from the 18th and 19th centuries or that collectors frequently amassed cellars with...

Book Reviews

0 Comments

April 30, 2010

The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey * (of 4)

An Irish western outlaw in 1870s Australia. I think the book won some famous prize. I found it unreadable, predictable drek. Recommended by Terri Laufer

Book Reviews

0 Comments

April 30, 2010

The Songs of the Kings by Barry Unsworth * (of 4)

Winner of the Booker Prize totally boring Midrash of the Iliad. I couldn’t finish it.

Book Reviews

0 Comments

April 29, 2010

QBVII by Leon Uris *** (of 4)

About a trial of a libelous author who writes about Nazis, autobiographical. Uris is a class-act story teller making big books go by in quickly.

Book Reviews

0 Comments

April 29, 2010

Old Men at Midnight, by Chaim Potok *** (of 4)

Enigmatic. I went back and forth between thinking the three short stories were too simple, too typical, not completely unique recountings of Jewish suffering in...

Book Reviews

0 Comments