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A brilliant novel of love, hope, and the Rwanda genocide

A brilliant novel of love, hope, and the Rwanda genocide

Today, Rwanda is one of the brightest lights in Africa. The economy is booming. Corruption is rare. Government delivers services. The streets of Kigali, the capital, are clean. It's even easy to open a business. Thirty years ago the country was in chaos, as this award-winning...

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Explore My “BEST OF the category” selections

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE BOOK?

When people ask me that question, I never know what to say. In a lifetime of reading, I’ve read many thousands of books. And I’ve reviewed well over 2,000 of them on this site. Picking just one as a “favorite,” or even a handful of them, makes no sense to me.

The problem is, I read for many different reasons. Perhaps you do, too. And I read many different sorts of books. Mysteries and thrillers. Popular fiction, especially historical fiction. Science fiction.

And nonfiction, history in particular. You’ll find hundreds of reviews in every one of those categories on this site.

Look to the right for a rotating random selection culled from throughout this site.

Happy reading!

 

Cover image of "Christine Falls," a book about corruption in Ireland

Corruption and mayhem in Dublin and Boston in a superior mystery novel

When a brilliant author turns his hand to genre fiction, the result is often disappointing at best. The writer's motivation may have been simply to make a quick buck, and that inevitably shows. But when every ounce of the writer's talent is poured into the work, treating a mystery or a science...
Cover image of "Pandemic," a book about the history of contagious disease

The existential threat of contagious disease

To judge from the over the top rhetoric on display among the Republican candidates in the 2016 Presidential primary campaign, many millions of Americans live in abject fear of immigration, terrorism, and having their guns taken away. It's true there are genuine reasons to fear that our lives, our...
Cover image of "Blood on Snow," an example of outstanding Scandinavian noir

Jo Nesbo: outstanding Scandinavian noir

If you have a taste for outstanding Scandinavian noir, you're likely to have read at least one of Jo Nesbø's novels. Nesbø's unforgettable Norwegian detective, Harry Hole, is featured in so many of his books that it's tough for a fan of his work to accept stories from him about anyone else....
Cover image of "Resurrection Day," a novel about the aftermath of nuclear war

If the Cuban Missile Crisis had led to war

Ten years ago millions of Americans and Soviet citizens had died in a nuclear war. Washington DC, Miami, San Diego, and several other cities lie in rubble. The United States is now a second-rate power, dependent on aid from Great Britain. Chafing under martial law, the survivors struggle to feed...
Cover image of "Brandenburg Gate," a novel set in Easy Germany before the Wall fell

When Communism lost its grip on East Germany

On November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, setting off a fast march to German reunification. But it was not a singular event, arising out of the blue. Because the reform movement launched by Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow four years earlier had triggered a series of increasingly assertive protest...
Madame Fourcade’s Secret War is one of the best books about the French Resistance.

Good books about the French Resistance

Type in the phrase “French Resistance books” in Amazon, and you’ll learn that more than 4,000 titles have been published. Naturally, some of these are translations into languages other than English. Many are memoirs, often blatantly self-serving. (There was a lot of that in the years after World...
Cover image of "Bannerless" by Carrie Vaughn, a novel about population control

In an SF novel of life after the Fall, population control is the key to survival

What are the roots of the biggest problems confronting humanity today? Amid a long list of possibilities, two stand out: overpopulation and overconsumption. Today, we are beginning to confront the resource limits of our planet, drinkable water and arable land most prominently among them. In...

The #1 top historical mystery series

The late C. J. Sansom wrote a series of seven outstanding mysteries set in Tudor England before his untimely death in 2024. His protagonist, a resourceful lawyer named Matthew Shardlake, has the misfortune of gaining the attention of the most powerful lords in the land, including King Henry VIII...
Cover image of "Russka," a novel of Russian history in fiction

A journey through Russian history in fiction

No country on Earth can boast a more tumultuous history than Russia. Born in the clash of marauding nomadic tribes nearly 2,000 years ago, this sprawling Euro-Asiatic nation has witnessed repeated bouts of foreign incursions, ethnic conflict, revolution, and a millennium of autocratic, and often...
Cover image of a book about bad teachers

Teacher training, normal schools, and “bad teachers”

Perhaps it seems to you that there has never been so much controversy surrounding the work of teachers as there is today. After all, from "prayer in the schools" to the Common Core to the continuing battles over homeschooling and charter schools, it might appear that we're experiencing the...

My Most Popular Reviews

Weekly Reviews Delivered to You!

Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

Weekly book reviews to match your taste!

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Mal Warwick

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…includes summaries and links to all the previous week’s three to five book reviews, including some that don’t appear in any of the other newsletters.

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