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SCIENCE FICTION

MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

US Special Forces and the CIA collide in Cold War Berlin

US Special Forces and the CIA collide in Cold War Berlin

Veterans of intelligence agencies and the special forces crowd the ranks of spy novelists. Some have rightfully been hailed as masters of the craft—John le Carré, for example. Or, more recently, David McCloskey. Others have written worthy and suspenseful novels that illuminate...

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NONFICTION

Popular Fiction

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 "Wolves Eat Dogs," a book about Chernobyl

Martin Cruz Smith addresses what really happened at Chernobyl

Over the years, I made two trips to the Soviet Union. The first time was in 1965, in the course of a four-month knockabout through the USSR, Eastern and Central Europe, and Scandinavia before my Peace Corps service started. (That was the trip during which I was threatened by submachinegun-toting...
Cover image of "Yellow-Dog Contract," a novel about dirty politics

Dirty politics, union style

It's been so long since labor unions have appeared high on our radar screens here in the US that you may be unaware what the phrase "yellow-dog contract" means. I for one had forgotten. Well, it turns out that such a contract, or a clause in a contract, requires that a new employee never join a...
Cover image of "The Sisterhood," a book about women at the CIA

A deep dive into the history of women at the CIA

On December 10, 2012, Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow's acclaimed film about the hunt for Usama bin Laden, debuted in Los Angeles. The central figure is a CIA officer named Maya, who pursues traces of "UBL" for years until finally locating him in his compound in Pakistan. Her targeting...
Cover image of "Brothers, Rivals, Victors,"

The American generals who led the Allies to victory

This is the story of three American generals, their on-again, off-again friendship, and the military operations they led from 1942 to 1945 to win the war against Nazi Germany. For those old enough to remember the history, two of their names live on in memory, the third, much less often. But all...
Cover image of "Freedom's Forge,"a book about how America united in common purpose in World War II

World War II: when America was united in common purpose

Since I was born six months before the U.S. entry into World War II, I grew up familiar with a long list of names — little-heard now, more than half a century later — that were associated with the U.S. role in the war. Remember, this was the war that seized hold of Planet Earth for a half-dozen...
Cover image of "The Buck Stops Here," a book about decisions that changed history

Assessing the most fateful Presidential decisions

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes When we study American history in high school or college, we learn that Thomas Jefferson bought the Louisiana Territory from the French and James Polk launched the Mexican-American War. But what we don't often learn about are the context in which Presidents...
Judgment is Joseph Finder's new novel, a courtroom drama.

A high-stakes courtroom drama in Joseph Finder’s new novel

Juliana Brody is living the good life. She's "in her early forties, but as her mother liked to say immodestly, she had good genes." She's a respected judge on the Superior Court in Boston, and happily married with two teenage children. And she's touted to be in contention for Chief Justice of the...
Cover image of "A Credible Threat," a novel about stalking

Stalking and murder at UC Berkeley

A young man named Ted Macauley is stalking two undergraduate women at UC Berkeley. Someone, presumably the same man, has been calling the Elmwood District house they share with several other students and hanging up without speaking. And now the residents have returned to find all the flowers in...
financial crisis: All the Devils Are Here by Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera

Now we know who caused the Great Recession—not just the bankers

Once upon a time, not so long ago, really—it was 1999—there was a group of three exceedingly smart men whom Time Magazine called The Committee to Save the World. In fact, these three men— Alan Greenspan, Larry Summers, and Robert Rubin—seemed to think they were the smartest people in the whole...

A superb historical novel about the opium trade

Amitav Ghosh reaffirms his place as one of contemporary India's greatest writers with this extraordinarily rich tale of class conflict, exploitation, and forbidden love against the background of the opium trade. The story is set in 1838, shortly before the First Opium War in China, which set the...

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Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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