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Books about extraordinary women

Books about extraordinary women

You won’t recognize some of the names on this list of exceptional women. Most were little known even in their own time. They represent a wide range of activities, from espionage to politics to science and to running their countries. But what they have in common with the three...

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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 "Downbelow Station,"

In this interstellar war, the combatants are all human

Pick up any one of those sci-fi epics with a lurid cover that promises a story of combat in space. What do you see? Probably, humans battling evil aliens resembling lizards or spiders—or something undefinable. You can be sure there'll be lots of battles, with heroic space jockeys stressed to the...
Cover image of "The Deep Blue Good-By,"

Suspense authors look to this classic thriller series as a model

Check out your favorite writers of mysteries and thrillers whose careers began after, say, 1970. You're likely to find that several turn to the work of John D. MacDonald as a model of the craft. In his time—the 1940s through the 1980s—he was one of the world's most admired and bestselling authors...
Cover image of "The B Corp Handbook," a book about running a values based business

How to run a values based business

We are in the midst of the evolution of capitalism from a century focused on maximizing shareholder value to one focused on maximizing long-term shared value." Over the past several decades, a set of bold new ideas promoting this transition has been gaining momentum in the worlds of business and...
Cover image of "A Spy Among Friends" a book about Kim Philby

Was Kim Philby the greatest spy ever?

Mention his name in the halls of the CIA or MI6, and you'll get a decidedly frosty reaction. Your reception at the successor to the KGB will be quite different. You can guess whose side he was on. Estimated reading time: 4 minutes Kim Philby is indisputably one of the most successful spies whose...
Cover image of "The Dean of Shandong," a book about the Chinese political system

An insider’s view of the Chinese political system

Ask just about any American at random to describe the Chinese political system, and the answer is likely to be "Communism." It's a convenient label that results from Mao Zedong's 1949 revolution and seven decades of reporting by and about the Chinese Communist Party. Not to mention decades of...
Cover image of "Groucho Marx, Master Detective," the first of the Groucho Marx Mysteries

The delightful Groucho Marx Mysteries

During the years 1998 to 2005, the popular cultural historian and author Ron Goulart (1933-) published a series of six Groucho Marx Mysteries featuring the legendary comedian in an unfamiliar role as a crime investigator. They’re set in the period immediately before the United States entered World...
Cover image of "Dark Money," a book about the Koch Brothers by Jane Mayer

How the Koch brothers are revolutionizing American politics

The Koch brothers, Charles and David, get a lot of attention from political observers and, increasingly, from the public. No wonder. The fortune they possess together is greater than those of Bill Gates, Carlos Slim, Warren Buffet, and other private individuals who are often characterized as the...
Delta-V

A brilliant hard science fiction novel about asteroid mining

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes Mars, Mars, Mars. It seems that NASA and the public can think of little else about space travel. There have been more than fifty missions to long-dead Mars but no more than a handful to all the ice moons of the gas giants. And a few of those moons show signs that...
Cover image of "Nothing to Envy," a book about

North Korea makes clear why politics matters

If anyone ever tries to tell you that politics doesn't matter, I suggest you raise the case of North Korea. Now, I don't mean the big abstracts like "Communism" and "dictatorship" and "rogue state." I'm referring to the little things, the daily life in North Korea individual people who are caught...
Cover image of "The Great Escape," a book about the inequality gap

How the inequality gap came to be

Has the human race made progress since the days when all our lives were nasty, brutish, and short? Some might think this question patently silly, since it would appear to answer itself. But Angus Deaton finds in it a point of entry into his inquiry on "health, wealth, and the origins of...

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

The latest mystery
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…includes my latest nonfiction book review, with links to other nonfiction content.

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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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