The Latest

SCIENCE FICTION

First Contact deep in the Amazon rainforest

First Contact deep in the Amazon rainforest

What can I say about a book that could have been great but isn't? In Entropy, the 31st entry in his long-running series of standalone novels about First Contact with alien intelligence, Australian author Peter Cawdron tells a gripping story about the crash of a private jet deep...

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MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

Travis McGee stumbles into a massive financial fraud

Travis McGee stumbles into a massive financial fraud

He calls himself a beach bum. Travis McGee lives on a houseboat in Fort Lauderdale and only works when he's running out of money. Then he becomes a "salvage consultant," helping someone who's been robbed blind. He'll steal back the money or valuables—for half the take. But this...

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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 "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...
Corrupt spies take center stage in "Twilight at Mac's Place" by Ross Thomas.

Corrupt spies and bent politicians in this clever murder mystery

Ross Thomas was forty-one years old in 1967, when his first novel was published. He had already lived an eventful life. Thomas served in the infantry in the Philippines in World War II and later worked as a reporter and a public relations specialist. Most famously, he also hired out as a political...
Cover image of "A World in Disarray," a book about foreign policy

American foreign policy in a “nonpolar” world

It would be difficult to identify anyone other than Henry Kissinger who represents the tradition of America's bipartisan foreign policy more fully than Richard A. Haass. Haass is the longtime president of the Council on Foreign Relations, which comes as close as any institution to sitting at the...
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One

Reassessing the Science Fiction Hall of Fame

Science fiction fans speak of the Golden Age of Science Fiction, a period that, most broadly construed, ran from 1929 to 1964. SF Grand Master Robert Silverberg, acting on behalf of the Science Fiction Writers of America, included twenty-six stories published during that period in The Science...
19th century image of Joan of Arc leading French troops against the English.

Good books about the Middle Ages

Few of us in the 21st century think much about the medieval era. Nor are we likely to believe that life in that time bears any meaningful relationship to the world around us today. Yet that would be a mistake. Much of what we take for granted traces its origins to the Middle Ages. The banking...

Red meat for political junkies: “The Making of the President 2012”

For a campaign junkie like me, reading Double Down was sheer pleasure, as was its predecessor by the same authors, Game Change. I've been reading book-length accounts of presidential campaigns since Theodore White's The Making of the President 1960. This has something to do with my having been...
There There is a novel about urban Indian life.

A bestselling new novel casts a bright light on urban Indian life

If you're into alcoholism, wife-beating, absentee fathers, and drugs, or simply like to read about them, you may enjoy Tommy Orange's portrayal of urban Indian life in his new novel, There There. I didn't. I cannot be persuaded that everyone in the urban Indian community is a loser or a criminal....
Photo of books in shelf, making us wonder how many books have been published

Just how many books are there, really?

In a guest post here on October 4, 2016 (“10 awful truths about book publishing”), publisher Steven Piersanti remarked on the huge numbers of books being published today. Here’s what he wrote: According to the latest Bowker Report (September 7, 2016), more than 700,000 books were self-published in...
corporate personhood: Corporations Are Not People by Jeffrey D. Clements

Citizens United, corporate personhood, and the way forward

A review of Corporations Are Not People: Why They Have More Rights Than You Do and What You Can Do About It, by Jeffrey D. Clements. @@@@@ (5 out of 5). An activist plea for readers to join the gathering movement to overturn Citizens United, wrest political power from the corporations, and put it back in the hands of people.

The roach patrol and a Bad Monkey by Carl Hiaasen

A severed arm, a detective on the roach patrol, and a bad monkey

A review of Bad Monkey, by Carl Hiaasen. @@@@ (4 out of 5). Another funny Florida crime story from one of the masters of American humor in print.

My Most Popular Reviews

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Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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Mal Warwick

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