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Ken Follett’s monumental saga of the First World War

Ken Follett’s monumental saga of the First World War

No one is still alive with any adult memory of World War I, which ended a century ago. So when we think of the events that have shaped the world we live in today it's likely World War II looms large. But its antecedent three decades earlier may have had greater long-term...

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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 "Island of the Sequined Love Nun," a novel about a South Pacific adventure

A farce plays out on an isolated South Sea island

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes Sun-drenched beaches. Curvy young brown-skinned women dancing in grass skirts. Gentle, easy-going villagers gliding through the sea in hand-hewn canoes. If this is your image of a South Sea island, you can forget about it. That's not what you'll find on...
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 "Pale Rider" by Laura Spinney, a book that cautions us about a future pandemic.

Was the Spanish Flu of 1918 a greater disaster than World War II?

A future pandemic of devastating proportions is all too possible given our limited understanding of how to predict the emergence of new strains of killer flu. History could well prove that the COVID-19 pandemic gave us only a foretaste of what is to come. But there is worse in our history. Much...
Cover image of "Dark Matter," a novel about the multiverse

A journey into the multiverse

Imagine that every decision you make throughout your life creates a new universe: the old one representing the path you actually take, the new universe conforming to the alternate path. Over the years, then, your life branches into innumerable possible universes. So does the life of everyone else...
Cover image of "Hillbilly Elegy," a book about hillbilly culture

Hillbilly? Redneck? White trash?

Two recent books set out to paint a picture of working-class culture. One is White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, by Nancy Isenberg. I found the book to be too densely written and couldn't finish reading it. The other is far more accessible. Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a...

Homophobia, rape, murder in the New South

A review of Blindsighted, by Karin Slaughter. @@@@ (4 out of 5). Blindsighted, set in rural Grant County in Southern Georgia, focuses on Dr. Sara Linton, the 30-something town pediatrician and part-time coroner; her ex-husband, Jeffrey Tolliver, who is Chief of Police; and Lena Adams, a young detective.

A Bend in the River offers an unflattering picture of Africa.

Nobel Prizewinner paints an unflattering picture of Africa

In 1960, the chief of staff of the army in the recently independent Belgian Congo led a coup that toppled the democratically elected government of Patrice Lumumba. Five years later he ousted the men he had installed in power and became the country's dictator. His name was Mobutu Sese Seko. He...
Cover image of "A Rage for Order," a book about the Arab Spring

A postmortem for the Arab Spring

Historians are fond of advancing the notion that no major event in human affairs can be fully understood until many years later, when the major actors have passed from the scene and long-suppressed archival records finally come to light. Journalists sometimes dispute this contention, citing their...
In Over the Edge, the author demonstrates his psychological expertise.

Psychological expertise enlivens this crime thriller involving gifted children

Alex Delaware had left behind his practice as a child psychologist three years earlier. But when he receives a call in the middle of the night about a former patient, he doesn't hesitate to rush out to the psychiatric hospital where the young man was living. Except that Jamey Cadmus is no longer...
Cover image of "The School that Escaped the Nazis," a book that tells the story of the Holocaust through the eyes of children

The Holocaust viewed through the eyes of children

Amazon lists 4,000 books about the Holocaust. Half are nonfiction, such as Elie Wiesel's Night and Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl. The rest include such bestselling novels as The Book Thief and The Tattooist of Auschwitz. Of course, some of the innumerable memoirs and novels relate...

My Most Popular Reviews

Weekly Reviews Delivered to You!

Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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Mal Warwick

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