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SCIENCE FICTION

MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

The best spy novelists writing today

The best spy novelists writing today

The first espionage novels appeared early in the 19th century with the publication of James Fenimore Cooper's The Spy in 1821 and The Bravo in 1831. A few other notable titles were published in the ensuing decades, and Sherlock Holmes got into the act around the turn...

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NONFICTION

Roger Ailes: the man who built Fox News and divided America

Roger Ailes: the man who built Fox News and divided America

As a teenager growing up in the 1950s in Lima, Ohio, (population 50,000 then), I learned that our local daily, The Lima News, had been purchased by a man named R. C. Hoiles. Hoiles lived in Orange County, California, and was a member of the John Birch Society. He owned a chain...

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Popular Fiction

Love, disease, and self-deception: the life of Typhoid Mary

Love, disease, and self-deception: the life of Typhoid Mary

Shortly after the 19th century turned into the 20th, a medical sleuth named George Soper, whom we would today call an epidemiologist, identified a young Irish immigrant cook in New York City as an asymptomatic carrier of the pathogen that causes typhoid fever. Her name was Mary...

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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 "Apple in China," the story of the partnership between Apple and China

How Apple made China great—and became a $3 trillion company

You might have wondered, as I have, how China could become so prosperous and powerful in less than half a century since Deng Hsiao-ping launched what I might call the Second Chinese Revolution. Certainly, the centralized power of the Communist Party has played a pivotal role. Like the Soviet Union...
Cover image of "Sunset Limited," a novel about the New Orleans mob

The New Orleans mob, a crooked film director, and a 40-year-old crucifixion

Here’s what to expect from a novel in the Dave Robicheaux series by James Lee Burke: Dave will get himself into trouble by ignoring orders from the Sheriff, his boss, and by disregarding threats from supremely dangerous people. Dave’s former partner in the New Orleans Police Department, Clete...
CIA strategy: The Way of the Knife by Mark Mazzetti

Drones, mercenaries, and targeted murder: the new CIA strategy

A review of The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth, by Mark Mazzetti. @@@@ (4 out of 5). A Pulitzer-winning reporter’s inquiry into the profound shift in the CIA’s strategy since 2001, from intelligence-gathering to enhanced interrogation to targeted murder using drones.

Cover image of "American Midnight," a book about the First Red Scare

Repression, censorship, and official violence in the First Red Scare

On Sunday, October 9, 2022, the cover story in the New York Times Book Review featured Adam Hochschild's American Midnight. Reviewer Thomas Meaney characterized the book as "masterly" and applauded its reminder that "there are other contenders than the period beginning in 2016 for the distinction...
Cover image of "A Spy at War,"

This gripping spy story is set in Ukraine during the war with Russia

When we first met Simon Sharman in Charles Beaumont's explosive debut, A Spy Alone, he was a former MI6 officer employed at a private British intelligence service. Working in tandem with an Oxford academic named Sarah du Cane, who was influential at 10 Downing Street, he exposed a high-level...
Cover image of "Still Life" by Louise Penny, a detective novel

From Louise Penny, a detective novel that continues to surprise to the end

She doesn't look like a misanthropic poet, but, if it's true that the characters in a novel all reflect some aspect of the author's personality, she may not be nearly as sweet as she looks. That's Louise Penny, who has written ten complex detective novels featuring Chief Inspector of Homicide...
Cover image of "Earthly Remains" by Donna Leon, but it's not one of her best

Donna Leon’s latest is not one of her best

For some reason I cannot fathom, Marilyn Stasio raved about Earthly Remains. Stasio has been editing a column on crime fiction for the New York Times Book Review—forever, it seems. Her recommendations are often good. But this one wasn't. She called this novel, the 26th in Donna Leon's long-running...
Cover image of "The Shape of Water," a novel by Andrea Camilleri

Andrea Camilleri writes about murder in Sicily. What else is new?

There's little of that celebrated Italian charm in The Shape of Water, the first novel by Andrea Camilleri in his widely-read series of crime stories featuring Inspector Salvo Montalbano. The book is set in the town of Vigata in Sicily, where corruption reigns supreme and murder is nothing out of...
A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea

Escape from North Korea: a first-person account

Few countries on Earth are more isolated than North Korea. The term "hermetically sealed" is often applied. And as a result few first-hand accounts of life in the hermit kingdom of the Kim Dynasty have made it into print in the West. Of those that have appeared in the United States, most are...
By the Light of Burning Dreams

Chronicling the incomplete second American Revolution

Americans have short memories. Our failure to read history leads us to believe that nothing in our past could equal the dangers posed by the crises that threaten us today. We forget those times when the nation's very existence hung in the balance. 1776, when the American project might well have...

My Most Popular Reviews

Weekly Reviews Delivered to You!

Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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Mal Warwick

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