The Latest

SCIENCE FICTION

MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

A hilarious romp through the byways of small-town crime

A hilarious romp through the byways of small-town crime

To be clear at the outset, you should not expect a realistic picture of small-town crime when you read Justin Halpern's comic masterpiece, Get Lost. What you'll get instead is a fiendishly clever story that somehow involves a missing woman, corrupt almond farmers, a Big Box...

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NONFICTION

He could have been king. Or a dictator. He retired instead.

He could have been king. Or a dictator. He retired instead.

Myths and legends swirl around the life of George Washington. Remember that cherry tree? The wooden teeth? Throwing a coin across a wide river? The white wig? All of these widely accepted beliefs about our founding President are flatly untrue. And, just for the record, he was...

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Popular Fiction

American history, laughing all the way

American history, laughing all the way

Scoot yourself over, Huckleberry Finn! Make room! Here comes Henry Shackleford, aka Henrietta, aka Little Onion, with a tall tale ripped and twisted out of the pages of history that's like to set your britches afire. Yes, here's The Good Lord Bird, courtesy of James McBride, a...

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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!

 

Hawksbill Station gets lots of things wrong about the future.

A science fiction Grand Master gets it wrong about the future

Some would say science fiction writers are notorious for getting things wrong about the future. After all, there are few examples of important developments in science or technology that any science fiction author can credibly claim to have predicted. Yes, Arthur C. Clarke famously foresaw...

Benjamin Black brings back Philip Marlowe

I've never been a fan of books written by contemporary writers using legendary characters created by someone long dead -- but I'm such a big fan of Benjamin Black's Quirke series set in Dublin that I couldn't resist grabbing up his recreation of Raymond Chandler's legendary detective, Philip...
A Psalm for the Well-Built

The intriguing start to a new Becky Chambers series

Becky Chambers has made a name for herself among the newer crop of science fiction authors with her outstanding Wayfarers series, which won the Hugo Award for Best Series. The four books in that inaugural series introduced readers to a delightful future. Beginning with The Long Way to a Small,...
Cover image of "Suspect," an urban crime thriller

Scott Turow’s new urban crime thriller is a winner

As I write, Scott Turow is seventy-three years old. He is an accomplished attorney and bestselling author of sixteen books, most of them bestsellers. He possesses a law degree from Harvard University. So, one might think he would stumble badly building a novel around a poorly educated,...
Cover image of "Engineers of Victory" by Paul Kennedy, a book about problem-solvers

The problem-solvers who won World War II

What use is history? This question has been kicked around for centuries, but I'm not certain that those who venture opinions about it have bothered to ask a follow-up question: What do you mean by history? Most of what we're force-fed in school—even, all too often, in university courses --...
The Fight of the Century explores 100 years of landmark ACLU cases.

Reflecting on 100 years of landmark ACLU cases

Anthologies are, inevitably, uneven. No matter how tightly edited, the individual contributions necessarily vary in character and quality. And in an audiobook, the format in which I "read" this collection of essays about the landmark ACLU cases of the past century, the problem is compounded when...
The Last Firewall is about life after the singularity.

A grim view of life after the singularity

Today some observers of artificial intelligence believe the singularity is near—the point at which machine intelligence will exceed that of the most brilliant humans. The concept seems as though it comes straight out of Silicon Valley. But it originated many decades ago with the legendary...
The Middleman is the story of a Second American Revolution.

A spy novelist foresees a Second American Revolution in a curious new novel

Olen Steinhauer has gained a reputation as one of the most compelling authors of espionage fiction writing today. He is best known for the Milo Weaver Trilogy (The Tourist, The Nearest Exit, An American Spy) and the five-book Yalta Boulevard Cycle in addition to three standalone novels. All these...
The Revenge of Geography by Robert D. Kaplan

Geopolitical analysis illuminates history and world politics

A review of The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate, by Robert D. Kaplan. @@@@@ (5 out of 5). A view of current events and U.S. policy from the perspective of geopolitics, grounded in geography and history.

Surveillance Valley reveals the secret military history of the Internet.

Shocking revelations: the secret military history of the Internet

The secret military history of the Internet comes to light in a powerful new book. It's well known that the Internet was birthed by the Pentagon. Originally called the ARPANET, the name reflected its origin in the military's Advanced Research Projects Agency created late in the Eisenhower...

My Most Popular Reviews

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Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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Mal Warwick

The latest mystery
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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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