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Were British double agents the key to the Normandy invasion?

Were British double agents the key to the Normandy invasion?

Americans' views of the Second World War have been dominated by films, books, and television specials about the role that U.S. troops played in the fighting. Even today, more than three-quarters of a century after the war ended, we tend to believe that it was our ingenuity and...

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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 "Wonder Boys," a novel of life on campus

A novel of life on campus that seems more like middle school

Perhaps this has happened to you, too. You read a book that you know is supposed to be funny, but it just doesn't work for you. The story is absurd, so the author's intent is clear, and the complications that ensue are worthy of the Marx Brothers. It seems as though it all should be hilarious. But...
Cover image of "Dewey Defeats Truman," a novel of political history

From Thomas Mallon, a terrific political history novel

For at least a year before the 1948 presidential election, New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey was almost universally expected to beat the incumbent, former Vice President Harry Truman. (Apparently, even Truman himself thought he would lose.) The title of Thomas Mallon's brilliant novel about that...
The Joy and Light Bus Company

Botswana’s famous lady detectives are back

Nothing ever changes, but nothing's the same from day to day for Botswana's famous lady detectives. Once again, the challenges come three at a time for Mma Precious Ramotswe, proprietor of Gaborone's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. The son of a wealthy man is convinced that the nurse who cares for...
Cover image of "The Paris Architect," a novel about a reluctant hero in WWII

A reluctant hero in World War II

Charles Belfoure's 2013 novel, The Paris Architect, is the story of a reluctant hero in WWII. The publisher's own promotional copy for the novel calls him "unlikely and unlikable," and so he is. Lucien Bernard is a French modernist architect who is manipulated into risking his life in a...
Cover image of "Search the Dark," a British detective novel

A British detective novel that doesn’t measure up

What is it that keeps fans reading book after book in a series of detective novels? I should know as well as anyone, since I keep going back again and again to the work of Michael Connelly, Karin Slaughter, Henning Mankell, Jacqueline Winspear, James Lee Burke, Cara Black, John Sandford, Tana...
Cover image of "Bellwether," a satirical sci-fi novel

From Connie Willis satire that doesn’t make me laugh

I'm a big fan of satire. For instance, I love Christopher Buckley's books. Some of them make me laugh almost nonstop. But there's nothing worse than a satirical tale that. Just. Isn't. Funny. Unfortunately, that's what I found in Bellwether by Connie Willis. Apparently, Willis wrote this satirical...
Poppy Redfern and the Midnight Murders

A charming cozy mystery set during the Blitz

Early in 1942, American soldiers and airmen began pouring into England in what Britons termed the Friendly Invasion. In a charming cozy mystery, Poppy Redfern and the Midnight Murders, Tessa Arlen dramatizes the impact of the Yank invasion on the tiny village of Little Buffenden. While bombs fall...
Cover image of "The Incarnations," a novel about Chinese history

A brilliant novel that spans a thousand years of Chinese history

No doubt Chinese history (or, for that matter, the history of any other people) is littered with innumerable examples of depravity, violence, and betrayal. Though I'd like to think that a few good things happened, too -- and I know that they did, having read some Chinese history -- the novel...
This book purports to be an account of the turning point in World War II.

When FDR, Churchill, and Stalin planned the Normandy invasion

In Three Days at the Brink, journalist Bret Baier and his coauthor purport to zero in on the three-day period late in 1943 when FDR met Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin at the Tehran Conference. The book does include an account of those consequential three days — days "which might have birthed...
Cover image of "Empire of AI,"

Will artificial intelligence help us or hurt us?

Chances are, you'd never come across the term "artificial intelligence" as recently as a decade ago. And even if you had, it was probably either in reading science fiction or working in the tech industry. For the rest of us, AI was far off the radar screen. Yet today, you can't read or view the...

My Most Popular Reviews

Weekly Reviews Delivered to You!

Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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Mal Warwick

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