No one born after about 1950 is likely to have any living memory of the abject fear that seized hold of the American psyche under the annual threat of polio. But I remember. Early in the 1950s, as polio steadily grew more prevalent with every succeeding summer, I grew from childhood into...

Most of us know what little we know about the work of the CIA from novels. Of course, much of that, perhaps most of it, is fanciful. Former CIA officers do write memoirs from time to time, but often, as the Washington Post noted (June 4, 2012), they write to "settle scores about spies." And, as...

So, here's the background to this intriguing book about Bitcoin. If you've ever thought much about money, you may have wondered what gives it its value, especially if you're aware that Richard Nixon took the dollar off the Gold Standard more than forty years ago. And if you're at all involved in...

Emily St. John Mandel came to the attention of millions of readers worldwide with the publication of her third novel, Station Eleven. The book has sold at least 1.5 million copies and elevated Mandel to the ranks of superstar status in the literary firmament. Perhaps it was foreordained that a...

For a guy who made his living for more than thirty years by writing letters and mailing hundreds of millions of copies of them, you might think I'd be familiar with the story of the US Postal Service. Unaccountably, I knew little before I read journalist Devin Leonard's compact and engaging new...

A review of Phantom Prey, by John Sandford. @@@@ (4 out of 5). Phantom Prey, like others I’ve read in the series, is a flawlessly executed tale built around a complex and unusual plot. A young heiress, Frances Austin, has disappeared, leaving behind spatters of her blood in her mother’s house that suggest she was murdered, but she has apparently withdrawn $50,000 from an investment account and colected it in cash, suggesting that perhaps she was not murdered but has simply fled. Other murders take place in close succession, linked to the heiress through friendship. .

John Lescroart writes compelling courtroom dramas set in San Francisco, most of them centered on the brilliant defense lawyer Dismas ("Diz") Hardy. Now, in his latest work, The Fall, Lescroart begins moving into the future with Hardy's daughter, Rebecca ("The Beck"), who has passed the bar and...

I rarely read political memoirs, because so often they're one-sidedly partisan and self-serving. They tend to lack any sense of balance. For example, though I didn't read Hillary Clinton's book about the 2016 election, I saw enough reviews to know that its primary purpose was to deflect blame for...

A review of Pharmacy on a Bicycle: Innovative Solutions for Global Health and Poverty, by Eric C. Bing and Marc J. Epstein. @@@@ (4 out of 5). A leading global health authority and an eminent management professor explain how recent developments make it possible to deliver effective healthcare to the billions of the world’s poor now living in often-remote rural areas.

Since NAFTA took effect in 1994, "more than 60,000 American manufacturers permanently shut their doors. . . In textiles alone, more than a million manufacturing jobs evaporated between 1990 and 2019." That fact, brought starkly to light in Rachel Slade's powerful new book, Making It in America,...