The Latest

SCIENCE FICTION

MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

A clever whodunit author outdoes himself

A clever whodunit author outdoes himself

In A Deadly Episode, the sixth book in his Hawthorne and Horowitz series, Anthony Horowitz delivers a belated sequel to the novel that launched the series, The Word is Murder. And, true to form, he delivers a baffling story with a devilishly clever premise. Yes, Horowitz does...

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NONFICTION

How the Occupied nations helped win World War II

How the Occupied nations helped win World War II

Thousands of books memorialize the story of World War II in Europe. Every aspect of the conflict has received its due, from the fighting itself, to the deprivations on the home front, to the role of intelligence and the personalities of the civilian and military leadership on...

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Popular Fiction

Laughs in sci-fi? P. G. Wodehouse did humor better.

Laughs in sci-fi? P. G. Wodehouse did humor better.

The legendary English humorist Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (1881-1975), known to readers as P. G., wrote about 100 books in a career that spanned much of the 20th century. His output included 71 novels, 24 collections of short stories, 42 plays, three memoirs, and a lot...

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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!

 

political junkies: Then Everything Changed by Jeff Greenfield

Joy for political junkies in a brilliant alternate history

A review of Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics, JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reagan, by Jeff Greenfield.
@@@@@ (5 out of 5). There is a subspecies of the human race that is afflicted, usually from birth, with an insatiable thirst for politics. This book was written for them — and, to this political junkie, what a book it is!

Cover image of "Jefferson's Second Revolution," a book about the election of 1800, when the US stood on the brink of civil war

America’s first existential election

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes Three times in US history a presidential election has brought the nation to the brink of civil war. In 2020, when Donald Trump attempted to remain in office after losing by seven million votes. In 1860, when the election of Abraham Lincoln actually did trigger the...
Cover image of "James," one of the 20 best books of 2024

The 20 best books of 2024

Okay, I lied. What follows is not a list of the 20 best books of 2024, if by that you're expecting the 20 best books published during the past year. Truth to tell, I don’t believe anyone—not the New York Times, the Washington Post, or any other news organization can...
Cover image of "How We Got to Now," a book about innovation

A brilliant new take on innovation

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes Silicon Valley has warped our perspective on innovation. Think of the words invention or innovation, and what's most likely to come to mind today? The computer, the Internet, and their various permutations and combinations. But take a broader, historical...
Cover image of "The Ventriloquists," a novel about the World War II Resistance in Belgium

A wild WW2 caper by the Belgian Resistance

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes Working round the clock for sixteen days in October and early November 1943, a ragtag bunch of Belgian resisters staged one of the most audacious and innovative protests their Nazi overlords had ever experienced. No one blew up train tracks or assassinated an SS...
Cover image of "Black Edge," a book about hedge funds

Hedge funds, insider trading, and the most wanted man on Wall Street

If you want to understand the depth of corruption that prevails on Wall Street, a good place to start is New Yorker staff writer Sheelah Kolhatkar's admirable new book, Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street. A loathsome human...
Cover image of "War and Conflict in the Middle Ages,"

A global view of war in the Middle Ages

Most Western historians view the years between about 500 CE and 1500 CE as the Middle Ages, and they typically divide the period into three sections of 500 years each. The bookmarks for the period are the collapse of the Roman Empire and the "discovery" of the Americas. But this is a decidedly...
Kill Decision

Killer drones menace the USA in this military technothriller

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes Over the past two centuries, industrial technology has played an increasingly critical role in warfare. From the telegraph, ironclad steamships, and Gatling guns of the 19th century to the supersonic aircraft, computer-directed artillery fire, and drones of the...
Cover image of "Beyond the Wire," a novel about an uprising at Auschwitz

Jews stage an uprising at Auschwitz

On October 7, 1944, some 250 members of the Sonderkommando at Crematorium IV, nearly all of them Jews, staged an uprising at Auschwitz. They had been hand-picked by their SS guards to manage the flow of doomed prisoners, Jews like themselves, herding them into the gas chambers and moving...
Cover image of "Poverty, by America," which explains how to end poverty in America

How to end poverty in America

One of the ugliest aspects of life in America today is the appalling level of poverty—and the failure of our government to do anything meaningful about it. As sociologist Matthew Desmond makes clear in Poverty, By America, a single action by Congress and the President could easily generate the...

My Most Popular Reviews

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Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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