Book Review: To Save a Viscount
/England's newest viscount has an assassin's target pinned to his new title, and the spies who accidentally put it there now have a nobleman to protect
Read MoreBook Review: Ataturk in the Nazi Imagination
/It's well known that Hitler looked to Mussolini's success in Italy as a model for his own fascism, but a fascinating new book details the lesser-known fact that Hitler had another model as well - an earlier and more exotic one.
Read MoreBook Review: Fear City
/F. Paul Wilson's supremely capable action-hero, "Repairman" Jack, wasn't always the kneecap-crushing arm-breaking, bad guy-defenestrating paragon his legions of fans know and love; once upon a time, he was a kneecap-crushing, arm-breaking, bad guy-defenestrating neophyte with a dream. "Fear City" takes us back to 1993.
Read MoreBook Review: The Good War
/The war in Afghanistan began promisingly - and then dragged on, fell apart, and limped to a quasi-ending. A lively new book narrates the story
Read MoreSix for the Books!
/Ink Chorus The dear old Guardian the other day published what the kids call a “listicle” – basically a themed list of items air-pumped into roughly the dimensions of an actual column – on a subject near to my heart: good books about books and reading, and I was right away reminded of a good three […]
Read MoreBook Review: Ardor
/Intellectual polymath Roberto Calasso's latest translated work is an exploration of the ancient hymns and verses of the Vedas
Read MoreBook Review: Chain of Events
/In this thriller, two specialists discover an unbelievable revelation written into the genetic code of all living things
Read MoreBooks in My Baggage!
/Ink Chorus Our book today is Lawrence Clark Powell’s utterly delightful 1960 book Books in My Baggage, one of his follow-ups to his very popular earlier work of literary musings, A Passion for Books. I thought about this one lately because I’ve been low-grade fuming for a while now about the purblind convservatism of that […]
Read MoreBook Review: Chief Executive to Chief Justice
/William Howard Taft was the only man to be both President of the United States and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and a new book tells the story of the overlooked years in between
Read MoreBook Review: America's Pastor
/For half a century, preacher Billy Graham was an unofficial spiritual advisor to presidents and rock stars; a new biography attempts to assess his impact on mainstream American religious thought
Read MoreApproaching hoofbeats!
/No doubt some of you spotted the item in your newsfeeds: a recent article noting that both Amazon and Publisher’s Weekly have already produced their lists of the Best Books of 2014, despite the fact that the year still has two months to go. This is of course both canny and craven; on the one […]
Read MoreBook Review: WWII - A Chronicle of Soldiering
/Fifty years ago, the author of "From Here to Eternity" wrote a vivid, impressionistic account of the Second World War, and that fascinating book now enjoys a new edition
Read MoreComics! If Asgard Falls …
/Our story today is a corker from 1968: “If Asgard Falls …” from Thor Annual #2, written by Stan Lee and drawn by Jack Kirby (with customarily perfect inks by Vince Colletta), the kind of fine hammy high fantasy that always best suits this strangest of all the original crop of Marvel superheroes Lee & […]
Read MoreBook Review: Captive Paradise
/James Haley's new history takes up the oft-told story of the Hawaiian Islands
Read MoreComics: Bram Stoker’s Dracula!
/On 8 November we honor the birthday of Bram Stoker, the author of the immortal 1897 novel Dracula, which brought Dracula and humanity-stalking vampires to the popular imagination and lodged them there so firmly that “Dracula” and “vampire” have become easy synonyms. Dracula has of course been packaged and re-packaged a million times, adapted for […]
Read MoreBook Review: Fire and Movement
/The British Expeditionary Force in the First World War has accrued a great many legends over the last century; Peter Hart's new account aims to delete the mythology - and still preserve the heroism
Read MoreOld Curmudgeons in the Penny Press!
/There’s a certain kind of purity-of-the-turf book-article that I expect to encounter on a regular basis in the Penny Press, and yet even though I expect it, the encounters are always a bit depressing. The theme never changes: I’m an old-fashioned reader; I’ll never cozy up to these new-fangled electronic books or electronic reading gizmos, […]
Read MoreEchoes aplenty in the Penny Press!
/One of the little joys of book-reviewing is finding “echoes” of your own reviews in somebody else’s Table of Contents. My beloved Open Letters Monthly, though well-respected in the industry, is virtually unknown outside it (except perhaps for those curious browsers who find one of our blurbs on some new paperback), so it’s extra-pleasing for […]
Read MoreAbout Boston!
/Our book today is David McCord’s charming 1948 volume About Boston, a warmly affectionate look at Boston written by a Harvard graduate and long-time professional Harvard booster (and fundraiser! Good Grief, the man could get a donation-check out of a potted geranium) McCord, who was most famous in his own day as a charming poet, […]
Read MoreBook Review: Bee Time
/An enjoyable new book draws some unexpected parallels between human society and the world of bees
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