Book Review: The Heartbreak of Aaron Burr by H.W. Brands

I grew up in an era when people still wrote letters. In fact, I remember my mother sitting down at least once a week writing to friends and relatives out of town, many on a weekly or biweekly basis. Today, though, letters are more rare. We tend to rely on email or text messaging to [...]

FacebookGoogle+Google ReaderDiggRedditStumbleUponTechnorati FavoritesBookmark/FavoritesTwitterFarkShare

Book Review: The Commandant by Rudolf Hoess, edited by Jürg Amann

War crimes trials are a 20th Century invention. Although a vehicle for punishment and, perhaps, the reestablishment of the rule of law, one has to wonder the extent to which individual defendants truly acknowledge any real guilt.

This is seen in the autobiography written by Auschwitz camp commander Rudolf Hoess while in prison following [...]

FacebookGoogle+Google ReaderDiggRedditStumbleUponTechnorati FavoritesBookmark/FavoritesTwitterFarkShare

Reading Impressions: Two biographies

Although I’ve only read three books this year, my early effort at spontaneity over planning in my reading selections means two of those books were biographies of two women at about the same time. They resulted in impressions as different as the subjects.

On the disappointing end of the spectrum was Eva Braun: Life with [...]

FacebookGoogle+Google ReaderDiggRedditStumbleUponTechnorati FavoritesBookmark/FavoritesTwitterFarkShare

Book Review: Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall by Anna Funder

Early into reading Anna Funder’s Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall, I came across a passage that made me think, “That is truly Kafkaesque.” For some reason, that sent my mind on a digression into the difference between something being Kafkaesque and something being Orwellian. While I eventually sorted it out in my own [...]

FacebookGoogle+Google ReaderDiggRedditStumbleUponTechnorati FavoritesBookmark/FavoritesTwitterFarkShare

Book Review: A History of the World Since 9/11 by Dominic Streatfeild

The main ramifications of historic events are frequently easy to see. Often, though, we overlook the ripples that produce unexpected, or even untended, effects. Take 9/11, for example. It didn’t take a great deal of thought to realize it would bring the U.S. into direct armed conflict with al-Qaeda. And it was barely six weeks [...]

FacebookGoogle+Google ReaderDiggRedditStumbleUponTechnorati FavoritesBookmark/FavoritesTwitterFarkShare

Book Review: Death in the City of Light by David King

World War II is often seen as the last “good war,” a clear-cut conflict between good and evil. And there was plenty of evil to go around, not just in the Axis forces. Take, for example, the case of Marcel Petiot.

Petiot, a French physician, was convicted of murdering 26 people in Paris during World [...]

FacebookGoogle+Google ReaderDiggRedditStumbleUponTechnorati FavoritesBookmark/FavoritesTwitterFarkShare

Book Review: Principle Over Party by R. Alton Lee

Why do certain political ideas take root and gain acceptance while others advocated by the same party or movement do not? That question can’t help but come to mind reading R. Alton Lee’s Principle over Party: The Farmers’ Alliance and Populism in South Dakota, 1880-1900.

The Farmers’ Alliance and the political parties to which it [...]

FacebookGoogle+Google ReaderDiggRedditStumbleUponTechnorati FavoritesBookmark/FavoritesTwitterFarkShare

Book Review: The Missing of the Somme by Geoff Dyer

The War to End All Wars didn’t. At least in the United States, the vast majority of those alive today probably view World War I as the chapter in their history textbook before the Depression and World War II. And the death earlier this year of the last surviving combat veteran of the Great War [...]

FacebookGoogle+Google ReaderDiggRedditStumbleUponTechnorati FavoritesBookmark/FavoritesTwitterFarkShare

Book Review: The Long Night: William L. Shirer and the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by Steve Wick

It sticks out on almost any bookshelf. Like the cover, a white circle appears in the center of the jacket spine, the antithesis of the black that otherwise fills the space. In the midst of the circle is black again, but in the shape of the Nazi swastika. The title, The Rise and Fall of [...]

FacebookGoogle+Google ReaderDiggRedditStumbleUponTechnorati FavoritesBookmark/FavoritesTwitterFarkShare

2010 in books — by the numbers

2010 was a record year in one respect. I read more books this year than in any one year since I started keeping a book diary in 1976. This year’s total was 127, quite a bit higher than the 111 from last year, the previous record. I attribute the number to 2010 being the first [...]

FacebookGoogle+Google ReaderDiggRedditStumbleUponTechnorati FavoritesBookmark/FavoritesTwitterFarkShare