Blogroll

Book Review: Yalo by Elias Khoury

Lebanon, particularly Beirut, was torn asunder by the civil war that raged in the country from 1975 to 1990. Both external forces and internal strife contributed to the depredation. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that the war is the backdrop and more to Yalo, the most recent work of Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury to […]

Book Review: The Ten-Cent Plague by David Hajdu

Many people believe the U.S. is in a mess. But the history David Hajdu recounts in his latest book might provide a handy scapegoat: comic books. Stop and think about it. For nearly two decades, the men in the Oval Office — and even longer for Congress — have been of the generation that grew […]

Book Review: This Republic of Suffering by Drew Gilpin Faust

Mind-numbing. That’s the only way to describe the casualties from America’s Civil War. For example:

An estimated 620,000 soldiers died between 1861 and 1865, roughly the same number as in the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean War combined.

While […]

Book Review: Commander of the Faithful by John W. Kiser

Innumerable obstacles stand between an author and gaining the widest possible audience. For John W. Kiser, the problem is subject matter. There probably aren’t a lot of Americans interested in a favorable biography of an Islamic jihadist. And that’s a shame because not only did that jihadist die 125 years ago, shortly before his death […]

Book Review: Karnak Café by Naguib Mahfouz

“There is always an idea behind a novel, at least behind the novel as I know it,” Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz once said. In his case, the idea frequently shed light on the cultural and political landscape of his native country, helping earn Mahfouz the 1988 Nobel Prize in Literature. That unquestionably occurs with Karnak […]