Death of Kings by Bernard Cornwell
As with previous Cornwell novels, this one reads well and quickly. You can easily finish the book in a day if you have the time, the inclination you'll find easily enough. As with previous Uhtred books...
View ArticleOsama Bin Laden by Michael Scheuer
Michael Scheuer's biography of Osama bin Laden, although slim, speaks to the understanding we in the west have of a figure that can be claimed to have changed the United States like few others could...
View ArticleThe Fifteen Biggest Lies about the Economy: And Everything Else the Right...
If you're a liberal, or at the very least an open-minded individual when it comes to what you've heard for the past decade in regards to our economy, then this book will be an eye-opening experience...
View ArticlePower Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New...
I've read at least two books by Chomsky in the past. I approach his polemical style as I do any other literature that deals with historic topics, or current events that are rooted in history...
View ArticleUnder the Wire: The Bestselling Memoir of an American Spitfire Pilot and...
Few in this world 'live in interesting times' and even fewer, one could argue, live 'interesting lives'. William Ash, however, can lay claim to both. Growing up in depression era America, Ash lived a...
View ArticleThe Defense of Moscow 1941: The Northern Flank by Jack Radey and Charles Sharp
The title is somewhat of a misnomer, the book covers the fight over the town of Kalinin during the beginning of Operation Typhoon. The fighting that went on in the 'northern flank' of Moscow would...
View ArticleLegacies of Stalingrad: Remembering the Eastern Front in Germany since 1945...
I had high hopes for this book, but unfortunately the title is somewhat misleading. While 'Stalingrad' plays a role throughout the book, there is little to no analysis of the battle itself or its...
View ArticleThe White Rose of Stalingrad: The Real-Life Adventure of Lidiya Vladimirovna...
One would think that "The White Rose of Stalingrad" by Bill Yenne is an attempt to tell the story of Lidiya Litvyak, the highest scoring Soviet female pilot of the Great Patriotic War. Unfortunately,...
View ArticleGolden Harvest: Events at the Periphery of the Holocaust by Jan Tomasz Gross...
Jan Gross has a somewhat controversial history when it comes to the Holocaust and Poland. Many view his book on the Jedwabne 'massacre' as something groundbreaking and very much thought-provoking when...
View ArticleThe Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945 by Rick Atkinson
Although I usually remain mired in books dedicated to the Eastern Front of the Second World War, when offered the opportunity to receive an advance reader’s copy of ‘The Guns at Last Light’, I was...
View ArticleThe Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia by Orlando Figes
Orlando Figes is a well known name in the historical community. He's also a popular historian whose books sell. To write a book as dense and factually rich as 'The Whisperers' requires decades, and...
View ArticleThe Unknown Eastern Front: The Wehrmacht and Hitler's Foreign Soldiers by...
"The Unknown Eastern Front: The Wehrmacht and Hitler's Foreign Soldiers" by Rolf-Dieter Muller gives a brief account of the various formations that joined the Wehrmacht or became units (ranging from...
View ArticleThe Taste of Ashes: The Afterlife of Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe by...
'The Taste of Ashes' is an odd book to categorize. I can't say it is a memoir as its concentration is rather limited. It's definitely not a historical monograph in the traditional sense of the word,...
View ArticleThe Role of the Soviet Union in the Second World War: A Re-examination...
Many have written on the history of the Second World War in Russia in the past twenty to thirty years. Gorbachev’s ‘glasnost’ opened the way for new questions, ideas, theories, and accounts from the...
View ArticleOur Harsh Logic: Israeli Soldiers' Testimonies from the Occupied Territories,...
The problem with books like "Our Harsh Logic" is that they're fuel for the fire. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict has been going on for generations and the presentation of these testimonies without...
View ArticleThe Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe by Richard Ned Lebow, Wulf...
The overall thread running through all the chapters in this book is that the memory of the Second World War is continually contested territory that up to the present is still being interpreted and...
View ArticleDeath in the Baltic: The World War II Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff by...
It's hard to know what to make of this book. The subject is well enough known for those familiar with WWII. For those who are not, reading about the event changes nothing in the grand scheme of...
View ArticleWhat Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France by Mary...
Unfortunately, it appears that many who read the title assume that some type of diatribe awaits them within the pages of this text. The truth, however, is that this is an academic attempt to do a few...
View ArticleInterpreting Dan Brown's Inferno: Reading Between the Lines by Deborah Parker...
Before I review this minor snippet of the larger book I was allowed to read through, I'd like to first write my review of Dan Brown's Inferno.Dan Brown is far from a 'one hit wonder'. I enjoyed both...
View ArticleHitler's Wave-Breaker Concept: An Analysis of the German End Game in the...
"Hitler's Wave-Breaker Concept" is hard to contextualize or fit into the greater literature of the Eastern Front. Unlike the author's previous projects ("Finland's War of Choice", for instance), this...
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