Category: Book Review
Book Review: This land is Our Land by Jedidiah Purdy
The word “Commonwealth” has a particular place in Massachusetts vernacular. It’s common to find the word used as political branding, “The Commonwealth of Massachusetts” as an obvious example. But beyond sounding nostalgic, orderly, and constitutional,…
The Vietnam War Remembered Part I: Ho by David Halberstam
Note: As we come up on the 50th Anniversary of the Pentagon Papers, and with the recent release of the Afghanistan Papers, we felt it was timely to look back at the conflict in Vietnam….
Book Review: Notes From an Apocalypse by Mark O’Connell
What do Cold War Bunkers in South Dakota, real estate transactions in New Zealand, Elon Musk at a conference in LA, the Chernobyl wasteland, and a wilderness retreat in Scotland all have in common? For…
Review: Unworthy Republic by Claudio Saunt
Progress is a funny little word. As we have trudged forth with our comprehension of “other” United States history – that is a sort of bottom-up, from the margins view of those that have been…
War Fever by Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith
In timely fashion, authors Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith investigate baseball, war culture, and the pandemic of 1918 in Boston during the late stages of World War I. This book uses three characters as the…
This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
“But wars are dense with causes and effects, calculations and strange attractors, and all the more so are wars in time. One spared life might be worth more to the other side than all the…
The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson
What was it Stalin once said? A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic? Dates too, in the sea of history, can shed their essence and become empty numbers in the…
Book Review: Weather by Jenny Offill
One of the attributes I always revere when reading novels is an author’s ability to create characters that demonstrate both the ideals and fears of an age and the dreams and realities of individuals. In…
Book Review: The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
Colson Whitehead is one of the best authors on race in America. He has particular skill in taking the racial history of this country and weaving his literary characters around them – characters that are…
Book Review: Topics of Conversation by Miranda Popkey
Provocative as in to provoke, as in to provoke interest. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: conversation is flirtation. Miranda Popkey, Topics of Conversation I greatly enjoyed Topics of Conversation, Miranda Popkey’s…
