Author: Tim Graczewski
-
Napoleon: The Path to Power (2008) by Philip Dwyer
For those who love to read biographies, there is nothing as satisfying as a deep and richly textured accounting of the formative years of great figures in history, and that’s exactly what Philip Dwyer delivers here in a marvelous first volume biography covering the first three decades of the life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Dwyer describes…
-
The Making of a Tropical Disease: A Short History of Malaria (2007) by Randall M. Packard
This book isn’t nearly as arcane as one might think. The subject and general theme are far outside my standard reading zone, yet I never once lost interest nor felt lost in the subject matter. Author Randall Packard’s central message is abundantly clear: malaria is a social disease and only significant economic development and social…
-
Alexander the Great (1974) by Robin Lane Fox
There is no shortage of biographies on Alexander the Great. This one from Robin Lane Fox, now over three decades in print, may be the best. Fox seeks to retrieve, from the murky depths of the ancient past, Alexander the man, chipping away at the myth and libel that have become part of his towering…
-
Washington’s Crossing (2004) by David Hackett Fischer
There aren’t many historians like David Hackett Fischer, widely respected by his judgmental, often captious peers in the academy, the recipient of some of the most prestigious awards in his field, and capable of taking serious scholarship mainstream and with commercial success. I was first introduced to Fisher in graduate school when we were required…
-
American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur, 1880-1964 (1978) by William Manchester
Few figures in twentieth century American history cast a longer shadow than Douglas MacArthur. Fewer still have seen their legacy sink so inexorably over the years. But there was more to the man than the pompous, dangerous, ego maniacal insubordinate, as he has become known to history, as the late William Manchester demonstrates in this…
-
The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution (1953) by Edmund S. Morgan and Helen M. Morgan
First published over a half century ago, the Morgans’ “The Stamp Act Crisis” is still the most well-rounded and penetrating account of the political upheaval of 1764 to 1766 that essentially put the American Revolution in motion. The authors combine the very best of narrative history, with a strong focus on some of the most…
-
The Gracchi (1979) by David Stockton
First published in 1979, David Stockton’s The Gracchi is a scholarly, balanced and insightful analysis of the two Gracchi brothers, whose eventful — indeed revolutionary — tribunates set the course for the final Roman Revolution of Julius Caesar nearly a century later. Stockton’s book was published the same year as another significant work on the…
-
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea (2009) by Barbara Demick
A friend of mine working at the American embassy in Beijing sent me this book. It is six separate defector’s stories from North Korea, providing a glimpse into typical lives north of the 38th Parallel from the end of the Cold War, through the death of Kim Il-Sung and catastrophic famine of the late 1990s,…
-
Planning A Tragedy: The Americanization of the War in Vietnam (1982) by Larry Berman
The first in a trio of insightful monographs on key decision points in the US war in Vietnam, “Planning a Tragedy: The Americanization of the War in Vietnam”, which focuses on the Johnson administration’s actions in the fateful year of 1965, may be the best of the three. The material that Larry Berman covers has…
What's Tim Reading Now? 