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Collected reviews from decades of reading — organized by subject and written for clarity, context, and long-term reference.
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“A People Numerous & Armed” is a collection of twelve essays written by John Shy in the late 1960s and 1970s when he was an up-and-coming historian at the University of Michigan. In his own estimation, the themes that unite the varied pieces are “that war changes society, that strategy and military policy are aspects…
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Michael Grant is a remarkably prolific and engaging historian of the ancient world, known for his ability to write clearly and forcefully, making complex historical periods accessible to a broad audience. In The Climax of Rome, Grant offers a vivid and comprehensive account of the Roman Empire during the tumultuous third century AD—a period often…
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Few consumer brands are more iconic and deeply woven into American culture than the Hershey Bar and M&Ms. For most Americans, these candies are more than just sweet treats—they are childhood staples, lifelong companions, and comfort foods that evoke nostalgia. Personally, my confectionery loyalty lies with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, but the story behind these…
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As an avid reader of history, I’ve long struggled with putting my learning to use in day-to-day situations, whether that be in evaluating critical business decisions or in helping me better observe and understand the world around me. On the one hand, there is the familiar aphorism attributed to George Santayana that those who ignore…
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hadn’t read anything by David McCullough in several years and had forgotten just how masterful a storyteller he is. The Great Bridge, published in 1972 as McCullough’s second major historical work, remains a towering achievement in narrative nonfiction and has earned its place at #48 on The Modern Library’s list of the “100 Best Non-Fiction…
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During the 1990s, discussions about a new “military revolution” shaped by advances in the Information Age dominated defense intellectual circles. Yet the concept of a “military revolution” as a transformative historical process actually dates back much further—to a seminal 1955 lecture by British historian Michael Roberts titled The Military Revolution 1560-1660. Building on and revising…
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On the eve of the decisive showdown with Napoleonic France, Admiral Horatio Nelson was offered the opportunity to select any officer from the Navy List to serve in his fleet. Nelson’s confident, if not arrogant response was “Choose yourself, the same spirit actuates the whole profession.” The end result was Trafalgar, one of the most…
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work in a corporate environment, mainly alongside MBAs, and The War for America by Piers Mackesy is one of the rare substantive history books I would enthusiastically recommend as professional reading to my colleagues. It offers a compelling study of leadership, strategy, and organizational dynamics—lessons as relevant to boardrooms as they are to battlefields. Mackesy’s…
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I first read this classic ten plus years ago during winter break as an undergraduate economics major. Not much sunk in back then, which says more about me than it does about the skilled author, Robert Heilbroner. The author turns a two hundred year history of rather recondite theories and inaccessible economic tomes into a…
What's Tim Reading Now? 