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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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The Magna Carta. It’s one of those things that everyone knows, but few truly know anything about. Hip Hop mega star Jay-Z (for reasons known only to him) titled his 2013 album “Magna Carta Holy Grail.” In 2014, British Prime Minister David Cameron, who one would presume would know a thing or two about it,…
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Ronald Reagan isn’t the kind of president that many Americans are on the fence about. Either you love him and believe he belongs in the pantheon of great presidents alongside Washington, Lincoln and FDR or you think he is one of the most incompetent (albeit lucky) chief executives in American history. Lou Cannon’s “President Reagan:…
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I came to this book with a completely open mind. For the past two decades I’ve lived and worked in Silicon Valley as a technology executive, but my educational background and early career experience was in national security and defense, including a stint at the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, the defense department’s internal long-range…
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The Federal Reserve is one of the most controversial government organizations. Many fear its powers; fewer actually understand them. The topic of central banking in America has been addressed many times before, from the classic 1957 study “Banks and Politics in America” by Bray Hammond to William Greider’s 1987 bestseller “Secrets of the Temple.” What…
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The Big Stick: The Limits of Soft Power and the Necessity of Military Force (2017) by Eliot A. Cohen
There are, it seems to me, two distinct elements to “The Big Stick: The Limits of Soft Power & the Necessity of Military Force” by Eliot Cohen. First, and in my opinion far most important, is how should our elected and military leaders think about national security strategy and the decision to go to war?…
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Every February or March, all across America, local Democratic Party organizations hold their annual Jefferson-Jackson Day fundraising dinner in honor of the third and seventh presidents of the United States, respectively, widely regarded as the founding fathers of the party. In 1997, President Bill Clinton helped dedicate the new, sprawling memorial to President Franklin Roosevelt…
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“Once in Golconda: A True Drama of Wall Street, 1920-1938” by John Brooks, first published in 1969, is a true classic of American business history. It’s really two books in one, or so I found. First, Brooks brilliantly captures the zeitgeist of the Roaring Twenties and early Depression years through a number of colorful, but…
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At the heart of Harvard history professor Sven Beckert’s award-winning book, “Empire of Cotton: A Global History,” is a simple but compelling syllogism: the wealthy, capitalist world we Americans live in today was created by the Industrial Revolution; the Industrial Revolution was driven by massive productivity gains in textile manufacturing; cotton was the essential raw…
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Much ink has been spilled writing memoirs from the Vietnam War. “The Things They Carried” may be the very best. Not because the tale it tells is the most heroic or gut-wrenching or historically significant, but rather because the experience of Alpha Company, 5th Battalion, 46th Infantry Regiment, 198th Infantry Brigade operating in Quang Ngai…
What's Tim Reading Now? 