All Posts
Collected reviews from decades of reading — organized by subject and written for clarity, context, and long-term reference.
Categories
- A Very Short Introduction (4)
- Afghanistan (5)
- Africa (3)
- Age of Discovery (14)
- American Revolution (29)
- Ancient Greece (11)
- Ancient Rome (2)
- Anglo-German Naval Competition (8)
- Anthropology (3)
- Art History (6)
- Artists (16)
- British History (16)
- Business Books (19)
- Business Greats (12)
- Central Banking (8)
- China (1)
- Cold War Era (19)
- Colonial America (25)
- Commodities (10)
- Corporate Biography (11)
- Counter Insurgency (6)
- Cuba (1)
- Disease (9)
- Early Modern Europe (8)
- Early Republic (21)
- Economic Development (12)
- Economics (17)
- French Revolution (8)
- Great Depression (6)
- Great Projects (9)
- Great Writers (4)
- Industrial Revolution (14)
- Iranian Revolution (4)
- Italian Renaissance (27)
- Jacksonian America (4)
- Korea (1)
- Middle Ages (4)
- Middle East (5)
- Military Innovation (20)
- Napoleon (3)
- Philosophy (4)
- Pop History (32)
- Progressive Era (8)
- Republican Rome (16)
- Roman Empire (25)
- Russian History (5)
- Russian Revolution (3)
- Sri Lanka (3)
- The Gilded Age (4)
- U.S. Civil War (7)
- U.S. Presidents (16)
- Vietnam (8)
- World War I (6)
- World War II (10)
-
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?…
-
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…
-
“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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (2014) by Edward Baptist
The year 2014 witnessed the publication of two weighty historical works on the seemingly mundane subject of cotton: Sven Beckert’s “Empire of Cotton” and Edward Baptist’s “The Half Has Never Been Told.” The former was better critically received, winning the prestigious Bancroft Prize and being named as a Pulitzer-Prize finalist; the latter arguably generated more…
-
In 1417, at a remote monastery in what is today southern Germany, Poggio Bracciolini – a former apostolic secretary to the disgraced Pope John XXIII and a man renowned for his exquisite handwriting and command of classical Latin – pulled a dusty manuscript from the shelf of the monastic library. It was a long forgotten…
-
I loved this book. In fact, Rich Cohen’s “The Fish that Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America’s Banana King” just might make it into my non-fiction book Hall of Fame, an honored group of the best, most engaging pieces of history and biography that I’ve ever read. Why such high praise? Well,…
-
Danny Meyer is a legend in the restaurant business. His bestselling business book, “Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business,” should make him a lower deity in the realm of American business gurus. Beginning with the Union Square Café in 1985 and culminating (for now) with Shake Shack, which went public in…
What's Tim Reading Now? 