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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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What a difference a few years make! When “Private Empire” was first published in 2013, ExxonMobil was the largest company in the world by market capitalization, a quarter-trillion-dollar behemoth, delivering jaw-dropping quarterly profit statements that late night talk show hosts found as monologue fodder. By the dawn of 2020, however, the world had changed whereas…
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Napoleon’s Russian campaign of 1812 is legendary – and rightfully so. All I knew about it before reading Adam Zamoyski’s “Moscow, 1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March” was that the Russian winter defeated Napoleon’s Grand Armee. I had no idea how horrific the whole experience was for soldiers and civilians, alike, nor the historical context in which…
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God bless David McCullough. With seeming effortlessness he does what most every historian hopes to achieve – recreate the life and times of the distant past. I was not prepared to like this book. How could anyone write over four hundred pages chronicling the experience of Americans in nineteenth century Paris and make it somehow…
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According to no less an authority than Henry Kissinger: “George Kennan came as close to authoring the diplomatic doctrine of his era as any diplomat in our history.” John Lewis Gaddis’ Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of the great twentieth century statesman is absolutely brilliant, start to finish. Weighing in at nearly 700 pages, no aspect of…
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In “The History of Money” anthropologist Jack Weatherford does exactly as promised, delivering a fast-paced, 2,600 year narrative of money. Weatherford breaks the story into three more-or-less equal thirds. Phase One, “Classic Cash,” traces the history of money from the first known coined currency in the western Anatolian kingdom of Lydia in 640 BC to…
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Walter Isaacson’s “The Innovators: how a group of hackers, geniuses, and geeks created the digital revolution” may be his most ambitious project yet. Unlike his award-winning biographies, “The Innovators” is a thematic history of the Information Age. The whole story is indeed complex and convoluted, beginning with the inspirations of Charles Babbage and Lady Ada…
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They don’t make them like John J. McCloy any more, influential men who serve presidents of both parties on issues of enormous national importance. Kai Bird tells McCloy’s amazing life story in this lengthy single volume biography first published in 1992. McCloy came from rather humble beginnings. His insurance executive father died when he was…
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I love to read popular histories by authors such as David McCullough, Candice Millard, Stacy Schiff and Roger Crowley. I was hoping that the “The Glorious Revolution” would be cut from the same mold. I was persuaded by the back cover of the paperback edition, which claims the book is, “A thrilling narrative account of…
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One of the most influential business books of all-time, Clay Christensen’s “The Innovator’s Dilemma” is a must-read for anyone interested in business strategy. The author’s paradoxical conclusion is that what is often perceived as good management practice – listen to and faithfully serve your current customer base – actually exacerbates the problems associated with dealing…
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