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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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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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The first in a monumental five volume series on the 36th president of the United States, “The Path to Power” takes nearly 800 pages to cover just the first 32 years of Lyndon Baines Johnson’s life. Often times biographers lose their sense of objectivity about their subject and end up writing a glowing hagiography. Such…
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Volume II of “The Years of Lyndon Johnson” takes place over just seven years, from 1941 to 1948, the interregnum between Johnson’s two US senate races. It marks perhaps the lowest ebb in Johnson’s political fortunes, a period of deep and lasting personal malaise. Volume I, “The Path to Power,” introduces Johnson as a man…
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