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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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Who really wrote Shakespeare? It’s a question that’s been asked literally for centuries, sometimes by thoughtful intellectuals, but most often by those with a limited knowledge of literature and a strong predisposition to conspiracy theories. In this book, “Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?” (2020) by distinguished Columbia University literature professor James Shapiro, the author seeks…
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“Listen, my children, and you shall hear, Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.” So begins one of the most famous poems in American history, “Paul Revere’s Ride” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1860). Published forty-two years after the death of the great American patriot, Longfellow’s poem cemented Paul Revere’s name in American history. In the…
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Richard White’s “Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America” (2011), which won the Parkman Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, argues that the transcontinental railroads of the late nineteenth century were not the inevitable engines of progress that they were often portrayed to be in earlier notable works of economic…
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Mike Duncan has an unusual background for a New York Times Bestselling author of ancient Roman history. Possessing nothing more than a political science degree from Western Washington University and a few years experience as a fishmonger, he burst onto the scene in 2007 with his wildly popular podcast “The History of Rome.” I have…
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Alison Weir’s “The Wars of the Roses” (1995) offers an absorbing and detailed narrative of the dynastic struggles that engulfed England in the fifteenth century. These conflicts – known more accurately to contemporaries as the “Cousins’ Wars” – fought between the rival houses of Lancaster and York, arose from a crisis of succession that had…
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In “The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865–1896” (2017), historian Richard White presents a sweeping and richly textured account of American life from the end of the Civil War through the pivotal election of 1896 – a period commonly known as the Gilded Age, and which…
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“With the possible exception of Henry Ford,” Tom Peters wrote in his landmark book “Search for Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies” (1982), “Sam Walton is the entrepreneur of the century.” That’s pretty high praise – and well-deserved. The story of Sam Walton and his kingdom of giant, low-priced Walmart stores is incredible on multiple…
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Douglas Brinkley’s “American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race” (2019) tells the dramatic, deeply human story behind one of the most ambitious and inspiring feats in American history: the race to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to earth before the end of the 1960s. At its center…
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