'Book Reviews' Category
The Thirty Years War by Peter H. Wilson
The Thirty Years War by Peter H. Wilson There are a few problems with this book but the main one is that it is simply too long. 800 pages on the Thirty Years War is just too much unless you have an extreme interest in the topic. I was interested in learning about the war [...]
How Rome Fell by Adrian Keith
How Rome Fell by Adrian Keith Adrian Keith has written a detailed account of the end of the Roman Empire that makes a good argument for why the Empire fell. The book starts from the high point of the Empire in 150AD and works its way to the end of the Empire in the West [...]
The Czechs by Hugh Agnew
The Czechs by Hugh Agnew Being half Czech, I was hoping that this book would give me an interesting history of the Czech people. Unfortunately the book is far from interesting and although it does cover the history it does it in a way that can only be described as boring at best. It is [...]
Satan’s Circus by Mike Dash
Satan’s Circus: Murder, Vice, Police Corruption, and New York’s Trial of the Century by Mike Dash In February, 1894, Charley Becker put on the uniform of a New York City police officer. Twenty one years later, the state of New York executed him for murder. In 1894 the NYC police department was completely corrupt. The [...]
Take the Cannoli by Sarah Vowell
Take the Cannoli by Sarah Vowell You would think that reading and reviewing a book written ten years ago about American culture might be tricky. You would expect that so much has changed that a book like this would be more like a history lesson than a view into America. But surprisingly, in spite of [...]
Rizzo’s War by Lou Manfredo
Rizzo’s War by Lou Manfredo I think it would be very difficult to create two characters who are more stereotyped than the two main characters in this story. We have Joe Rizzo, tough Italian detective who has been on the force forever and is just waiting to be able to afford to live off his [...]
The Crying Tree by Naseem Rakha
The Crying Tree by Naseem Rakha Nate Stanley is offered a job as a deputy sheriff in Oregon and accepts it against his wife, Irene’s, opinion. He drags his family 2,000 miles to their new home and then soon after their arrival, the Stanley’s son, Shep, is murdered. The next part of the book is [...]
No Sense of Decency by Robert Shogan
No Sense of Decency by Robert Shogan In the Spring of 1954, Senator Joe McCarthy was one of the most feared men in Washington. In the Summer of 1954, McCarthy had lost his power and no one was afraid of him. What happened in between was the Army-McCarthy hearings and why the hearings changed everything [...]
Doctor Olaf Van Schuler’s Brain
Doctor Olaf Van Schuler’s Brain by Kirsten Menger-Anderson This book is a collection of short stories with the vague link of occurring in separate generations of one family. The author tries to show a history of quack medicine through the eyes of one family but really the link to the single family is vague at [...]
An Arsonist’s Guide To Writer’s Homes in New England
An Arsonist’s Guide To Writer’s Homes in New England by Brock Clarke The cover of my copy of this book quotes reviews from the New York Times and Entertainment Weekly that describe the book as wildly, unpredictably, and searingly funny and as absurdly hilarious. I can only assume the the authors of those reviews either [...]
