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Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero by James Romm Alfred A. Knopf (March 2014) ISBN: 978-0-307-59687-1 Seneca was born in 4 B.C. on the Iberian peninsula to the son of a accomplished rhetorician (Seneca the Elder). The young Seneca moved to Rome to study rhetoric and was introduced to Stoic philosophy. Entering […]
The Volga Rises in Europe by Curzio Malaparte Translated by David Moore Birlinn Limited: Edinburgh (1951) ISBN 0-7394-1930-7 I enjoyed Curzio Malaparte’s novel Kaputt and his recently translated writings. When I stumbled across this collection of dispatches he wrote during World War II I grabbed it without a second thought, wanting to see some examples […]
Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West by Blaine Harden(Viking: New York City, 2012)ISBN: 978-0-670-02332-5 I had planned on reading three nonfiction books on North Korea this winter but everything got shuffled out of order when I impulsively grabbed Adam Johnson’s The Orphan Master’s […]
Women of the Gulag: Portraits of Five Remarkable Lives by Paul R. Gregory Hoover Institution Press: Stanford, California, October 2013 Hardcover, 264 pages ISBN 9780817915742I have not posted on much of the non-fiction I’ve read this year, something I’m determined to correct starting with this marvelous history/memoir by Paul Gregory. Links: There is plenty of […]
I wanted to make a short post after listening to the audiobook version of Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England by Thomas Penn. Highly recommended. OK, maybe I should add a little bit to that… I knew very little about Henry VII before listening to the book, which probably reflects his position between the […]
Joseph Roth: A Life in Letters Translated and Edited by Michael Hofmann W. W. Norton & Company, Hardcover, 512 pages ISBN-10: 0393060640 / ISBN-13: 978-0393060645 Albert Einstein to B. W. Huebsch (24 February 1935) Esteemed Mr. Hübsch, I am truly grateful to you for sending me this consoling book [Job] by a real mensch and […]
The Landmark Arrian: The Campaigns of Alexander Edited by James Romm, Series Editor Robert B. Strassler, Translation by Pamela Mensch, Introduction by Paul CartledgeIf you haven’t noticed by now, I am a huge fan of the Landmark series, created by Robert B. Strassler. If you haven’t picked up a volume in the series, check out […]
Ghost on the Throne: The Death of Alexander the Great and the War for Crown and Empire by James Romm Knopf, 341 pp., $28.95 This book covers in gripping detail the events that began on June 1, 323 B.C., when Alexander the Great became ill with what would be a fatal fever, and ended seven […]
Gang of One: Memoirs of a Red Guard by Fan Shen (University of Nebraska, 294 pp.) From the University of Nebraska Press page: In 1966 twelve-year-old Fan Shen, a newly minted Red Guard, plunged happily into China’s Cultural Revolution. Disillusion soon followed, then turned to disgust and fear when Shen discovered that his compatriots had […]
Coin portraying MithradatesThe Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy by Adrienne Mayor For audiobooks I’ve rarely gone beyond a couple of sentences on my reviews. I’m still feeling my way out on expanding any comments for a book I’ve listened to instead of read, but I’ll give it a try […]