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Several years ago I posted on Women of the Gulag: Portraits of Five Remarkable Lives by Paul R. Gregory. A moving and powerful book, Gregory detailed some of the problems that five Soviet women faced when victimized by the gulag system. I believe I first found out about the book from Cynthia Haven at The […]
Under the Big Black Sun: A Personal History of L.A. Punk by John Doe, with Tom DeSavia and Friends Da Capo Press, 2016 Hardcover, 336 pages Under the Big Black Sun explores the nascent Los Angeles punk rock movement and its evolution to hardcore punk as it’s never been told before. Authors John Doe and […]
Vasily Grossman and the Soviet Century by Alexandra Popoff Yale University Press, 2019 Hardcover, 424 pagesStalingrad by Vasily Grossman is officially released today. While I’m waiting for my copy to arrive by mail, I wanted to share a little about this outstanding biography. Alexandra Popoff has written several literary biographies and is a former Moscow […]
Picture from Old Maps, Expeditions, and Explorations blog The Voynich manuscript has been in the news off and on over the past few years. From Wikipedia: The Voynich manuscript is an illustrated codex hand-written in an unknown writing system. The vellum on which it is written has been carbon-dated to the early 15th century (1404–1438), […]
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou Alfred A. Knopf, 2018 Hardcover, 352 pagesBad Blood, the true story of the rise and collapse of a medical device start-up in Silicon Valley that blew through $900 million dollars on a product that never worked, was on many “Best Of” book […]
On the centenary of the end of First World War, Academy Award-winner Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings trilogy) presents the World Premiere of an extraordinary new work showing the Great War as you have never seen it. This unique film brings into high definition the human face of the First World War as […]
And now for something completely different… I’ve been slowly working my way through The Elements by Euclid and recreating the propositions. What a strange, nerdy thing to do, right? I’m not completely sure why I decided to do this, but I’m thoroughly enjoying it. At the rate I’m going, it will take until the middle […]
And in 1790, he [Radishchev] wrote, anonymously, one of the immortal works of Russian literature: Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow. Nationalistic, insightful, mindful of the human condition, and understanding of the forces of human history, Radishchev envisioned a better world: His book was both a document and a pamphlet, the narrative of a simple […]
S. N. Jaffe has an article at the War on the Rocks site titled “The Risks and Rewards of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War“ that should be helpful to anyone attempting to read or write about the war. Jaffe is the author of Thucydides on the Outbreak of War: Character and Contest, a study […]
To Know a Fly by Vincent G. Dethier Foreword by N. Tinbergen Illustrated by Bill Clark and Vincent Dethier Oakland, California: Holden-Day, Inc., 1962 Although small children have taboos against stepping on ants because such actions are said to bring on rain, there has never seemed to be a taboo against pulling off the legs […]
Brutus: The Noble Conspirator by Kathryn TempestYale University Press, 2017 To a considerable extent this book will examine how Brutus’ life has been recorded and transmitted from antiquity to today: a central contention is that, to appreciate Brutus the man, we must really probe the sources we use, to understand who is speaking and shy. […]
Nemesis: Alcibiades and the Fall of Ancient Athens by David StuttardHarvard University Press: April 2018Hardcover, 400 pages From the inside book flap: Alcibiades was one of the most dazzling figures of the Golden Age of Athens. A ward of Pericles and a friend of Socrates, he was spectacularly rich, bewitchingly handsome and charismatic, a skilled […]
On Grand Strategy by John Lewis GaddisNew York: Penguin Press, 2018 John Lewis Gaddis is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military & Naval History at Yale University. He is best known as an author specializing in the Cold War and grand strategy (six of the ten books shown at his faculty page have “Cold […]
A few years ago, the boys and I read Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Eagle of the Ninth, a historical fiction book that looks at the “disappearance” of the Roman Ninth Legion (Legio IX Hispana) from Britain in the second century AD. While we enjoyed the book (and the 2011 movie version, The Eagle), we also looked […]
The Disappearance of Émile Zola: Love, Literature, and the Dreyfus Case by Michael RosenPegasus Books, 2017 I have to admit I’ve never really connected with Zola’s books. I find things I appreciate and like in his writing, but its more in fits and starts than for a sustained reading. What interested me in […]
The Avignon Papacy Contested: An Intellectual History from Dante to Catherine of Siena by Unn Falkeid Harvard University Press, 2017 Series: I Tatti Studies in Itallian Renaissance History The aim of this book has been to explore some of the most significant critics of the Avignon papacy, critics who in many ways came to prepare […]
I posted about this earlier this year, but I’m excited to say that The Landmark Julius Caesar: The Complete Works is now available and it is beautiful. While Robert Stassler is still the series editor, Kurt A. Raaflaub did the translation and editing. If you’re not familiar with the series, it presents classical historical works […]
I seem to be all over the place in reading lately, but with little time to post about it. I seem to focus on big-brush topics at times and while I always hope to post on them, it never seems to work. So I’m hoping with a little prodding on my own part, I’ll follow […]
I wanted to wait until I had a released copy of Be Like the Fox to quote anything from it. Here’s a lengthy excerpt about an episode late in Machiavelli’s life. The setting: the Medici successfully returned to Florence in 1512 and Machiavelli was removed from office. He remained in political exile until 1521 when […]
Be Like the Fox: Machiavelli in His World by Erica Benner W. W. Norton & Company, 2017 Erica Brenner’s study of “Machiavelli in his world” is being released today. I obtained an advance reading copy secondhand and wanted to pass on a few of my thoughts about the book since I found it helpful and […]