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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 Tome 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 […]