Crusaders by Dan Jones
★★★★☆ In Crusaders, Dan Jones applies his significant story-telling skills to the people who fought the wars for the Holy Lands. Seventeen pages of concise identifications of the major characters reinforce his emphasis on...
Category: History
The Pioneers by David McCullough
★★★★☆ The Northwest Ordinance passed Congress “without the least variation” on July 13, 1787. It created a territory that encompassed the eventual six states from Ohio and west around the Great Lakes to Wisconsin...
Spying on the South by Tony Horwitz
★★★★★ Tony Horwitz’s final book, Spying on the South, follows two “routes.” The first is a fascinating look at a young Frederick Law Olmstead, a mini biography if you will, as Horwitz follows his...
In the Hurricane’s Eye by Nathaniel Philbrick
★★★★★ The final installment in Nathaniel Philbrick’s Revolutionary War trilogy may be the strongest yet. First, Bunker Hill covered the opening salvoes of what came to be a protracted war of attrition. Then Valiant Ambition explored the...
Bones of My Grandfather: Reclaiming a Lost Hero of World War II by Clay Bonnyman Evans
★★★★☆ In Bones of My Grandfather, Clay Evans recalls his boyhood fascination with World War II, specifically being mesmerized by his mother’s father, a war hero “whose legend had hung like a morning mist...
Atlas of a Lost World by Craig Childs
★★★★☆ Half a lifetime ago my graduate minor was anthropology with a smattering of archaeology. It was so long ago that none of the giants whose works I read and studied are even mentioned...
The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders by Stuart Kells
★★☆☆☆ The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders disappoints. The title and the cover, a picture of the Dublin University library, suggest a look at some of the great libraries of the world. Instead, we...
Gibraltar by Roy Adkins and Lesley Adkins
★★★☆☆ As long as there have been interactions between neighboring tribes and villages, there have been stories like Gibraltar. British citizens who lived in Gibraltar in the late 18th Century got along reasonably well...
The Triumph of Christianity by Bart D. Ehrman
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ In The Triumph of Christianity, Bart D. Ehrman attempts to answer the crucial question of how Christianity succeeded when other comparably small religious sects lost traction or disappeared completely....
