“To End All Wars”
I don’t often read historical books on wars because even after 50 years on this earth, I still don’t really understand the aggression and find the detail on battles and strategic moves boring. But...
View Article“In The Garden of Beasts”
Berlin has always captivated me because it was the first European city where I could see and feel the remnants from World War II and the Cold War. The capital city isn’t known for its climate,...
View Article“Lords Of Finance”
In 2010, “The Lords of Finance” by Liaquat Ahamed, a professional investment manager was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for History. A non-fiction account of “the bankers that broke the world,” this 505...
View ArticleFive Chimneys
We lived to resist and we resisted to live. Five Chimneys was written in 1947 by Olga Lengyel, a 38-year old survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau who wrote the book as a memoir; a personal account of the...
View Article“The Kraus Project”
Our Far Left may hate religion and think we coddle Israel, our Far Right may hate illegal immigrants and think we coddle black people, and nobody may know how the economy is supposed to work now that...
View Article6 Indie Bookstores to Patronize NOW
A quiet battle between Amazon (the behemoth bookseller) and Hachette (the giant book publisher) has been waging on for years but the lid was blown off this past week by a combination of factors that...
View Article“Niki: The Story of a Dog”
Affection is not only a pleasure for the heart but also a burden which, in proportion to its importance, may oppress the soul quite as much as it rejoices it. Long before books like Marley or The Art...
View Article“The Brothers”
One way to bring Americans to reflect on their past – and future – would be to revive memory of the Dulles brothers. Their actions frame the grand debate over America’s role in the world that has...
View Article“A Map of Betrayal”
I’ve been left alone to do my own work, to live my own life. ~Ha Jin Contemporary Chinese literature is a genre that doesn’t...
View ArticleGünter Grass: 1927-2015
Günter Grass, the German novelist, poet, playwright, artist, and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature died yesterday at the age of 87. Last month, a story was posted about Gunter Grass and one...
View Article“Zealot”
The more I probed the Bible to arm myself against the doubts of unbelievers, the more distance I discovered between the Jesus of the gospels and the Jesus of history – between Jesus the Christ and...
View Article“The Wife of Martin Guerre”
…when hate and love have together exhausted the soul, the body seldom endures for long. While scouring the shelves described as “classics” in an independent bookstore (Mac’s Backs-Books on Coventry)...
View Article“Orphan #8”
Did anyone know what was going on there? Of course they did. They must have. Kim van Alkemade, a writing professor at the University of Pennsylvania at Shippensburg spent about five years researching...
View ArticleElie Wiesel, Night, and July 4th
Three years ago, I posted a book review of Elie Wiesel’s Night – the story of his family and how the teenage Wiesel survived the Holocaust during World War II. On this July 4th as we celebrate...
View ArticleThe Good Lord Bird
It weren’t slavery that made me want to be free. It was my heart. If the cover of The Good Lord Bird did not disclose the author to be James McBride, the reader would think that Mark Twain was the...
View ArticleThe Return
The country that separates fathers and sons has disoriented many travelers. Many Americans associate Libya with the September 11, 2012 uprising in Benghazi where Islamic militants attacked the...
View ArticleThe Girl Who Smiled Beads
I am here. I need you to see me. I need you to see that I am here. You, world, cannot make me crumble. I am alive. I am alive. I am alive. Clemantine Wamariya was born in 1988 in Rwanda and led an...
View ArticleManhattan Beach
Seven years ago in 2011, Jennifer Egan was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for A Visit From The Goon Squad (Goon Squad) – a novel that wasn’t typical in its structure or story which left readers...
View Article
More Pages to Explore .....