Monthly Archives: January, 2019

A History of Venice (John Julius Norwich)

This long but smoothly written book, by the very recently deceased John Julius Norwich, scion of English nobility, covers more than a thousand years...

The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America’s Next Rendezvous with Destiny (William Strauss and Neil Howe)

I am almost ashamed to review this book. It is like reviewing Fifty Shades of Grey—the mere fact that someone publicly admits he has...

Eumeswil (Ernst Jünger)

Ernst Jünger’s Eumeswil, one of the famous German’s last works, published when he was eighty-two years old, is often regarded as an exposition of...

On Battlefield V

Last year, the giant gaming company Electronic Arts released the latest version of an extremely popular military game, Battlefield V. Each release in the...

The Language of the Third Reich (Victor Klemperer)

Victor Klemperer is famous today for his diaries covering the Nazi era in Germany. But those were published in 1995, thirty-five years after his...

48 Hours (William Fortschen)

I’ve read all of William Fortschen’s books.  They’re among the best of apocalypse fiction, a genre dominated by potboilers, so naturally, I preordered this...

West Like Lightning: The Brief, Legendary Ride of the Pony Express (Jim DeFelice)

My great-grandmother’s cousin, William Pridham, was a rider for the Pony Express.  This is not a family legend, as are many Pony Express stories;...