Book Reports

In "The Order," Silva transitions from previous novels' focus on Israeli spymaster Gabriel Allon's fight against Islamic terror, to intrigue within the Catholic Church.

Wilson, reluctantly concluded the US must enter the war on the side of the Entente as war events suggested the real possibility of a dark tyranny sweeping away democracy should the Central Powers prevail.

These guys, one hundred forty some years ago, were building a prefab building at 81 degrees north latitude, in bitter cold, with little more than rudimentary tools and their wits. No radios... no way to communicate with the outside world. Men are tested in many ways these days, but, few are ever tested in the same way as were Greely and his men.

In 1617, the date when Moghul Emperor Jahangir, granted the EIC trading rights, the Moghul Empire accounted for a fifth of the world’s population and a quarter of the globe’s manufactured goods, while England, with a 20th of India’s population, produced three per cent of the world’s manufactured goods.

And this book, "Savage Son." We are to believe that a protected higher up in the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) can lure a top former Seal, now CIA operative, to a remote Russian Island to be tracked and hunted? And that the CIA operative (Reece) went on this mission against the express wishes of the CIA.... and that the Russian hunter was tipped off as to the CIA operative's (Reece) plans by the Chief of Staff to the US President? C'mon!

It is said that "the moment makes the man." Despite Washington's imperfections and doubts, he summoned up enough strength to see the job through drawing from his core belief in the primacy of individual freedom as a God given right.

Most people know about Brigham Young, Smith's able, pragmatic, successor, and the well organized Mormon crossing of the American plains he orchestrated. But, that trek would have been impossible without a people hardened in the crucible of Joseph Smith's remarkable city of Nauvoo. Park's book is a needed, well told story about American exceptionalism and an exceptional American. Read it.

To some extent, the 2019 book under the new title is a bait and switch.

He's one of those guys you want to be near when the proverbial mud hits the fan.

I have said "I'm finished with Jack Reacher" several times. But, Lee Child understands his fans are hooked. Reacher is like a drug. If Reacher is the worst drug I use, I suppose that's not so bad.

Desai's book points out many examples of seeming shocking treatment of colonials as British authorities tried to maintain control of a rapidly deteriorating situation in Amritsar. 

Resulting from heavy handed trade requirements and growing Christian missionizing, there grew an unease amongst the peoples of North India that the EIC threatened their way of life and their religious beliefs.