In the early hours of 17 July 1918, the Cheka firing squad (the Soviet secret police) fired volley after volley into Nicholas Romanov, Czar of all the Russias, and his family: Empress Alexandra, son Nikkei, and four daughters, Maria, Olga, Tatiana, and Anastasia. In the March 1917 Revolution, the Bolsheviks successfully overthrew the Romanov’s régime […]
Author Archives: smartinshelton
Book Review: Hell and Good Company by Richard Rhodes
Rating – Three Stars Rhodes writes an easy read, semi-informative book about the Spanish Civil War (1936 to 1939) that pitted the Fascists forces of General Francisco Franco against Spain’s “Republican” government. The Spanish government was far from a democracy—it was a pseudo-communist government that was suffused with Comintern agents of the Soviet Union. In May […]
Book Review: Stonehenge Decoded by Gerald S. Hawkins
Rating – Five Stars Hawkins weaves a compelling narrative as he decodes the mysteries of the monument dubbed Stonehenge—an astronomical observatory lying on the Salisbury Plain in southwestern England. It’s a monumental temple with intricate celestial alignments concealed in apparent simplicity and symmetry of design. He posits that Stonehenge is the eighth wonder of […]
Book Review: Air War Over Khalkhin Gol: The Nomonhan Incident
Rating – Three Stars From May to September, 1939, the Union of Socialists Soviet Republics and the Empire of Japan waged an undeclared war near the Khalkhin Gol (River) over the border between Soviet controlled Mongolia and the Japanese puppet state Manchukuo (formerly the Chinese Province Manchuria). In this little remembered war, casualties in men […]
Book Review: Bill O’Reilly’s Legends and Lies by Bill O’Reilly, David Fisher
Rating – Five Stars Fisher and O’Reilly have a winner on their hands. This is an outstanding book—an easy read, informative, and factual. Fisher leads us through the life and adventures of a dozen famous men of the “wild” West. He starts with Daniel Boone and concludes with Butch Cassidy. Fisher strips these biographies of the folderol […]
Book Review: The First World War in the Middle East by Kristian Coates Ulrichsen
Rating – Two Stars This is a heavy book. Not in its weight but in its syntax. It’s tedious. This text reads as if it were a doctorial dissertation modified for publication. Here’s one example from page 15: “For their part, the localised backlashes […]
Book Review: Spy Mistress by William Stevenson
Rating – Three Stars Stevenson introduces Vera Atkins—her nome de guerre, and recounts her exploits as a senior operator in Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE). This deep black outfit trained and sent agents into occupied Europe and Southeast Asia to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance—and to work with local resistance groups. For example, in France […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Armies of Warlord China 1911-1928 by Philip Jowett
Rating-Four Stars This is a large (11” x 9”), heavy book–in weight and content. Jowett tells us just about everything we’d want to know about the history of the warlords of China that ruled the Northern provinces (and a few in the south). He laces his narrative with relevant photographs. Unfortunately, the organization of this […]
BOOK REVIEW: Lost Scriptures by Bart D. Ehrman
Rating-Three Stars By the beginning of the 4th Century AD there was not a single belief system regarding Christian doctrine. Numerous Christian sects had evolved—each basing their faith and liturgy on disparate manuscripts. Such was especially the case between the Roman church and the Greek-speaking East’s Oriental Orthodoxy, the Assyrian church in Asia Minor, and […]
BOOK REVIEW: Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises by Timothy F. Geithner
Rating- Three Stars Geithner weaves a complicated and compelling insight into the management of large scale financial crises. A great deal of the book is dedicated to the financial collapse of 1987. Economists and other gurus in the “money business” averred that this crisis was the worst since the 1930’s Great Depression. Soon it was […]