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 […]
Category Archives: Book Reviews
BOOK REVIEW: Steve Canyon, Milton Caniff, Vol. 6: 1957 to 1958
Two stars. Headline: Lieutenant Colonel Steven (Steve) Canyon, USAFR, intensifies his domestic agenda. Egad! Milton Caniff, what have you done to our iconic hero? The eight stories in this book all hinge on some sort of domesticity, teenage nonsense or failed romance. Unfortunately, this book is an overblown telenovela, a Bollywood par excellence, a classic […]
BOOK REVIEW: 20th Century China, 3rd Edition
Clubb weaves a heavy book loaded with the incredible history of the Chinese government from the Boxer Rebellion to the Death of Mao Tse-tung and a little beyond. I read this tome from cover to cover, including the notes. Conclusion: This is not a reading book. Rather it is a superb reference book that details […]
BOOK REVIEW: Killing Reagan: A Violent Assault that Changed a Presidency by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard
An outstanding book. Exceptionally well written—no nonsense, no extraneous jabberwocky, no political twists—just the facts presented in a sterile, compelling narrative. O’Reilly strips the Holy Grail sheen off Ronald Reagan and renders him an ordinary human being—much as the rest of us with all our frailties. At times, Reagan was petty, angry, vindictive, chapfallen, humdrum, and […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Secret History of Mary Magdalene: Christianity’s Hidden Goddess by Lynn Picknett
Lynn Picknett explores in great depth alternate versions and background of the Christ story as told in the canonical Gospels (New Testament), Gnostic Gospels, and other sources—some apocryphal—focusing on The Magdalene’s background, her physical and spiritual relationship with Jesus Christ, and the historical perspective of this enigmatic woman. Picknett’s helter-skelter narrative is too confusing for […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Mexican Revolution: A Short History 1910-1920 by Stuart Easterling
Easterling makes a reasonable clarification of the chaos of the Mexican Revolution—as he says “…ten years of social conflict, deprivation, and bloody warfare.” He skims through the ten-year revolution with seminal characters in this petite book as: Profirio Diaz (1839-1915). Dictator of Mexico from 1884 to 1911. Overthrown by Gustavo Madero (1875-19130. President 1911 to […]
BOOK REVIEW: Steve Canyon, Volume 1955 to 1956 by Milton Caniff
I opened the cover of this tome with eager anticipation—to read and view another of Caniff’s boffo comic-strip stories about the rousing adventures of the heroic Lieutenant Colonel Steven B. Canyon, USAF. Alas! I was disappointed. I found that Caniff’s stories in this volume had plots that are incongruous to the Steve Canyon mystic, and […]
BOOK REVIEW: Prelude to the First World War, the Balkan Wars 1912-1913 by E. R. Hooton
Hooton explores the complexities of the two Balkan Wars with a surgical analysis–two important, little known, wars that were the prelude to the Great War in 1914. He earns a sincere congratulation for his in depth research. His statistics are overwhelming–so overwhelming that the reader is inundated with details that after a time becloud the […]
BOOK REVIEW: I Could Never Be So Lucky Again by Lieutenant General James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle, US Army Air Corps, (ret.)
I Could Never Be So Lucky Again is the autobiography of one of the United States’ great heroes: Lieutenant General James (Jimmy) H. Doolittle—aviation pioneer, and Doctor of Science in Aeronautical Engineering from the Massachusetts of Technology. After the First World War, he became one of America’s top racing aviators. He won the Schneider Marine Cup, […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Spanish Civil War by Gabriele Ranzato
Ranzato presents us with a pocketsize, summary of the political machinations of the various fighting-factions during the 1936 to 1939 Spanish Civil War. In large measure, he skips the military campaign. Permeating the conflict was the chaos of vacillating loyalties, conflicting interests of the various factions, and the telling influence of the military involvement of […]