Criticalcompendium
Book Reviews

“It lurks in the background of our childhood imagination, now and again roaring back in adulthood to remind us of possibilities. A map of the world, that fixture in elementary classrooms, has always been a book masquerading as a flat piece of paper. Like layers of the earth for geologists, maps offer a glinting sample [...]

“On Aug. 11, 1941, as massed German armies were advancing on Moscow, Colonel-General Franz Halder, chief of the Nazi general staff, wrote in his diary that “we have underestimated the Soviet colossus.” Since the German invasion had begun, some seven weeks before, the unprepared Soviets had been steadily pushed back toward Moscow, Leningrad, and Kiev, [...]

“Amazon.com lists more than 36,000 books on the American Civil War, and my guess is that most of them depict battles and heroes, and describe wartime deaths as noble and tragic. Drew Gilpin Faust’s “This Republic of Suffering” does something different. It’s a shattering history of the war, focusing exclusively on death and dying — [...]

“Sometimes you see it said in a fiction review that the geographical setting is as much of a character in the novel as, well, the characters. It seems this observation can be extended to nonfiction, as well, for in James Campbell’s superb “The Ghost Mountain Boys,” the island of New Guinea is one of the [...]

“In his “New History,” Barry Strauss tells the story of the Trojan War from the very beginning. Paris, the “cosmopolitan prince” from Troy, abducted the unhappy Helen in Sparta, not for love but for political reasons. Strauss sees the adulterous couple as “less like Romeo and Juliet than Juan and Eva Péron.” Helen escaped Sparta, [...]

“John Ferling toiled for years in relative obscurity at West Georgia University, churning out at least nine books, dozens of articles, and uncounted reviews, almost all dealing with war and politics in eighteenth-century America, the same subjects that have brought fame and riches to Joseph Ellis, David Hackett Fischer, and David McCullough. His prose may [...]

“Philosophers may lead us in terms of profound ideas, but their personal lives can be quite another matter entirely. As historian Nigel Rodgers and philosopher Mel Thompson write in their marvelous little book, Philosophers Behaving Badly, “a life of reason does not necessarily lead to a reasonable life.” Their portraits of eight philosophers bring home [...]

“In his provocative new study, “Burning to Read: English Fundamentalism and Its Reformation Opponents,” James Simpson undertakes a bold reassessment not only of Thomas More as embattled “defender of the faith,” but of the English Reformation itself. His focus is quite specific; he identifies the years 1520 to 1547 as crucial. Though Martin Luther had [...]

“The Messenger cannot be considered an impartial historical biography in the Western tradition – still less an apology. Indeed, those familiar with the habitual points of Western interest in early Islam (which pretty much follows the tabloid code of sex and violence) will find Tariq Ramadan’s book a most frustrating document. Where are the pages [...]

“Why do some countries have an economically helpful culture while others don’t? And, since no society got very far in economic terms before the Industrial Revolution, what caused the culture of the recently successful ones to change? In “A Farewell to Alms,” Gregory Clark, an economic historian at the University of California, Davis, suggests an [...]

Does the right person always get credit for a great invention? Was Thomas Edison or the Englishman Joseph Swan responsible for the light bulb? Did Al Gore or some other geek invent the Internet? Did Alexander Graham Bell steal from Elisha Gray a key idea behind the telephone? Such questions can fuel debates between historians [...]