Owen Matthews knows the Soviet Union. First of all, he was born in Leningrad. He went on to become a journalist there, serving as Newsweek’s Moscow correspondent for years. He wrote an excellent biography of…

If you’re looking for a short book about the 1921 rebellion of the Kronstadt sailors against the Bolshevik dictatorship, this is not a bad place to start. Written from an activist rather than an academic…

What was the greatest maritime disaster in history? The Titanic? Not even close. It was the German cruise ship Wilhelm Gustloff, with over 10,000 people on board — some 9,000 of whom died in the…

Alice Sebold is a terrific writer and this book proves it. A memoir of her rape at a time when she was a young student at Syracuse University, it begins with a harrowing and honest…

Dan Randall is a British socialist and opponent of anti-semitism. That should be a tautology; after all, aren’t socialists by definition opponents of all forms of racism, including anti-semitism? Clearly not. Randall is a member…

One of the most striking anecdotes in this book appears at the very end. This was the story of Leon Bronchart, a French railway worker who stood up to the Nazi German occupiers and their…

There have been three books in this series and I’m reading them out of order, but no matter. These are enjoyable romps written by an author who has already tried his hand at writing a…

First of all, that’s quite a title. In polite company, one doesn’t throw around the word ‘traitor’ very casually. But Lownie has written about traitors before (I really enjoyed his book about Guy Burgess) and…

Do books come any scarier than this? I guess they do. The Exorcist was pretty terrifying. But Ira Levin’s great skill as a story-teller reveals itself here in creating a world that is both unimaginably…

Having recently read a new novel about the creation of a Nazi Fourth Reich set in 2012, I wanted to return to this classic thriller. I noticed two things immediately: first of all, the prospects…