Let me begin by saying that Major L H Manderstam is not someone I’d want to invite over for dinner. This memoir, published in 1985 shortly after the author’s death, is full of obnoxious racist…
This is a brilliant book and I encourage all my non-Jewish friends to read it. My Jewish friends will not need to read it because what Baddiel writes — and he writes really well —…
This, the seventh book in the Jackson Lamb series, does not disappoint. I imagine most everyone who reads it has already devoured the previous six books. For us, the return of Lamb and his “slow…
This month marks the 100th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Georgia in February 1921. This is significant today, and not only for Georgians and Russians. Back in 1921, Georgia was ruled by the Social…
Nearly twenty years ago, science journalist Gary Taubes wrote an article for the magazine section of the Sunday New York Times reporting that some eminent scientists were beginning to re-think the conventional view about why…
This letter was published in the February 2021 issue of Literary Review. In his otherwise excellent review of The Tyranny of Merit (LR, December 2020 – January 2021), Andrew Adonis challenges Michael J. Sandel’s statement…
According to author Mark Felton, the people put in charge of keeping Adolf Hitler safe and well actually created the modern practice of body-guarding, sometimes known as ‘close protection’. The U.S. Secret Service, among others,…
I sent this letter off to the New York Times two weeks ago. They have not published it. But I thought some of you might find it of interest. Thomas Friedman in his column “Trump…
While fans wait for the arrival of the seventh Slough House novel by British author Mick Herron, he has thrown some crumbs to his audience with a series of novellas — this being the most…
Anne Applebaum is a great historian, a terrific journalist and a strong opponent of authoritarian regimes everywhere. But this book disappoints. It begins with a party she and her Polish husband hosted in 1999. Their…