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Genre: History

Manners Make (More Than) the Man

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Some books have you read them slowly. Some books have you keep turning the pages. The best books do both. Such is A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. The gentleman is Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov. In 1922, while living in Moscow’s Hotel Metropol, he is summoned before The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, which is inclined to have him shot for being a noble. They remember, however, that before the Revolution he wrote a poem showing some sympathy for the cause, and so his life is spared. Instead, they…

A Quick Pull That’s Well Worth the Effort

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From the opening moments of Daniel Brown’s The Boys in the Boat, we learn that there’s more to “the boat” than the finely crafted racing shell. What really matters is the characters and relationships of the men that propelled it… and something more: the spiritual bond that forms under certain conditions when friendship, trial, and beauty intertwine. This is what Joe Rantz, elderly and in failing health, wanted Brown to capture. Boy, does he do it to the gunwales.  Plunging us into the world of collegiate rowing in the ’30s,…

Compelling History: Bomb Book Review

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Bomb by Steve Sheinkin In Bomb: The Race to Build —And Steal—The World’s Most Dangerous Weapon, Steve Sheinkin introduces young readers to the many plots and subplots involved in the creation of the world’s first nuclear bomb. Extensively researched, Bomb employs primary sources from declassified FBI files to simultaneously tell of Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project, Soviet espionage, and Allied efforts to sabotage Nazi Germany’s ability to develop the bomb first. Sheinkin weaves together the stories of some of the 20th century’s most famous and notorious figures—the ingenious, courageous,…

La Vie en Rose

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The Boy in the Striped Pajamas provides a great opportunity for the cultivation of moral sensibilities in young people. What is more, it is an interesting read, particularly for those who have a personal connection to the history that surrounds the Holocaust.