By Jill N. Claster UTP Higher Education, $29.95, 356 pages The Crusades was one of the monumental moments in the history of Europe, at least from the eyes of the Europeans. On book shelves these days you can find many new books that cover the entire history of the Crusades, add this one to that [...]
By Kevin Starr Walker & Company, $23.00, 215 pages If the dreams of spanning the Golden Gate go back to frontier days, the objections are almost as old and as numerous. The Sierra Club complained on environmental grounds that a bridge would profane the site, and famed photographer Ansel Adams agreed that a bridge would [...]
By David A. Strauss Oxford University Press, $21.95, 150 pages Mr. Strauss’s argument is essentially that our Constitution is a common-law Constitution, evolving under the pressures of precedent and tradition. He pleads his case well, demonstrating the unwieldiness of the amendment process and the proven success of the precedential. He makes a very good set [...]
By Luis Francia The Overlook Press, $35.00, 352 pages A History of the Philippines is, as the title suggests, a comprehensive history of this Southeast Asia archipelago, which contains more than 7,000 islands. Luis H. Francia, a professor as well as an author, details the history of the Philippines from pre-Spanish colonial times up to [...]
By Alex Butterworth Pantheon, $30.00, 482 pages By the dawn of the 20th century, the people had had enough. Some countries teetered on the brink of economic and social collapse, and where there is doubt and despair, fear cannot be far behind. Anarchism and terrorism were on the rise, as people of every social class [...]
By Louise A. JacksonMountain Press Publishing Company Mountain Press, $15.00, 210 pages Ancient folklore holds together this book’s two parts, one the hard science of geology, climate, and biology, the other the anthropology of Indian cultures thriving in the Sierras before the first ‘white’ man made his appearance in the mid-16th century. Monache Indians, for [...]
By William T. Larkins, Alameda Naval Air Museum Arcadia Publishing, $21.99, 127 pages The Alameda Naval Air Station was home to thousands of Navy personal, their families, and civilians working on the base across from San Francisco and just south of Oakland. It was made into a Naval air base in the early 1940s and [...]
By Christopher Ryan, Cacilda Jethá Harper, $25.99, 400 pages This should have been an interesting book. It should have been an entertaining book. It should have been a well written book. Instead, it was none of these. Sex at Dawn claims to get to the origins of modern sexuality in humans. While they might get [...]
By H.L. Mencken, Marion Rodgers, Editor Library of America, $70.00, 1408 pages H.L. Mencken was a cultural, artistic, movie critic of the early 20th century in the United States, between 1917 to 1926. He tackled the issues facing Americans of the day, from Communists and Leftists, to Conservatives and Fascists. No one was safe from [...]
By Robert V. Remini The Basic Book Group, $24.00, 184 pages The Compromise of 1850 saved the Union from Civil War for at least another 10 years. While it was not meant to totally solve the problem of slavery in new states once and for all, it was meant to buy enough time to come [...]
By James Horn The Basic Book Group, $26.00, 304 pages Before Plymouth there was Roanoke, and Roanoke, specifically what exactly happened there, has always been shrouded in mystery. But this latest book to examine the history of England’s first colony in the New World casts new light on the subject, and does so with substance [...]
By Heather Cox Richardson The Basic Book Group, $28.95, 363 pages Westward expansion, big business, and partisan politics ruled post-Civil War America. Under a Republican-backed system of tariffs, big business thrived, raising food prices for the working poor. To remain in power at a time when senators were selected by state legislators, Republicans secured party [...]
By Nathan Philbrick Viking, $30.00, 466 pages Custer’s Last Stand. Everyone who attended high school in the United States has probably heard the story of Custer’s vainglorious defeat at the hands of Sitting Bull at the Battle of Little Bighorn. Wandering down such a well-trod path is a difficult task for a writer, to be [...]
By Donald Stoker Oxford University Press, $27.95, 512 pages Donald Stoker is a Professor of Strategy and Policy at the US Naval War College’s Naval Postgraduate School and he offers an in-depth look at the strategies used and mishandled in the Civil War in ways that other authors never have. Winning the war wasn’t a [...]
By Deborah Rudacille Pantheon, $27.00, 290 pages Growing up in Dundalk, Maryland, may not have been glamorous, but Deborah Rudacille, decades later, understands the values her hometown boasts: community, solidarity, an old-fashioned closeness among neighbors. These values remain intact, though the town has seen better days. Dundalk is a steel town, at one time dominated [...]
By Richard Snow Scribner, $27.00, 338 pages During World War II, the fight for the Atlantic didn’t make the headlines with the same dramatic frequency as news from the other war fronts. But for five years the Atlantic Ocean served was monitored and frequently attacked as it conveyed essential supplies ‘across the pond.’ The allied [...]
