From the very first page of this compelling book, you’re in the thick of it. James Bloodworth describes participating in a course to teach him how to pick up girls in London’s Leicester Square. That…Read more…
Review: In the Heart of the Fire, by Dean Koontz
I must be the last person on the planet to discover Dean Koontz, who has sold something like 450,000,000 books. (I’m not making that up.). This one is a novella, part of series about a,…Read more…
Review: Hitler’s Private Library: The Books that Shaped his Life, by Timothy Ryback
There are a few things that Hitler and Stalin shared, despite the obvious differences. Both men began their lives deeply committed to their faith, and considered life as clergymen, before turning on the church. Both…Read more…
Review: Takeover: Hitler’s Final Rise to Power, by Timothy Ryback
Writing history has one serious problem: how does an author maintain suspense when the outcome is known in advance? Timothy Ryback does this very successfully in Takeover where one can easily imagine another result in…Read more…
Review: Dissolution, by Nicholas Binge
What a strange book. It has elements of time travel, but it’s not really a time travel book. Much of it consists of an interrogation taking place we don’t know where in which the interrogator…Read more…
Review: Stalin, by Harold Shukman
This is one of a crop of very short biographies of Soviet dictator published in recent years. Here is what I loved about it: Harold Shukman is a well-known academic, an expert on Soviet history….Read more…
Israel has had enough of Netanyahu
Public opinion polls in Israel consistently show that Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government cannot win the next election. The parties of the centre and left are consistently polling higher than those of the right. And it’s…Read more…
Review: Red Widow, by Alma Katsu
First of all, that’s a great title for a spy thriller. But “Red Widow” is not a great spy thriller. Having spent many hours reading it, I don’t see the point of the story. Not…Read more…
Why the Left should support increased defence spending
The Left has a long and proud history of anti-militarism. One cannot help but look back in admiration at the American Socialist leader Eugene V. Debs who went to prison after making an anti-war speech…Read more…
Belarus: Time for solidarity
Last week I interviewed Lizaveta Merliak, who runs Salidarnast, a group campaigning in support of the embattled independent trade union movement in Belarus. Liza was an activist in the Belarusian unions who was forced to…Read more…
Review: The Crossing Places, by Elly Griffiths
I read best-selling author Griffiths’ latest novel, which involved time travel, and in the end I wasn’t impressed. But I have friends who are really hooked on her crime fiction starring Dr Ruth Galloway, an…Read more…
Marx & Engels on the German elections
At the start of the Cold War, in 1952, a book came out in the USA and Britain entitled “The Russian Menace to Europe”. The authors were listed as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. A…Read more…
Review: The Frozen People, by Elly Griffiths
Elly Griffiths is the author of two very successful series of novels, knocking off dozens of titles. She apparently has a huge fanbase. This book promises the be the first of a series featuring Ali…Read more…
Munich 2025: Return of the “Guilty Men”
As Karl Marx famously wrote in 1852, “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as…Read more…
Review: Freud for Historians, by Peter Gay
“Both history and psychoanalysis are sciences of memory, both are professionally committed to skepticism, both trace causes in the past, both seek to penetrate behind pioues professions and subtle evasions.” So concludes historian Peter Gay…Read more…
Goma and Global Capitalism
“More than 100 female prisoners were raped and then burned alive during a jailbreak in the Congolese city of Goma, according to the UN.” That’s from a BBC report a few days ago. This horrific…Read more…
Review: All You Need to Know … Stalin, by Claire Shaw
This attractive, well-illustrated short biography of Stalin is part of a new series featuring prominent historians including Max Hastings and focussing on some of the biggest issues, including the Third Reich, the British Empire and…Read more…
Review: Roman Malinovsky: A Life Without a Cause, by Ralph Carter Elwood
This is not the first time I have read this short book and that’s probably because it is proving to be so useful to me in my understanding of how the tsarist police (the Okhrana)…Read more…
Trump’s Favourite President
Last Monday was Donald Trump’s first day in office as President and he raced to issue a series of “executive orders”. One would imagine that these reflected his highest priorities as well as those of…Read more…
Review: The Mind of Stalin: A Psychoanalytic Study, by Daniel Rancour-Laferriere
This is a surprisingly interesting book. In just 143 pages (including extensive footnotes), the author examines many aspects of the Soviet dictator’s life through the prism of Freudian psychoanalysis. And many of his conclusions are…Read more…