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…Read more…
Review: Ship of Fate: The Story of the MV Wilhelm Gustloff, by Roger Moorhouse
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…Read more…
Review: Lucky, by Alice Sebold
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…Read more…
Review: Confronting Antisemitism on the Left – Arguments for Socialists, by Daniel Randall
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…Read more…
Review: Ordinary Workers, Vichy and the Holocaust: French Railwaymen and Second World War, by Ludivine Broch
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…Read more…
Review: The Word is Murder, by Anthony Horowitz
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…Read more…
Review: Traitor King: The Scandalous Exile of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, by Andrew Lownie
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…Read more…
Review: Rosemary’s Baby, by Ira Levin
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…Read more…
Review: The Boys from Brazil, by Ira Levin
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…Read more…
Review: The Counterfeit Candidate, by Brian Klein
Imagine if you will a wealthy German-American whose son runs as a populist candidate for the Republican nomination for president — but who harbours a dark secret. That secret is not his inclination…Read more…
Sudan: Unions take the lead in the fight for democracy
Military coups are, sadly, a fairly regular occurrence in Africa. In the last couple of years, we’ve seen the military seizing or attempting to seize power in Mali, Guinea, Ethiopia, Gabon and…Read more…
Review: Ruins, by George Orwell
During the years between writing Animal Farm and 1984, George Orwell was mostly engaged with journalism. In early 1945, he was sent over to the continent to observe the final weeks of the Second…Read more…
Review: Stalin’s Englishman: The Lives of Guy Burgess, by Andrew Lownie
Like many people, I grew up thinking that the West had the best secret agents — James Bond being the most famous (fictional) example. It was only later on that I discovered the incredible…Read more…
Review: The Passenger, by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz
It seems like everyone who reads this books loves it, and the praise from book reviewers in deafening. Allow me to offer a dissenting view. While the life story of the author is tragic and…Read more…
Teaching History: Defending the Indefensible
Last week, a youth worker in the UK named Hannah Wilkinson tweeted an image from a textbook used today in this country for A-Level history. Students were asked “To what extent do you believe the…Read more…
Review: Silverview, by John le Carré
Silverview, John le Carré’s final book, has all the elements that made his earlier books such fantastic reads. It has former spies, current spies, hard-nosed cynics, naive innocents, betrayed…Read more…
Moscow: The truth can’t be hidden forever
Last week, more than thirty masked young men broke into a public meeting at the human rights NGO “Memorial” in Moscow. They shouted “Scum!”, “Fascists!” “Get out of Russia!”, and “There’s no room for…Read more…
Review: The Key to Rebecca, by Ken Follett
Only recently, I learned that the title of this book — and a key part of the story — is based on real events. There really was a German Nazi spy who helped Rommel’s armies…Read more…
Italy: It’s time to complete the anti-fascist revolution
Of the three aggressor nations that made up the Axis during the Second World War, only one saw its population rise up and topple a dictatorship. While the populations of Germany and Japan remained…Read more…
Review: How to Stop Fascism, by Paul Mason
Journalist and author Paul Mason turns to the past to see what worked — and what didn’t work — in the fight against fascism in the twentieth century. He confronts head-on the…Read more…