This article appears in the current issue of Solidarity. American politics has made a sharp turn to the left in recent years – a turn that few anticipated, but that underpins much of what is…Read more…
Review: Which Side Were You On? The American Communist Party During the Second World War, by Maurice Isserman
“The history of communism in America is bitterly contested terrain,” writes Maurice Isserman on the first page of his 1982 book. Nearly four decades later, it remains bitterly contested….Read more…
Review: SAS Shadow Raiders – The Ultra-Secret Mission that Changed the Course of WWII, by Damien Lewis
One thing I loved about this book is that it tells a much bigger story than one might imagine. At the heart of Lewis’ tale is the heroic raid by British paratroopers in early 1942…Read more…
Bernie Sanders, the Jewish socialist who has won the heart of America’s Muslims
This article appears in the current issue of Solidarity. In recent months, Bernie Sanders has become an enormously popular politician among Muslim Americans. He was one of only two Democratic…Read more…
Can Sanders win?
This article appears in the current issue of Solidarity (30 October 2019). Click here to see the whole issue (PDF). According to most polls, Americans have had enough of Donald Trump. A majority…Read more…
Review: Agent Running in the Field, by John le Carré
When I learned that John le Carré had a new book coming out, I ordered it in advance and began reading it the day it arrived. I did so because his last book, A Legacy…Read more…
Bernie Sanders: The road to Iowa
This article appears in the current issue of Solidarity (23 October 2019). Click here to see the whole issue (PDF). Bernie Sanders has 100 days to change American politics forever. In a little more…Read more…
Review – Target: America, Hitler’s Plan to Attack the United States by James P. Duffy
What a great idea for a book: a review of the all the German plans, some completely bonkers, some plausible, to strike back at the United States during the Second World War. One of the…Read more…
Review – The Devils’ Alliance: Hitler’s Pact with Stalin, by Roger Moorhouse
This is how history should be written. Roger Moorhouse has taken a subject rarely covered in detail despite its obvious importance and done a very thorough job of it. He begins the book by pointing…Read more…
Trump, the Kurds and Normandy
The Kurds currently under attack by Turkish forces “didn’t help us in the second world war, they didn’t help us with Normandy as an example,” said US president Donald Trump this week. “They mention…Read more…
No to a Turkish invasion of Syria – solidarity with the Kurds!
Five years ago, the Kurdish enclave of Kobane in Northern Syria was besieged by Islamic State fighters, who then seemed to be on an unstoppable march through Iraq and Syria, with cities and towns…Read more…
Review: The Second Sleep, by Robert Harris
Robert Harris often has the very best ideas for his books, but sometimes the book itself is a real let-down. The Second Sleep is an example of this. First of all, his good idea — the big reveal…Read more…
Review: The President is Missing, by Bill Clinton and James Patterson
In the 1960’s there was a thriller called The President’s Plane is Missing by Robert J. Serling, the older brother of Rod Serling of Twilight Zone fame. As I remember it, the book…Read more…
Die rebellion der Georgier
My article about the rebellion of Georgian soldiers on the Dutch island of Texel in April-May 1945 — often described as the final battle of the second world war in Europe — has appeared…Read more…
The battle for historical memory now playing out on TripAdvisor
A German couple recently went on holiday in the Austrian Alps, and found a four-star hotel in the village of Gerlos. To their shock, in the lobby were two framed photographs of men in World War…Read more…
Review: Nein! Standing up to Hitler, 1935-1944, by Paddy Ashdown
This was a surprising book. I expected an account of the numerous small-scale attempts by individuals and tiny groups of decent Germans to oppose the Nazi regime, such as the famous White Rose group….Read more…
Review: Joe Country, by Mick Herron
‘Joe’ in this case is slang for a secret agent. This book, the sixth and latest (but not last) of the series is set in Slough House, the place where the British secret service discards…Read more…
Review: London Rules, by Mick Herron
OK, I’ve said this before and I have to say it again: plot is not Mick Herron’s greatest strength. In this book, the fifth in the Slough House series, a bunch of terrorists blow up some…Read more…
How Netanyahu lost
On October 30, 1972 a little-known author named Arthur Tobier published a book entitled How McGovern Won the Presidency and Why the Polls Were Wrong. The New York Times described the book as “perhaps…Read more…
Review: Spook Street, by Mick Herron
Let me start by saying that having now read the first four books in the Jackson Lamb/Slough House series, I think we can pretty well give up on any expectation that the plots are going to get any…Read more…