About Book Marks
Recent Reviews
Stuart A. Reid
Mixed Booklist Reid’s attention to detail makes for a sometimes difficult and occasionally confusing reading. While not recommended for casual readers, serious students of modern history may find The Lumumba Plot rewarding.
John Lisle
Positive Booklist Endlessly fascinating.
Kevin Cook
Positive Booklist In chilling detail, Cook describes Koresh’s descent into religious paranoia ... Cook does a good job explaining how Koresh’s sad saga unfolded, though the mystery of the why of Koresh remains elusive.
Mark Bergen
Mixed Booklist In extensive, and sometimes overlong, detail Bergen shows how it was done. For both YouTube’s content providers and consumers, it’s an interesting journey.
Ben Miller and Huw Lemmey
Positive Booklist The purpose is not to excuse them but to understand them and their cultures, out of which the present day evolved. We see how same-sex relationships started as acceptable (within strict social-status rules), to being a sin, to being a crime, and how that shaped the lives and personalities of each era’s \'bad\' gays. The historical perspective is fascinating, and the bits of salty gay humor sprinkled throughout liven the proceedings considerably.
Gideon Rachman
Positive Booklist Rachman’s analysis is troubling but not entirely pessimistic, as he is well aware of the cyclical nature of history. It is also readable, engaging, and extremely worthwhile.
Christopher Leonard
Positive Booklist While the subject matter is tough slogging for those without a background in higher economics, Leonard strives to present the issues clearly but without oversimplification, and the patient reader will gain a greater understanding of economic issues that are affecting everyone’s lives.
Casey Michel
Positive Booklist Michel’s clear prose helps make a complicated subject comprehensible, and leaves readers with some hope that financial corruption may not be so inevitable after all.
Dan Abrams
Positive Booklist Abrams and Fisher take a fresh, detailed look at Jack Ruby and his trial ... With journalistic precision and in encyclopedic detail, the authors follow the increasingly complicated and at times ludicrous proceedings ... Followers of all things regarding the JFK assassination will be fascinated by this account of one of the most unique trials of the twentieth century.
Jeff Shesol
Rave Booklist Shesol chronicles the early days of the space program with a historian’s attention to detail and a novelist’s flair for interesting storytelling ... The story of how (and why) NASA so quickly got its act together is fascinating, as is the parallel story of the original seven Mercury astronauts, especially John Glenn, who were considered virtual superheroes at the time. The success of Glenn’s mission, to riotous acclaim for the agency but especially for the man, kick-started America’s space program into high gear and set it on the path to the moon
Daniel Levin
Positive Booklist Unlike in fiction, Levin’s true-life account does not promise a satisfying resolution to the story; in life, war seldom leaves room for happy endings. But whether facing tragedy through the horrors of war or through the randomness of real-life, it remains important to never give up. Levin’s story is not an easy one to experience, but it is an important one.
Serhii Plokhy
Rave Booklist While the Cuban missile crisis and its resolution have been well documented in the six decades since the incident, a raft of new information has come to light, including firsthand accounts and unclassified documents, particularly from the Russian side since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Historian Plokhy makes good use of this new information to paint a clearer picture of the behind-the-scenes machinations, the motivations, the politics, and the errors in judgment that almost brought about a nuclear holocaust. Plokhy pulls it all together with sober yet accessible prose that reads like a suspenseful thriller. For anyone interested in the Cold War, this is an indispensable read.
Philippe Sands
Mixed Booklist There’s no question that Sands is a superlative historical researcher and excellent writer, but, ultimately, Wächter’s career as a Nazi was unremarkable, and his postwar life and death of interest mostly to detail-obsessive academic historians specializing in Nazism.
David Stebenne
Positive Booklist With a historian’s eye for detail and context, he examines factors that helped propel the growth of the middle class ... Promised Land is a dense and somewhat challenging read, but the determined reader will find it immensely enlightening and rewarding.
Jacob S. Hacker
Rave Booklist ... a standout among recent releases, timed for the 2020 presidential election cycle, that seek to help readers make sense of the often-confusing political climate ... The answers the authors come up with are cogent and distressing—and convincing. Highly recommended.
Colin Woodard
Positive Booklist Woodard...shows the complexity of the process by delving into the background of a number of the people involved, revealing how different and often incompatible their viewpoints were ... abundant detail ... Union is detailed and unflashy, and it contains many valuable historical lessons modern readers will find useful.
Rachel Lance
Positive Booklist ...[a] solid, engaging mystery ... Lance recounts her efforts to unravel the mystery in a lively, entertaining, novelistic style that carries the reader along with all the verve of an Agatha Christie whodunnit—only this is a real-life \'whatdunnit.\' In the Waves will work well for fans of mystery, both historical and scientific.
David Plouffe
Positive Booklist For those on the blue side of the political fence, Plouffe, former campaign manager for Barack Obama, has written an instructive, step-by-step guide to the electoral process for the average Democrat who wants to contribute substantively towards unseating the current president ... The readable and informal prose highlights useful, practical suggestions for the involved moderate Democrat as well as fascinating behind-the-scenes anecdotes that professional political operatives would do well to study. The book’s political leanings are made obvious in the title and would not be welcomed by conservative voters. For Democrats, liberals, and progressives, however, this is an invaluable map for political engagement.