About Book Marks
Recent Reviews
Tim Alberta
Positive Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Starting with the final months of the Obama presidency, Mr. Alberta’s wordy history works its way through the crowded 2016 Republican field ... Mr. Alberta...offers a detailed review of everything that happened from President Obama’s last term up through the pivotal 2018 midterms. Mr. Alberta’s detailed timeline would play nicely as a history text if you took the expletives out of the quotes. And there are plenty ... Mr. Alberta adds some insider anecdotes from (and about) John Boehner, Mr. Priebus and Mr. Cruz. Some of the Boehner stories are laugh-out-loud funny, particularly his respectful interactions with President Obama, but also his unlikely reactions to some of his colleagues. Mr. Alberta’s access to these weighty GOP figures and peripheral players makes for some juicy reading ... This book doesn’t go easy on Mr. Trump in any way, pointing out many of his well-documented lies, missteps, gaffs and embarrassments. He goes no easier on Democrats or liberals ... Old school Republicans will have to decide what he is, where they stand and how they’ll vote in 2020. Maybe this \'textbook\' of recent GOP history will be of some assistance.
Jack Kelly
Positive Pittsburgh Post-Gazette \"If there is a consistent complaint about how Mr. Kelly tells this story, it is that he has produced a book about a visually rich period that contains almost no photographs ... Mr. Kelly’s book goes into fascinating detail about how 1893 unfolded with Gilded Age wonderment on display at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago ... Jack Kelly’s work presents an era that, though passed from collective memory, still resonates today, particularly in the Pittsburgh region. The Homestead strike and its emotional aftermath, though mitigated by many generations, continues to have an impact that lingers.\
Michael Pullara
Positive Pittsburgh Post-Gazette His bold examination of an almost laughable Georgian murder investigation and its cover-up at the highest levels bespeaks of someone who’s looking to get himself killed. As comical as it is frightening, it’s one of the things that makes this book all the more interesting ... His examination of the Georgian and Russian probes, as well as the subsequent trial, exposes an implausible-sounding but accurate look at the instability that passed for a government after the Soviet Union broke apart ... Mr. Pullara delivers. The Spy Who Was Left Behind, while telling Freddie Woodruff’s tragic story, also displays what a real investigator can uncover among complex documents, details and personalities. This investigative journey will draw readers in.
Pamela Haag
Rave The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette The stories from the gun industry’s early attempts to create markets for repeating arms sometimes sound like the stuff of movie fiction: one tale involved a harrowing stagecoach journey out of Mexico in 1866 following a lucrative sale, a trip that couldn’t have been more exciting if Indiana Jones had been involved … Pamela Haag’s history, though, takes an interesting approach as she lays out the backdrop of the early days of the gun in America. Her thread through the stories of multiple manufacturers and their wares, is the Winchester empire, because it contains a unique personality … Pamela Haag’s detailed history of America’s gun culture is as colorful as it is surprising.