Ghosts of Honolulu by Mark Harmon and Leon Carroll, Jr. (Historical Biography, 2023). This non-fiction book details as much as is known about two men working secretly on opposing sides, leading up the attack on Pearl Harbor, during the attack itself and afterward. Douglas Wada, a US citizen born in Hawaii to Japanese immigrants, became […]
Read more "BOOK REVIEW: Ghosts of Honolulu"Till (Feature Film, 2022). The 2 hours and 10 minutes of this powerful and fact-based drama is divided almost precisely into distinct halves. In the first, we meet Emmett Till, a black 14-year-old from 1950s Chicago (played as a fun-loving and spirited kid by Jalyn Hill). We meet his mother Mamie (Danielle Deadwyler) and other […]
Read more "FILM REVIEW: Till"It’s a thankless task, trying to write a coherent (let alone compelling) biography of a historical figure about whom so little is really, factually known. And while the author is a veteran historical writer focused on the American West, he hasn’t done himself any favors in the peculiar way this account is structured. I’ll expand […]
Read more "BOOK REVIEW: Etta Place"Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings by Neil Price (Nonfiction Book, 2020). Neil Price, one of the foremost figures in the study of the people we call the Vikings, offers up a compelling and richly detailed account of their 300 year heyday. At not quite 600 pages, this book certainly covers […]
Read more "BOOK REVIEW: Children of Ash and Elm"The Heart: Frida Kahlo In Paris by Marc Petitjean; translated by Adriana Hunter (Nonfiction, 2018; English Translation 2020). In 1939, a Second World War was in the offing as Mexican artist Frida Kahlo came to Paris for the first European show of her growing career. Much of the politically active art community, especially those whose […]
Read more "BOOK REVIEW: The Heart: Frida Kahlo in Paris"This book is a magnificent, honest and heartfelt triumph. Kershaw, a best-selling history writer, presents the stories of an array of common soldiers and their field officers whose individual courage, smarts and determination enabled the vast invasion of Nazi-dominated Europe to secure the footholds allowing the rest of the Allied armies to flood into northern […]
Read more "BOOK REVIEW: The First Wave"Fly Girls by Keith O’Brien (Historical Biography, 2018) This excellently researched and beautifully written book was a hardcover Bestseller last year and is now available in all the usual formats. It’s the riveting yet thoughtful account of a mostly forgotten period in early aviation history and of the struggles, triumphs and tragedies of the comparatively […]
Read more "BOOK REVIEW: Fly Girls"Oliver Wendell Holmes: A Life in War, Law, and Ideas by Stephen Budiansky (Historical Biography, 2019). This extensive and fair-minded biography of perhaps history’s single most influential Associate Justice of the American Supreme Court is something special, indeed. It gives us a great, nuanced portrait of a true intellectual, a man of convictions and courage. Yet […]
Read more "BOOK REVIEW: Oliver Wendell Holmes"Wild Bill: The True Story of the American Frontier’s First Gunfighter by Tom Clavin (History/Biography, February 2019). Tom Clavin, a best-selling and multiple award-winning historical writer, ably follows up his history of one of the Wildest of the Wild West’s cow-towns (Dodge City) with this carefully researched and entertainingly written account of James Butler (“Wild Bill”) […]
Read more "BOOK REVIEW: Wild Bill"Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry by Imani Perry (Biography, 2018). Taken by cancer in 1965, Lorraine Hansberry crammed a great deal of living and achievement into 34 years. A Raisin in the Sun, Hansberry’s best-known creation, was the first work of an African-American author on Broadway. Decades later, it’s still […]
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