Category: books

Book Review: ‘President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier’: A Triumph of a Biography, Even-Handed and Finely Written

James A. Garfield, the 20th president, only lasted 200 days in office before an assassin’s bullet ended his tenure. Aside from being fateful, his presidency may seem all but forgetful. This may be true. But there was a life that led to that presidency and the egregious moment on July 2, 1881; and it is…


Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’: The Wife of Bath: A Character With Surprising Views

One of the most recognized characters of Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales,” the Wife of Bath, is known for her novel ideas on marriage and love. Chaucer created a character that inspired future writers of Western literature. One of the 30 pilgrims featured in these 24 tales, the Wife of Bath represented the changing views about…


Book Review: ‘Bloody Blood Groups!’: Blood Types and Groups From A to Z

Blood is the essence of life. It also forms an important part of our culture: If it bleeds, it leads; blood is thicker than water; blood will have blood. The word carries spiritual significance. But what do we actually know about blood? “Bloody Blood Groups!” by Hugh Graham explains blood. Graham is a Fellow of…


Epoch Booklist: Recommended Reading for May 19–25

This week, we feature a children’s classic that stirs the love of nature and a lucid essay collection exploring early 20th-century naval history. Naval History ‘Fighting in the Dark: Naval Combat at Night: 1904–1944’ By Vincent P. O’Hara and Trent Hone, editors During the sailing era, only 10 percent of battles occurred at night. During…


Book Review: ‘Battle of Ink and Ice: A Sensational Story of New Barons, North Pole Explorers, and the Making of Modern Media’

Before reality television, people satisfied the urge to see new places and do new things by reading about the exploits of risk takers, including explorers. Before the internet or radio, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the way to do that was through the newspaper. Back then, the modern mass-market daily newspaper was…


Book Recommendation: ‘Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul: Celtic Wisdom for Reawakening to What Our Souls Know and Healing the World’

As I pen this recommendation, I’m looking out my home office window to a world of green from the trees that stand tall to greet the day. Perhaps they will serve as inspiration for a book that calls readers to a deeper connection with nature. I suspect so. I’m reminded of another recent review: Karen…


Book Recommender: Behind Abraham Lincoln’s Journey From Log Cabin to White House

So much has been written about Abraham Lincoln that it seems impossible to reveal more. Yet John Cribb’s work of historical fiction, “The Rail Splitter,” gives us the emotive, expressive, brooding, and persistent Lincoln long before he became leader of a nation burning with war. Not since Carl Sandburg’s 1926 “Abe Lincoln Grows Up” has…


Lost in Excess: Mark Twain’s Short Story, ‘Hunting the Deceitful Turkey’

Temperance is a very undervalued and much ignored virtue. Though we usually associate temperance with food and drink, we should apply it to everything else in our lives for it brings clarity and order. In his short story, “Hunting the Deceitful Turkey,” Mark Twain shows that surfeit, or excess, in anything leads to trouble. When…


The Enemy Within: Jean Raspail’s ‘The Camp of the Saints’ 50 Years Later

From the terrace of his home on the crest of a hill, an old professor peers through a spyglass at the scene unfolding below on the sand and waters of the Riviera. Calgues is his name—his ancestors built this house 300 years earlier—and he is studying the beginning of an extraordinary invasion: 100 ships and…


Book Review: ‘Crushed: Big Tech’s War on Free Speech’

Monopolies are nothing new in our capitalist economy, but as Colorado Congressman Ken Buck aptly illustrates in his book “Crushed: Big Tech’s War on Free Speech” (“Crushed”), Silicon Valley’s current monopoly is more dangerous than earlier ones. Today’s Big Tech monopoly is both an economic threat and a serious risk to democracy and future innovation….