I can’t recall who exactly recommended this to me when I first picked this up back in 2010 or 2011, but I do recall the cautionary note that they took as they described it and the author’s conclusions. The global recession had begun four years earlier, since which time I had just barely been able […]
5 Minute Review | Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages by Jean Gimpel
January 3, 2014 by
The medieval ages were far more like our modern age than we often think. The only thing that came to my mind prior to reading this book was knights and castles. Hardly a dark age as often portrayed, the period was full of industrial innovation, and Jean Gimpel makes an interesting survey of some of […]
Book Review | Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956 by Anne Applebaum
December 28, 2013 by
Perhaps what is most fascinating about the strange episode of human history under which the communist oppression of Eastern Europe falls is that it has gone so long without a comprehensive history of how it occurred. Anne Applebaum‘s Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956 appears to step into that gap, providing in-depth research and a […]
Book Review | An Edible History of Humanity by Tom Standage [Contributor]
December 27, 2013 by
Food is the nouveau topic to write about. Whether it’s an exposition on the mad genius that is Ferran Adrià, or the theological import of maize in the Mayan culture, food is where it’s at. In this vein, An Edible History of Humanity by Tom Standage examines food and its impact on the whole of human development. […]
Book Review | Guest of Honor: Booker T. Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, and the White House Dinner That Shocked a Nation by Deborah Davis [Contributor]
December 23, 2013 by
Some happenings are simultaneously obscure, interesting, and pregnant with historical import. When all of these elements come together, an exploration of the happening and how it shaped subsequent history cannot be anything but a great read. Such is the premise of Guest of Honor: Booker T. Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, and the White House Dinner That […]
Book Review | The Beautiful Tree by James Tooley [Contributor]
December 16, 2013 by
The Beautiful Tree is a book about what’s right with the world. Amazingly, what is right with the world is found in the slums of Nigeria, India, Kenya, China, and Zimbabwe. The poor educating themselves without government assistance is the name of the game. In the early 2000s author of The Beautiful Tree, James Tooley (a British […]
Review | The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die by Niall Ferguson
October 28, 2013 by
One of the most interesting books I’ve read in recent years was Niall Ferguson‘s Civilization: The West and the Rest, an examination of the extraordinary rise of Western Civilization relative to the rest of the world and the causes that seem to be at the root of its apparent decline. Ferguson’s newest book–The Great Degeneration: […]
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