August 11, 2026

5 Minute Book Review: “Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson

Isaacson’s biography is fascinating, covering warts and and moles along with his contributions and genius. With direct access to Jobs, his associates, rivals, and family, it is an incomparable work that will be the defining biography for decades to come.

I suppose there are a lot of ways to look at Steve Jobs. However you view him, though, it’s hard to dispute his success in technology, design, and animation. Not quite an inventor or engineer, Jobs thought himself more an artist, and perhaps he was. He had an attention to detail and a vision of minimalism that allowed him to build great products that changed how we compute, listen to music, and make purchases, to say nothing of his contributions to the digital animation industry with Pixar. [cont…]

Book Review: “Civilization: the West and the Rest” by Niall Ferguson

With that flippant, matter of fact, almost “devil may care” attitude then, Ferguson determines to take the reader through a grand narrative of the last five hundred years, identifying six “killer apps” that Western civilization adopted to rise to a dominance unmatched in breadth and duration in human history. It is this broad overview, as told in Ferguson’s urgent and quick witted voice, that makes the extended argument so interesting and in an age of multicultural relativism, refreshing.

Short Book Review: “Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America, and International Terrorism” by John K. Cooley

Citing the US as a culprit in the quagmire, a significant amount of responsibility is placed on the actions of the Pakistani intelligence services. Controlled by religious ideologues, the Pakistani intelligence services operated nearly autonomously from other Pakistani government branches, and often in opposition to stated policy. [cont…]

Book Review: “1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created” by Charles C. Mann

In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” But what happened next?

More than just the discovery of the new world that we call the Americas, Christopher Columbus set off globalization of ecology, trade, biology, and nationality beyond anything that preceded it, argues Charles Mann in “1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created.” The discovery of America did more than just uncover lands previously unseen or mapped by Europeans. It set adrift the then current order of the entire world. [cont…]

Book Review: “Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft, and World Order” by Charles Hill

IIn Hill’s eye, fiction is more than just a story. In literature, we see the great ideas and forces that move history worked out, argued, and recorded. The “international world of states and their modern system is a literary realm,” he argues. “[I]t is where the greatest issues of the human condition are played out.” Nothing may come closer to a thesis for his opus. [cont…]

Book Review: “1421” by Gavin Menzies

On a scale of 1 to 10, this book is junk.

It’s rare that I would waste space blasting a book. Life is short and time is a scarce resource. I’d rather just drop a book unworthy of finishing and move on to a new one. This time, though, I think 1421 merits further explanation because of the sensational success it has experienced worldwide.

Simply put, 1421 is junk history posing as “real history.” [cont…]

Book Review: “Rubicon” by Tom Holland

I recently finished “Rubicon” by Tom Holland. What follows is first the Publisher’s Weekly review, because it gives a good summary of the book, and then my thoughts on this excellent book. After a palace coup demolished the reign of King Tarquin of Rome in 509 B.C., a republican government flourished, providing every person an […]