Category: Books

My nomadic friend at work dropped this on my desk a while back before heading to catch a cargo ship out of Kiel. We’d been discussing the madness of Nixon over coffee one day in order to avoid any actual work, and he reckoned I’d enjoy this, and he was right. It’s a riveting overview […]

Mortality by Christopher Hitchens My rating: 5 of 5 stars “I have decided to take whatever my disease can throw at me, and to stay combative even while taking the measure of my inevitable decline. I repeat, this is no more than what a healthy person has to do in slower motion. It is our […]

Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914 by Max Hastings My rating: 4 of 5 stars Having also read The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 by Christopher Munro Clark, I found ‘Catastrophe’ to be rather light on the lead up to war, particularly on the Serbian state and the personalities involved. Hastings excels […]

I haven’t allowed myself a new book in a while, largely due to the small mountain of unread books I already have. Still, I had to get one one the first war, given the year that’s in it. ‘Speccy Nation’ just slipped in there for nostaglia. Of course, the real reason I was bookshopping was […]