Six pivotal events set the course of history in the twentieth century. The emergence of the United States as the world’s preeminent economic and military power. The Bolshevik and Chinese Revolutions. World Wars I and II, often lumped together into a latter-day Thirty Years War. And decolonization, accelerated by the…

Fair warning: although the headline promises the “best books of 2022,” what follows is not a list of the best books published during the past year. Instead, I’ve chosen not to challenge the New York Times and every other mainstream publication that each year publishes its own best books list…

Fair warning: although the headline promises the “best nonfiction of 2022,” what follows is not a list of the best published during the past year. Instead, I’ve chosen not to compete with any reviewers who may imply they’ve read the many thousands of nonfiction books published in any given year…

To be clear, what follows is not a list of the best mysteries and thrillers published during the past year. Instead, I’ve decided not to copy those reviewers who imply they’ve read the many thousands of mysteries and thrillers published in any given year. Nobody, and no team of reviewers…

To be clear, what follows is not a list of the best science fiction published during the past year. Instead, I’ve chosen not to copy those reviewers who imply they’ve read the many thousands of science fiction novels published in any given year. Nobody, and no team of reviewers, can…

When you challenge the historical consensus fundamental to our understanding of the past, you’d better be prepared for trouble. And that’s exactly what Robert Stinnett got when he published Day of Deceit, purporting to tell the truth about Pearl Harbor. Picking up on a charge long ago rejected by most…

According to most expert observers of the intelligence community, James Jesus Angleton(1917–87) had long since descended into paranoia when he retired in 1974 after two decades as CIA chief of counterintelligence. During his last years in the service, Angleton had torn the agency apart in a futile search for a…

What comes first to mind when you think of Europe in the Middle Ages? Unending violence and unspeakable tortures? Babies and young children dying so often that parents would never dare to love them? Medical and surgical procedures so barbaric that ill or wounded people would have been better off…

On Sunday, October 9, 2022, the cover story in the New York Times Book Review featured Adam Hochschild’s American Midnight. Reviewer Thomas Meaney characterized the book as “masterly” and applauded its reminder that “there are other contenders than the period beginning in 2016 for the distinction of Darkest Years of…