Recent Reviews

17 March 2010 (287 words)

The Yiddish Policemen's Union (Michael Chabon)
- alternative history mystery in a Jewish state in Alaska

8 March 2010 (204)

The Oxford Murders (Guillermo Martinez)
- a serial killer with a mathematical bent

4 March 2010 (197)

Troubled Waters (Sarah Lazarus)
The Changing Fortunes of Whales and Dolphins

17 February 2010 (540)

Midnight Convoy and Other Stories (S. Yizhar)
- alfalfa, the 1948 war, and childhood inspiration

16 February 2010 (726)

Vietnam 1946 (Stein Tønnesson)
How the War Began

16 February 2010 (658)

Trick or Treatment? (Simon Singh, Edzard Ernst)
Alternative Medicine on Trial

16 February 2010 (403)

The Rest is Noise (Alex Ross)
Listening to the Twentieth Century

16 February 2010 (759)

The (Mis)behavior of Markets (Benoit Mandelbrot, Richard L. Hudson)
A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin, and Reward

14 February 2010 (332)

Vietnam (David Chanoff, Doan Van Toai)
A Portrait of its People at War

13 February 2010 (162)

A Case of Two Cities (Qiu Xiaolong)
An Inspector Chen Mystery

12 February 2010 (269)

A Corner of a Foreign Field (Fiona Waters)
The Illustrated Poetry of the First World War

11 February 2010 (291)

The Turkish Embassy Letters (Lady Mary Wortley Montagu)
- an aristocratic Englishwoman visits Ottoman Turkey

10 February 2010 (187)

The Murder Farm (Andrea Maria Schenkel)
- a brutal murder in post-war Germany

9 February 2010 (610)

Fireflies, Honey, and Silk (Gilbert Waldbauer)
- human uses of insects

4 February 2010 (312)

Austerity Britain, 1945-1951 (David Kynaston)
- a social history of post-war Britain

31 January 2010 (339)

Map Addict (Mike Parker)
A Tale of Obsession, Fudge and the Ordnance Survey

16 January 2010 (571)

Eurasian Crossroads (James A. Millward)
A History of Xinjiang

3 January 2010 (226)

Wonder (Hugo Claus)
- collaboration and confusion in post-war Flanders

1 January 2010 (200)

Puppet Theater in Contemporary Indonesia (Jan Mrazek)
New Approaches to Performance Events

31 December 2009 (329)

Under the Volcano (Cameron Forbes)
The Story of Bali

21 December 2009 (349)

Harvest of the Suburbs (Andrea Gaynor)
An Environmental History of Growing Food in Australian Cities

15 December 2009 (179)

Angkor (Dawn Rooney)
Cambodia's Wondrous Khmer Temples

13 December 2009 (418)

The Myth of the Holy Cow (D.N. Jha)
- the origins of cow veneration and vegetarianism in India

5 December 2009 (407)

Works Along the Way (Gisli Sigurdsson)
- notable Icelandic architecture in concrete

3 December 2009 (262)

*Angkor (Michael D. Coe)
And the Khmer Civilization

2 December 2009 (451)

*The Blind Owl (Sadegh Hedayat)
- "there are sores which slowly erode the mind in solitude"

27 November 2009 (172)

River of Time (Jon Swain)
- a memoir of Cambodia and Vietnam at war

4 November 2009 (377)

Under the Heel of the Dragon (Blaine Kaltman)
Islam, Racism, Crime, and the Uighur in China

31 October 2009 (334)

Birth of the Chess Queen (Marilyn Yalom)
- powerful women and chess in medieval Europe

26 October 2009 (612)

Vietnam: A Natural History (Sterling, Hurley, Minh)
- biogeography, flora and fauna, and conservation

21 October 2009 (173)

Q.E.D. (Burkard Polster)
Beauty in Mathematical Proof

14 October 2009 (592)

Japan to 1600 (William Wayne Farris)
A Social and Economic History

4 October 2009 (301)

Bartleby & Co. (Enrique Vila-Matas)
- writers who "prefer not to"

1 October 2009 (486)

Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone? (Mahmoud Darwish)
- "the premier poetic voice of the Palestinian people"

28 September 2009 (793)

The Story of French (Jean-Benoît Nadeau, Julie Barlow)
From Charlemagne to The Cirque du Soleil

20 September 2009 (379)

The Real Oliver Twist (John Waller)
Robert Blincoe: A Life That Illuminates a Violent Age

12 September 2009 (702)

Martyrdom in Islam (David Cook)
- from its genesis to modern radicals

30 August 2009 (242)

Little Man, What Now? (Hans Fallada)
- struggling to survive in Germany in the Great Depression

26 August 2009 (210)

Plants Don't Drink Coffee (Unai Elorriaga)
- intertwined stories about insects, rugby, love + carpentry

23 August 2009 (692)

Dirt (David R. Montgomery)
The Erosion of Civilizations

12 August 2009 (719)

*A Little Primer of Tu Fu (David Hawkes)
- an introduction to classical Chinese poetry

22 July 2009 (470)

MediaWiki (Daniel J. Barrett)
Wikipedia and Beyond

Full chronological listing (long)