Patrick Fuliang Shan, “Yuan Shikai: A Reappraisal” (UBC Press, 2018)
When he was elected president of China in 1912, Yuan Shikai was hailed as his nation’s George Washington, yet four years later he would die as the leader of a country in turmoil after a failed bid to ...
7 Nov 201850min
Sue Prideaux, “I Am Dynamite!: A Life of Nietzsche” (Tim Duggan Books, 2018)
Like most philosophers, Friedrich Nietzsche is better known for his ideas than for the life he led. In I Am Dynamite!: A Life of Nietzsche (Tim Duggan Books, 2018), Sue Prideaux details the events of ...
24 Okt 201843min
Roland Philipps, “A Spy Named Orphan: the Enigma of Donald Maclean” (W.W. Norton, 2018)
Donald Maclean was one of the most treacherous and productive – for Moscow spies of the Cold War era and a key member of the infamous “Cambridge Five” spy ring, yet the complete extent of this shy, in...
23 Okt 20181h
Kathryn Fuller-Seeley, “Jack Benny and the Golden Age of American Radio Comedy” (U California Press, 2017)
Jack Benny was one of the first crossover stars in broadcast comedy, rising from the vaudeville circuit to star in radio, film, and television. Kathryn Fuller-Seeley chronicles Benny’s career in her b...
19 Okt 20181h 6min
David Pietrusza, “TR’s Last War: Theodore Roosevelt, the Great War, and a Journey of Triumph and Tragedy” (Lyons Press, 2018)
Teddy Roosevelt had one of the most colorful lives in the American history, but few have deeply explored his final years. Historian David Pietrusza does just that in TR’s Last War: Theodore Roosevelt,...
17 Okt 201858min
Paul Bjerk, “Julius Nyerere” (Ohio University Press, 2017)
Paul Bjerk’s compact biography Julius Nyerere, published as part of the Ohio Short Histories of Africa series follows closely on the heels of his monograph on the same subject – Building a Peaceful Na...
5 Okt 20181h 26min
David Stuttard, “Nemesis: Alcibiades and the Fall of Athens” (Harvard UP, 2018)
Among the many personages associated with the Peloponnesian War, none are as colorful as the Athenian general Alcibiades. In Nemesis: Alcibiades and the Fall of Athens (Harvard University Press, 2018)...
5 Okt 201853min
Ruth Gamble, “Reincarnation in Tibetan Buddhism: The Third Karmapa and the Invention of a Tradition” (Oxford UP, 2018)
Ruth Gamble’s Reincarnation in Tibetan Buddhism: The Third Karmapa and the Invention of a Tradition (Oxford University Press, 2018) is a thorough and accessible study on reincarnation, the tulku tradi...
21 Sep 201844min
