All Purls. No Swine.
In 2010, the FBI rolled up a network of Russian spies living illegally and undercover in the United States. Press coverage focused on one spy captured, the exceedingly attractive Anna Chapman and they portrayed the illegals as a gang of inept klutzes, caught through their own carelessness. Spy Swap: The Humiliation of Russia’s Intelligence Services,… Continue reading Book Review by Seawriter: A Double Game with Double Agents
I learned yesterday from a Ricochet friend that his book, Operation Free Bird, has been published on Smashwords. After a hiccup or two I was able to download it, and have started reading it. Operation Free Bird is the sequel to Virga Joy, by the same author, and a book I recommended here late last… Continue reading Book Recommendation: Operation Free Bird
In January 1945 Major Donald J. Humphrey commanded a B-29 Superfortress. During a 1900-mile mission from India to bomb Singapore, his bomber was shot down over Malaya. Humphrey and four other members of the crew of Postville Express successfully parachuted out of the dying bomber. The rest of the crew failed to escape. 8 Miraculous Months… Continue reading Book Review by Seawriter: A Memoir of Endurance and Survival
In which my friend Seawriter calls his own number. My new book hits the bookstores today: The Vanished Texas Coast. (You can get it at Amazon or Arcadia Publishing if you cannot find it in your local bookstore.) It is a collection of short essays about incidents in Texas maritime history, linked by the theme that they are all… Continue reading Book Review by Seawriter: An Historian’s Search for Truth
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries London, England was the world’s greatest city. Even today it ranks in the top ten. London and the 17th Century: The Making of the World’s Greatest City, by Margarette Lincoln examines London’s most formative years; between the death of Queen Elizabeth I and the reign of King William III.… Continue reading Book Review by Seawriter: London During its Launch to Greatness
In the far future, civilization experiences a catastrophic collapse in the centuries-ago past. Jon of Dun Add is re-forging isolated pockets of human habitation into a unified and civilized whole. His Hall of Champions is a tool in this effort. This fellowship enforces justice across Jon’s realm. Pal is one of Jon’s newest knights, and… Continue reading Book Review by Seawriter: An Arthurian Tale in a Science Fiction Future
It is 1927. Prohibition is on and the stock market crash is in the future. Joe Rath is a catcher for the National League Baltimore Beacons. Pickoff, a novel by GP Hutchinson, opens with Joe heading off for the ballpark to join the team for a road trip to Chicago. Joe is a family man,… Continue reading Book Review by Seawriter: Baseball and Bootleggers in the Roaring Twenties
The European discovery of the Americas and the subsequent colonization of that land by Europeans was the most consequential occurrence of the last millennia. Two men prominent in that discovery’s opening events were Christopher Columbus and Hernando Cortés. Sword of Empire: The Spanish Conquest of the Americas from Columbus to Cortés, 1492-1529, by Donald E.… Continue reading Book Review by Seawriter: The Rise of the Conquistador
The British police procedural is one of the most popular forms of detective fiction. The twentieth century brought Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse and P. D. James’s Adam Dagliesh. There are many others, including some set in the nineteenth century. Queen of Swords, by Robert Mills, brings the genre into the twenty-first century. Senior nurse Jenny… Continue reading Book Review By Seawriter: A British Police Procedural Updated for the Present Time
Railroad rivalries played a significant role in nineteenth-century US history. No rivalry was as intense or bitter as the one between the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, and the Denver and Rio Grande railroads. At times it erupted into actual gunfire. From the River to the Sea: The Untold Story of the Railroad War That… Continue reading Book Review By Seawriter: From The River To The Sea–A Tale of a Real Shooting Railroad War