by envisionmg | Jun 12, 2015 | History, Jim Reviews
By Jim When I first saw Michael Pye’s The Edge of the World: A Cultural History of the North Sea and the Transformation of Europe I though “huh I don’t really know anything about life around the medieval North Sea.” And that’s kind of...
by envisionmg | Jun 5, 2015 | Fiction, Jim Reviews
By Jim The great thing about Scott Lynch’s Lies of Locke Lamora (Book 1 of the Gentlemen Bastards series. Followed by Red Seas Under Red Skies and Republic of Thieves) is that it incorporates great character development, world building and lots of plot twists. Since I...
by envisionmg | May 18, 2015 | History, Jim Reviews
By Jim Now that we are through the first year of the hundred year anniversary of World War 1 I thought it would be interesting to read a history of that first year of the war. So I picked up Peter Hart’s Fire and Movement: The British Expeditionary Force and the...
by envisionmg | Apr 27, 2015 | History, Jim Reviews, YA
by Jim The obvious hook of Georg Rauch’s memoir Unlikely Warrior: A Jewish Soldier in Hitler’s Army is how did a Jew end up in the German army in World War II? Until I read this book I would have thought it was impossible, but apparently it was a thing...
by envisionmg | Apr 15, 2015 | Historical Fiction, Jim Reviews
By Jim On the surface, Perez-Reverte’s The Siege is an historical fiction mystery set in Cadiz, Spain during the siege of that city by a Napoleonic army. However the story has much more depth and complexity than a straight-up murder mystery....
by envisionmg | Mar 11, 2015 | Historical Fiction, Jim Reviews
By Jim David Flusfeder’s novel John the Pupil has been repeatedly compared to Umberto Eco’s fiction. The similarity is definitely there. The story is about John, a young Franciscan monk in 1267 Oxford studying under the English philosopher Roger Bacon...
