Category: Books/Museum Reviews

  • Pax by Tom Holland

    Brendan’s Alternate Tagline for Pax: Congrats on becoming emperor. You’ll be dead soon. Quick synopsis: A look at the Roman Empire at the height of its power. Fact for Non-History People: Nero married a lookalike of his dead wife. Not strange except this person was a man who Nero forced surgery upon to remove…. well,…

  • One Fine Day by Matthew Parker

    Brendan’s Alternate Tagline for One Fine Day: It wasn’t fine for everybody. Quick synopsis: A look at the time when the British Empire was at its zenith. Fact for Non-History People: The British Empire on this one fine day covered nearly 14 million square miles which is a quarter of the world’s land area. Fact…

  • Battle of Ink and Ice by Darrell Hartman

    Brendan’s Alternate Tagline for Battle of Ink and Ice: I’d rather go to the Arctic than a newsroom. Quick synopsis: The story of the newspaper wars around the expeditions to the North Pole by Robert Peary and Frederick Cook. Fact for Non-History People: For years, the New York Times was boring on purpose. Fact for…

  • The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel by Douglas Brunt

    Brendan’s Alternate Tagline for The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel: The engine’s name is truly apt. Quick synopsis: The life and mysterious death of the creator of the Diesel engine, Rudolf Diesel. Fact for Non-History People: By 1885, there were only 250,000 electric light bulbs in America. By 1902, there were 18 million. Fact for…

  • Flee North by Scott Shane

    Brendan’s Alternate Tagline for Flee North: Thomas Smallwood is the KING of trolling 1800s slaveowners. Quick synopsis: The story of an extremely successful branch of the Underground Railroad in the 1840s. Fact for Non-History People: After helping slaves escape, Smallwood would write and articles that Torrey published mocking the slaveowners for “losing” their slaves. Again,…

  • The Six by Loren Grush

    Brendan’s Alternate Tagline for The Six: Space: yet another place I have no intention of visiting. Quick synopsis: The story of the first six female astronauts at NASA. Fact for Non-History People: A totally of 8,079 people applied to be astronauts between 1976 and 1977. Fact for History Nerds: From 1950 to 1960, women represented…

  • To Besiege a City by Prit Buttar

    Brendan’s Alternate Tagline for To Besiege a City: I hate being forced to root for the Soviets. Quick synopsis: A look at the first two years of the siege of Leningrad in World War II. Fact for Non-History People: The Germans took about 5.7 million Soviet soldiers prisoner during World War II. About 3.3 million…

  • Bitter Peleliu by Joseph Wheelan

    Brendan’s Alternate Tagline for Bitter Peleliu: “Bitter” is putting it mildly. Quick synopsis: The story of the Battle of Peleliu in World War II. Fact for Non-History People: Japanese engineers created over 500 caves on the island before the battle. Fact for History Nerds: The Black Marine unit on Peleliu had the highest casualty rate…

  • Pure Wit by Francesca Peacock

    Brendan’s Alternate Tagline for Pure Wit: Pure indifference to people’s opinions, as well. Quick synopsis: A biography of Margaret Cavendish, an author in 1600s England. Fact for Non-History People: The title of a pamphlet in this time period for context, “The Arraignment of Lewd, Idle, Froward, and Unconstant Woman.” Fact for History Nerds: Cavendish was…