I read a lot of books and don’t watch much television. Unfortunately, I don’t finish a lot of the books I start reading because they turn out to be inferior. But I got lucky this summer and hit a streak of good fiction and nonfiction. I’m currently reading the book above, which was written in 1957. It opens with a quote from Winston Churchill: “This was a secret war, whose battles were lost or won unknown to the public… No such warfare had ever been waged by mortal men.” Then the author, Gerald Pawle, goes on to prove Churchill right. It’s a fascinating read, especially the mishaps and failures involved in developing new and sometimes outrageous weapons.
Recently Recently Read Fiction:
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- I have stopped reading John Grisham, Lee Child, C. J. Box, and a few other top crime writers who have fallen victim to writing the same book over and over. But not Michael Connelly, who remains innovative and is the best crime writer in the world.
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- With the possible exception of Phillip Kerr and the Bernie Gunther novels in a post-World War Two world. They are ingenious, exciting, and moving. This one is set in Nazi-infested Argentina in 1950.
Recently Read Nonfiction:
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- This ghastly story is quite different from The Lost City of Z, but still reveals David Grann’s extraordinary talent in revealing the murders for profit.
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- This is a great story that survives the author, who’s not a particularly good writer. But the dramatic tale of the recovery of 44 tons of World War One gold from the ocean off the coast of Ireland is a tense and thrilling one.
