Where is your nonfiction section please.
Not to sound like a cliched ancient person, but even given the surreal circumstances, this year is positively flying by, isn't it? I can't even fathom that we've already made it halfway. And yet we have! These are my favorite new releases of the nonfiction published between January and June 2020. What's been your favorite... Continue Reading →
Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West, by Catherine Belton You in the West, you think you’re playing chess with us. But you’re never going to win, because we’re not following any rules. Vladimir Putin seemingly came out of the shadows to run Russia and he's managed to... Continue Reading →
Book review: Surviving Autocracy, by Masha Gessen (Amazon / Book Depository) Journalist and author Masha Gessen lived through the changes of the Soviet Union, including Putin's ascendancy and increasing control over the state media. She's reported and written extensively about totalitarianism and the relationship of Putin's Russia with the west. In Surviving Autocracy, she turns her... Continue Reading →
Russians Among Us, by Gordon Corera (Amazon / Book Depository) In July 2010, on the tarmac of the Vienna International Airport, the biggest spy swap since the Cold War took place. Ten Russian undercover agents who had been living in the US, some representing a new era in espionage by using their own names instead... Continue Reading →
How to Feed a Dictator, by Witold Szabłowski, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Amazon / Book Depository) Polish journalist Witold Szabłowski saw a movie about army cooks that featured Branko Trbovic, the personal cook to Marshal Josip Broz Tito, "the absolute ruler of Yugoslavia" and describes it as being a lightbulb moment: "I started wondering what... Continue Reading →
Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction, by David Enrich (Amazon / Book Depository) This is the story of Deutsche Bank’s rise and fall. It is about the men who transformed a sleepy German lender into what was, for a time, the largest bank in the world, but who also... Continue Reading →
Book review: The Romanovs, by Simon Sebag Montefiore (Amazon / Book Depository) Marx wrote that 'History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.' This was witty but far from true. History is never repeated, but it borrows, steals, echoes and commandeers the past to create a hybrid, something unique out of the ingredients of... Continue Reading →
One post of new nonfiction to look forward to is never enough, so here's a second roundup of some upcoming titles in 2020 that have caught my eye. This time I've got macabre science stories, tales of obsession, badass women of World War II, current social and political commentary, multiple trips to Paris and Siberia,... Continue Reading →
2019 hasn't shown itself out quite yet but I'm already looking forward to what new nonfiction 2020 has in store. Here are some upcoming new releases from the new decade that I have my eye on. F*ck Your Diet: And Other Things My Thighs Tell Me, by Chloé Hilliard (January 7) --Hilliard was cursed with... Continue Reading →
