Tag Archives: book review

A Woman In Berlin

Posted on September 21, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

This anonymously written diary was kept between April 20th and June 22nd 1945 by a single thirty-something journalist in Berlin, and describes first-hand the utter collapse of German power in the capital of the Reich and the coming of the … Continue reading →

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The Pianist

Posted on August 8, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

This autobiographical tale by Władysław Szpilman is another staggering account of the holocaust, this one by a Polish Jew. A nationally known concert pianist living in a Jewish area of Warsaw with his parents, brother and two sisters, after the Germans … Continue reading →

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Imperium

Posted on August 6, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

Ryszard Kapuściński was a Polish reporter who was sometimes accused of a certain, well, embellishment. It’s true that this astonishing book about the end of the Soviet empire has its moments of what might be described as magical journalism: a … Continue reading →

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This Way for The Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen

Posted on July 29, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

Tadeusz Borowski, who wrote these stories, lived through Auschwitz somehow, and left sharply told tales of hell behind. There is nothing to say about them by way of commentary; they just need to be read. But his guilt (one has … Continue reading →

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Love and Garbage

Posted on July 27, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

A novel by the Czech writer Ivan Klima, written in the early 1980s: mostly garbage, actually. He’s very good on garbage: he describes well the environmental pollution of Prague and its environs by the communist regime, and how they also … Continue reading →

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I Served The King Of England

Posted on July 27, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

This novel by the Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal, written in 1971, consists of a series of impossible anecdotes strung around the life of the narrator, a waiter in Bohemia during the years around the Second World War. At first it’s … Continue reading →

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The American Future

Posted on April 19, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

A curious title for what is a work of thematic history about America interspersed with passages of personal reminiscence, but Simon Schama’s book was written during the 2008 election, those days of surging hope when it seemed the US might … Continue reading →

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Storms of My Grandchildren

Posted on April 13, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

This first book by James Hansen, the dean of American climate scientists and the man who introduced a mass audience to the concept of “global warming” in a Congressional hearing nearly a quarter of a century ago, was published right … Continue reading →

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The God Delusion

Posted on February 25, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

I suppose how you receive Richard Dawkins might depend on where you start from. A lot of his points about the folly of religious thinking in this book seem perfectly reasonable, if not unarguable, to the point where it almost … Continue reading →

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Falling Off The Edge

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

A book by Alex Perry, foreign correspondent with Time Magazine, published in 2008. It’s an account (sometimes self-promoting, but then considering the extremes to which he has gone in the service of his trade, it’s not hard to forgive him … Continue reading →

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