Most Recent Articles
Literary historical fiction: C.M. Mayo’s Last Prince of the Mexican Empire
Highly recommended to readers of historical fiction drawn to either a mother’s relentless quest to regain her child or to a convincing example of self-delusional hubris among the on-high.
Read MoreBest histories and biographies read during 2015
First post in a good while. Been busy polishing up my manuscript, The Girl in the Iron Box: Tucson’s 1934 June Robles Kidnapping, & the Myth of J. Edgar Hoover’s Infallible FBI, and sending it off to a publisher for consideration. More on this in a future post. Here is my annual list of best biographies and histories read during the previous year. As in recent years, I have been reconnecting with aspects of European (including Beatles!) history that held my interest prior to my own turn to writing Southwest Borderlands history. Winston S. Churchill, Marlborough: His Life and Times, Vol III: 1705-1708. This 4-volume biography, certainly Churchill’s finest work of history (rather than memoir), just keeps getting better and better. Winston’s ancestor, John Churchill, the 1st Duke of Marlborough, was condemned to live in interesting times, never more so than during the years covered by Volume III. Arguably England’s greatest general ever, he scored several impressive victories in the War of the Spanish Succession over the previously unbeatable armies of the Sun King, Louis XIV, all the while having to fend off the undermining efforts of Great Britain’s Dutch, Austrian, Prussian, and other allies. At the same time, he was forced to fight a losing battle with both Tory and Whig politicians for influence with...
Read MorePart III of III: How Many Books Did Winston Churchill Write?
In 1974, in Sword and Pen: A Survey of the Writings of Sir Winston Churchill, author Mannfred Weidhorn listed 33 books written by Winston Churchill. This was nine years after Churchill’s death, so you’d think the listing would be comprehensive. But it isn’t. There are more. Here we go. 1940: Addresses Delivered in the Year Nineteen Hundred and Forty to the People of Great Britain, of France, and to the Members of the English House of Commons, by the...
Read MoreHow Many Books Did Winston Churchill Write – Part II
Winston Churchill was a busy man. He gallivanted around the British Empire as both British cavalry officer and, simultaneously, war correspondent, sat over the course of seven decades in Parliament, holding virtually every cabinet post in the British government, from First Lord of the Admiralty to Prime Minister (twice), and saved the world from Hitler in a way no other person on the planet could have done. He wooed prospective brides, downed mass quantities of champagne, painted hundreds of...
Read MoreHow Many Books Did Winston Churchill Write?
Suppose you wanted to read, or decided to collect, all the books written by Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill. Statesman, politician, soldier, writer, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and generally regarded as the man who saved Western Civilization. How many titles would you read? How many volumes? How many would you have to purchase? Well, google, go to this website listing or that, count the titles, count the volumes, and you have your number. Or do you?...
Read MoreReading the Wars of the Roses: The Original Game of Thrones
Let us… tell sad stories of the death of Kings (Shakespeare’s Richard II, Act III, Scene 2) Take away Daenerys Targaryen’s dragons, the superhuman White Walkers, and their the zombie-like minions, and George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire has a lot in common with England’s Wars of the Roses (1455-1487), an epic event Martin himself has identified as a key historical inspiration for his fantasy saga. Both stories involve complex, multi-generational, personal, dynastic, and military conflicts...
Read MoreTen Best Histories and Biographies Read During 2014
The list begins with Napoleon: A Life, the best book I read in 2014, and certainly the most impressive literary achievement among all the books listed. Runner-up is A Misplaced Massacre, a mesmerizing example of creative non-fiction. The final eight are listed in chronological order of subject matter, from ancient to modern. *NAPOLEON: A LIFE by Andrew Roberts: My library contains some 250 books on the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. I thought I’d read virtually everything worth knowing,...
Read More