Good Reads...Period

Historical Fiction

Gillian Bradshaw has written both Arthurian (Hawk of May, Kingdom of Summer) and conventional historical fiction (The Bearkeepr's Daughter covers Theodora, wife of the Emperor Justinian). Her most recent is Island of Ghosts. Render unto Caesar by Gillian Bradshaw. Solidly grounded historical story, with a quick thinking Greek trying to collect a debt of honor in Augustan Rome. A good follow-on to her medieval The Wolf Hunt.

Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe series is also well done. Action, but not too much gore; romance, but neither mush nor explicit details. From Sharpe's Rifles : Richard Sharpe and the French Invasion of Galicia, January 1809 to Sharpe's Revenge : Richard Sharpe and the Peace of 1814, Sharpe rises from outcast to leader and finally to peace. My 13 year old is now reading the series too. Good for reluctant male readers.

Dorothy Dunnett has not one but two superb series of historical fiction. The House of Nicolo series follows the chameleon Nicholas /Niccolo /Claes as he rises from apprentice to master merchant to world banker, all the time exploring the world from Timbuktu to Moscow. The series starts with Niccolo Rising and is currently on Caprice and Rondo (volume six). Dunnett's other series concerns Lymond of Crawford, a Scots nobleman who plays a deadly and convoluted game through several volumes. Every page is great and there are thousands of them. Who could ask for anything more? Starts with The Game of Kings. Definitely read them in order.

Conn Iggulden's Emperor: the gates of Rome plays fast and loose with the facts in the interests of drama. Personally, I get distracted when someone writes historical fiction and the story bends major facts (he has Sulla kill Marius). Worth watching, but not as close to my reading profile. I like historical fiction that hews the line on what is known.

Gary Jennings writes historical fiction with a twist, exploring the underbelly of a society. If you don't mind incest, hermaphrodites and genocide, he does keep your interest. Aztec covers the end of the Empire, Spangle follows a Civil War era circus and Raptor takes place in Visigothic Europe.

Longnecker, Bruce W. The lost letters of Pergamum. The author uses the frame of letters between Luke (the evangelist) and a Romanized nobleman to explore what life was like in the first century in the cradle of Christianity. The style may be anachronistic, but it is a great way to explore the times.

Colleen McCullough's excellent series on ancient Rome, starting with Marius, then Sulla and on to Julius Caesar. Heavyweight fiction, with loads of historical details. Starts with The First Man in Rome and is presently up to Caesar : Let the Dice Fly

The True Account : A Novel of the Lewis and Clark and Kinneson Expeditions by Howard Mosher. Follow True Kinneson as he beats Lewis and Clark to the Pacific. Call it Little Big Man Lite, just as long as that is not faint praise.

Patrick O'Brian's fine series of naval stories featuring Stephen Maturin and Jack Aubrey. Now at over twenty titles, it is like Hornblower as if written by Jane Austen. Plenty of authentic battles and seafaring, but the focus in on character and storytelling. the series starts with Master and Commander and runs through The Hundred Days. Sadly, O'Brian's death ended the series with Blue at the Mizzen, just when it looked like the Napoleonic series might extend to the American Civil War.

.At swim, two boys by Jamie O'Neill is a hard book to do justice to. "Massive, enthralling, and brilliant debut" - yes. Enough Irish dialect that some will need a dictionary - yes. History, philosophy and the Easter Rising. Not your average book at all, at all. As good as the reviews say and maybe better.

Sharon Kay Penman has a marvelous series on the interaction between Wales and England, covering the last princes of Wales and their defeat by the English. Detailed, romantic without mush, a joy to read. Her last historical title was When Christ and His Saints Slept, but she has now turned to historical mysteries with equally fine results. Two of her most recent are Queen's Man and Cruel as the Grave.

Steven Pressfield's Last of the amazons does an excellent job of extrapolating from the sketchy writing about the Amazons and gets in their skins in a feat of world building that makes most science fiction writers jealous. Highly recommended. His earlier Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae and Tides of War: A Novel of Alcibiades and the Peloponnesian War are gritty and realistic. Not for the squeamish or readers of period romances.

Simon Scarrow's Under the Eagle and The Eagle's Conquest follow a centurion and his aide in Vespasian's legion.  The action is more like Sharpe - battles mixed with lots of period detail, but the paired heroes provide a nice contrast. A good read even if you don't know that Vespasian is destined to be the last man standing during the Year of Three Emperors, giving this series a lot of history to cover.

Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson. Another direct hit on my reading profile. Historical fiction with a sharp sense of otherness. Newton, Hooks, Puritans and a Glorious Revolution as they never appear in history books. Funny, deep, long (vol. 1 of 3).  Science fiction readers could view this as an exercise in world building. All I could ask for. Volume 2 is The Confusion (NY Times bestseller). The System of the World provides that rarest of experiences, a trilogy finale that doesn't disappoint.

David Wingrove's Chung K'uo series is considered science fiction, but it closely resembles historical fiction. A wide sweep, dozens of characters, exotic locales, power politics and a world in transition. The difference is that it takes place in the future, not the past. No matter. The series starts with Chung Kuo : The Middle Kingdom and the first six volumes are great. The seventh (Marriage of the Living Dark) disappoints and may reflect the premature ending of the series.

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's St. Germain series is usually not considered historical fiction because the lead character is a vampire, but the terror in these books comes from humans, not the humane vampires. It is not necessary to read the series in any order, since they were not written chronologically. the "oldest" is Out of the House of Life, which covers St.Germain's origins, but other titles cover the Black Death (Blood Roses) or Revolutionary Russia (Writ in Blood). The latest is Night Blooming, which deals with Charlemagne's reign. Even newer is In the Face of Death which follows a female vampire who meets Gen. Sherman.  A companion series follows a Roman lady who St. Germain saves and who provides an interesting counterpoint to his male view. Yarbro can't quite seem to evade blaming religion for everything that has gone wrong throughout history, but they are entrancing books.

Soon's Historical Fiction Site
Links to usenet FAQ, authors, online bibliographies, everything a reader could ask for.

Historical Mysteries

Steven Saylor's Gordianus series is also set in Rome (Julius Caesar's), but is more serious. Not that there aren't memorable characters and wonderful scenes, but the history is more dense and definitely not anachronistic. These people's concerns, values and actions seem foreign and part of their time. Some titles in the series are Arms of  Nemesis, Catilina's Riddle and Rubicon. Also by Saylor is A Twist at the End : a novel of O. Henry. Saylor  leaves ancient Rome to follow Will Porter before he becomes O. Henry. Excellent for all who like their history and mystery.

Caleb Carr has written two enormous historical mystery novels, The Alienist and Angel of Darkness. Both are heavy on history and psychology. Excellent work! He is also the author of a book on terrorism, The Lessons of Terror: A History of Warfare Against Civilians: Why It Has Always Failed and Why It Will Fail Again.

Sharon Kay Penman's medieval mysteries were mentioned above.

Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael stories are nice and good reading, but are mainly British village mysteries wearing the clothes of another time. In short, they pass the time, without particularly conveying the sense of the place.

Max Allen Collin's  stories follow Nate Heller as he tags along as investigator on many high profile cases of the 1930's. Check out Kisses of Death, Majic Man and Carnal Hours. He also does an Elliot Ness series, which I haven't tried.

James Ellroy makes 1950's LA come alive in all it's seamy glory. Violent, noir deluxe and a guilty pleasure. Go beyond L.A. Confidential and try White Jazz and The Big Nowhere.

Stuart Kaminsky sets his hilarious Toby Peters movie detective series in LA, but it is mostly fun and games, with cameos by the stars thrown in. Some titles are You bet your life, A fatal glass of beer and Murder on the yellow brick road. All are out of print.

Justice Hall by Laurie King. One of the Mary Russell series. Russell is Sherlock Holmes' wife, who was first "The Beekeeper's Apprentice." Excellent writing, great characters, involved plots that manage to be almost secondary to the narrative. The exact opposite of so many formulaic mystery series. Patrick O'Brian or Dorothy Sayers would be the only apt comparison.

Edward Marston uses a Shakespearean era theater troupe as his setting, providing interesting background to go with rather conventional mysteries. Some titles are The Queen's Head, The nine giants and The merry devils.

Walter Mosley also looks at the underbelly of society, following black sometime detective Easy Rawlins through his troubles. Try Devil in a blue dress, Gone fishing and A little yellow dog.

The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl. Longfellow, James Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes and others are forced to track a killer imposing Dante's punishments of the powerful of Boston. Exquisitely written, historically plausible. The best historical mystery since Carr's The Alienist.

The River God's Revenge by John Maddox Roberts. Number eight in a series set in the end days of the Roman Republic, featuring a junior senator. Good accuracy and feel for the time.

Dorothy L. Sayers did not write historical mysteries, but her books remain exceptional and carry the flavor of their days. Lord Peter Whimsey is worth reading and re-reading. Try Lord Peter views the body, The nine tailors and Gaudy night.

There are many more (Ann Perry, Elizabeth Peters, etc). who are fine writers, but not to my taste.

Fiction and Mysteries

Dead Soul by James D. Doss. Librarians live for read-alikes. Doss is like Tony Hillerman, though with important differences. His hero, Charlie Moon, is older, works solo and often unofficially and is a Ute, not a Navajo. The whole point of read-alikes is not that the authors are the same, but that they share characteristics, often the ones that readers value. That's true here, since both Hillerman and Doss can tell a story.

The curious incident of the dog in the night time by Mark Haddon. I don't list too many best sellers, but this one meets my standards. Full of information about something I am only vaguely aware (autism), a mystery and without the implausibility that I can't abide.

Ice run by Steve Hamilton. I thought I knew my reading profile. One major tenet is "no crime close to home", so that serial killers are OK if they live in another country or time. Turns out that was not quite right. It actually is "no crime that is ripped from the headlines." If I can see it on TV (news or Law and Order), then why bother to read it? Hamilton's Alex McKnight series showed me the error of my ways. It is set in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (I used to be a Yooper and one of my sons is a born Yooper)) and features reluctant detective and recovering police officer Alex McKnight. All six books in the series are wonderful. 

Kilbrack by Jamie O'Neil. This is a tough one to describe and do it justice. How about Playboy of the Western World meets Confederacy of Dunces? An amnesiac wanders into Kilbrack looking for the author of the book that obsesses him - then the fun begins. Laugh out loud/roll on the floor. 

Strip Jack by Ian Rankin. An Inspector Rebus mystery. Not his most recent, but one I could get easily on tape. Much of my mystery reading is on tape (or vice versa). Competent police procedural with quirky characters and a taste of Scotland (home of the Barnetts).

Persepolis : the story of a childhood  and Persepolis : the story of a return by Marjane Satrapi. For all those who think graphic novels are all about anime, a biography of growing up in Iran during the revolution and then returning as an adult to a changed world. Maybe not Maus, but certainly exceptional.

Winding River by Jeff Weir. It is good to read beyond your favorite genres. From the minute I picked this up, I knew what kind of book it was. A lawyer based cozy, not that much different from Jan Karon's work. I hate cozies. New lawyer comes to work in a small northern town. Highjinks ensue. He is destined to marry the judge's daughter, become reconciled to the slow pace of life and find rewards in helping people in their everyday life. Despite myself, this one worked for me, probably because I am the son of a small town lawyer who could have been a character in this book. Recommended for all cozy readers, those who love the Northwoods and children of lawyers. Two out of three ain't bad.

Science Fiction

American Gods by Neil Gaiman. The very English author of graphic novels writes about America and specifically, the Upper Midwest, where he now lives. Agreeably strange to read about Odin wandering about Muscoda and the House on the Rock.

The Sandman series by Neil Gaiman. The ten books of the graphic novel series hit my spot, as does his The Books of Magic. Mythmaking at its best.

Robert Holdstock is an award winning author whose work is classed as fantasy, but is more in the nature of mythology. His latest - Celtika - is the first in the Merlin Codex seriies. Expect Medea and her children to be continuing characters. His earlier work deserves the awards it has won.

Distraction / Bruce Sterling. Don't let the SF tag put you off. This novel is chock full of interesting ideas and great lines, such as "Next we had an Information Age, but it turned out that the real killer apps for computer networks are social disruption and software piracy." The plot follows a hardwired political spin doctor through the wreckage of 2044. Sterling's other work is exceptional extrapolative SF without being "hard" or ignoring the human.

Connie Willis is always worth reading. Whether she is providing social comment (Bellwether), having fun with a time travel series (To Say Nothing of the Dog) or writing "serious" science fiction (Lincoln's dream), I have never been disappointed in her work. Enuf said. Her latest (Passage) is one of the few books (and certainly the only one about near death experiences) to move me to tears. 

C.J. Cherryh writes complex fantasy, alien centered stories and a future history series that includes Downbelow Station, Finity's End and Hellburner that explores a humanity split and in rebellion.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. Touted as Harry Potter for adults, this features an imagined Napoleonic Era England where magic is being reawakened. Fine alternative history, but not quite as much to my taste as John Crowley (Little, Big and Demonomania). I don't want to damn it by faint praise, as it is an excellent read and more mainstream than Crowley.

Non-Fiction

Koba the Dread : Laughter and the Twenty Million by Martin Amis. Brief, to the point and utterly damning. Amis looks at Stalin and finds a match for any monster the human race has ever thrown up. History as only a talented novelist could write it.

Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides by Christian Appy. The book that Studs Terkel would have written if he were 20 years younger. Based on hundreds of interviews with a minimum of editorializing. Propulsive reading for those who don't remember or have put it out of their minds.

Citizenship papers by Wendell Berry. Essays on what it means to be a citizen, the importance of community, the evils of globalization, etc. Not really a political book, because it is much deeper than that. This is a book that can change your mind and even your life. Read at your own risk.

J.R.R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth: understanding Middle-earth by Bradley Birzer. A fresh look at Tolkien for who he was, a Catholic who loved myth and hated allegory, a soldier in the Great War, a teacher. An unexamined LOR is not worth reading. Personally, I also am bored by fantasy, unless it touches myth, thus Holdstock and Gaiman, but not Goodkind or Robert Jordan.

In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made by Norman Cantor. Many histories of the period virtually skip over the Black Death, but Cantor traces its causes, immediate impact and long term consequences. Popular history at its best. 

Big lies: the right wing propaganda machine and how it distorts the truth by Joe Conason. From the co-author of The hunting of the president (not reviewed). Tired of the shrill cries of treason? Take a look at the actual vast right wing conspiracy that controls America's media.

Guns, germs and steel : the fates of human societies/ Jared Diamond . The author tries to explain why Europeans and Americans have so much and the rest of the world has so little by looking at the root causes of the  inequity, starting with the Ice Age. Accessible and sweeping.

Stand Up, Fight Back: Republican Toughs, Democratic Wimps and the Politics of Revenge by E.J. Dionne.  Written (and ignored) as a guide to Dems for 2004, Dionne's work has lasting merit in trying to restore some balance to our divided country. Though his prescriptions ring true, he almost totally ignores abortion as an issue.

American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson and Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generationby Joseph J. Ellis. - Everyone loves Jefferson and Ellis knows why. He follows that with insightful capsule views of the founding generation.

Lies and the Lying Liars who tell them by Al Franken.  A book for the whole family (at least my whole family). If the media is so left wing, why is Franken almost the only liberal voice among the talk show babble? Quick and enjoyable.

Stasiland : true stories from behind the Berlin Wall by Anna Funder. An Aussie takes a look at the personal costs of living in a vast prison camp and how the Stasi (East German secret police) sought to control everyday life and create a nation of informers.

Chain of Command : the road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib by Seymour Hersh. Americans have great amnesia. Give us three years and we forget our own past. We want our leaders to be truthful and want to believe them so, even when they are not.  As the joke goes, "Who you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?" Hersh condenses his reportage from the last four years and the results are damning.

.Rubicon : The Last Years of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland. A look at the events leading up to the end of the Roman Republic, an era that is mined for lessons about empire and plots for fiction. Very solid, readable.

La Belle cuisine / Patti La Belle. Even the One Librarian has to eat and Patti has the BEST Macaroni and Cheese recipe on this planet.

The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity by Philip Jenkins is another eye opener. More Anglicans in South Africa than England? More active Catholics in Peru than Italy? Will the growth in impoverished countries balance the fading of Christianity in affluent Europe? A worthy follow-up to his Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way.

Beyond tolerance: child pornography on the Internet by Philip Jenkins. Child porn is one of the few things our relativistic society universally condemns. Since we so rarely see arrests, it is easy to think that there is not a problem anymore. Jenkins strength is that he looks at problems sideways - focusing on how they are constructed and refusing to accept conventional wisdom. He found a significant child porn subculture, which law enforcement is helpless to stop and therefore ignores. He stresses the importance of framing issues properly, which is hard to do in today's sensationalistic media driven world. He also points out that if we as a society are unable to make a dent in something like child porn, we have little hope of controlling other criminal or socially harmful uses of electronic communications. As Bruce Sterling wrote in Distraction,  "it turned out that the real killer apps for computer networks are social disruption and software piracy." 

The real Jesus : the misguided quest for the historical Jesus and the truth of the traditional gospels by Luke Timothy Johnson. Along with Jenkins, a good guide to how far the "historical Jesus" crowd have wandered into self promotion. A good read when the Da Vinci people want to change history and recreate Gnosticism in their own image.

Of Paradise and Power: America Vs. Europe in the New World Order by Robert Kagan is an expansion of his article Power and Weakness in Policy Review. Since the article is a well written 20 (28 in the pdf version) pages, you might want to skip the book, though all libraries should buy it. Kagan attempts to explain why Europe and the U.S. no longer share a world view. Much more than America is from Mars, based on an analysis of the competing values and realpolitik that separates us, without demonizing either side, not even those cheese eating surrender monkeys. 

Homegrown Democrat : a few plain thoughts from the heart of America by Garrison Keillor. Droll and deadpan, Keillor dissects the Republicans, with their "I got mine" attitude. They would definitely not be welcome in Lake Wobegon. Funny and dead serious. 

Under the Banner of Heaven : A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer. A look at the origins of the Mormon religion and present day polygamists/fundamentalists that will give you the creeps and a lot to think about. As my bother says "Disconnectedness defines danger." 

They marched into sunlight: war and peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967 by David Maraniss. From the author of the great Lombardi bio When pride still mattered comes a look at three interlocked events. A battalion marches into an ambush in South Vietnam, with results that will not get made into a Mel Gibson movie. In Madison Wisconsin, protestors plan to disrupt Dow chemical recruiting, with results that stained the floors of campus buildings with blood. In the White House, President Johnson faces an election and a war he can't win. Interview based history at its best.

The Universal Hunger For Liberty: Why the Clash of Civilizations Is Not Inevitable by Michael Novak. A thought proving book that asks important questions. How compatible is democracy with Christianity? How is democracy different in a secular society and can it survive there? How compatible is Islam with democratic ideals? Novak holds that culture and politics are at least as important as economics. A work that compliments The Pentagon's New Map.

Race and culture / Thomas Sowell. Can it be that people's culture is a major determinant of how they do in the modern world? Impeccably researched and controversial. Sowell lives to tweak liberals and he succeeds here

Who's Teaching Your Children? Why the Teacher Crisis Is Worse Than You Think and What Can Be Done About It by Vivian Troen, Katherine C. Boles. This one has many lessons for the library profession. The authors identify a three fold problem that feed back in a downward spiral. (1) Not enough academically able students are being drawn to the profession. (2) Preparation programs need substantial improvement. (3) Life in the profession is on the whole unacceptable. Sounds way too familiar to librarians.

Small pieces loosely joined: a unified theory of the web by David Weinberger is worth reading, but has a misleading subtitle. It is more in the nature of a meditation on what the web is and isn't and what metaphors best apply. From the co-author of The Cluetrain manifesto. I usually hate manifestos, but this one was breezy rather than didactic, so it was fun rather than a chore.

We Were Soldiers Once... and Young: Ia Drang--The Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam by Harold G. Moore. As usual, the book is better than the movie. I am listening to it on tape, but the paper should be better because of the maps. Not one dimensional, Moore lets his soldiers speak for themselves, which Mel Gibson could not do. A cross between Studs Terkel and Patton.

Snowball Earth: The Story of the Great Global Catastrophe That Spawned Life As We Know It by Gabrielle Walker. It now appears that the Earth froze over completely several times. The geological evidence shows that before life moved beyond single cells, our planet was entirely covered by ice, even at the equator. This might be related to the evolution of life beyond single cells, but world of geology makes for interesting reading, as science examines and then accepts an oddball theory.

Why I am a Catholic is merely the latest of Garry Wills excellent works. Even if you are not a Catholic, Wills is a fascinating author, because takes the power of  religion seriously. This informs his political and social commentary in ways that are rarely seen. Everything he writes is worth reading, but I especially recommend Lincoln at Gettysburg,  Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Indepedence,  A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government and Papal Sin. In addition to his Pulitzer Prize winning prose, Wills also attended the best high school in the Midwest, as did I. 

Negro president : Jefferson and the slave power by Garry Wills. Yes, I read all of Wills work, but this one is perfect for those with an interest in history. He makes the case that slavery was the main factor in almost all major decisions in U.S. history between 1770-1865. Since textbook writers have to sell books in the South, slavery is glossed over in most history classes. In a brief but powerful work, Wills shows that early American history only makes sense if slavery is front and center, as it was to those involved. A corrective to the pap that is taught in high schools.

The Penguin Lives series seems to be history already, which is a shame. They were all well written introductions to major historical figures. I listened to several of them and found them all enlightening, even though the main course of these lives were familiar to me. Try Napoleon, St. Augustine,  and Mao, for starters. The audio books are worth considering too, since they are inexpensive and will fill a gap in your non-fiction collection.