There is no record of where or when the first boat was built, according to the author. That question is somewhat irrelevant anyway, he points out, since different people in different places gradually developed watercraft, using trees,... Read More

With subtitles like the above, book reviewing might become obsolete. Be that as it may, this overwhelmingly successful book is a worthy recipient of all the positive press it serves to generate. Once again, Weinstein and Scarbrough, the... Read More

Controversy has tailed the theory of evolution ever since the publication of Charles Darwins On the Origin of Species in 1859. As recently as 2004, National Geographic magazine published an article titled, “Was Darwin Wrong?” The... Read More

More than sixty years after she first came to prominence, the philosopher and writer Ayn Rand continues to provoke controversy. Her ideas, posited on ruthless self-interest, have many admirers, among them such figures as Alan Greenspan,... Read More

The prolonged visit to Europe was a rite of passage for well-educated and well-to-do Americans, and the numbers undertaking it swelled after the Civil War. A voluminous literature of reportage resulted. After Louisa, then thirty-eight... Read More

“How do you intend to get advice from people you surround yourself—how do you intend to set up your Oval Office so that people will come in and give you their advice,” posits President George Bush. The author provides the... Read More

It sounds like the plot for a thriller by someone like Robert Ludlum. In 1931 Germany, Nazi thugs shoot and wound several men at a dance hall. The incident triggers three months of violence. When the suspects are brought to trial, a... Read More

“If you had to pick a moment when it all began to rot,” says Michael Scott, whose father is the subject of this page-turning nonfiction thriller about the CIA in the fifties and sixties, “it might be Guatemala in 1954.”... Read More