Peter Skinner, Book Reviewer

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Book Review

All the Tea in China

by Peter Skinner

Those far-sighted enough to have snapped up Overlook Press’s 2005 re-issue of the *Mortdecai Trilogy—*Kyril Bonfiglioli’s powerfully comedic, high-octane send-ups of the bon-viveur-cum-sleuth detective story—may have hoped that... Read More

Book Review

Kingmakers

by Peter Skinner

The Middle East is unstable, war-torn, and generally hostile to the West; religious and/or civil strife, fanaticism, and militias are ever more dangerous; America is a clumsy meddler—and soaring oil prices a worldwide threat. Just how... Read More

Book Review

A History of Iran

by Peter Skinner

Iran has for several decades projected a dismal image—repression of political and human rights; crippling censorship in the press, literature, the arts, and self-expression; the ideological distortion of education; and the increasing... Read More

Book Review

In the Realm of the Gods

by Peter Skinner

In her eloquent retelling of this evocative selection of Chinese myths and legends, Victoria Cass (a retired professor of Chinese) transports us into a marvelous, disturbing, and often magical realm. There is a refreshing lack of... Read More

Book Review

Books on Fire

by Peter Skinner

A near-encyclopedic history of the fires, looting, and other assaults that have destroyed or damaged many great libraries—public and private—may not strike many as a “must-read” book. But those who work through "Books on Fire"... Read More

Book Review

The Unknown Gulag

by Peter Skinner

Lynne Viola, professor of history at Toronto University and a highly respected historian of the Soviet Union of the 1930s, has written a searing book on an immense and all too neglected human tragedy. It will leave no reader unshocked or... Read More

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