Author Archives: smellincoffee

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About smellincoffee

Citizen, librarian, reader with a boundless wonder for the world and a curiosity about all the beings inside it.

The Impossible Nazi

Posted on October 25, 2025 by smellincoffee

Yes, yes, I know. I said I wouldn’t read more in this series until I’d hit some nonfiction first — but the last book ended with the Dome of the Rock being blown up! How could I resist? The Impossible … Continue reading →

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The Improbable Nazi

Posted on October 23, 2025 by smellincoffee

In The Accidental Nazi, a historian from 1981 West Berlin was astonished to find himself inexplicably standing on a tarmac in 1941 Berlin, watching a plane carrying Adolf Hitler plow into the pavement and completely reroll the dice on Germany’s … Continue reading →

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The Accidental Nazi

Posted on October 22, 2025 by smellincoffee

Can you imagine the Russians marching through Berlin? And the Americans and the British in the Ruhr? It would be the end of everything.” “It almost seems as though you can see the future,” she said. “Do you think you … Continue reading →

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Scary things & WWW Wednesday

Posted on October 22, 2025 by smellincoffee

Today’s Long and Short review is….”Things that Scare Me”. Swarm insects that sting/bite, obviously. Falling off bridges into deep water. The increasing dystopia of the 21st century, as technology further destroys our ability to be human and AI begins destroying … Continue reading →

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Teaser Tuesday

Posted on October 21, 2025 by smellincoffee

In my lifetime, in my part of the world, the notion and meaning of ‘home’ has steadily crumbled under this external pressure until it is little more than a word. In a Machine anticulture, the home is a dormitory, probably … Continue reading →

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From Raiders to Kings

Posted on October 19, 2025 by smellincoffee

I can still remember being scandalized in seventh grade when I opened the next chapter in our western civ text to discover we would be studying THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. England, conquered? At that age, for whatever reason, I had … Continue reading →

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WWW Wednesday

Posted on October 15, 2025 by smellincoffee

WHAT have you finished reading recently? In Distant Lands, Lars Brownworth WHAT are you reading now? I just started The Normans: From Raiders to Kings by Lars Brownsworth. WHAT are you reading next? Perhaps The Devil in the White City, … Continue reading →

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In Distant Lands

Posted on October 14, 2025 by smellincoffee

When the Crusades are mentioned today, it is almost always in the context of weary self-flagellation by Westerners searching for some ersatz virtue in denouncing their own history. Forgotten are the Muslim assaults on the Eastern Empire, the conquest of … Continue reading →

Posted in history, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | 11 Comments

Teaser Tuesday

Posted on October 14, 2025 by smellincoffee

“The belief in the inevitability of the past — that whatever happened had to happen — is the great enemy of learning from history.” Lars Brownworth, IN DISTANT LANDS

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Dynasty

Posted on October 12, 2025 by smellincoffee

The names Caesar and Augustus have been known to me for as long as I can remember,   from the Bible’s Christmas story to early world history texts with colorful illustrations of the Forum. Despite the long history of Rome,  … Continue reading →

Posted in history, Reviews | Tagged , , | 3 Comments