Category Archives: Reviews

Book reviews, as well as Reads to Reels

Against the Machine

Posted on October 27, 2025 by smellincoffee

At some point during college, I tried to work out what an ideal human society might look like. This was back when I still strongly identified with the left,  but my dreams were not of a world state and a … Continue reading →

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13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey

Posted on October 27, 2025 by smellincoffee

When I was a wee bairn, in the olden days when the Earth was new and dinosaurs roamed the land, I cut my teeth on reading Kathryn Tucker Windham’s collections of ghost stories. KTW, or “Kathryn” as Selmians still call … Continue reading →

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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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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 →

Posted in history, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | 7 Comments

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 →

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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

The Iron Dream

Posted on October 7, 2025 by smellincoffee

You know how I mentioned October would have a nod to German history, and maybe combine it with horror? …this is not now I expected that to happen. This will surely be my strangest book read for 2025. There I … Continue reading →

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Merlin’s Tour of the Universe

Posted on October 3, 2025 by smellincoffee

This is a book I’ve been meaning to read for years, though the only thing I knew about it was that it was authored by Neil deGrasse Tyson. Tyson is the director of the Hayden Planetarium and a public advocate … Continue reading →

Posted in General, Reviews, science | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments