May 31 2017
I totally judged this book by its cover. First of all, the book is by Catherine Merridale. About a decade ago, I picked up a copy of Ivan’s War and was rewarded with one of the most amazing works of history that I have ever read. It’s a chronicle of the Great Patriotic War as …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/05/31/lenin-on-the-train-by-catherine-merridale/
Feb 06 2015
People who were annoyed by the cliffhanger ending of Wolfhound Century should definitely wait the six weeks or so until Radiant State is published before reading Truth and Fear. Peter Higgins hasn’t solved the middle-book problem, but it’s clear that he conceived and wrote the three books of the Wolfhound Century tale as a single, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/02/06/truth-and-fear-by-peter-higgins/
Jan 28 2015
I’m about a quarter of the way through Truth and Fear (concurrent with more Discworld, The Iliad – to see whether it captures me the way The Odyssey did, and in a modern translation since I bounced right off of Chapman’s, and probably some other things that rise to the surface of the to-be-read piles), …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/01/28/vlast-and-cool-and-dangerously-sympathetic/
Jan 19 2015
Sometimes it’s nice to be squarely in the middle of the target audience. Although I am not sure whether anyone would have said ex ante that the audience for a police procedural set in an alternate history Russia with fantasy and science fiction elements was much more than just me. But Peter Higgins went and …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/01/19/wolfhound-century-by-peter-higgins/
Jan 09 2015
Last autumn, Berlin celebrated the 25th anniversary of the opening of the Wall, and the peaceful collapse of the Communist order in eastern Germany. Eight Pieces of Empire: A 20-Year Journey Through the Soviet Collapse, by Lawrence Scott Sheets, reminds readers that in other places the end of Communism was not peaceful at all. The …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/01/09/eight-pieces-of-empire-by-lawrence-scott-sheets/
Jan 16 2014
This a subject I keep revisiting, without gaining much illumination. Much about the 1848 revolutions remains mysterious to me. It isn’t clear to me what set off the revolutions in the first place, or how or why they occurred simultaneously and independently throughout the major cities of Europe, or why they failed so decisively when …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/01/16/1848-the-revolutionary-tide-in-europe-by-peter-stearns/
Oct 22 2009
I admit that I am one of those spoiled, privileged, affluent Western punks who idolize and romanticize Che Guevara. I admire his courage, his charisma, his dedication, and his manhood. That said, I am not blind to his less sanguine attributes and the wrongheadedness of his ideology, which this book expresses in great detail. He …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2009/10/22/guerilla-warfare-by-che-guevara/
Jul 14 2009
This was not a long book, but I took my time reading it because the writing was so eloquent. I have never seen such hatred and fury channeled into such eloquent discourse. There isn’t enough space allowed here for me to get into the problems of post-colonialism, but what impresses me most about this work …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2009/07/14/the-wretched-of-the-earth-by-frantz-fanon/
Oct 23 2006
Novermber 1955: Tired of trying to crack the problem of the informer, Gyuri settled down to think about being a streetsweeper while he gazed out of the window at the countryside that went past quite lazily despite the train’s billing as an express. The streetsweeper was a sort of cerebral chewing gum that Gyuri popped …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2006/10/23/under-the-frog/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire