Month: December 2012

  • The casualties in industry’s assault on science

    The book Denis DuBay reviews here was published in 2008, but it is, unfortunately, just as relevant today as it was then. By Denis DuBay.  DOUBT IS THEIR PRODUCT: HOW INDUSTRY’S ASSAULT ON SCIENCE THREATENS YOUR HEALTH. By David Michaels. Oxford University Press, 2008.  384 pages. $29.95.  Once upon a time, seemingly in another galaxy…

  • The Civil War – did it have to happen?

    Full disclosure: Although he’s lived in North Carolina for decades, and knows more about the workings of government in the Tar Heel State than just about anybody, Paul O’Connor is a Connecticut Yankee. Bless his heart. Despite that, or perhaps because of it, he approached this book about the causes of the Civil War (aka,…

  • A few good midshipmen

    With all the emotion and aura of Saturday’s annual Army-Navy game fresh in my mind, I’m reviewing a recent novel set at the Naval Academy in the  (Go Navy, Beat Army!) late 1980s-early 1990s. By Linda C. Brinson THE RECIPIENT’S SON: A NOVEL OF HONOR. By Stephen Phillips. The Naval Institute Press. 270 pages. $28.95.…

  • Ho, ho, ho, Merry Mystery!

    This isn’t really a Christmas book, if by Christmas books you mean those novels – usually fairly slim and quickly read – with a holiday theme that appear in the fall, just in time to be read or given as gifts. But what else do you call a novel with a main character named Father…

  • A terrible history in the making

    Would we recognize evil if we saw it walking around? Tom Dillon, a veteran newsman himself, takes a look at a book about American journalists and others who witnessed firsthand the rise of Hitler’s Nazi Germany. By Tom Dillon HITLERLAND: AMERICAN EYEWITNESSES TO THE NAZI RISE TO POWER. By Andrew Nagorski. Simon and Schuster, 2012.…

  • Challenging questions

    The Rev. Dr. Charles P. McGathy, aka Chuck, takes a look at a provocative book about the existence of Jesus as a historical person. By Charles McGathy DID JESUS EXIST?: THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT FOR JESUS OF NAZARETH. By Bart D. Ehrman. HarperOne. 361 pages. $26.99. Bart D. Ehrman, the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of…