Category Archives: Book Review

Was There A Pre-Flood Civilization?

About 2,400,000 years ago the earth entered into an ice age. This ice age is likely still going on, there having been at least 17 interglacial periods which represented a warming of the planet, a receding of the ice caps, … Continue reading

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The Indo-Europeans

Philology is the study of languages, their etymology and development and history. It is a sort of linguistic archeological anthropology; and while everyday anthropology is sort of an act of accident (you stumble upon something buried in a hole), philology … Continue reading

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Invitation to a Beheading

Vladimir Nabokov said “Invitation to a Beheading” was his best work; he evidently wrote it in the period of two weeks. Nabokov was of course a Russian writer and intellectual who was exiled by the Bolsheviks to Germany and who … Continue reading

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The Blind Traveler

About two-hundred years ago, during the golden age of the British Empire and exploration, there lived a man named James Holman. Holman was born into the new English merchant class; his father was a pharmacist. During those days, there were … Continue reading

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Iran Frozen in Time

I started reading “Reading Lolita in Tehran” by Azar Nafisi because now, right now, Iranians are again trying to be free. They rise up, every once in a while to attempt to throw off the oppressive reign of the Mullahs, … Continue reading

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Reviewing “A Hero of Our Time”

Mikhail Lermontov straddled the mountain ridge of Russian creative culture, between poetry of the ‘intelligentsia’ during the days of high empire and the period of prose that both was led by and inspired the revolutionary time of Russia’s coming of … Continue reading

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700 Pages of Horror

I just finished “The Fate of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence”, Martin Meredith’s imposing tome that tells the story of post-colonial, ‘independent’ Africa. There is no way to write this review, except in the spirit that Meredith … Continue reading

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William Saroyan – A Daring Young Man

William Saroyan is the most well-known American/Armenian writer. His family arrived, like so many of the Armenian diaspora, fleeing the genocide at the tail of end of the Ottoman Empire. Saroyan had the seeds of greatness and genius. I think … Continue reading

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The Shadow of the Winter Palace

I can think of no better place to go to understand the current war in Russia than “The Shadow of the Winter Palace” by Edward Crankshaw. In miniscule detail Crankshaw delves into the minutiae and characters and twists and turns … Continue reading

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Journey to the Center of the Earth

Scientists have recently discovered a sixth great ocean, underground, between the upper and lower layers of the Earth’s crust. Jules Verne wrote about this in “Journey to the Center of the Earth”, published in England in 1871. Verne was an … Continue reading

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