April 2012 | Hanover Evening Sun

The Eagle's Conquest: A Novel Review

Average Reviews:(More customer reviews)This is a sequel to Scarrow's first book, Under the Eagle, and is every bit as good as its antecedent. Both provide us with a series of interesting, new twists. Few novels have been written of Ancient Rome that do not feature christians, the triumph of christianity, or the excesses of Latin civilization....

The Wife's Tale: A Novel Review

Average Reviews:(More customer reviews)I liked Lori Lansens' last novel enough that I wanted to read this one right away. I liked this one too, though not quite as much. With its endearing conjoined heroines, The Girls was such an original story. The Wife's Tale, on the other hand, is very familiar--almost an archetypal ugly duckling tale....

A Vision for Girls: Gender, Education, and the Bryn Mawr School Review

Average Reviews:(More customer reviews)I found this book very hard to put down. Anyone with an interest in women's history and education--and certainly anyone with a connection to the Bryn Mawr School--will find much to savor here. Bryn Mawr, a private girls school founded in 1885 in Baltimore, was the first school in the country that was...

My Thoughts Be Bloody: The Bitter Rivalry Between Edwin and John Wilkes Booth That Led to an American Tragedy Review

Average Reviews:(More customer reviews)"My Thoughts Be Bloody", whose title is taken from a line in Shakespeare's "Hamlet", is an absolutely fascinating examination of the lives of an American acting dynasty. The Booths - father, three sons, son- and daughter-in-law - comprised the most influential, yet notorious, family of thespians in 19th...

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Review

Average Reviews:(More customer reviews)This second entry in Smith's Botswana-set series picks up right where the wonderful The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency left off. Indeed, the two books are utterly seamless, and it'd be a real shame to read this without reading its predecessor first. The book picks up with the engagement of "traditionally...

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party Review

Average Reviews:(More customer reviews)"I do not believe they ever meant unkindness."So Octavian says of those to whom he was an experiment, to those who claimed him as chattel, to those who weighed his excrement daily and compared it to his intake.It is perhaps this book's most frightening truth that he is correct.Octavian and his mother...

It's Hard to Talk about Yourself Review

Average Reviews:(More customer reviews)"It's Hard to Talk About Yourself" is a transcript (edited) of a series of interviews on RAI (Italian state radio) with Natalia Ginzburg, one of Italy's most esteemed authors--now deceased. It is a potpourri of chatty conversations and intimate questions about the author's methods, background, and career....

Van Loon: Popular Historian, Journalist, and FDR Confidant (World of the Roosevelts) Review

Average Reviews:(More customer reviews)Time has not been kind to Hendrik van Loon, notwithstanding that a number of his works have often been reprinted seventy and eighty years after he wrote them. Van Minnen has done a thoroughly-researched, intelligent rescue of flawed but brilliant teacher. The hatchet-job done by Van Loon's son, Gerard...

A Treasury of Children's Literature Review

Average Reviews:(More customer reviews)Ok, so I'm a little disturbed by some of the reviews here. These are the classics, and you should read them to your kids. Dark? Maybe, but no darker than reading the old testament or anything else like that. It's literature, children have been reading these stories for GENERATIONS and have turned out...

Envy: A Luxe Novel (The Luxe) Review

Average Reviews:(More customer reviews)Penelope is the envy of society. She is married to Henry Schoonmaker and has everything money, privilege and blackmail can buy. But she cannot force the affections of her husband, or the loyalty of her friends.Elizabeth has lived quietly since her return to New York. Grieving the death of her husband...

In the Blood Review

Average Reviews:(More customer reviews)This quiet, sad memoir penned by Andrew Motion, Britain's Poet Laureate from 1999-2009 is full of what Wordsworth called "the still, sad music of humanity." There is none of the garish "redemption" to which we have become accustomed in this "age of memoir." Rather, it is an at times Stoic, at times lyrical...

Keystone: The American Occupation of Okinawa and U.S.-Japanese Relations (Foreign Relations and the Presidency) Review

Average Reviews:(More customer reviews)In this thorough and well-written work, Professor Nicholas Sarantakes relates the story of how the United States occupied and controlled the strategically vital region of Okinawa after World War II, and held it until the early 1970s. No issue is ignored: Sarantakes combines politics, diplomacy, strategy,...

Felicia Hemans Review

Average Reviews:(More customer reviews)Felicia Hemans is a rising star in the field of Romantic literature, now regarded as equal in significance to any of her more famous male contemporaries. And here is the ideal way to read her: through Susan Wolfson's breathtaking selection of poetry and other source materials. This is the fruit of many...

The Voice of Small-Town America: The Selected Writings of Robert Quillen, 1920-1948 Review

Average Reviews:(More customer reviews)We are indebted to John Hammond Moore for compiling and editing this fine collection of reportage, editorials, and one-liners written by the now obscure Robert Quillen (1887-1948), who, beginning in the 1920s, was for more than twenty years "one of the leading purveyors of village nostalgia" (xi) from...

Sniping in France 1914-18: With Notes on the Scientific Training of Scouts, Observers, and Snipers (Helion Library of the Great War) Review

Average Reviews:(More customer reviews)It would appear that this title has not been published since its first appearance in 1920; a great pity given its unique subject and the authors' expertise and experience in the field. Prior to the war, Hesketh-Prichard had been a big-game hunter, expert shot, cricketer, and travel author. He entered...

The Winter Rose Review

Average Reviews:(More customer reviews)The Winter Rose, a sequel to The Tea Rose, is a simply stunning tale of family drama, politics, and medicine at the turn of the last century. Ms. Donnelly brings back familiar characters such as Fiona and Joe, and adds newer ones that equally enthrall. Long and densely written, this is a book you will...

Dreamers of Dreams: Essays on Poets and Poetry Review

Average Reviews:(More customer reviews)To read John Simon's writing on poetry is to be held enthrall by a master. He doesn't waste his time or ours with theories. He doesn't believe that poetry has anything to hide behind. There was a lot I missed in school, and Simon is invaluable for catching me up with (fairly recent, as in the 20th-century)...