by zen | Mar 4, 2016 | Monitor
[by Mark Safranski / “zen“] The Strategist: Brent Scowcroft and the Call of National Security by Bartholomew Sparrow In writing The Strategist, Bartholomew Sparrow has demonstrated that his talents as a biographer match his skill as a scholar. Cautious...
by zen | Jun 29, 2015 | Monitor
[by Mark Safranski, a.k.a. “zen“] I have a tremendous backlog of good books to review that I have read in recent months and I am facing the fact that it is dubious that I will ever to get to feature most of them here. As a stopgap, I am going to try a few...
by zen | Feb 5, 2015 | Monitor
[by Mark Safranski, a.k.a “zen“] Stalin: Volume I. Paradoxes of Power 1878-1928 by Stephen Kotkin I’ve read quite a bit about old Uncle Joe. Most of the major biographies of Stalin sit on my shelf, including those from Adam Ulam, Roy Medvedev, Robert...
by zen | Aug 4, 2014 | Monitor
[by Mark Safranski, a.k.a. “zen”] The Orientalist by Tom Reiss Some biographies are as much about the era or the milieu as the man. The Orientalist is one of them. This is not to say that Tom Reiss has written a bad book. On the contrary, it is an...
by zen | Jul 15, 2014 | Monitor
[by Mark Safranski, a.k.a. “zen’] American Spartan: The Promise, the Mission, and the Betrayal of Special Forces Major Jim Gant by Ann Scott Tyson When I first posted that I had received a review copy of American Spartan from Callie, it stirred a vigorous...
