Steve Gross

The Jewish essays were OK but the literary ones were incomprehensible.

Lots of battles, lots of kings. Much scholarly apparatus

I gave this three stars - 4 for content, 2 for writing, which is bad. Sometimes it sounds like the author hurriedly dictated his comments and someone wrote them down. The chapter on Gratitude is the best.

All the big names are here

About 20 mini-biographies of older film composers.

The writing is solid, but at spots often unclear and confusing.

The writing is quirky. And difficult. Lots of short sentences. Many kind of snarky parenthetical (like this) asides (get it?). The biggest irritant is the lack of simple, fundamental definitions - liberal, Liberal 1.0, liberal 2.0, tested betterment. On the other hand, a mostly compelling case for classic liberalism.

Some interesting facts about Indian society. Too many references to the first book in the series, which I haven't read.

Strange but good - a Jewish lawyer in Tucson in the 1940's

Mystery was OK, language was awful.

Decent pastiche

You should read the previous book before reading this one

beautifully illustrated and explained.

Dull. Too many eye-gouging capitals - NSA, SCRABBLE and all the other boring acronyms. Read Stefan Fatsis's book instead/

W@arm and thoughtful, but the author has adopted the Magic Jew syndrome - all the Orthodox people in her book are smart and tolerant and good. She could have used some input from a (admittedly, hard-to-find) non-Orthodox committed Jew.

This was a rather darker entry in the series.

It's very difficult to write an unbiased history of Israel. The author tries, at least at the beginning, but tilts more and more against Israel as the book progresses.
Two examples: his first mention of Yassir Arafat on page 149, he says the goal of the PLO was “liberation of the region from Israeli control”. No, the goal of the PLO was the destruction of the state of Israel and the murder of all its Jewish inhabitants.
On page 297, describing a right-wing Israeli's summation of the situation (and while there are plenty of right-wing Israelis, there are apparently no left-or right-wing Arabs), he says “the Israeli government paid a security agent to protect the area's Jewish settlers, and Jewish children were regularly ushered to and from school by armed guards”. Well, gee, maybe the government had to protect Jewish residents (all the Jews in this book are “settlers”) and children from murderous Arab attacks? Were Israeli Jews murdering Arab children?
Too bad. The history is interesting but the bias crippling. Skip this.

Some sparkling writing, but challenging with the maritime lingo and the 70 year old English. Lots of action.

Some really good writing, but overall a little too dark

None of these stories wowed me

Interesting Punch history

Another great entry in the series. Fowler is a wonderful writer!

The author is an excellent explainer. I particularly liked the mini-biographies.

I couldn't finish this - it's just too sad. But it's an important story and well-reported.

Good addition to the series