Category: Book Reviews
-
Book Review: ‘SSN’ (originally published as ‘SSN: Strategies of Submarine Warfare’)
The Inspiration: Tom Clancy’s SSN On November 16, 1996, Simon & Schuster Interactive released Tom Clancy’s SSN, a computer video game/submarine simulator based on the Improved Los Angeles-class nuclear-powered attack sub USS Cheyenne (SSN-773). Co-produced by Clancy Interactive Entertainment and Virtus Corporation, SSN was a single-player third-person perspective game set in what was then the…
-
Book Review: ‘The Odyssey of Star Wars: An Epic Poem’
The Odyssey of Star Wars: An Epic Poem Written by: Jack Mitchell Illustrated by: Jessica Benhar Publisher: Abrams Image, an imprint of Henry N. Abrams Publishing Date: September 28, 2021 Spirit of learning, angel of the Force, In grief, in longing for your tender touch, I call you to my side: let sorrow cease, Let…
-
Book Review: ‘A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America’
A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America (2020 hardcover, 2021 paperback) Written by: Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig Publisher: Penguin Press (a division of Penguin Random House) Category: Domestic Politics Format: Paperback No. of Pages: 512 Publication Date: Hardcover: January 21, 2020; Paperback (Updated with New Reporting): February 23, 2021 “This taut and terrifying…
-
Book Review: ‘The Complete Maus’
On November 19, 1996, Pantheon Books published the hardcover edition of Art Spiegelman’s The Complete Maus, a 295-page omnibus edition that combines the two volumes of Spiegelman’s graphic novel, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, with a related comic, Prisoner on the Hell Planet: A Case Story, included as a unifying element. Originally published in Raw –…
-
Book Review: ‘The World of Star Trek’
In the summer of 1985 – sometime during my freshman year at Miami-Dade Community College – I purchased a paperback copy of a reference book titled The World of Star Trek by author, screenwriter, and cultural observer David Gerrold. Originally published in 1973 – during the “lost years” after Star Trek: The Original Series’ cancellation…
-
Book Review: ‘The Battle of Midway’
On October 5, 2011, Oxford University Press published Craig L. Symonds’ The Battle of Midway, one of the 18 books in the Pivotal Moments in American History series, which is edited by David Hackett Fischer, James M. McPherson, and David Greenberg. Based on exhaustive research and drawing on a cornucopia of new revelations about the…
-
Book Review: ‘Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays’
Luke Skywalker was Annikin Starkiller. Han Solo was a “huge green-skinned guy with no nose and large gills.” And Princess Leia had a bit part. – Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays Considering how intertwined George Lucas’s original Star Wars trilogy is in modern pop culture, it’s hard to imagine that the film versions of A…
-
Book Review: ‘Star Wars: Return of the Jedi: The Original Topps Trading Card Series -Volume Three’
On August 16, 2016, Abrams ComicsArts, an imprint of New York-based publisher Henry N. Abrams that specializes in books about comics and trading cards, published Star Wars: Return of the Jedi: The Original Topps Trading Card Series – Volume Three, the third volume in a series of books about the Topps Company’s card-and-sticker sets celebrating…
-
Book Review: ‘Snow & Steel: The Battle of the Bulge, 1944-45’
Snow & Steel: Hitler’s Last Gamble in the West Examined On November 28, 2014, the Oxford University Press published Snow & Steel: The Battle of the Bulge, 1944-45, an in-depth book about Operation Autumn Mist (Herbstnebel, which can also be translated from German as “Autumn Fog”), the last counter-offensive launched by Nazi Germany on the…
-
Book Review: ‘Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945’
On September 1, New York-based (and wholly-owned by its employees) publisher W.W. Norton & Company published Twilight of the Gods: The War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945, the concluding volume of Ian W, Toll’s Pacific War Trilogy, thus completing the story begun in Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific (2011) and The Conquering…
A Certain Point of View, Too 