Book reviews in English

This is the companion to the “Eastern Front” book reviewed below, written in the same style. I gained a better understanding of the war’s sheer scale and trajectory, how it dragged on inconclusively for years, and how Germany ultimately lost.

After running his car into a ditch because of thick fog, a man stumbles upon a murder scene in a remote house: he finds the wife leaning over her husband’s dead body. It turns out the husband was a nasty piece of work, and in the confined setting of that remote house, every occupant becomes a prime suspect at some point. Very entertaining!

Two English lads want to become football internationals and their lack of talent makes Pohnpei the team they think they can break into. Pohnpei is a Micronesian island though and after the first visit the author starts to take things seriously: he tries to establish a league and setup an international game against the mighty neighbors Guam (two hours on a plane away). One of the best and most empathetic football books I have read.

A new neighbor threatens to uncover Ripley’s past: he’s got uncanny instincts and he seems to be able to connect the dots about the previous murders. It takes considerable effort to brush him aside without Heloise, his wife, and Mme. Annette, his housekeeper, getting wind of it. A great finale to the series.

This biography tells the story of Vasily Mitrokhin, an unassuming KGB archivist who spent over a decade secretly copying classified files before defecting at the end of the Cold War. The book also traces the history of the Soviet intelligence services, highlighting their significance and the resurgence of their influence in modern Russia.

Mostly set in cold war West Berlin, Ripley tries to help a sixteen-year-old boy come to terms with having pushed his father over a cliff. I grew up in West Berlin, so there was a bit of a trip down memory lane in this excellent installment of the Ripley crime series.

A great book on one of the most fascinating topics of Soviet / Russian politics: the illegals were Russians that were sent abroad as long-term spies. Initially it was easy to tap staff from a conspirational and polyglot movement, but after World War II the Soviet Union had basically become a hermit nation. Unsurprisingly the book ends almost today, Russia’s most important politician used to be a KGB employee abroad.

Post civil war Madrid is the grim background to this British historical spy novel: the grand theme is how to keep Spain out of World War II. There’s love, betrayal, and twists and turns in buckets. The book is a bit on the long side, but an excellent summer read.

An autobiography from the daughter of the man who led Equatorial Guinea to independence. She is sent to North Korea for education and becomes somewhat stuck there after her father is executed. That life trajectory is more than promising. However, the book doesn’t quite deliver; it’s flat, at times naive and evasive or even disingenuous, e. g. see what Wikipedia says about her biological father.

Ripley engineers a contract killing of a Mafia boss, from there everything goes downhill - for the previously respectable killer, of course. A page turner!

The 8th Millennium book will probably be my last one: it’s too boring and too predictable and simply not captivating anymore.

This has only been my second Rebus book and he’s already retired here. His daughter is suspected to have killed her husband and all kinds of complications ensue. I lost track a bit with all the people and timelines intertwined.

A scientific book about S.O.B.’s first full length album. I’ve got to spin the record and lubricate my throat now, this book is a bit on the dry side.

Sweden 2005, a secret organization that fights pedophilia, both sides exploit the then fairly new internet for their shenanigans, women and girls as perpetrators and victims, all in all a fairly good setup, albeit a bit naive in hindsight. Of course Sweden was still Bullerby back then and everybody and me thought Nordic Noir seemed like a fairly contradictory thing.

A stunning and intense masterpiece about a father whose first son is born mentally handicapped, the downward spiral is staggering.

A tender biography of a quirky English couple that survived an incredible 118 days adrift in a dinghy in the Pacific Ocean.

Another attic find: the story is off to a very strong start with a billionaire committing suicide and trying to wreck his heirs’ lives. It peters out a bit and ends too moralistic.

A very thorough history of the beginning and the trajectory of the Soviet dissident movement, a bit too long and verbose for my taste. My takeaway: it started with a group of people who were privileged and “devout constitutionalists”.

Casey chronicles the life of the Irish radical May O’Callaghan and her communist friends who meet in the 1920s in Moscow’s Hotel Lux. A compelling read about the hard-to-believe lives of “common people” who moved in between the radical circles of major cities back then. It starts optimistic, it ends badly, but that’s to be expected - a compelling read.

An in-depth account of the Third Battle of Ypres in 1917, in which the British army came close to a decisive win. It sheds light on both sides of the battle and provides a clear trajectory of the battle by breaking it down into its different phases.

An American journalist returns to post-war Berlin to find the married woman he had an affair with, but he’s thrown into a maelstrom of crime, treason, and attempts to hire the brightest German minds for either side in the impending cold war. Lawless 1945 Berlin is a great backdrop for a novel that highlights that “morally good or justified” can be very malleable. The book is a bit on the long side.

Swedish metal rules supreme anyway - and the authors cover a couple of metal genres and bands in an entertaining manner, i. e. Entombed, Dissection, or Mayhem by way of their Swedish singer. Must read if you’re into metal.

A roadtrip in the tumultuous post-Soviet Caucasus, two Georgian guys plan to score drugs in Azerbaijan, but end up in Karabach’s war: a compelling and fascinating read.

Airlift Berlin, leftist artists who have gone sceptical of communism, double agents, and military are the backdrop for this solid spy novel. The plot is a bit confusing, but there’s more than enough atmosphere of betrayal and Berlin noir.

Another attic find: Upstairs Russian teenage girl falls madly in love with a Downstairs peasant anarchist boy, conceives a child, and is forced into exile and a shotgun wedding with an English aristocrat. They meet 18 years later - in 1914 - when he tries to assassinate a Russian diplomat to torpedo British-Russian negotiations. Good plot, we also meet Churchill and Pankhurst, but at times too fluffy and wordy.

I found this in my parents’ bookshelf, it was released in 1974 and still is a good read - 50 years later! Le Carré’s spymaster Smiley has to uncover a mole in the top echelon of the British secret service, the twists and turns show that the world of secret services was a world of betrayal.

A general history book of Spain by Britain’s foremost Spain historian that starts around the time the country loses its last colonies. The book comprises 750 pages in 18 chapters, each chapter focuses on an era of Spanish politics, a lot of which have been dominated by the three scourges mentioned in the title. Not an easy, but still a very gripping read, highly recommended if you are into Spanish history.

Another instalment in the late Stieg Larsson’s series about Lisbeth Salander, an enigmatic Swedish woman which I would loosely describe as a grown-up goth version of Pippi Longstocking who has turned all grumpy and is surrounded by social justice warriors who fight for the right cause and solve a crime while doing so. This time they are fighting environmental destruction and domestic violence. The story is meandering and full of clearly delineated good and bad guys with hard-to-believe traits. It’s still a page turner if you liked any other book of the series.

Hands down the best book on contemporary Spain, its society and politics.

There are many books on the Spanish Civil War, only a tiny amount is impartial though. Beevor recounts the trajectory of the war neutrally, explains the lead-up to the war, tactics and politics of the different phases of the war, and its aftermath. A timeless classic.

A thriller from 1950 that hasn’t lost its punch: two young men meet on a train and discuss the perfect murder and the ensuing avalanche slowly takes off…

This is the companion book to Palin’s travel documentary from 2018: the book is short, every day is given its own chapter of a few pages each. Despite this and the obvious difficulties to travel to and in North Korea, Palin manages to convey a lot of empathy towards his “travel guides” and the country.

I recently found this book in an old crate: it’s a spy/crime novel set before D-Day and a Germany uberspy threatens to inform the German secret service that the First United States Army Group is merely a sham. He needs to leave Great Britain in the north-east with a submarine, kills a lot of people, and ultimately fails. Full of suspense and interesting characters.

I share the author’s opinion on cars and I thoroughly enjoyed the 200-page anti-car sermon. Knowles correctly points that apart from combustion engines cooking the planet, cars waste space, accidents impair or kill people and they cause noise. Walking and cycling are healthy and shorter commutes give you more time every day. Yet, I think he vastly underestimates how many people really want to live the suburban lifestyle, my impression - unlike the author’s - is that the “lust for cars” is only getting bigger.

Hoyer is an East-German historian who has been living in the UK for a couple of years and wrote this book about her native country geared towards the English-speaking world - where it received more positive reviews than in Germany. The author interweaves anecdotes and historical events and makes the world’s grayest country look a bit more colourful - nothing beats the drab Mutti Merkel’s craving for blue jeans - and achieves one of her stated goals (“a place far more dynamic than the Cold War caricature often painted in the West”). I don’t buy into the tacit suggestion that East German culture has been actively ignored - e. g. have a look at “their TV station” which is uninteresting to anyone not East German - but this book may be pave the way to more books on the GDR that is neither dismissive nor overly nostalgic.

The book is subtitled “Nationalism and Protest in Post-Soviet Russia” and its two main protagonists are Eduard Limonov and Aleksandr Dugin, two of the co-founders of the National Bolshevik Party. Fenghi shows how these two fringe people managed to blend socialism and fascism into their own ideology, achieve considerable success in the post-Soviet political space and then how Dugin managed to move into the Russian political mainstream with the Eurasia Movement and supposedly wield a lot of influence over Putin. This is an intellectual book and not easy to read, it is essential to understand this fascinating and unreal topic.

This book was released in May 2023 with the war raging at full scale. It consists of two parts: the lead-up the war which is very well-explained, the invasion of the Little green men which has been widely ignored in the West. Plokhy also explains how fundamental the Ukrainian SSR was in the Soviet Union and the role of 1991 Ukrainian independence referendum in its break-up. The second part is about the actual war itself and it feels a bit cobbled together, not surprising because we don’t really know yet how things will end. I’m sure there will be a compelling second edition, hopefully soon.

My perception of World War I has been shaped by books and imagery of the Western front. This book recounts the history of the Eastern Front which is so often overlooked, yet resulted in the collapse of an empire that lasted more than 7 centuries, four new nation states, the Soviet revolution, and the very uneven peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk that couldn’t save Germany’s war efforts. Excellent book to understand the trajectory of the war and its long-lasting repercussions.

The author is a historian and recounts the history of Soviet hippies with tangible empathy. She dug through personal and official archives - the Russian official ones are not accessible for obvious reasons - for more than a decade and almost brings to life her subjects and the Soviet society and its morale as a backdrop. Subculture research in the Soviet Union - except for some tidbits of punk - is almost inaccessible for me because I don’t speak any Russian, but the book seems very well-researched and the writing good which papers over the editing which feels a bit sloppy: an academic book which you must read if you are interested in subculture or Soviet history.

Plokhy recounts the last months of the Soviet Union starting with the August coup via the dissolution on the 8th December 1991, when the leaders of the Slavic republics decided to leave the union, to the 25th of December 1991 when Gorbachev resigned with a a televised speech. The author sheds light on the struggle between Gorbachev and Yeltsin and then-regional leaders like Leonid Kravchuk or Nursultan Nazarbayev, how the USA led president George Bush tried to stay on top of things, and how the world’s then largest empire would disappear more or less peacefully. This book also helps to understand the ethnic conflicts and wars that have flared up since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

I read most of Johnstone’s books and the Skelf family series are unfortunately not among my favorites: The Skelfs are a family of grandmother, mother, and daughter who run a funeral business and moonlight as sleuths. This crime novel has too many plots and characters to keep track of - so despite Johnstone’s excellent writing it was a bit of a dull read.

Arthur Chichester - his more famous name is Bald and Bankrupt - visited Belarus, especially the nowadays deserted area that was heavily irradiated after the Chernobyl disaster. The book is very much like Bald’s videos: he knows Russian and he adds some background information about the country. I guess he would word his assessment of “Batska” a bit differently today. If you enjoy Bald and have two spare hours - read this book!

A left-wing historian writes about the First Red Scare and covers the years from 1917 to 1921. The author shows how enthusiasm for war and nationalism led to a wide-spread fear of left-wing movements and at the end he also draws some parallels to the Trump presidency. It’s not a dry history book rattling down the facts, it rather tries to recount the fates of “normal people”. Personally I know too little about that period in the USA, so I would have done better with an introduction.

Jarvis Cocker cleans up his attic and needs to decide whether to keep or bin things he hasn’t seen in years. Things turn into memories of adolescence, setting up a pop band, school, moving out and a lot more. Must read if you are even only remotely into Pulp or britpop.

Josef Mengele tries to take over the world in the 1970ies, but Yakov Liebermann (very reminiscent) of Simon Wiesenthal prevents that. The book is off to a thrilling start, but fizzles out towards the end, especially because it is somewhat amusing to see how they imagined the future would be. I found this book in my parents’ attic and I bet it must have been an exciting read back then. The plot is great and it’s still a quick read…

The history of the semiconductor industry in one book, readable and understandable, yet not too superficial. It points out how chip technology was essential in winning the cold war and retaining American/Western supremacy. It also explains how complex chip production is, what Moore’s law’s exponential growth means in real life, and the many choke points that exist. It provides for a solid understanding of what US industrial policy has looked like since Trump and what it quite likely will look like in the years to come.

The author itself says it: a book on the history of Cuba from a Howard Zinn perspective. The author, a professor of history, was born in Cuba, emigrated to the USA as a toddler, and returned to Cuba many times. She recounts Cuban history from a people’s perspective and intertwines it in a revealing manner with US-American history, she also treads a fine line between Cuban, American, Cuban-American and (US) Democratic perspective and manages to be sensible there. A thoroughly enjoyable and enlightening read.

A fantastic book on the history of computing intertwined with the biography of J. C. R. Licklider, one of its early visionaries who was seminal for how we interact with computers, software, networking, and thus today’s internet. This is quite a tome, but an excellent and compelling read.

Plokhy, a professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard university, chronicles the life of Bogdan Stashinsky, a Soviet spy of Ukrainian descent. In the 1950ies he killed two leaders of the Ukrainian nationalist movement, one of which was Stepan Bandera, with an umbrella that was squirting cyanide. He later married an East-German woman who convinced him to defect to West-Berlin, on the night before the Wall was built, was put to trial and sentenced to jail in West-Germany. He disappears after having been released from prison. Plokhy’s writing is captivating, the story itself is so good it makes a James Bond movie look mundane.

One of the Soviet Union’s goals on the path to reach communism was to do away with religion through the scientific foundations of their new belief. This book chronicles the different approaches that were taken over the roughly 70 years of Soviet rule: suppression by militant atheists, tacit acceptance, collaboration against an external enemy to ersatz rites. 1000 years of the Christianization of Kievan Rusʹ Gorbachev officially met the then head of the Orthodox church, much to almost everyone’s surprise. An excellent read and I would much appreciate a follow-up on the Yeltsin and Putin years.

9 countries and how their history was shaped by their geography, entertaining reads of half an hour each. The book ends with how the upcoming space race may end up and how geography may shape that. Read it soon (till June 2023), this book won’t age well.

Sasha is a young member of the “SS Party”, cheeky acronym for Sojus Sosidajuschtschich, who fight against Westernization, globalization, and the powers that be. The author romps through various graphical acts of violence in Moscow, Riga and Sasha’s native Nizhni Novgorod. Their economic ideas are left-leaning, their social ideas right-leaning, e. g. Women play second fiddle both in the party and in Sasha’s life. Sounds familiar? Everything seems to be modeled after the National Bolshevik Party and it turns out that the author was a long-time of said party, so the novel might be quite autobiographic, although all involved parties deny that. Today’s Prilepin thinks that Putin is a wuss. The book was published in 2006 and translated to German in 2012 and to English in 2014. Its German publisher is left-leaning and intellectual and it received raving reviews back then, which is next-to impossible to understand with today’s moral compass.