Blossoms and Bayonets is about the Japanese occupation of Korea during World War Two. Korea was the first nation to fall victim to Japan’s imperial ambitions; the Japanese seized control of the country in 1910. The Japanese attempted to assimilate the Koreans to their culture, staffing the schools with Japanese sensei , indoctrinating Korean children […]
Book Review: Eyes Behind Belligerence by K.P. Kollenborn
October 27, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Eyes Behind Belligerence, by K.P. Kollenborn is a rich and fascinating fictional account of the experience of Japanese Americans in the internment camps during World War Two. Kollenborn follows two main characters and their families throughout the war and its aftermath. At the start of the war, Jim Yoshimura and Russell Hamaguchi (AKA Goro) are […]
Colossus: Stone and Steel by David Blixt
October 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Yis’gadal, v’yit’kadash sh’mei raba. . . . May his great name grow exalted and sanctified. . . The Jewish mourner’s Kaddish, spoken in every Jewish prayer service. Unlike other prayers which are in Hebrew, the mourner’s Kaddish is in Aramaic, the language spoken in Judea at the time of the Roman conquest. I always assumed […]
Book Review: My Half of the Sky by Jana Mc Burney-Lin
September 26, 2012 By Leave a Comment
China at the turn of the twenty-first century is a rapidly evolving society. The older people had lived through violent revolution, a period of starvation in the early 1960s and the chaotic and violent cultural revolution of the late sixties and early seventies. Jana McBurney-Lin’s heroine, Li Hui experienced none of that. Born in […]
Book Review: A Tainted Dawn by Barbara Peacock
September 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment
At the beginning of the first chapter of her book, A Tainted Dawn, Barbara Peacock quotes Wordsworth: “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. But to be young was very heaven!” The final quarter of the 18th century was time of immense change and progress in western civilization. There were two momentous political […]
Book Review: The Master of Verona by David Blixt
September 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment
David Blixt is a Shakespearian actor, playwright and author. I have never seen any of his plays, but if his novel, The Master of Verona, is any indication of his literary abilities, I would wager that his plays give the Bard of Avon a run for his money. The Lord of Verona is enthralling from […]
Book Review: The Party is Over by Mike Lofgren
August 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment
For who is so worthless or indolent as not to wish to know by what means and under what system of polity the Romans in less than fifty-three years have succeeded in subjecting nearly the whole inhabited world to their sole government, a thing unique in history? Or who again is there so passionately devoted […]
Book Review: The Jewel of Medina
July 7, 2012 By 1 Comment
Sherry Jones’ novel The Jewel of Medina tells the story of the prophet Mohammad and his child bride A’isha. A’isha was the daughter of Abu Bakr, an early follower of the prophet. He offered the forty-nine year old widower Mohammad his six year old daughter to strengthen their bond of friendship and devotion. The wedding ceremony […]
Book Review: In Vain by Barbara Geisler
June 9, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Barbara Geisler’s book In Vain just won the BAIPA (Bay Area Independent Publisher’s Association) award for best Historical Fiction. This is Barbara’s third book in her Averillian series about Sister Averilla at the Shaftsbury monastery 12th Century England. The other two books are Other Gods and Graven Images. In Vain is a prequel to the […]
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