Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan, 1839-42 by William Dalrymple
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Return of a King is the story of the First Afghan War. This is, more or less, the beginning of the “Great Game” in which Russia and the British competed for influence in Central Asia. The British send an expedition to Kabul to oust the Amir, Dost Mohammed, and replace him with Shah Shuja, who would presumably follow the British lead.

The short story is that the British expedition does reach Kabul, Shah Shuja is installed as king, and then the British make a series of unforced errors, which undercut their own standing and also that of Shah Shuja. This leads to resistance on the part of the Afghans, and eventually to an open revolt in Kabul. The British army attempts to retreat back to India but is destroyed. It is an amazing story, and it brings to mind the events in Afghanistan of the last twenty or so years.

The author has written an excellent narrative of the campaign. The use of primary sources from both the British and the Afghan sides really makes the story come alive. The maps and the list of “dramatis personae” are a big help in keeping things straight as the campaign proceeds. I also liked the Author’s Note at the end; it’s definitely worth reading – the parallels between the First Afghan War and the events of the last twenty years are enough to make one believe the old adage of history repeating itself.

I highly recommend this book. I really learned quite a bit by reading it, and it is very well written and a pleasure to read.

One further note: one of my favorite series of books is the Flashman series of historical novels by George MacDonald Fraser. The first book in the series, Flashman, is set during the First Afghan War. And this is book that sparked my interest in Central Asia and led me to read Return of a King.

The Inugami Curse by Seishi Yokomizo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Inugami Curse is another book in the Detective Kindachi series by Seishi Yokomizo. It is set in post-war Japan in the 1940s. The wealthy head of the Inugami family dies of natural causes and his children and grandchildren gather for the reading of his will. The will contains a number of very unusual conditions for who will inherit the Inugami fortune, and this leads to a series of murders.

I really don’t want to say much more, for fear of spoiling it. But I will say that it is a very well constructed mystery with many clues and red herrings along the way. I really enjoyed reading it and I did not figure out the mystery before it was revealed by Detective Kindachi at the end of the book.

This is the second book of the series to be published in English. I definitely recommend it and I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the series as it becomes available in English.

The Premonition: A Pandemic Story by Michael Lewis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’ve read a quite a few of Michael Lewis’s previous books and so it was an easy choice to pick up this one. The topic this time is pandemics, and once again, he does not disappoint his readers. We start with a middle school student’s science fair project, which leads to some mathematical modeling of pandemics, and eventually to the interest by President George W Bush in the influenza pandemic of 1918.

Bush created a small group to look at how should the US respond to a pandemic. And this small group of doctors eventually became “the Wolverines” who kept in touch as they changed jobs. And when the Covid19 pandemic began the Wolverines were on top of it, but as the blurb on the book jacket says “…they did not have official permission to implement their work.”

It’s a very interesting and compelling book. I certainly learned a lot about the health care establishment in the US, and how the CDC fits in, or doesn’t fit in. The one issue I have with the book is that it just kind of drifts to an end in the middle of 2020 – the presidential election and the vaccine rollout are still in the future at that point. So there is no big finish, but I still recommend this book. It’s an interesting look at the US response to the pandemic.

The Black Prince: England’s Greatest Medieval Warrior by Michael Jones
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Black Prince is the story of Edward, Prince of Wales who was the eldest son of Edward III. Edward was born in 1330 and died in 1376. Edward III died the following year, so the Black Prince never became king; his son Richard II became king in 1377.

The Black Prince is remembered today mostly for his actions at the battle of Crecy (with his father), and his victory at Poiters. But in most modern histories of this era, he is just a cardboard figure. In this biography the author tries to show something of the man behind the image. And I think for the most part the author succeeds; we learn for example, that the Prince was very religious and devoted to his wife. And the Prince and his father did not always see eye to eye on policy – hence the Spanish campaign on behalf of Pedro the Cruel, which the Prince was very much opposed to.

One item that the author does discuss in detail is the Sack of Limoges during the Prince’s last campaign. The Prince is often held responsible for a massacre of civilians when the city was re-taken by English forces. As the author points out, this is just not the way that things happened, and he shows the inconsistencies in the various stories.

There still are a few mysteries. Nobody is sure why Edward was called the “Black Prince” – there is plenty of conjecture, and it does not seem to have been used during his lifetime, but that’s all we know for sure. And we also don’t know what the disease caused his death. Again, there are many theories, but nothing is certain.

I enjoyed this book – I think it sheds some valuable light of the life of an important figure in medieval history. if you are interested in this period of English and French history, I think you will enjoy this book.

The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Honjin Murders is a mystery novel set in Japan in the late 1930s. It is a classic “locked room” mystery story written in the 1940s and only recently translated into English. It is a great story, revolving around the murders of a couple on their wedding night. There is really not much more that I want to say about the plot for fear of giving something away, but as I mentioned above it is a locked room kind of mystery with plenty of twists and turns, and a few red herrings. The mystery kept me guessing all the way to the end.

This is the introduction of the author’s detective Kosuke Kindaichi, who is instrumental in solving the case, when the police investigation becomes bogged down. There are another 76 books in the Kosuke Kindaichi series, and I’m looking forward to reading them as they become available in English. And I will say that the translator for this book did an excellent job.

I definitely recommend this book – it’s an entertaining and well-written mystery.

Richard III: The Self-Made King by Michael Hicks
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Richard III: The Self-Made King is a fairly exhaustive study of how Richard lived and worked, both as the Duke of Gloucester and later as King of England. The real focus here is on what he did and how he managed things, so it is not so much of a biography as as study of how Richard wielded power. So it is not the typical book on Richard III.

The focus on Richard’s manner of governing can be a little distracting, so I would not necessarily recommend this book for someone who has not read a more narrative biography of Richard. But there are many interesting details that come out in the author’s analysis of Richard, both as duke and as king. The book is more like an academic book as opposed to one meant for a broader audience; but I did appreciate the footnotes and references.

There are many insights along the way, and one that I found interesting was that one of the problems for Richard as king, was that there was very few members of the royal family and so it was not easy for him to project the power of the monarchy. This is especially true after the death of his son Edward. Of course had Richard been the victor at Bosworth, this would not have mattered.

So, I have somewhat mixed feelings about the book – it is an in-depth look at Richard’s abilities to manage and overcome obstacles, and there is a lot of information here. On the other hand, there narrative is somewhat weak, and it may be somewhat confusing for readers who do not have a solid background in this area of English history

Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service by Carol Leonnig
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Zero Fail covers the history of the Secret Service’s presidential protection detail from the Kennedy years up to the inauguration of President Biden. There is some information about the early years of the Secret Service, and some discussion of the field offices and the other duties of the Secret Service, but the main focus is on how the president is protected. It is a fascinating story, to say the least.

The book is organized around incidents where the Secret Service had to deal with threats of one sort or another, for example, the response of the detail protecting President Bush on 9/11 or the night that someone shot at the White House in 2011. In each situation we learn not just the details of the incident, but how the Secret Service learned a lesson, or in some cases, didn’t learn. The sad thing is that we see that the Secret Service has been chronically underfunded, which affects both the people and the technology that is used. And often, just plain luck has kept a minor incident from becoming a major tragedy.

I definitely recommend this book. The author has done a good job in telling the story, and I mentioned, it is a fascinating story.

V2: A Novel of World War II by Robert Harris
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

V2 is the latest novel from Robert Harris, set in late 1944. We follow two people, a German rocket scientist, Rudi Graf, and an English intelligence officer, Kay Caton-Walsh, in alternate chapters. I’m not really sold on the alternating chapter style of narrative – I’ve seen it fail and become distracting several times – but the author makes it work here.

We follow Rudi as he helps launch V2 rockets at London from the occupied Netherlands, and we follow Kay as she joins a unit that tries to calculate the V2’s launching point based on radar data. I really don’t want to say much more than that for fear of spoiling it, but let me just say that both of the stories are very interesting and of course they are intertwined. It’s definitely a good read and it really kept my interest.

I appreciated the author’s inclusion in his Acknowledgements of a bibliography concerning the V2 and the missile campaign of 1944.

A New World Begins: The History of the French Revolution by Jeremy D. Popkin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A New World Begins is one of the best treatments of the French Revolution that I have come across. Beginning with the problems besetting the monarchy under Louis XVI in the 1780s to Napoleon’s coronation as emperor in 1804, it’s all here. The author has done an amazing job of providing a compelling narrative of the revolution, as it begins and then twists and turns and eventually morphs into something quite different from what it was at the start.

One of my history professors once told us that the French Revolution was really the beginning of modern politics, and as I read this book, I was again reminded of his observation. There’s a lot of material in this book, too much to really go into, but I do want to mention two topics that are not often found in books dealing with the French Revolution, but are covered in some detail here: the role of women in the Revolution, and the question of slavery and the rights of people of color.

If you are interested in this period of history, I strongly recommend this book.