Rutten Book Reviews: An Archive of Past Reviews -- Newsday.com

October 29, 2008

BOOK REVIEW

'Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief,' by James M. McPherson

James M. McPherson is the most important historian of the most important event to occur in these United States since the Revolution and the framing of the Constitution -- the Civil War.

October 22, 2008

BOOK REVIEW

'Happy Families' by Carlos Fuentes

It once was said of James Joyce that he had abandoned everything about the Scholastic philosophy of the High Middle Ages that suffused his education -- except its basic principles.

October 15, 2008

BOOK REVIEW

'A Most Wanted Man' by John le Carre

THE FIRST recognizable English-language novels of espionage were published in the first decade of the 20th century -- and both have been continuously in print ever since.

October 8, 2008

BOOK REVIEW

'Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism' by Bernard-Henri Levy

IT IS impossible to imagine any country but France that could produce Bernard-Henri Levy.

October 1, 2008

BOOK REVIEW

'The Forever War' by Dexter Filkins

THE LITERATURE of human conflict divides itself into two schools: One -- the more ancient -- is bardic and celebrates war and warriors; the other is the tradition of witness, which elucidates war and records the fates of those caught up in it.

September 16, 2008

BOOK REVIEW

'Indignation' by Philip Roth

ONE OF THE ways to recognize truly great writers is that even their mistakes engage us.

September 10, 2008

BOOK REVIEW

"The War Within" by Bob Woodward

ONE OF modern warfare's founding fathers, the 19th century Prussian field marshal Helmuth von Moltke, was of the opinion that no military plan, however well and carefully conceived, could survive its first contact with the enemy.

August 20, 2008

BOOK REVIEW

'Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar' by Paul Theroux

IN 1973, an expatriate American novelist possessed of great ambitions, pretty good reviews and slender means set out from London's Victoria Station to circumnavigate the great Eurasian land mass, mostly by train. Two years later, he published an account of that epic journey, "The Great Railway Bazaar."

BOOK REVIEW