Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Winston was the only person Randolph truly loved.”

Churchill & Son by Josh Ireland

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If I say “this book was a lot better than I thought it was going to be,” I definitely run the risk of sounding rude, but I was very pleasantly surprised by Churchill & Son. I’m not a politics book type of person, as I tend to find them too dry, but Ireland has written a very engaging and interesting book that deals with a lot of politics in a readable and nuanced way. I was never bored or forcing myself to push through a section […]

Churchill, the Blitz, and British Grit

The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson

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I’ve read most of Erik Larson’s books, and you really can’t go wrong if you want an interesting (some say cinematic) take on history. That said, I had more trouble becoming engaged with The Splendid and the Vile than I have some of his other works, my interest in London during the Blitz notwithstanding (and really, will Larson ever be able to top Devil in the White City?). Slow to get going, the book picks up in the second half, and it’s definitely worth sticking out to […]

The Candice Millard Collection

The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard

Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard

Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill by Candice Millard

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I think it was the Reader Harder 2018 Challenge that called for reading a book by a female historian. It may also have been a twitter discussion about female historians but in either event I realized that of all the historical books I’ve read, very few have been written by women.  I wanted to remedy that.  Last year, or earlier this year as they run together, I read The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman.  Then someone here, maybe Jen K., recommended Paris 1919 by […]

Winston Churchill was a real one

Hero of the Empire by Candice Millard

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  I should start this review by saying that I knew next to nothing about Winston Churchill before reading this book. I knew even less about the Boer War. That being said, Winston Churchill was a real badass. Other good descriptors would be, “arrogant”, “obnoxious”, “tenacious”, and “remarkably lucky”. He contained multitudes. This book profiles Churchill’s life during early war campaigns and through the end of the Boer War. He was interested in war not because of the righteousness of the cause but because he […]

A Dual Biography that works

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I read Churchill and Orwell because I am a fan of the author, Thomas E. Ricks.  Ricks is best known as a military historian who wrote Fiasco and The Generals, both of which I highly recommend.  This book is a bit of a departure for Ricks but the topic seemed interesting.  Churchill and Orwell is a dual biography of two British men who had similarly parallel lives during WWII-era Great Britain.  I was surprised to find how much the two men had in common, especially […]

Historical footnote brought vividly to life by a master of non-fiction writing

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Erik Larson (Devil in the White City and Thunderstruck to name a few) writes non-fiction that reads like a novel, enthralling the reader and keeping them up page-turning with the same intensity as a beach read thriller. Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania is no exception. History tells us on May 7 1915 a German submarine attacked and sank the British cruise liner, RMS Lusitania, on a voyage from New York City to Liverpool with several hundred American citizens on board. This act […]



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