The Shakespeare Thefts: In Search of the First Folios

Eric Rasmussen. The Shakespeare Thefts: In Search of the First Folios.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
As reviewed by Ted Odenwald
A character in Edgar Lee Master’s Spoon River Anthology observes that people thought him mad because his life goal was to memorize the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. Shakespearean scholar makes a similar profession of lunacy regarding his decades’-long [...]

Roger Ebert. Life Itself: A Memoir

Roger Ebert. Life Itself: A Memoir.
New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2011.
As reviewed by Ted Odenwald
Rituals are an important part of Roger Ebert’s life. He revisits people and events that have been formative for him. He revisits places through which his education and career have taken him: his hometown, Urbana, Illinois; the University of Illinois, [...]

Nightwoods

Charles Frazier. Nightwoods.
New York: Random House, 2011.
As reviewed by Ted Odenwald
Set in rural North Carolina in the early 1960’s, Charles Frazier’s Nightwoods exhibits strengths that readers have come to expect from his two earlier novels, Cold Mountain and Thirteen Moon: characters who are on the fringes of society, intelligent beyond their levels of education; a [...]

Our Kind of Traitor

John Le Carre. Our Kind of Traitor.
New York: Viking. 2010

As reviewed by Ted Odenwald
Though Our Kind of Traitor may not be totally Orwellian in message and tone, there is enough disenchantment and cynicism permeating this novel to assure us that John Le Carre has not lost his edge. His target is corruption in the [...]

Dear Donna, It’s only 45 Hours from Bien Hoa

Dear Donna, It’s only 45 Hours from Bien Hoa: Stories from the Vietnam War.
Douglas Neralich.
1st Books Library, 2002.
As reviewed by Ted Odenwald
Douglas “Doc” Neralich has created a succinct, incisive, and moving collage of his experiences as a medic with the 36th Engineer Battalion in Vinh Long, Vietnam. Interweaving short stories, brief anecdotes, and poetry, “Doc” [...]

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

Walter Isaacson. Benjamin Franklin: An American Life.
New York: Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, 2003.
As reviewed by Ted Odenwald
To arrive at an accurate picture of Benjamin Franklin, claims biographer Walter Isaacson, “we must rescue [him] from the schoolbook caricature of a genial codger flying kites…and spouting homespun maxims… [and from] critics who would confine him with the [...]

FDR’s Funeral Train

Robert Klara. FDR’s Funeral Train: A Betrayed Widow,
a Soviet Spy, and a Presidency in the Balance.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
As reviewed by Ted Odenwald
The death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt on April 12, 1945, shook the nation; the heroic world leader, who had guided his people through the Great Depression and through nearly four years [...]

Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned

John A. Farrell. Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned.
New York: Doubleday, 2011.
as reviewed by Ted Odenwald

Clarence Darrow is often regarded as a folk hero, as evidenced by two American classics: Irving Stone’s biographical novel, Clarence Darrow for the Defense and Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee’s depiction of the Scopes Monkey Trial in [...]

The Final Storm: A Novel of the War in the Pacific

Jeff Shaara. The Final Storm: A Novel of the War in the Pacific.
New York: Ballantine Books, 2011.
As reviewed by Ted Odenwald

Okinawa was the last stepping stone for American forces as they anticipated invading Japan and eventually ending World War II. But the stepping stone became a major stumbling block-a series of gruesome, bloody battles [...]

Washington: A Life

Ron Chernow. Washington: A Life.
New York: Penguin Press, 2010.
As reviewed by Ted Odenwald

The fresco in the eye of the U.S. Capitol rotunda depicts the “apotheosis of Washington,” the ascension into the heavens of the “Father of our country.” For two centuries Americans have idolized, lionized, mythicized, and even deified the Revolutionary War hero [...]