Review by Brian Tanguay When I began reading Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth by Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian writer who won the Nobel Prize for…
Author: Brian Tanguay
To Govern the Globe: World Orders & Catastrophic Change by Alfred W. McCoy
Review by Brian Tanguay What factors contribute to the rise and fall of empires, and what characteristics distinguish an empire from a world order? In To Govern the Globe, American…
A Field Guide to White Supremacy Kathleen Belew and Ramon Gutierrez, Editors
Review by Brian Tanguay When Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, there was a perception that the United States had crossed a line and put the worst excesses of…
Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us by Brian Klaas
Review by Brian Tanguay At one time or another most of us have suffered at the hands of a petty tyrant, perhaps an overbearing supervisor at work, a rude clerk…
Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America by John McWhorter
Review by Brian Tanguay In the Human Stain, the late Philip Roth’s award-winning novel published in 2000, an academic named Coleman Silk has his life, career and reputation derailed for…
Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War by Samuel Moyn
Review by Brian Tanguay Warfare is one of the oldest practices in human history, one that creates and destroys empires, topples or installs kings and dictators, and inflicts suffering on…
21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari
Review by Brian Tanguay When I began reading 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, the 2018 book by historian Yuval Noah Harari, I was feeling at loose ends about the…
The Fall of the House of Dixie by Bruce Levine
The Fall of the House of Dixie is a fascinating account, extensively researched and written in an accessible style.
How The Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith
Review by Brian Tanguay As the controversy over the removal of Confederate monuments and tumult over critical race theory makes evident, American history is contentious and unsettled, with nostalgia and…
Until Justice Be Done: America’s First Civil Rights Movement, From The Revolution to Reconstruction By Kate Masur
Review by Brian Tanguay Prior to reading Until Justice Be Done by Kate Masur, a historian who teaches at Northwestern University, I assumed that the critical period in the struggle…