Etched in Starlight is a novel featuring the converging historical paths of two people of the first century CE. One is a Roman legionnaire, Maxentius, the other a Jewish physician named Hannah. Their fates collide in 66 CE when Jewish rebels attack the Roman fortress of Masada to challenge Rome’s occupation of Judea. Maxentius is […]
Tag: Spectacle
Pumblechook and Great Expectations
Great Expectations is a very old book and is not, strictly speaking, historical fiction. But it’s a classic, and it has a character named Pumblechook in it, and I’ll write about classics with characters named Pumblechook if I want to. Besides that, I decided it wouldn’t hurt to read how a classic author like Charles […]
Review of The Premonitions, a Pandemic Story
The Premonitions is Michael Lewis’s follow-up to his recent book The Fifth Risk. In fact, one might say that The Fifth Risk required that Lewis write The Premonitions. He wrote The Fifth Risk because he realized that one of the US government’s great tasks was to mitigate the risks of major disasters. Disasters like food […]