What Karl's reading

After three years preparing The Triumph of William McKinley by reading very little but books, letters, articles and newspapers from the Gilded Age, I’m trying to get back into my regular routine, which I’ll chronicle here with an occasional review of what I’ve read.

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

By Laura Hillenbrand

With economy, precision and superb pacing, Ms. Hillenbrand has written a jewel of a book.

Lost to Time: Unforgettable Stories That History Forgot

By Martin W. Sandler

Eleven short tales of now largely forgotten people, events or places from throughout history, from the Moorish slave turned scholar to the botched practice for D-Day that cost more lives than were lost in the actual landings the first day on Utah Beach.

God's Battalions: The Case for the Crusades

By Rodney Stark

A short, brash book by a respected Baylor University professor, this volume provides a healthy dose of revisionism about the Crusades.

Clash of Extremes: The Economic Origins of the Civil War

By Marc Egnal

Marc Egnal, a history professor at York University in Toronto, Canada, makes a powerful, well reasoned (and ultimately unsatisfying argument) that the Civil War resulted more from the clash of the economic systems of the North and South than it did from slavery.