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.

Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life (The Lewis Walpole Series in Eighteenth-C)

By Nicholas Phillipson

A really good read, this is well-written, deeply informed, and often surprising intellectual biography of the world?s first great free marketer.

The Templar Salvation

By Raymond Khoury

Khoury?s sequel to The Last Templar, this book is a fast-paced tale that rockets over seventeen centuries, from the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD to today?s Turkey.

American Colossus: The Triumph of Capitalism, 1865-1900

By H.W. Brands

University of Texas historian Bill Brands surveys what the book?s subtitle calls ?The Triumph of Capitalism, 1865-1900.?

Winston's War: Churchill, 1940-1945

By Max Hastings

This is a powerful, clear-eyed exposition of Churchill?s wartime leader. He details the great man?s strengths (including his indomitable will) and his weaknesses (his readiness to interfere with his generals in pursuit of wild schemes of dubious value) and finds value in both.