Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Beyond the Wall

Berlin Game by Len Deighton

by Leave a Comment

My wife and I honeymooned in Berlin. A lot of folks are surprised by this but we’re not beach people. We like to explore histories, interesting cultural icons, the unusual. Berlin was perfect for that. We had a great nine days there and it was a good start to our marriage. Berlin is sort of a Frankenstein’s monster of a city: a pastiche of prewar romanticism, total ruin, capitalist-western occupation and totalitarian communist occupation make up a sort of fascinating urban landscape. It is doing […]

Books and Spooks

Silverview by John Le Carré

by Leave a Comment

33 year old Julian Lawndsley (yes, he’s British, why do you ask?) has had enough of life as a hardcore stock broker in the City and decides to start anew in a nameless seaside town, where he opens a book shop. He’s not an avid reader and doesn’t know a lot about books, so when a quaint, older man named Edward starts frequenting his shop, offering him advice, he seizes the opportunity. He finds himself enjoying the older man’s company, so when Edward asks him […]

Rosenberg, H-bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom….Brando, “The King and I” and “The Catcher in the Rye”

Act of War: Lyndon Johnson, North Korea, and the Capture of the USS Pueblo by Jack Cheevers

by Leave a Comment

One thing I love about history is that no matter how much you think you know, there’s always something new to uncover. Such was the case, here. I think I have a pretty good handle on 20th century US history. I’m not an academic, by any means, but I’ve done a fair bit of reading. I’ve either never heard of the USS Pueblo, or had forgotten about it until reading this book. Technically speaking, the Korean War never ended. We were all reminded of this […]

The Weekend

Absolute Friends by John Le Carré

Are Snakes Necessary? by Brian De Palma and Susan Lehman

The Jedi Doth Return (William Shakespeare's Star Wars) by Ian Doescher

by Leave a Comment

I really wanted to write separate reviews of these but life is incredibly busy right now so this will have to suffice… Absolute Friends *** This is another review I’m glad I slept on. I really wish I liked it more than I did. The beginning was great: two friends making their way across the chasm of time and space in the post-WWII Cold War Europe. Idealism mixed with low class status, the desire to create a better world but lacking in power to do […]

It’s a real life spy thriller! (And it’s really good!)

The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War by Ben Macintyre

by Leave a Comment

Oh boy, do I love a good espionage thriller. So, continuing with my “what’s free and available” method of choosing books, I picked up my father’s copy of Ben Macintyre’s The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War. This is the true story of a high-ranking KGB official who defected to MI6 during the deepest freeze of the Cold War. (KGB is Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti for anyone who plays trivia – it seems like a formidable bonus question). Macintyre interviews […]

Arguably, America’s Greatest General

George Marshall: Defender of the Republic by David L. Roll

by Leave a Comment

I remember learning about the Marshall Plan in AP US History class and how critical it was to repairing the world after WWII. I did not realize until years later that General George C. Marshall was individual who lent his name to the plan. I’ve been in the Army for thirteen years, as of yesterday, and I’ve developed opinions on many famous generals from our history. Most of those opinions are demonstrably leery of anyone who receives unadulterated hero worship. I am not a fan […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo