On Today’s Bookshelf XXV

In the time since my last On Today’s Bookshelf post (On Today’s Bookshelf XXIV) has resulted in some interesting acquisitions for my library. Here is a list of some of the hardcovers and ebooks that I have acquired and added to my to-be-read pile since the last On Today’s Bookshelf post:

Nonfiction –

• The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan
• Classical Philosophy: A History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps, Volume 1  by Peter Adamson
• Philosophy in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds: A History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps, Volume 2  by Peter Adamson
• The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade that Gave the World Impressionism by Ross King
• Brunelleschi’s Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture by Ross King
• Top Nazi: SS General Karl Wolff by Jochen von Lang
• The Last Jews in Berlin by Leonard Gross
• Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science by Alice Dreger
• The Spanish Armada by Robert Hutchinson
• Such Good Girls: The Journey of the Holocaust’s Hidden Child Survivors by R.D. Rosen
• American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman Who Defied the Puritans by Eve LaPlante
• The Trigger: Hunting the Assassin Who Brought the World to War by Tim Butcher
• Devil’s Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three by Mara Leveritt
• The Floor of Heaven: A True Tale of the Last Frontier and the Yukon Gold Rush by Howard Blum
• Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series by David Pietrusza
• Childhood at Court, 1819-1914 by John van der Kiste
• Lady Katherine Knollys: The Unacknowledged Daughter of King Henry VIII by Sarah-Beth Watkins
• Wondrous Beauty: The Life and Adventures of Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte by Carol Berkin
• The Girl Who Loved Camellias: The Life and Legend of Marie Duplessis by Julie Kavanagh
• The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
• The Origin of Satan by Elaine Pagels
• Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation by Elaine Pagels
• The Imjin War: Japan’s Sixteenth-Century Invasion of Korea and Attempt to Conquer China by Samuel Hawley

Fiction –

• Calamity by Brandon Sanderson
• The Bands of Mourning by Brandon Sanderson (signed edition)
• The First Order by Jeff Abbott
• Magic Breaks, Magic Binds, and Magic Shifts (3 books) by Ilona Andrews
• Mutineer, Deserter, and Defiant (3 books) by Mike Shepherd
• The Forest at the Edge of the World, Soldier at the Door, The Mansions of Idumea, and The Falcon in the Barn (Books 1-4 in the Forest at the Edge series) by Trish Mercer
• City of Light: An Outcast Novel by Keri Arthur
• The Troupe by Robert Jackson Bennett
• The Case Against William by Mark Gimenez
• Midnight Sun by Jo Nesbo
• Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen by Lois McMaster Bujold (signed limited edition)
• The Fatal Flame by Lyndsay Faye
• Imperial Woman: The Story of the Last Empress of China by Pearl S. Buck

As you are reading this, I am on vacation with my son and one of the places we are stopping is Daedalus Books in Columbia , Maryland. I have bought a lot of books from Daedalus online, and thought I’d like to see their retail store and perhaps add to my collection — especially children’s books, which I am hesitant to buy without having first read the book myself or being familiar with the author.

I recently read something that I plan to discuss in a later essay, but thought I would share now. In discussing John Gillingham’s new book, The EU: An Obituary, the reviewer wrote: “His thesis might be more persuasive if his book were not littered with errors.…” (“The Economist,” May 14, 2016, p. 76). It is just a reminder of the value of a good, professional editor.

Richard Adin, An American Editor

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