Tag: history

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#BookReview: Ruby Falls by Gin Phillips

Locked Room Mystery More On Women’s Fiction End Than Horror End. Growing up at the border of Appalachia and Atlanta, halfway between Chattanooga and Atlanta, I saw the “See Rock City” signs – mostly barns – quite frequently. Have even been out there both on school field trips and with my family, and indeed my youngest brother actually proposed to his now wife on top of Lookout Mountain. In other words, I know the modern version of the mountain – and the caves – fairly well. (Though to be clear, I haven’t seen the 2020s era updates.) Thus, you, oh reader of my review, can easily see why a book about the modern origins of the tourist attraction known as Ruby Falls would entice me to read it.

The tale itself is a locked room mystery yet is more women’s fiction than horror, though those with any hint of actual claustrophobia are going to find certain scenes here (at minimum) quite difficult to read. Probably even *worse* than *that* scene in Lee Child’s Die Trying, the Reacher story that finds even Reacher crawling through a cave at one point. The use of the cave as the “locked room” is done quite excellently, as are the basic cave survival aspects, all in service to the actual story being told.

But we *are* getting a lot more relational drama than the straight up terror from a tale such as Greig Beck’s Beneath The Dark Ice, even as a murder mystery unfolds deep underground. This is the Great Depression and this is still the age of people claiming to be clairvoyant… many of whom turn out to be hucksters… but not all. The era when the caves – and the Falls – were first discovered by modern man nearly a century ago as this book is released in March 2026, and we do in fact get to hear about the moment of their discovery as part of this story.

For those looking for a women’s fiction tale with a bit more kick, or perhaps a locked room murder mystery a touch more on the relational side than the terror side, this book is going to be pretty close to exactly what you’re looking for. Those looking for a more pure survival or horror tale… not so much.

Ultimately though this is truly a great tale of its form that does great service to its real world subject even as it creates a fictional story around the real-world history. For the millions… and millions! (cheap pop!)… who have been to Ruby Falls or who live in the surrounding regions or who enjoy these types of tales, this is absolutely going to be a book you’re going to want to pick up.

Very much recommended.

This review of Ruby Falls by Gin Phillips was originally written on March 6, 2026.

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#BookReview: Chosen Land by Matthew Avery Sutton

“His Assessment Told Only Half The Story”. Yes, this is a direct quote Sutton used in this book… and also quite possibly the most succinct summary of this text available. Despite having an ambitious premise with a rather large page count to expound upon it, Sutton here still manages to omit or dismiss key figures and movements when he deems them problematic (Lottie Moon, the Student Volunteer Movement, and Annie Armstrong), fails to show moderating actions by groups he opposes (the Southern Baptist Convention in particular), and fails to show similar controversies involving those he generally supports (black prosperity gospel preachers TD Jakes and Creflo Dollar) while showing in some detail at times the controversies of those he opposes.

And yet, despite all of this – and particularly for those who align with Sutton’s progressive biases – there is enough here that you are likely to learn something, almost no matter how much you know about the history of Christianity in the United States.

For those who know no better, Sutton’s history here shows at least one version – a significantly biased one – of the history of American Christianity that largely downplays or outright omits much of the history of Christianity in the American South, including the efforts of Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong in the era around the turn of the 19th century into the 20th in particular. Through this period, more focus is placed on the religious developments of the enslaved or formerly enslaved, even when other leading figures – such as first female US Senator and last formerly slave owning US Senator Rebecca Latimer Felton – were pivotal through this period. Further, key Southern revivalists such as Sam Jones are omitted entirely, even when similarly situated and influential black, Northern preachers are later discussed and even when discussing white Northern predecessors and successors to Jones’ style, such as Billy Sunday (the real one that the fictional character played by Robert De Niro in Men of Honor claimed no relation to) or Billy Graham.

And yet, for those who perhaps don’t know much about the history of American Christianity at all… there is truly enough here that warrants reading this book. As I noted above, you’re truly going to learn at least a little. You just also need to treat this as a biased primer and actively seek out a more complete picture, including from original sources such as Felton’s Country Life in Georgia In The Days Of My Youth or Jeff Guinn’s excellent chronicle of the siege at the Branch Davidian compound, Waco.

Ultimately, the star deductions are for a lack of bibliography, clocking in at just 10% of the overall text available in the Advance Review Copy edition of the book I read, the stark omissions that show only part of the overall premise, and the bias bordering on bigotry against anything white and/ or conservative that is so pervasive throughout this text.

One final curious note is that deep in the text, in the penultimate chapter to boot, there is a brief chronicle of one particular pastor named Doug Wilson who holds a very distinctive view of Christianity…. and who lives in and “took over” the next town down the road from Sutton’s base at Washington State University. While there is no public record of any animosity between the two, the lack of balance and clear bias towards perspectives even remotely similar to Wilson’s seems more than coincidental – though again, to be crystal clear, there is *zero* public evidence to support this. Still, that particular passage made me wonder, and I leave it to you, the reader of my review and possibly reader of Sutton’s book, to draw your own conclusions there.

Those that have a conservative lean to their politics and/ or religion are likely going to want to defenestrate this book long before completing its 600 ish pages. Don’t. There really is enough through most of this text that you’re going to learn something. Those who lean more in Sutton’s direction will likely praise this book quite highly. Again, I leave it to you, the reader of my review, to decide for yourself whether to read this book or not, and I do hope that if you decide to read it at all – even if you wind up DNFing it – that you’ll leave your own review and tell all of us what you thought of the text and why.

Recommended.

This review of Chosen Land by Matthew Avery Sutton was originally written on February 25, 2026.

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#BookReview: The Greatest Scientific Gamble by Michael Joseloff

Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr. Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant. J. Robert Oppenheimer and Werner Heisenberg. In this text, Joseloff almost portrays the leading nuclear scientists of the WWII era – particularly Oppenheimer and Fermi vs Heisenberg – as a Professor X vs Magneto friendship yet rivals, still with humanity’s freedom – and possibly existence – at stake. Written in an approachable more journalistic rather than academic style befitting Joseloff’s background as an Emmy award winning news producer for various cable networks, thriller/ action fans may actually be able to enjoy this particular nonfiction book quite well.

This noted, the cast of “characters” is rather large – if you have trouble keeping track of half a dozen different characters in a tale, this one may not be for you after all, as there are nearly that many major players here along with several more supporting players for this particular narrative (many of whom were far larger players in the overall scheme of WWII, but who weren’t *as* prominent directly within the efforts on both sides of the war to build a working atom bomb).

Clocking in at roughly 23% documentation though, this tale is fairly well cited, and even if you think you know absolutely everything about nuclear development during the WWII era, this book will likely show you at least a few you didn’t. For example, I personally learned of the Allied attempts to assassinate Heisenberg, that Heisenberg was a version of the US/ Confederate States of America’s Robert E. Lee… and that the plutonium blast at Nagasaki that effectively ended the war (once the Russians finally declared war against Japan the next day) actually hit facilities used to produce torpedoes that had been used to attack Pearl Harbor nearly four years earlier (along with a *lot* of other facilities in Nagasaki).

But really, it is a story of friends finding themselves on opposing sides of a war, both seeking to both be the best in their field and uncover new scientific breakthroughs before the other does… knowing that their governments intend to weaponize these breakthroughs to use against the other side. It is a story of one man remaining staunchly loyal to his homeland, knowing its faults and yet choosing his home and family anyway. It is a story of his friends already seeing how evil their friend’s homeland is – even before its full evils were truly known – and doing absolutely everything possible to convince their friend to abandon his home and join them… even if they have to kidnap him to save his life.

It is a story you think you know… and yet you almost certainly never knew these particular aspects of it.

Very much recommended.

This review of The Greatest Scientific Gamble by Michael Joseloff was originally written on February 18, 2026.

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#BookReview: I Told You So by Matt Kaplan

Interesting History That Can In Fact Comes Across As Extended Ad For Author’s Day Job. I was perusing the existing reviews on Goodreads as I sat down to write this review, as is my custom, when I saw a 2 star review mention that this book felt, to that reviewer, at least partially like an extended ad for the author’s day job as a science reporter for The Economist and actually agreed with that point in retrospect.

Written almost as much in a memoir style as even a popular science history type book – the author’s bread and butter for twenty years now both in articles for The Economist and in books on various topics over the years, if you didn’t know (see what I did there? 😉 )- this is actually the second book this month I read that dealt with a Hungarian physician named Ignaz Semmelweiss and his pioneering antiseptic work in the 19th century, with the other being The Great shadow by Susan Wise Bauer, about the history of sickness and healing more generally whereas Kaplan’s text here focuses more on how right Semelweiss was… and how much a price he paid for being the one man that was beginning to get at least something right in an era when The Establishment (to use a more modern phrase) was oh so very wrong.

Semmelweiss’ story is the binder of this narrative, but along the way we encounter a few others similarly situated, from the famous (Galileo, Lister (whom Listerine is named after, to give those who may not be familiar with the name an idea of why it may be significant), and Pasteur, among others) to the more bleeding edge and let’s say not-yet-as-globally-famous, even though this modern set has at least one Nobel Prize winner among it and one who was essential in the creation of the COVID 19 vaccine.

The history is well written – as should be expected with someone of Kaplan’s experience – and doesn’t shy away from relevant facts that may make the historical figures look not so great in modern eyes, yet the modern is, while still well written, perhaps a touch *too* personal, offering insights into Kaplan’s own training and direct interactions with some of the subjects he is profiling. This is where the more memoir aspects of the tale kick in, and again, these are still well written and engaging, they just don’t share the same psychological distance as is notable when Kaplan is writing of Semmelweiss and others.

Still, the only reason for the star deduction is, as long time readers of my reviews of nonfiction books can probably already guess, a lack of documentation, clocking in at just 12% of the overall text here, just shy of the 15% or so of even my more recent more relaxed expectations on this point after having read quite a few nonfiction Advance Review Copy books over these last eight or so years.

Overall though, the book is truly fascinating and brings to light quite a bit of obscure history of the last few hundred years, and does a great job of making the points Kaplan is trying to make quite clear without veering too deeply into preachiness. Most readers will likely learn quite a bit from reading it, and have a generally pleasant experience doing so.

Very much recommended.

This review of I Told You So by Matt Kaplan was originally written on January 30, 2026.

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#BookReview: Country Life In Georgia In The Days Of My Youth by Rebecca Latimer Felton

Fascinating Look Into A Bygone Era From A Truly Remarkable Woman. Rebecca Latimer Felton was born in 1935 in DeKalb County, GA. She died in Cartersville, Ga – my own hometown – in 1930, just 53 years before my own birth. Her grandparents witnessed the American Revolution. Mine were children when she died – one of them a small child when Felton became the first female US Senator – and, in the same moment, the last formerly slave owning US Senator – in 1922.

This book is both a memoir of her early years through the Civil War and just beyond and also a collection of several of her writings and speeches as she became politically active in the last decades of her life, becoming a leader in both (white) women’s suffrage and the temperance movement that eventually lead to Prohibition – and its repeal – in her final years.

Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind has become a legend in American lore of the antebellum and Civil War periods. Meanwhile, Felton’s *real* story of those same periods has largely been forgotten. Even in Cartersville, where a home still stood on her plantation land *this Millennium* (as an abandoned lot, according to my memory of living just a mile or so away) until it was destroyed by arsonists in 2001, Felton’s name appears on a couple of shopping centers and a couple of roads near where her plantation once was.

This story, *her* story, deserves to be read and understood far more than it currently is. Felton was absolutely a person of her time and era, and this book shows it. She does not hide that she owned slaves. She is quite clear that she believes the white race superior to the black – or any other. Yes, that even means that she uses a certain word beginning with “N” that is virtually *never* used by anyone other than the most hardcore avowed racists of the 2020s. Even with these views however, Felton makes great effort to explicitly state – and devote a decent section of this book to conclusively proving in her own way – that the Civil War was explicitly because rich Southerners wanted to defend slavery specifically. Though in one of the more prescient statements that many today should take heed of, she also explicitly states that at least the politicians of Georgia had wished – and genuinely believed – that they could peaceably secede from the Union without bloodshed.

*And yet*, Felton also speaks highly of the society the Cherokee Nation built. She shows herself, particularly in the speeches and writings that form the back end of the book, to be a strong and stirring leader in pushing for women’s rights – not just to vote, but to be free from spousal and societal abuse. Indeed, it is clear that one large reason she was so passionate in her views of temperance was due to how drunk men treated the women around them – reasons that some of my own grandparents would see play out in their own lives after both of my grandfathers served in WWII and both survived the meat grinder of the Battle of the Bulge only to both be there to directly see the concentration camps liberated by them and their fellow American soldiers.

I’m not going to bullshit y’all. Felton is truly a fascinating and complex woman, and by 2000s standards, particularly 2020s standards, yes, she can be quite problematic indeed.

*And yet*, by the standards of her own era, she was more progressive than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or even Bernie Sanders are considered today.

Read this book. Learn about an era that so many today have so many strong and passionate views on *from someone who was actively there*. Even as someone who grew up separated by just a few decades in time and barely a mile in distance from Felton, who went to elementary school literally down the road from the last home Felton lived in, even *I* learned many things about this era that *I* had previously never known, and it opened even my own eyes in several ways. Thus, I have every confidence that anyone not both from Cartersville and at least as knowledgeable of its history as I am will absolutely learn a great deal here, even if this is admittedly a difficult read almost a century after Felton’s death.

Very much recommended.

Download this book from the Internet Archive here.

This review of Country Life In Georgia In The Days Of My Youth by Rebecca Latimer Felton was originally written on January 21, 2026.

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#BookReview: The Great Shadow by Susan Wise Bauer

Interesting Take On The Subject With Writing Reminiscent of Rachel Held Evans. I suspect Bauer would have admired much about the late great Evans, even if they didn’t agree on every particular. Here, Bauer approaches the history of sickness the same way Evans, particularly in the last few books before her death, did various Biblical topics – with a fair amount of creativity to give examples of a particular point followed by reasonably well reasoned analysis based on the available authoritative texts – whether those be the Bible (and Torah) in Evans’ case or what we consider to be more “objective” science and histories for Bauer.

Bauer does a truly great job here with the scenarios she creates usually at the beginning of each chapter, showing both how a “modern” (21st century ish) approach to the next topic looks – usually in a way most current readers will readily identify with or at least have heard of – and a more historical perspective would look on that same topic, with “historical perspective” here ranging from pre-history through roughly the WWII period. With these, Bauer shows herself to have almost a novelist eye for storytelling, and a fairly good novelist eye for *compelling* storytelling.

The actual histories she presents here are fairly solid and mostly reasonably known or at minimum in line with things that are reasonably known, so I don’t necessarily feel the Sagan Standard applies for this text as it exists. Which allows the 15% documentation to suffice without a star deduction, even though it *is* around the lower bound of what I expect to see from a nonfiction text.

In Bauer’s message of trying to reach those skeptical of modern medicine – which should be most anyone who actually understands its history and where it actually currently is – she actually had one particular line that stuck out to me as particularly well said:

“If you’re going to try to convince people of something that is going to deprive them of something vital (freedom, agency, control, their livelihood), anything less than an ironclad case isn’t going to do the trick.”

While this line, if I remember correctly, was specifically about trying to get docs to adopt more stringent standards in line with more current thinking, it really does apply equally well to anyone seeking any change from any other person for any reason at all. Thus, it is both quite wise and quite well spoken – and gives you a pretty solid idea of what to expect from the overall tone of the book here to boot.

Very much recommended.

This review of The Great Shadow by Susan Wise Bauer was originally written on January 18, 2026.

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#BookReview: The Most Awful Responsibility by Alex Wellerstein

Reasonably Well Documented Book Will Force You To Rethink All You Think You Know Of The Post-WWII Era. This is one of those rare history books that actively goes in to not just point out something most people missed about an era and/ or a person, but also goes to show the reader that a lot of what you thought you knew… may not have happened quite the way you think it did.

For example, one of the main points of the early part of the text: You think President Truman ordered the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That was what most textbooks (at least in America) teach, at least lower than say upperclassman history majors at the collegiate level. Except…. Wellerstein shows here – repeatedly – that this wasn’t exactly how that went down. Indeed, Wellerstein uses first hand sources from a few different key people – including Truman himself, where possible – to show that not only was there not one single decision to drop the bombs or where, but that Truman himself likely understood neither the weapon nor the target profile. (Which, let’s face it, both humanizes him a bit more – something Wellerstein is *great* at in this text, for what that’s worth – and should give most of us at least a touch of hope given more recent Presidents and their mental abilities.)

Then, in the period after the bombings, Truman – and the world – realize what has been done… and Truman is personally absolutely horrified. This is where and when the real struggles begin, and the “rest of the story” (as Paul Harvey famously proclaimed for so long) begins. And y’all, this part reads almost like a DC spy thriller/ court drama. High ranking people across several different realms within the US government all seeking to have their vision of the future made manifest, with Truman – and his famous “buck stops here” mantra – the focal point and the one both making decisions and seeking to establish his own preferred path.

Now, with all this lesser known history and with the entire point of the book showing a side of Truman most often ignored by history and historians, some may argue that this necessistates application of the Sagan Standard -that these are extraordinary claims that thus require extraordinary evidence. From my reading here and my understanding of both this text and the relevant histories as I know them, I don’t think this is true. This is a bit of a bombshell, yes, but is also fits pretty squarely in with known histories, it simply illuminates lesser known corners of those histories more properly. Thus, for me, the roughly 20% bibliography here sufficiently establishes a reasonable amount of documentation, and the frequent citations of the diaries and memoirs of those directly involved show the depth of research Wellerstein was able to bring to the table here.

Overall a very well written text that will completely rewrite your understanding of the post-WWII period as it relates to the use and control of atomic weapons – which seems to be Wellerstein’s very point, meaning he executed that point to near perfection.

Very much recommended.

This review of The Most Awful Responsibility by Alex Wellerstein was originally written on December 14, 2025.

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#BookReview: The History Of Money by David McWilliams

Solid Enough Primer. This is one of those “history of humanity” type books that attempts to take literally thousands of years of human history (including pre-history) and condense it into a sub-400 page narrative. (With 12% of its 403 Kindle pages being bibliography, which we’ll get to in a moment.) Human history being as complex as it actually is, none of these types of tales are going to be 100% correct in all details, as details are more often than not incredibly nuanced. But as an overall narrative, this one is at least interesting and provides a lot of solid jumping off points of “hey, did this particular bit of history *actually* happen the way McWilliams claims?”. Sometimes that answer will be “mostly”. Others, it will be “somewhat”, and still others will be “barely”. Different specialists will have different opinions at different points, and I know my friends trained more in the Austrian school of Economics (Milton Friedman, Ludwig Von Mises, Frederick Hayek, etc) will likely take quite a bit of umbrage with McWilliams’ 20th and 21st century histories in particular. Including the fact that McWilliams is obviously quite the fan of one John Maynard Keynes – the singular “economist” who has done more harm to the global economy than very likely any other in the history of humanity.

Still, like I said, as an overall primer on the history of money… this is at least entertaining and mostly informative… if you’re willing to do more research.

No, the actual star deduction isn’t for McWilliams’ adoration of Keynes or his at times gross over simplifications. Those can at least somewhat be excused as not 100% objective criticisms – even if they *are* educated criticisms. The actual star deduction here comes from the aforementioned 12% bibliography. Quite simply, a book with this much history should be cited *far* more than this, and indeed I’ve personally read books over the years covering a far more limited historical scope that had multiples of this level of documentation.

So read this book to begin to get a rough idea of the topic – and, as I’ve already pointed out to one friend and fellow book blogger since reading this, it *can* be enough to refute a few monetary policy memes/ stories floating around online. Then do even more research on the actual events portrayed here and see how accurate McWilliams truly was. Or was not.

Very much recommended.

This review of The History Of Money by David McWilliams was originally written on December 1, 2025.

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#BookReview: Gemini by Jeffrey Kluger

Solid History Of A Well told Yet Unfocused On Era. The subtitle of this book speaks of the “untold story” of Gemini… which is a bit misleading. Anyone who knows most anything about NASA in the 1960s and/ or the Apollo missions knows a fair amount about the Gemini missions that created and proved the tech that made Apollo possible. What this book does is that it *centers* its focus on that exact period. (Literally, the central part of the book is specifically about Gemini, after an introduction discussing how we got to Gemini, including Mercury, and a back end that begins discussing Apollo and other fallout from Gemini.)

In this focus, Kluger does exceptionally well. He shows the key players and tech, and even provides details that even those who know a fair amount about the history involved here may not know. (Such as the Chris Kraft toddler/ sandwich story, which I had never previously heard despite reading several books about and memoirs from many of the people Kluger profiles yet again within these pages.)

Indeed, the only real fault I could find here is the absolute lack of any bibliography at all, at least in the Advance Review Copy of this book I read. Which is the reason for the star deduction.

Overall this is a book where many will probably already know a lot about this subject, but more in passing while having been focused on other things. Again, the subtitle is misleading in that the Gemini story has always been well told, but most always before now *as part of* the Apollo narrative. Indeed, Kluger’s own Apollo books, at least the ones I’ve read, have all discussed the Gemini missions to some extent as well. But in centering this text precisely on Gemini, this new version does in fact provide at least some new details even those who think they know every possible thing about the Space Race of the 1950s and 1960s could possibly know quite likely did not, in fact, know.

Very much recommended.

This review of Gemini by Jeffrey Kluger was originally written on November 12, 2025.

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#BookReview: The Great Math War by Jason Socrates Bardi

Math And History Nerds Will Love This. Solid History For Everyone Else Too. Ok, so I’m a dude that got a Computer Science degree 20 yrs ago and came within literally half a dozen classes of getting degrees in Mathematics and Secondary Mathematics Education at the same time… who also took HIST classes as electives just because they sounded interesting. In other words, this book may as well have been titled “Jeff Sexton Will Beg To Read This Book”, because I damn near did. But clearly, I *am* the very math and history nerd that my title of this review above explicitly said would love this book.

Clocking in at 19% bibliography, it has a healthy enough backing so that it doesn’t drop a star on that account, and really the only even quibble I have here is that in choosing to end in 1938, Bardi doesn’t even attempt to show how the war he describes here played out in the Post Second World War world where the rise of computers and computer science changed pretty well everything in mathematics.

Still, for what it is and what it actually covers, this is an utterly fascinating book that gives enough of the backstories of everyone involved to show how they arrived at the moments they did and why they mattered when they got there without going too deep into unnecessary detail too often. Yes, even when it looks like Bardi is going off on some wild tangent that can’t possibly be related to The Great Math War (such as the Boer War), he ultimately manages to bring it right back around and show how that tangent actually played a role in shaping the thinking of one of his principle targets or at minimum someone closely linked to them who also shaped their thinking.

For me, this was an utterly fascinating look at a period of math history I hadn’t previously really considered, featuring several names I had known of from other exploits and adventures, but had never really dived into from this angle. And yes, at least some of the most famous of their era make appearances here, up to and including one Albert Einstein.

I do think that one of the more fascinating tidbits that I had not known, particularly as someone who learned the basics of Set Theory in 2004-2005, was just how new that particular branch of mathematics was – and how controversial it had been even a century before I learned it, at which time it was (clearly) being routinely taught to Senior level college students. (And I still hold that we can actually teach it even in elementary school, as one key feature of it ultimately revolves around remainder division.)

Truly an excellent book written without the dryness that can accompany such texts in the hands of less skilled storytellers, this is absolutely one of those kinds of books that many will enjoy and a few will absolutely love.

Very much recommended.

This review of The Great Math War by Jason Socrates Bardi was originally written on November 12, 2025.