Patrick Reardon

Elmore Leonard was a fan of human nature. He didn’t think in terms of us-and-them. We’re all us, each with flaws and moments of beauty. How else could he write [...]

The seven guys who make up the Animals had been through a lot in Christopher Moore’s earlier goofy novels set in San Francisco Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story and You [...]

Antony Maitland — an English barrister, a British spy during World War II, a thorn in the side of official police and an investigator with a knack for solving mysteries [...]

Kalypso has been told by Hermes, the messenger of Zeus, to permit Odysseus to return home after being held on her island of Ogygia — and in her bed — [...]

In preparing my review of Daniel Mendelsohn’s new translation of The Odyssey, I made a detailed comparison of how it matched against Emily Wilson’s 2018 version and the 1967 rendering [...]

John Keegan opens The Face of Battle, his groundbreaking 1976 book on war, with an examination of generations of military historians and finds them wanting. For instance, he quotes at [...]

At any number of points in Saint Francis of Assisi, the book’s writers make the point that the thirteenth-century Italian mystic and friar has been many things to many people [...]

The 1897 image on pages 110-111 of Jeremy Black’s A History of the Railroad in 100 Maps is a striking bird’s-eye view of Chicago, looking out across the downtown to [...]