Below The Beltway

Despite it’s title, S.M. Stirling’s The Protector’s War, the second volume in a trilogy that started with Dies The Fire isn’t about war in the Post-Change Williamette Valley so much as it’s about the precursors to a war between survivors in a new world that seems all but inevitable.
This second volume starts eight years after […]

Glenn Reynolds reviews Ron Paul’s The Revolution: A Manifesto:
The main shortcoming in Paul’s book, as with his candidacy, is in the follow through, the transition from critique to action. Although he does include a chapter entitled “The Revolution,” about reducing the size of government, it’s a pretty skimpy plan. Were we to see a Ron […]

Imagine if, in a split-second, every piece of technology that you depend upon stopped working. Not just televisions, computers, and cell phones. Add in cars, trains, and anything based upon electricity or the internal combustion engine. To make things even more interesting, let’s add in firearms and gunpowder too.
What kind of world would result, what […]

The Collected What If ? is nothing less than a comprehensive look at some of the most important turning points in history. And, once you get started considering the possible ways in which history could have turned out drastically different, it’s hard for the imagination not to start running wild.
With contributions from some of the […]

Through three novels, Newt Gingrich and William Forstchen have told the story of a Civil War that might have been. It started with Gettysburg, where Robert E. Lee withdraws from the field of battle in Pennsylvania and forces the Army of the Potomac to fight a battle on his terms, with devastating results. Then, in […]

Continuing the counter-factual history of the Civil War that they started with Gettysburg, Newt Gingrich and William Forstchen came up with another literary hit out of the park with the second volume of their trilogy, Grant Comes East.
When the last volume ended, the Army of the Potomac had been decimated at Union Mills, Maryland and […]

I don’t say this very often, but in Gettysburg, Newt Gingrich and William Fortschen have created a masterpiece.
The Civil War itself, and the Battle of Gettysburg in particular, have been the subject of countless historical books, novels, and films. The war has also been the subject of more than one “what-if” scenario; imagining how history […]

Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team Of Rivals: The Political Genius Of Abraham Lincoln is, on it’s face, an ambitious undertaking.
Not only does it tell the story of America’s 16th President, it also tells the story of the men who were his main political rivals for the Republican nomination in 1860 and later became the core of […]

Remembering the great Arthur C. Clarke:
Arthur C. Clarke, a writer whose seamless blend of scientific expertise and poetic imagination helped usher in the space age, died early Wednesday in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he had lived since 1956. He was 90.
Rohan de Silva, an aide to Mr. Clarke, said the author died after experiencing breathing […]

The last of the great triumvirate of Science Fiction authors has died:
Science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke has died aged 90, it was confirmed tonight.
The visionary author was most famous for his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, and for his collaboration with director Stanley Kubrick on the film of the same name.
Clarke was the last […]