Showing 11 - 20 of 25
A new sleuth
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 15/09/2017
» Society is based on the deal that in return for protection and security, the authorities have permission to define our rights, inalienable and otherwise. Laws and regulations apply. Nothing is more disconcerting than when they overstep their limits.
Three days in May
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 11/08/2017
» Hitler learned a lesson from his unsuccessful Munich putsch of 1924 -- that weapons are legal only in the hands of the government. He spent the next decade getting into the national government. After that Germany built weapons at breakneck speed.
Renaissance history
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 14/07/2017
» I am so conditioned when I pick up a new book about Italy that I expect it to be a historical novel about Ancient Rome. That period seems to fascinate historians and historical novelists. This reviewer finds it no more than somewhat interesting.
Off the bad guys
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 23/06/2017
» Nations are paranoid, apprehensive that they will be attacked from one direction or another. History has shown that today's friends may well be tomorrow's enemies. So they pre-emptively draw up plans for war against neighbours and distant lands, stockpiling weapons.
Hail and farewell
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 19/05/2017
» Contemporary historians are predictable -- penning book after book about Atlantis, ancient Rome, the Templars, World War II. But then a few looked at the calendar and the penny dropped. 2017. Isn't this the anniversary of something? Indeed. The Russian Revolution a century ago.
Open season on IS
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 27/04/2017
» Though the president of the United States is a character in more than a few novels, he is a product of the authors' imaginations and bears little if any resemblance to the actual incumbents. In some stories he's idealised, in others vilified.
The Tudor women
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 03/03/2017
» So much has been written about England's Tudor dynasty that duplication is inevitable. Historians and historical novelists are hard put to find new angles. Henry VIII has been analysed every which way. There is no way of getting around the fact that he had six wives, ordering two to be decapitated.
Fool's gold
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 01/08/2016
» The search for lost or hidden treasure is older than Jason and the golden fleece. Legend and history assure us it exists, on land and beneath the sea. Fortune hunters have been searching for it, high and low, for millennia. The Templars squirrelled away their trove, but where?
Use your grey matter
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 27/06/2016
» When Descartes said "I think therefore I am", it couldn't be faulted. But that was centuries ago. In this age of technological, electronic and digital inventions, our thinking is done for us. Touch a button, tap a few keys, and the screen fills with information. Questions are answered, problems solved.
The Cold War continues today
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 02/11/2015
» World War I ended in 1918. World War II ended in 1945. No argument there. The Cold War ended in 1989. No agreement there. Some pundits accept it. Others don't. According to the negatives, the Cold War is still going on, with and without communism. It continues, hot and heavy, between Russia and the US.