The Elon Musk of Botany Bay?
The Multifarious Mr. Banks: From Botany Bay to Kew, The Natural Historian Who Shaped the World By Toby Musgrave. Yale University Press, 2020. Hardcover, 357 pp., $35. Reviewed by Karl C. Schaffenburg In current usage “multifarious” refers to a thing that demonstrates...
The Nation’s First Architect
Building America: The Life of Benjamin Henry Latrobe by Jean H. Baker. Oxford University Press, 2020. Hardcover, 304 pages, $35. Reviewed by Addison Del Mastro Benjamin Henry Latrobe is, in two ways, not Pierre L’Enfant—he was not, despite his surname, French; and he...
An Imitation of Christ
The Volunteer: One Man, an Underground Army, and the Secret Mission to Destroy Auschwitz by Jack Fairweather. Custom House, 2019. Hardcover, 528 pages, $29. Reviewed by Joseph Barnas If you have heard of Witold Pilecki, odds are you know him as “the man who...
Skiing Alta with WFB
William F. Meehan III ‘Alta’ isn’t a word you hear often in fashionable conversations in skiing circles … You can live out a casual lifetime, as a casual skier, and not know about Alta, and the odd thing is that this really suits the Alta people just fine. There is...
Ah, just your typical 663-page light summer beach read for a @ubookman book review. Makes Wealth of Nations look like a Substack essay.