The “first mission to the moon”? Wasn't that Apollo 11? Not quite, as Jeffrey Kluger reminds us in Apollo 8: The Thrilling Story of the First Mission to the Moon. Seven months before Neil Armstrong's historic footsteps in July 1969, NASA astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders had actually flown to the moon, circled it 10 times and made it back to Earth, figuratively paving the way for Armstrong's crew.

Not only is Apollo 11 better known than Apollo 8, so is Apollo 13, the aborted mission Lovell flew on in 1970 that was the subject of a Best Picture-nominated movie. Kluger collaborated with Lovell on a bestselling book about that mission, Apollo 13 (originally published as Lost Moon), and here he sets out to tell the tale of a mission that is mostly remembered for a Christmas Eve broadcast in which the astronauts read from the biblical book of Genesis.

With the full cooperation of Lovell, Borman and Anders—particularly Borman, the mission commander—Kluger paints a detailed picture of a dangerous journey that included multiple maneuvers that had to go perfectly or the astronauts would crash on the moon or be literally lost in space. His access to NASA mission transcripts—the conversations inside the spacecraft and between the astronauts and controllers on the ground in Houston—proves particularly useful in bringing the reader inside the capsule. On the ground, Kluger expertly captures the intensity of the flight controllers and the anxiety of the astronauts' families watching from suburban Houston. For a book about science and exploration, there's plenty of emotion.

BookPage Top Pick in Nonfiction, May 2017

In the early hours of April 9, 1940, King Haakon VII of Norway was awakened by an aide shouting, “Majesty, we are at war!” The frantic and desperate flight of the Norwegian king and his government into snow-clad mountains and eventually to London is just one of the spellbinding stories in Lynne Olson’s masterful account of England in World War II, Last Hope Island.

Olson, a former White House correspondent for the Baltimore Sun, has written three previous books about World War II, and she brings both a journalist’s eye and a novelist’s command of character and setting to this subject. Here, in addition to King Haakon, she brings to life the indomitable Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, who kept her people’s spirits up through her energetic BBC broadcasts. Olson details the contributions of Polish pilots to the RAF and shows how courageous, ordinary Europeans participated in resistance efforts and in secret escape networks to guide downed pilots back to England. Olson does not shy away from a sharp critique of England’s SOE, the Special Operations Executive, a rival organization to MI6. Inept SOE officials failed to follow their own security protocols, even after radio operators tried desperately to communicate that their networks had been compromised. In a particular case in the Netherlands, this resulted in the tragic death of agents who were nabbed by the Germans immediately upon parachuting into a dark field.

For American readers inclined to begin their World War II reading after U.S. entry into the conflict, Last Hope Island opens a fascinating trove of stories, characters and facts. The final chapters deal with postwar Europe. In this way, Olson’s book, 10 years in the making, not only helps illuminate the past but also serves as an insightful backdrop for today’s discussion of the future of 21st-century European alliances.

This article was originally published in the May 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

While most readers familiar with Roman history have heard the name “Praetorian Guard,” many will readily admit that their knowledge of the elite squad charged with protecting Roman emperors is incomplete. In fact, the Praetorians have been the subject of numerous conflicting and uncertain historical accounts in need of clarification.

To that end, British historian Guy de la Bédoyère’s Praetorian chronicles the rise and fall of the Guard, which both protected and destroyed many emperors during its nearly 350-year history. De la Bédoyère illuminates this important facet of Roman history with precision, style and plenty of intrigue as regimes rise, prefects fall and emperors descend into madness.

At first glance, the book appears dense and intimidating—with its broad cast of characters and ample appendices—but de la Bédoyère’s account reads more like an epic military drama than a textbook. The author brings to life stories like the multiple assassination attempts carried out on the insane emperor Commodus by his Praetorian prefect. Knowing his days were numbered, like a long line of slaughtered prefects before him, Quintus Aemilius Laetus conspired with the emperor’s mistress to execute a failed poisoning attempt before simply having him strangled.

Demonstrating a misguided sense of self-confidence, the emperor Caligula openly invited a host of his prefects, including some of his Praetorians, to murder him if they wished. In a show of loyalty and deference to absolute authority, the prefects swore up and down that they would never harm Caligula—and later stabbed him to death as he listened to a song composed in his honor.

In the early fourth century, after backing the wrong side in a civil war (and seeing many of their number drown in the climactic Battle of the Milvian Bridge), the Guard was permanently dissolved by the emperor Constantine.

Praetorian includes a photo section depicting ruins, tombstones and artistic renderings of many figures from the book, adding an interesting visual component to the text.

De la Bédoyère, whose best known work in the U.S. is The Romans for Dummies, has crafted a well-researched but accessible narrative that will appeal to those fascinated with the military, all-around knowledge seekers and especially those with a passion for ancient history.

In 1815, those with political power in Europe—the aristocracy and the monarchy—felt that international cooperation was the way to restore political order and prevent a recurrence of social and political revolution. This was understandable following many years of war, even before the horrific spectacle of the French Revolution and the widespread destruction and death at the hands of Napoleon’s invading armies. There was some cooperation but what, for the most part, did happen gives the eminent British historian Richard J. Evans the title for his magnificent new book, The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815-1914, the latest volume in the excellent Penguin History of Europe series.

Evans explores power in many manifestations, from that exercised by the state to the efforts of individuals and groups to improve their lot. During the century covered by this book, there were only a small number of wars in Europe, limited in impact and duration, but governments still sought imperial and diplomatic power and built up their armies, industrialists and bankers wanted economic power, and political parties and revolutionaries strove for political power. Nationalism became both a unifying force as well as a divisive force in numerous states.

Societies were able to increase their power over nature with advances in science, medicine and technology, and new sources of power emerged, from steam to electricity, and from the power loom to the internal combustion engine. Although Charles Darwin and the vast majority of scientists and scholars regarded their discoveries as being compatible with Christianity, their efforts opened the door for intellectual challenges by others to the power and influence of religion.

Part of the masterly narrative focuses on individual lives and shows that arguments and struggles about inequality were at the heart of 19th-century European politics. Millions of people, particularly women, peasants, farmers and Jews, were given greater equality of status. It should be emphasized, though, that equality and emancipation were only partial and conditional, often achieved at great personal cost. Women, for example, might participate in revolutionary uprisings and help build barricades, but men would not allow them to have a say in politics. In raising questions about the rights of men, however, by implication questions were raised about women’s rights as well, and some women used this opportunity to advocate for female emancipation.

The Revolutions of 1848, perhaps the most influential series of revolutionary actions of the age for those without power seeking it, came in the midst of a deep and widespread sense of economic malaise. Desperate, poverty stricken masses staged mass demonstrations that caused a great crisis of confidence in governments throughout Europe. Evans disagrees with those historians who have dismissed the 1848 Revolutions as timid affairs, citing the violence of the crowds, the lynching of hated officials and the storming of palaces and offices.

Throughout the book, there are brief sketches of important but not always well-known personalities who played important roles and information about origins of words coined in this period including “scientist” and “anti-Semitism.”

This outstanding and authoritative synthesis, weaving social, political, diplomatic, cultural, engineering, scientific and economic history, is eminently readable and so carefully crafted that I was always reluctant to put it down. It will help readers appreciate the period of Europe’s growing dominance in the world as seen from variety of perspectives and better understand some of the roots of World War I.