The most notable assassination in history, of probably the single most influential man in European history, occurred in 44 B.C. The event changed the world, but not as the assassins had planned. Why and how did it happen? In The Death of Caesar, history and classics professor Barry Strauss offers both excellent historical detective work and riveting prose.

Strauss explains the historical context of Julius Caesar’s assassination and demonstrates how it became, for all practical purposes, the end of the Republic and the beginning of the Empire.

The three main conspirators—Cassius, Brutus and Decimus—said they acted to preserve the Republic, but the truth was more complicated. Ambition, greed and perhaps envy that Caesar had selected his grandnephew, Octavian, only 18 years old, to succeed him, were also motives. Cassius probably initiated the plot, but it was his brother-in-law, Brutus, who was essential to the murder. He had the authority and a reputation for ethical behavior; if he called Caesar a tyrant, his credibility would convince others and allow fellow conspirators to remain alive. Decimus, the closest to Caesar, served with him in the army for 10 years and played a crucial role in the plot. Caesar had made a decision to stay away from the Senate that day and was tricked by his good friend to go.

The Roman people and the conspirators both wanted peace and compromise. Caesar was dead, but Caesarism—the idea that a general and his legions could conquer the Republic—lived on. What the conspirators needed was a military coup. Instead, they committed murder and made speeches.

Meticulously researched and superbly written, The Death of Caesar is a vivid and readable exploration of a momentous event.

This article was originally published in the March 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

If you’re an author with a family ghost, it would seem almost obligatory to write about it. Hannah Nordhaus’ “paternal grandfather’s maternal grandmother,” Julia Staab, haunts La Posada hotel in Santa Fe (or so lots of people believe). In American Ghost, Nordhaus offers a fascinating and nuanced account of her ancestral ghost story and her complicated clan.

The Staabs, German Jews by birth, were among the first American merchants in Santa Fe. Julia married the already successful Abraham in 1865; she died in the house at the age of 52. Seven children survived her.

The ghost story goes like this: Julia never recovered from a baby’s death; her husband abused her; she died violently, perhaps by Abraham’s hand; and she now haunts her old bedroom. Nordhaus establishes that this is romantic fiction, though she remains respectful of those who believe they’ve encountered the ghost.

The Staabs were wealthy businesspeople, but they were also dysfunctional. Nordhaus unearths depression, addiction, suicide and estrangement. She writes of her ancestors’ travails with perception and compassion. Along the way, she employs family history to explore the lives of German Jews (Julia’s much younger sister died at Theresienstadt), the renaissance of Santa Fe and changing attitudes toward illness. It’s a spirited ride.

Perhaps most entertaining are her present-day encounters with psychics, ghost hunters and spiritualists, all eager to help. Her quest culminates in a weird experience in Julia’s room, make of it what you will. She does eventually discover whatever we can now know of the “truth” of Julia’s life, but inevitably, Nordhaus’ journey really is a search for self, and we are privileged to be able to accompany her.

This article was originally published in the March 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

BookPage Nonfiction Top Pick, March 2015

In an interview some years ago, Erik Larson, author of such bestsellers as The Devil in the White City and In the Garden of Beasts, called himself “an animator of history” rather than a historian. Indeed, he has always shown a brilliant ability to unearth the telling details of a story and has the narrative chops to bring a historical moment vividly alive. But in his new book, Larson simply outdoes himself.

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania tells in riveting fashion the story of the final voyage of the top-of-the-line British passenger ship, which sailed from New York City on May 1, 1915, and was sunk by a German U-boat off the coast of Ireland six days later. The magnificent ship went down in only 18 minutes. Of its 1,959 passengers and crew, only 764 survived. Among the dead were 123 Americans, and the sinking of the Lusitania is often cited as the reason President Wilson dropped his vow of neutrality and led America into World War I.

But the U.S. entry into the war was more complicated. Larson gets at this complexity by presenting a portrait of Wilson in emotional tumult after the sudden death of his first wife and the dawn of a romance with the woman who would become his second wife. Also contributing to the complexity of international relations were the ruthless actions of the Germans and the machinations of the British Admiralty, headed by Winston Churchill, which in a top-secret effort had cracked German codes and was tracking the U-boat that ultimately sank the Lusitania, but inexplicably did nothing to prevent it.

These are the realpolitik aspects of the story Larson weaves in alternating chapters. But what is most compelling about Dead Wake is that, through astonishing research, Larson gives us a strong sense of the individuals—passengers and crew—aboard the Lusitania, heightening our sense of anxiety as we realize that some of the people we have come to know will go down with the ship.

A story full of ironies and “what-ifs,” Dead Wake is a tour de force of narrative history.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Larson about Dead Wake.

This article was originally published in the March 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The Spanish Civil War, fought between 1936 and 1939, was the first struggle against fascism in Europe as the powers of Germany and Italy, for their own purposes, joined with General Francisco Franco’s Nationalist (rebel) forces to oust the elected government. Although the Western democracies adopted a policy of nonintervention, volunteers came from many countries to assist the Republican government in the hope that fascism could be stopped. Unfortunately, five months after the Spanish war ended, World War II began in Europe. As Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes (The Making of the Atomic Bomb and Dark Sun) shows in his fast-paced, often moving and revealing new book Hell and Good Company: The Spanish Civil War and the World It Made, the earlier war served in numerous ways as a laboratory for the larger war.

Rhodes concisely explains the background of the Spanish Civil War and follows events chronologically, but he is only incidentally concerned with Spanish politics. Franco’s side won the war and he ruled Spain as an absolute dictator until his death in 1975. Instead, Rhodes has three major concerns: first, the stories of courageous individuals whose stories have either not been told or told incompletely; secondly, the achievements in constructive technology spurred by the war, such as medical advances in collecting blood and sorting casualties; thirdly, the extraordinary works of art, reportage and literature, by such figures as Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn and George Orwell, that brought the tragedy to the attention of the world .

Some two million men and women fought in the war; at least 200,000 were killed and many more injured. There were an abundance of compelling figures involved, often doing their life-saving work under incredibly difficult conditions. American surgeon Edward Barsky, in an unpublished memoir, provided the title for Rhodes’s book. Barsky had been a busy doctor in New York but agreed to help raise funds for medical equipment for the Spanish Republicans and recruit people with exceptional medical and nursing skills. He agreed to lead a contingent of U.S. volunteers. Once in Spain, he found that the red crosses painted on the roofs of his ambulances not only were not respected, they became prime targets in a war of attrition. He coped with problems in lines of authority and language. Stolen equipment, inadequate facilities, unceasing war and an unending flow of casualties followed. Eventually, Barsky’s team became the largest and best-equipped medical unit. His remarkable life after Spain found him serving in World War II and aiding various humanitarian and human rights causes, despite U.S. government harassment. He also helped provide emergency medical services for civil rights workers in the American South.

Wherever she was assigned, skilled British nurse and midwife Patience Darton went to work improving conditions that were often deplorable. This frequently brought her into conflict with her co-workers. Two surgeons, Frederic Durán Jordà from Spain and Norman Bethune from Canada, developed an innovative national blood distribution program. Despite the fact that Bethune’s team would be responsible for 78 percent of all blood transfusions on the Republican side during the war, some Canadian Communists conspired successfully to have him expelled from Spain.

Many gifted men and women felt it was important to offer their skills to the cause of democracy in a small but pivotal war at a hinge of history. Their hope was that if they were successful it would delay or prevent a wider war. Rhodes relates their stories in a superbly engrossing narrative that packs a lot of information and drama and reminds us of the importance of individual lives in wartime.

Although Orwell noted that his time in Spain had left him with “memories that are mostly evil,” at the same time, “Curiously enough the whole experience has left me with not less but more belief in the decency of human beings.” We meet some of them in this enlightening book.

Thomas Cromwell and the Tudor Court have had something of a resurgence in popular culture. While Showtime’s melodramatic “The Tudors” focused on Henry VIII and his six wives, Hilary Mantel’s Booker-Prize winning novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies dramatized the political rise of Henry’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell. Tracy Borman’s vivid new biography, Thomas Cromwell: The Untold Story of Henry VIII’s Most Faithful Servant, is a timely addition to histories of the era.

Cromwell was born a commoner and rose to power through a blend of native intelligence and dogged workaholism. This aspect of Cromwell is what we see in Mantel’s novels, rendering him a sympathetic figure. The importance of Borman’s biography of Cromwell is that she creates a more balanced portrait of a contradictory and ruthless man.

Borman, who is chief curator of Britain’s royal palaces, blends the private and the public Cromwell, so we glimpse his personal generosity (he was always kind to widows and orphans) as well as his single-minded Machiavellian statesmanship. Torture and executions were tools for Cromwell to maintain his importance to the king, but they were tools that could also be turned against him.

Thomas Cromwell is a readable portrait of a complex man and the violent history he made.

This article was originally published in the January 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

When “Light-Horse Harry” Lee, Robert E. Lee’s father, eulogized George Washington, he memorialized the late president’s effort to forge a unified nation that would bring happiness forever to the people of America. On the eve of the Civil War, Robert E. Lee, married to the daughter of Washington’s adopted son, appeared poised to preserve the Union that Washington had fought so hard to establish.

Yet, as journalist and presidential speechwriter Jonathan Horn points out in his stirring and elegant The Man Who Would Not Be Washington, Lee chose to lead rebel forces against the Union, leaving division and discord in his wake. Although Lee’s proponents argue that he is the “second coming” of Washington and point to similarities between the two men, others note that Lee’s legacy lies in his painful decision to preserve the values of his beloved state of Virginia above all else.

While Horn does not draw on any new archival materials, he chronicles Lee’s life with a vitality that captivates our imagination and keeps us glued to Lee’s story. With graceful vigor, he traces Lee from his childhood to his days at West Point, his command in Mexico, his leadership at Harper’s Ferry and ultimately to his decision to resign his commission in the U.S. Army. Lee’s decision to turn his back on the Union—and his canny leadership in battle—meant that he would be forever estranged from the nation he cherished.

Horn’s illuminating study offers a fascinating comparison between two figures who shaped American history.

This article was originally published in the January 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

“I could’ve been a judge, but I never ’ad the Latin. . . . And so I become a miner instead.” So starts the bitterly funny “Miner’s Sketch” from the 1960s revue Beyond the Fringe, which gave Americans a sense of the long, brutal class war in Britain between coal miners and the ruling class. Neither emerged intact.

That antagonism provides the backdrop for Catherine Bailey’s irresistible Black Diamonds, a dual history of the “torrid unraveling” of an aristocratic dynasty, the Earls Fitzwilliam, and the collapse of the Yorkshire coal mining community that provided the family’s wealth.

As she did in The Secret Rooms, her 2013 bestseller about the Dukes of Rutland, Bailey provides proof that a noble title doesn’t always signify noble behavior. In 1902, when Bailey opens her story, the Fitzwilliams were based at the 365-room Wentworth estate. Staggeringly rich from coal, they spent the subsequent decades mistreating their children, betraying their spouses, impregnating village girls and chorus dancers and suing each other. Today, they have lost both Wentworth and their noble title.

Ironically, the one thing the Fitzwilliams did not do was oppress their workers: They were among the best of the mine owners. But they could do nothing about the viciousness of their fellow owners. Bailey writes movingly of the fatal accidents, the miners’ ghastly living conditions and the community solidarity that alleviated the horrors.

Peter, the eighth Earl Fitzwilliam, was a war hero and compulsive adulterer. When he died in a plane crash in 1948 with his lover Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy, John F. Kennedy’s sister, the grieving families rushed into full cover-up mode. Bailey gives us the real deal, on that and everything else. Downton Abbey’s earl would be appalled, but the dowager countess would love it.

This article was originally published in the January 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

What we usually remember about George III is that he was mad, but there was far more to this complex royal figure. As we learn in debut author Janice Hadlow’s fascinating account, A Royal Experiment: The Private Life of King George III, he had much to keep him busy during his long reign, including a very large family. This biography was originally published in the U.K. as The Strangest Family. It’s an apt title. Hadlow takes as her canvas not simply the private life of one monarch, but the entire House of Hanover, a dysfunctional dynasty if there ever was one.

In fact, George III, who came to the throne at age 22, developed his rule in opposition to the intrigue and jealousies that marked his childhood. He determined that a king should be a moral force for good, providing a model of virtuous family life. This philosophy was to guide him throughout his life and would have unintended consequences for his children, especially his daughters, who struggled to create their own independent lives.

George was fortunate in his choice of bride for his experiment. Hadlow’s portrait of the long-suffering Queen Charlotte (who managed the nearly impossible feat of successfully giving birth to 15 children in the 18th century) also provides insights into educational and child-rearing practices of the time.

George III’s mental illness, the cause of which is still debated, did not come until later in his life. By this point in the book, the characters in this royal drama seem like familiar figures on a long-running television series. We are sad to see the old king fade, but immensely curious to see how his values and ideals shape the future.

This article was originally published in the December 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

During the years after World War II, a group of ambitious, idealistic, affluent and well-connected young people settled in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C. Until at least 1975, their strong influence was felt, for good or ill, in virtually every aspect of government, especially foreign policy decisions, and in shaping public opinion on such issues as the founding of NATO, the military and covert actions of the Cold War, the Cuban missile crisis and the war in Vietnam.

Historian Gregg Herken takes us inside this world in his meticulously researched and compellingly written The Georgetown Set: Friends and Rivals in Cold War Washington. At the center of the narrative is political and foreign affairs columnist Joseph Alsop, whose Sunday night supper parties became a Georgetown tradition. Vigorous discussions of issues dominated these gatherings. The guest list was nonpartisan and usually included members of Congress, foreign ambassadors, administration officials and, of course, Alsop’s well-connected friends and neighbors. These neighbors included Katharine and Phil Graham, publishers of The Washington Post; Frank Wisner and Allen Dulles, both deeply involved in covert activity; and diplomats Charles “Chip” Bohlen, David Bruce and Llewellyn Thompson. It was understood that any information from these gatherings could be used by Joe Alsop and his brother, Stewart, in their reporting. But it worked both ways: If a guest wished to leak information to the press, it was the perfect place to do so.

Senator John Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, were neighbors and occasional Alsop dinner guests. After the official events of JFK’s inauguration were over, the new president went to the Alsop home, without notifying the owner beforehand, where he stayed for two hours. When the Cuban missile crisis was developing, JFK went to a private party at the columnist’s home and stunned the host by confiding that there might be a nuclear war in the next five to 10 years. During the Watergate hearings, Alsop’s home became a kind of refuge for Henry Kissinger, who was having dinner there when President Nixon reached him by phone to give him advance word of his plans to resign. After Watergate, the Georgetown dinner party lost much of its drawing power.

Some of the people in this book have written their own memoirs or been the subjects of books by other writers. Herken works through this material to give us a balanced view of the mark they left on history. This compulsively readable group portrait of movers and shakers shows how major government decisions were influenced by an elite few during a dynamic period of national and world events.

This article was originally published in the November 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.