Powerful Biography Lays Millions of Deaths at Mao's Feet The first sentence of the acclaimed biography, Mao: The Unknown Story, couldn't be more to the point: "Mao Tse-Tung, who for decades held absolute power over the lives of one-quarter of the world's population,...
Berlin Trip Takes Me to the Site of the First Shooting Along the Wall Talk about timing. I spent the last two weeks in Austria and Berlin, in part to do research for my new novel on the Berlin Wall, The Puzzle People (which explains why I have not done a blog for...
Big Brother Takes a Big Hit in 1989 George Orwell didn't quite get it right. His landmark novel, 1984, describes the 1980s as a time in which Big Brother is all-seeing and all-controlling. Little did he know that the 1980s would be better known for taking Big Brother...