When Niall Ferguson's Virtual History came out, I remember a collective "ooooh" went up from young history wonks. For the more intellectually adventuresome, this was hot stuff. Ferguson's The Pity of War had just come out, and it was must-read if you liked WWI history. Suddenly he was also presenting an edition of history essays, by leading Oxbridge dons, all about stuff that never happened. Read more...

In one of the world's most sublimely beautiful historical cities, not only were over a dozen people murdered over the course of decades, but the investigation into their deaths has now taken over a generation. In that time, it's propelled careers, consumed the innocent and embroidered speculation to the point of unrecognizable folly. In its way, it's helped "modernize" a timeless city for foreign observers while exposing a deeply flawed criminal justice system whose excesses may be every bit as monstrous as the mystery its attempted to solve. Read more...

The story opens at the dawn of the 18th century, with Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony, spendthrift sybarite and womanizer, desperately strapped for cash. Augustus decides alchemy is his ticket to an unencumbered good life and in seeking to fill his coffers with instant gold, turns to a man unfortunately gifted at magic. Johann Bottger is talented enough at sleight of hand to convince audiences that he's turned silver into gold, but the immediate downside to this ability comes in the form of Augustus, who kidnaps Bottger and —short of luring him with amontillado and walling him up in a catacomb — says, "You'll get out when you start cranking out the ingots." Read more...

The historiography of Hitler, Nazism and the Holocaust has always been fraught with strong opinions and frankly a lot of anger. What Taylor did, essentially, was play around with it. If his work were written today, a generation of historians raised on the internet might dub him the first historical "troll." Read more...

Into this strode Robert Strange McNamara, a man who had overseen efficiency improvements and applications of statistical analysis to both Pacific bombing campaigns in WWII and later to the Ford Motor Company. Accustomed to the implacability of analysis and logic to see him through, he was almost uniquely incapable of understanding an enemy that fought on an idea that defied it. Unaccustomed as he was to failure, he was also uniquely incapable of realizing its inevitability. Read more...