Philipp Blom. Nature's Mutiny: How the Little Ice Age of the Seventeenth Century Transformed the West and Shaped the Present.

A charming yarn woven around a questionable idea that the "Little Ice Age" ushered in the European Enlightenment.  Indeed, during the XVI-XVII century the center of European science and engineering moved from Southern to Northern Europe but why worse harvests and failing crops accelerated economic development misses me entirely. Blom's unflinching clarity frequently prevents him to distinguish half-tones and he considers atheism as signifying progress.

Fred M. Kaplan. The Bomb: Presidents, Generals and the Secret History of the Nuclear War

With neoconservatism approaching its intellectual (but not political: neocons monopolized US Government offices dealing with national security, schools of diplomacy and political science) dustbin, Fred Kaplan--seriously, I spent a fair amount of time to distinguish him from Robert Kaplan, Fred and Robert Kagan--reissued his 2002 book, which he carried to the Age of Trump. Remarkably, except reliance on questionable media sources, this book demonstrates a partial return to sanity in some corners of American commentariat. Namely, a nuclear posture with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons on a hair-trigger alert was a consequence of the Cold War and resulting paranoia and self-inflicted errors of judgment. Yet, China demonstrated a significant restraint in building up its strategic nuclear arsenal, being content with a few tens of nuclear tipped missiles and not very high level of their readiness. This posture defended the Chinese from both USA and USSR--in both countries hotheads contemplated a nuclear attack once in a while. Will the Chinese who are now faced with quickly upgrading US ABM system feel sorry now? The question goes unanswered. 

Rosanna Warren. Max Jacob: A Life in Art and Letters.

I took Rosanna Warren's book to research a single fact: whether Nazi sympathizer Cocteau really launched a campaign to save Jacob as it has been portrayed in the movie "Picasso". I finished reading it with ashen face because of how vividly his slow demise in the clutches of Nazi terror machine was described in the book. When the French Police took him for handing him over to Gestapo, his landlady sighed: "And was it worth to pray so much?" (He absconded Judaism of his childhood and became a fervent Catholic). 

The book is somewhat light on his poetry (though, reading a few poems in Russian translation left me with the feeling that, unlike another catalyst of the new art, Guilliaume Apollinaire, his poetry was secondary in importance and this impression might be unfair) and heavy on his gay relationships. But, nevertheless it is a monument to a great man and a martyr. 

Jacob looks on his photographs exactly like his portraits or vice versa...