Andrew Klavan writes in an engaging and interesting style that keeps the reader wanting to finish the story. Hunting Down Amanda is another Klavan book that makes for pretty good airplane reading. It is just about the perfect length for the 5 hour flight from JFK to PHX.

William Moultrie was a general from South Carolina in the Revolutionary War. He was a man of honor and integrity as these letters will attest. When the royal governor of South Carolina, Lord Charles Montagu, attempted to convince him to switch sides, Moultrie rebuffed his efforts in no uncertain terms. Moultrie was a prisoner at the time, having been captured when Charleston fell to the British in 1780.

True Crime is a fiction noir, in which the main character is a smart, but none too savory newspaper reporter with a proclivity for cheating on his wife and skeptical mind. True Crime is written in a very believable and straight at you kind of style. The preface at the beginning leaves the reader thinking that the story might actually be true and really sets the stage for suspending disbelief.

In the Niles Weekly Register of 1812, there were two mentions of a most interesting invention – a perpetual motion machine. Apparently a “great number of gentleman” examined the apparatus and were “satisfied that it is what what the inventor declared it to be.”

The Tehran Initiative is Christian fiction just shy of the mode in the popular (but terribly written) Left Behind series. Rosenberg makes no apologies for his religious perspective, but largely avoids hitting his reader over the head with it. Nonetheless, some readers will no doubt be turned off by the religious implications and views espoused in the book. For all that, it is incredibly timely, and really does seem to have been ripped directly from today’s headlines.

President Obama’s Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack thinks 46 million Americans on food stamps is not nearly enough. And so, the Department of Agriculture is offering non-profit groups the chance to receive $75,000 grants for projects designed to boost food stamp participation among those who are eligible but have yet to sign up.

In an interesting twist in history, Isaac Hull, captain of the USS Constitution captured HMS Guerriere in a decisive single ship action — three days after his uncle, Revolutionary War Hero William Hull, surrendered Detroit — almost without a fight.

Glenn Beck’s recent book on Washington is not a biography, a political rant, or even a history. Instead it is book designed to show the difference one man of character can make. It is a challenge to all Americans to be people of character.

Hamilton was often accused of being an advocate of a monarchical system of government. His political enemies saw his arguments in favor of a strong federal government and his efforts to strengthen the presidency as indications of his disposition to institute a monarchy in America. He was not deaf to such accusations. In this letter to Timothy Pickering, he explains his views. The last paragraph, is perhaps the most interesting.

With Musket and Tomahawk covers the Wilderness War of 1777 and is a great book to read in conjunction with several others reviewed here at WWTFT, particularly the Ethan Allen biography. Logusz provides a lot of interesting detail about the people and events leading up to Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga in October of 1777.