From The Thornveld Book Reviews – Welcome
  • Sword: D-Day Trial by Battle

    Max Hastings, Sword: D-Day Trial by Battle (London: William Collins, 2025) D-DAY ‒ Operation Neptune followed by the start of Operation Overlord and final nail in the coffin of Nazi Germany ‒ was a triumph […]

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  • The High Treason Club: The Boeremag on Trial

    Karin Mitchell, The High Treason Club: The Boeremag on Trial (Cape Town: Penguin, 2025) THE TRIAL lasted nine years, occupied 1 280 court days, involved over 200 witnesses and produced a transcript of 60 000 pages. Twenty-three […]

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  • Hollywood on the Veld

    Ted Botha, Hollywood on the Veld: When Movie Mayhem Gripped the City of Gold (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2025) RARELY can the central character of a book appear so elusive. The American Isidore William Schlesinger (IW) […]

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  • Comrade & Commander

    Ronnie Kasrils and Fidelis Hove (eds), Comrade & Commander: The Life and Times of Joe Modise (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2024) THE EDITORS of this book provide a summary of Joe Modise’s life and then describe it […]

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  • Guilty and Proud: An MK Soldier’s Memoir of Exile, Prison and Freedom

    Marion Sparg, Guilty and Proud: An MK Soldier’s Memoir of Exile, Prison and Freedom (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2024) EXTRAORDINARY and challenging circumstances raising matters of conscience can have unpredictable outcomes. Among the small group of […]

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  • Available Light: Omar Badsha and the Struggle for Change in South Africa

    Daniel Magaziner, Available Light: Omar Badsha and the Struggle for Change in South Africa (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2025) Daniel Magaziner, Available Light: Omar Badsha and the Struggle for Change in South Africa (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2025) ARTIST, […]

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  • Election 2024 South Africa: Countdown to Coalition

    Collette Schulz-Herzenberg and Roger Southall (eds), Election 2024 South Africa: Countdown to Coalition (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2024) IT was widely assumed from the start of the 2024 general and provincial election campaigns that the ANC would […]

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  • Together Apart: The Story of Living in Apartheid

    Xolisa Guzula and Athambile Masola, Together Apart: The Story of Living in Apartheid (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2024) NO one under 35 can have a first-hand understanding of life in apartheid South Africa. To many of today’s […]

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  • The Super Cadres: ANC Misrule in the Age of Deployment

    Pieter du Toit, The Super Cadres: ANC Misrule in the Age of Deployment (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2024) STATE capture nearly bankrupted South Africa. Its mechanics and perpetrators were well documented by investigative journalists and then […]

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  • The Bams of Grasslands Farm: A Family History

    Seán Morrow, The Bams of Grasslands Farm: A Family History (Johannesburg: Staging Post, 2024) WHAT might the course of South African history have been had the Christian African middle class of the nineteenth century been […]

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