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Andy’s Year In Books

Andy’s 2025 Year in Books

Take a look at Andy’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.

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Andy Barca

Goodreads Author

Website

http://www.andybarca.com/

Twitter

AndyBarcaWrites

Genre

Nonfiction, Thriller

Influences

Stephen King, Ernst Hemingway, Gor Vidal

Member Since

February 2026

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/andy_barca

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Born in the UK, Andy Barca grew up with a suitcase half-packed and a passport never far from reach. Early travels with his parents sparked a fascination with the wider world, along with a love of languages that now sees him speaking several to varying degrees of fluency. Andy still prefers to write on the road, chasing new perspectives in evocative, often unexpected locations. Yet it is the extraordinary people he meets along the way—their hopes, struggles and quiet acts of courage—that most deeply inspire his stories. Trained as a historian, he remains captivated by the past and the ways it echoes through the present, believing we can learn as much from old mistakes as from forgotten triumphs.

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Andy Barca’s books

Average rating: 4.0 · 1 rating · 1 review · 2 distinct works

	The Butterfly Effect: How a murder of a young Chinese woman led to a deadly war in the centre of Europe really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 1 rating	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Butterfly Effect: How a murder of a young Chinese woman led to a deadly war in the centre of Europe 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

* Note: these are all the books on Goodreads for this author. To add more, click here.

102 posts
Andy Barca's Blog

The God Robespierre Built

On 7 May 1794, Robespierre introduced a new state religion to replace Christianity. He had 82 days left to live. The Cult of the Supreme Being is one of the stranger episodes in a Revolution that was already stuffed with strange episodes.

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Published on May 06, 2026 17:00

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Andy Barca wrote a new blog post The God Robespierre Built On 7 May 1794, Robespierre introduced a new state religion to replace Christianity. He had 82 days left to live. The Cult of the Supreme Being is one Read more of this blog post »
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Andy Barca rated a book really liked it Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Simon Sebag Montefiore’s Young Stalin is a meticulously researched, sharply written portrait that dismantles the comfortable myth of the unlettered tyrant. I had long pictured him as a brutish, uneducated thug, yet the book reveals a cunning, surpr ...more
Apr 28, 2026 10:48AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Andy Barca rated a book really liked it The Wine-Dark Sea (Aubrey & Maturin, #16) by Patrick O'Brian	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
The Wine-Dark Sea serves as the fourth leg of O’Brian’s grand circumnavigation, and the rigging stays taut. Jack and Stephen chart unfamiliar harbours, gather fresh adversaries, and finally step into the long-anticipated political coup. Both men br ...more
Apr 22, 2026 10:47AM · like · see review
Andy Barca rated a book really liked it Perspective(s) by Laurent Binet	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I am growing rather fond of Laurent Binet. He is young, already established, and writes with a prose style that favours clarity over ornament. He prefers to show rather than explain, which suits him well. Perspective(s) unfolds as a sequence of let ...more
Apr 18, 2026 10:33PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Perspective by Laurent Binet. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Perspective by Laurent Binet <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Andy Barca rated a book really liked it Killers of the King: The Men Who Dared to Execute Charles I by Charles Spencer (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Spencer’s Killers of the King offers a brisk, sharply focused account of the men who tried and executed Charles I. He supplies just enough background on the seventeenth-century Civil War to anchor the narrative, yet never lets it crowd his true sub ...more
Apr 14, 2026 01:31AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Killers of the King by Charles Spencer. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Killers of the King by Charles Spencer <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Andy Barca rated a book really liked it Pertinax: The Son of a Slave Who Became Roman Emperor by Simon Elliott	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I approached Simon Elliot’s Pertinax: The Son of a Slave Who Became Roman Emperor expecting a conventional imperial biography and instead encountered a genuinely singular historical figure. Born in the second century to a manumitted slave who had a ...more
Apr 12, 2026 07:09PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Pertinax by Simon Elliott. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Pertinax by Simon Elliott <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Andy Barca rated a book really liked it A Tan and Sandy Silence (Travis McGee #13) by John D. MacDonald	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
As the thirteenth entry in the Travis McGee series, this instalment sustains the reliable standard I have come to expect from MacDonald. The central mystery is rather slight, I confess, yet he compensates with sustained tension and places his protago ...more
Apr 08, 2026 07:59AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of A Tan and Sandy Silence by John D. MacDonald. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — A Tan and Sandy Silence by John D. MacDonald <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Andy Barca rated a book really liked it The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance by Ron Chernow	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I rather enjoyed The House of Morgan. Chernow manages a formidable historical sweep without losing sight of the intricate mechanics that drove it. Modern finance may feel impenetrable, yet the scheming of early industrial capitalism was hardly primit ...more
Apr 06, 2026 09:08PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The House of Morgan by Ron Chernow. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The House of Morgan by Ron Chernow <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Andy Barca rated a book liked it The Reincarnationist Papers (The Reincarnationist Papers, #1) by D. Eric Maikranz (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
As science fiction goes, this is a competent affair, if slightly manufactured. I found myself engaged, though my credulity was stretched thin occasionally. In the final act, the protagonist's failure to utilise available resources is baffling. That i ...more
Mar 26, 2026 07:23AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Reincarnationist Papers by D. Eric Maikranz. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Reincarnationist Papers by D. Eric Maikranz <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Andy Barca rated a book liked it Until the Last of Me (Take Them to the Stars, #2) by Sylvain Neuvel (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
This second instalment in Neuvel's trilogy, so far as I am aware, picks up precisely where the first left off. While passably entertaining, I found it undeniably shallow. Neuvel mixes historical events with imagination, a conceit I accept for the ser ...more
Mar 20, 2026 06:56PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Until the Last of Me by Sylvain Neuvel. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Until the Last of Me by Sylvain Neuvel <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">