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[[Category:History|*]]
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Frances WoodsfordEdward W Said|title=Dear Mr Bigelow: A Transatlantic Friendship|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=Meet Mister Bigelow. He's elderly, living alone on Long Island, New York, with some health problems but more than enough family and friends to get him by, and still a very active interest in yachting, regattas and more. Meet, too, Frances Woodsford. She's reaching middle-age, living with her brother and mum in Bournemouth, and working for the local baths as organiser of events, office lackey and more. I suggest you do meet them, although neither ever met the other. Despite this they kept up a brisk and lively conversation about all aspects of life, from the late 1940s until his death at the beginning of the 60s. And as a result comes this book, of heavily edited highlights, which opens up a world of social history and entertaining diary-style comment.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099542293</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Peter Ackroyd|title=Venice: Pure City|rating=4|genre=History|summary=Among Peter Ackroyd's recent works are 'biographies' of London and of the river Thames. Now he gives similar treatment to Venice, basically a history but enlivened with his elegant, literary style, and what a previous reviewer has called his love of 'psychogeographical investigation'.x|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099422565</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Benedict Gummer|title=The Scourging Angel: The Black Death in the British Isles|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=The mid-fourteenth century was an unsettled time for England. It was an age which saw the first phases of the protracted Hundred Years’ War with France, and the Scottish war of independence, which came to an end with the capture of King David II. As if these events were not enough, in 1346 there was the first case of a man in Europe contracting an unknown disease that rapidly swept across the continent, claiming the lives Representations of millions, and one medieval chronicler noted that 'the bodies looked like a macabre lasagne: corpses piled row upon row separated only by layers of dirt'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548836</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Mary Beard|title=The ParthenonIntellectual
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Peter Beaumont is the Foreign Affairs editor at The Observer. He joined the paper in 1989 and has spent much Edward Said's ''Representations of the intervening time dealing with the kind of Intellectual'foreign affairs' that is better described as 'war reporting'. 'The Secret Life less a strict theory of War' is what intellectuals are and more a distillation passionate argument for what they should be. Said clearly rejects the comfortable image of his years in the fieldintellectual as a detached expert speaking only to other specialists. It is Instead, he insists on the intellectual as a book ill-served by both its title public figure, often awkward, abrasive, and its coverunpopular, except maybe insofar as both might serve to sneak it onto the bookshelves of those who really need speaks truth to read power even when it, but probably wouldn't choose to do so were it more accurately wrappedis inconvenient or risky.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099520982</amazonuk>1804272248
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nick BarrattJacqueline Rose|title=Lost Voices from the Titanic: The Definitive Oral HistoryWomen in Dark Times|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=As Barratt points out in the opening pages, there are literally thousands of titles available about the sinking of the Titanic, at the time the largest, most expensive and most luxurious ship ever built. His aim in this volume is to bridge the gap between another forensic examination of how it sank, and yet another re-run of what he calls the familiar stories of heroism and tragedy from literature in the public domain to provide the human story behind the disaster.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848091516</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Stefan Klein|title=Leonardo's Legacy: How Da Vinci Reinvented the World|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=This excellent combination of science history and biography starts with the most populist and some ''The world of the most awkwardly scientific. Basically it throws modern-day science at the Mona Lisa, which you might think unconscious is a little unfair – can she cope with being analysed, and not the neuroscience we now know used in interpreting her? Of course she can – she’s the world’s best-known masterpiece antagonist of Italian artpolitical life, and she’s survived much worse. Klein’s approach fully worksbut its steadfast companion, when we see also the science da Vinci did know and that he worked on himself, which all helps us know partly why the truths of La Gioconda are still unknowable.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0306818256</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Robert McCrum|title=Globish: How the English Language Became the Worldhidden place or backdrop where any true revolution must begin…''s Language|rating=3.5|genre=History|summary=We British tend to forget just how insignificant we are. Tiny geographically. Tiny in population. Tiny, whatever we tell ourselves, on the world stage.
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Bernhard SchlinkMary McCarthy|title=Guilt About the PastMemories of a Catholic Girlhood
|rating=4
|genre=Politics and SocietyAutobiography|summary=ConsiderMary McCarthy describes herself as an ''amateur architect'', if you will, guiltobsessively digging into the past to piece together the broken mosaic of her life. You might have it tainting you, as She attributes her ''beyond the perpetrators, every person who stands burning interest in solidarity with them and maintains solidarity after the fact becomes entangledpast'. The link might not strictly be a legal one, but concern 'norms of religion and moralsto her orphanhood, etiquette and custom as well as dayshe lacked any second-to-day communications and interactions'. Hence a collective guilt like no other - that witnessed hand memories from her parents, who died in Germanythe 1918 flu epidemic. 'The assumption that membership to a people engenders solidarity is something Germans of my generation do not easily like to accept'This memoir chronicles her early years, we read. However difficult it might have been back then beginning with her orphanhood in its dayMinneapolis, Germany had to physically renounce anything to do with NazismMinnesota, to actively 'opt-out' where she lived under the harsh guardianship of connections to avoid the solidarity seen connecting the whole nation like a toxic spider web. And since then ither late father's linked in all the childrenIrish Catholic parents and her abusive Uncle Myers and Aunt Margaret. Later, in she moved to Seattle to live with her maternal grandparents—her grandmother being Jewish and her grandfather Presbyterian—who provided her with a ''bequeathal'' different kind of guiltupbringing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1905636776</amazonuk>1804271659
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sara Wheeler1785633457|title=The Magnetic NorthCharging Around: Travels in Exploring the ArcticEdges of England by Electric Car|author=Clive Wilkinson|rating=4.5
|genre=Travel
|summary=The title Clive Wilkinson has a history of this book suggests another travelling by unconventional means with a preference for slow travel book about adventure in . As he neared his eightieth birthday the frozen north, but Sara Wheeler mixes her tales of her own travels with some history of polar exploration and a serious examination idea of exploring the impact edges of visitors and of those who wish to exploit the Arctic’s natural resources on the region and its peopleEngland in an electric car was not totally outrageous. Rather than setting off on another expedition to reach the North PoleIn fact, she travels around bits of the Arctic divided between different countries it should be a pleasant holiday for Clive and governments, including Chukotka (Russia), Alaska (USA)his wife, CanadaJoan, Greenland, Svalbard (Norway) and Lapland (Russia and Scandinavia). There is a huge amount of material in the book but Wheeler organises and presents shouldn't it in a very readable, accessible style.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099516888</amazonuk>?
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ronald Skirth and Duncan BarrettB09BLBP3P8|title=The Reluctant TommyNeville Chamberlain's War: An Extraordinary Memoir of the First World WarHow Great Britain Opposed Hitler, 1939-1940|author=Frederic Seager
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=As Received wisdom and simplified narrative often lead to misconceptions about history. One such is the author says in her introduction, scrubbing from the 'great silence' popular imagination of the title was that which followed early days of World War II from 1939-40, known as the 'incessant thunder' of the Great Phoney War''. There are three crucial dates in her narrativeWe remember Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler, war breaking out, all specific days and Churchill coming in three successive Novembersto save the day. The first was when the guns fell silent Very little time is spent on this period in 1918cultural reflections and yet, the second was that of the first two-minute silence as Frederic Seager argues in memory of the fallen one year laterthis book, and the third it was when the Unknown Soldier was lowered into silence beneath the floor in Westminster Abbey, another year on. These act as a framework around which she tells the story of the silence of grief which affected everyone vital significance in various ways during how the first two years of peacewar played out.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0719562562</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mark Griffiths3756228711|title=CDC: The Lotus Questhappy years with a spectacular IT 'Phenomena'|author=Hans Bodmer
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary='A source 'The history of hope for a radiant future or…the greatest threat on the face development of the earthIT could fill books of several hundred pages.''.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=John WelshmanJeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene|title=Churchill's Children: The Evacuee Experience in Wartime Britain Fritz and Kurt
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=We start with the pair of brothers Fritz and Kurt, and their muckers, doing things any Jewish lad in 1930s Vienna would want to do – kicking things around the empty market place, helping the neighbours, being dutiful when it comes to the synagogue choir and at a vocational school. Kurt has to make sure the lamps are turned on at their very Orthodox neighbours' each Friday night – the Sabbath preventing them for using anything nearly as mechanical and workmanlike as a light switch. But this is the time just before the Austrian leader is going to cave to Hitler's will, and instead of having a national vote to keep the Nazis out, invite them in with open arms. ''Kristallnacht'' happened in Vienna just as much as in Germany, as did all the round-ups of Jews. These in their turn leave the younger Kurt at home with his mother and sisters anxious to hear word of an evacuation to Britain or the US, while Fritz and his father are, unknown initially to each other, packed off on the same train to Buchenwald and the stone quarry there. And us wondering how the titular event for the adult variant of all this could come about…
|isbn=024156574X
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{{Frontpage
|author=John Henry Phillips
|title=The Search
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=As Archaeology cannot be child's play, when you're scraping in the dirt looking to find what you can find, often knowing there should be something there but not always confident what. Archaeology must be a little girl I was fascinated by stories from the second world warfair bit harder when you set out to find some specific thing. My Nan would tell me tales This book is a case of her work doing weldingthe latter, my mumas our author promises to locate the topic of the titular search. And he really hasn's uncle had exciting adventure stories from his years in t made it easy for himself – the search area is a wide one, the RAFtarget might not exist any more – oh, and it's underwater, when he cannot dive. Latching on to a particular D-Day veteran through helping the book Carrieheroic old man's War was one I returned visit back to France, our author has promised to find the landing craft that delivered him to again Normandy, and again. So I that he was intrigued by this title which looks at the stories of thirteen children and adults through World War Two, lucky to survive when it sank from the first wave of evacuations through beneath him. The secondary aim is to erect a memorial to everyone else aboard, the end vast majority of the warwhom perished.Who else would make such promises to someone in their nineties?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0199574413</amazonuk>1472146182
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Catrine ClayB09F4CTKJR|title=Trautmann's Journey: From Hitler Youth to FA Cup LegendFlights for Freedom|author= Steven Burgauer
|rating=4.5
|genre=BiographyHistorical Fiction|summary=It'You have s the later stages of World War I and the United States has just entered the conflict. Petrol Petronus is a young American who has signed up and joined the 17 Aero Squadron. This company was the first US Aero Squadron to learn be trained in Canada, the first to be hard men, attached to accept sacrifice without ever succumbing'. Such did Hitler say at the Nuremberg Nazi Party rallies in RAF and the 1930s. He probably did not have in mind playing in goal at a FA Cup final with a broken neck, such is first to be sent into the lifetime of difference between skies to fight the two referencesGermans in active combat. But before that lifetimecan happen, as packed and varied as it was, is in Petrol has to master flying the pages of this ever-interesting and swiftly-devoured booknotoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224082884</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chris Skidmore0578761718|title=Death and the Virgin: Elizabeth, Dudley and the Mysterious Fate The Inspiring History of Amy Robsart a Special Relationship|author=Nancy Carver
|rating=4.5
|genre=BiographyHistory|summary=When Elizabeth I ascended The church of St Mary Aldermanbuy had existed in the throne City of London from at least 1181, when it was first mentioned in November 1558records. Sadly, everyone's dominant concern the original church was destroyed in the matter Great Fire of her taking an appropriate husband and securing the successionLondon in 1666. The man most likely to become her husband It was Robert Dudley, whom she made her Master of rebuilt in Portland stone from a design by Sir Christopher Wren soon after the Horse fire and entrusted with considerable responsibility then survived for her coronation festivitiescenturies until World War II, when it was again ruined by bombs during the Blitz. The fact But that he was already married wasn't the end of its story: after a phenomenal fundraising effort, the stones from the church's walls were transported to Amy Robsart did little to quell Fulton, Missouri. There, in the speculationgrounds of Westminster College, especially since she the church was believed rebuilt and today serves as a memorial to be dying of breast cancerWinston Churchill.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297846507</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=R A Scotti1784385166|title=The Lost Mona LisaThird Reich in 100 Objects: A Material History of Nazi Germany|author=Roger Moorhouse|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=One of What is the few things I remember from those writers' courses and advice books – and I can hear from here first image that comes to mind when you wished I remembered more think of them – was the merit in being aware Third Reich? Hitler? A swastika? The Nazi salute? The gate to a concentration camp? None of these are comfortable images but they are emblematic of anniversaries, especially the Third Reich's fascist regime in your area of expertise, all its iniquity. But some objects and having the ability images from that time may be less familiar to sell articles concerning historical events linked into centenaries, modern comparisons, and so onyou. WellIn this short volume, here is Roger Moorhouse has attempted to illustrate the book equivalent, and although it's early – it's looking back on period of the summer Third Reich through one hundred of 1911 – this stands as quality enough to deny any latecomers shelf roomits material artefacts.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0553818309</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Greg GrandinLun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane and Edward Gauvin (translator)|title=FordlandiaTiananmen 1989: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle CityOur Shattered Hopes
|rating=4.5
|genre=HistoryGraphic Novels|summary=In 1927, I never really followed the Ford Motor company bought a huge tract events of land Tiananmen Square with much attention when it was playing out – someone in Brazilthe second half of their teens has other priorities, for you know. I certainly didn't know of the purpose weeks of the company growing its own rubber for use in making its cars. They planted rubber trees and built a factory and houses, protests and a number of top managers hunger strikes from the company were posted to Fordlandia to run students before the operation. Huge amounts massacre and the birth of money were pumped into Fordlandia, and Ford made great claims for their plans. Howeverthe Tank Man image, I didn't know how the project was area had long been a spectacular failurevenue for political protest, and it lasted less I didn't know more than twenty yearsa spit about the people involved on either side. This book is practically flawless in giving a general browser's context for the whole season of protests back in 1989.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848311478</amazonuk>1684056993
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Dominique Lapierre0648684806|title=A Rainbow in the Night Clara Colby: The International Suffragist|author=John Holliday|rating=4.5|genre=Politics and SocietyBiography|summary=A book integrating otherwise piecemeal news stories picked up over The path of Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the USA. At the past forty time she was just three-years into -old but because of some childhood ailment, she wasn't allowed to sail with her parents and three brothers. Instead, she remained with her grandparents, who doted on her and saw that she received a coherent explanation is always welcomegood education, both in and out of school. This book explores South Africa's history She was the only child in the household and developmenther childhood was glorious. By contrast, from her family had become pioneer farmers in the mid-west of the earliest Dutch arrivals in 1652 United States and life was hard, as Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to join the first racially integrated elections family. Clara would only know her mother for a few months: she was married for fifteen years, had ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and died in 1994childbirth not long after Clara arrived. As the eldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on Clara and Wisconsin was a rude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0306818477</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Doug Stewart1783784350|title=The Boy Who Would Be ShakespeareThis Golden Fleece: A Journey Through Britain's Knitted History|author=Esther Rutter
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=In the late 18th century, keen to impress the Shakespeare-obsessed father who paid him little attentionIt was December and Esther Rutter was stuck in her office job, 19 year old William Henry Ireland forged a couple of Elizabethan documents writing to show him. With the older man completely taken in, his child then pretended hepeople she'd found never met and preparing spreadsheets. The job frustrated her and even her knitting did not soothe her mind. January was going to be a trunk full time for making changes and she decided that she would travel the length and breadth of lost artefacts belonging to the Bard – love letters to Anne Hathaway, a declaration of his Protestant faithBritish Isles with occasional forays abroad, discovering and telling the manuscript story of King Lear, wool's history and how it had made and even entirely new playschanged the landscape. Ireland fooled not only his father, but also many of She'd grown up on a sheep farm in Suffolk - '' a free-range child on the prominent Londoners of the time, including Robert Southey, James Boswellfarm'' - and learned to spin, knit and weave from her mother and the future William IVher mother's friend. This was in her blood.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0306818310</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jim Krane1789017977|title=DubaiRonnie and Hilda's Romance: The Story of the Towards a New Life after World's Fastest CityWar II|author=Wendy Williams|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=In Ronnie Williams was the 1950son of Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall. There's some doubt as to whether or not they were ever married or even Harry's, Dubai contained just a few thousand inhabitants scraping a living. By 1985, it had grownbirthdate: he claimed to have been born in 1863, but Sheikh Mohammed he was still laughed at when already many years older than Ethel and he said that he wanted to make it might well have shaved a popular destination for touristsfew years off his age. With For a while the addition of artificial islands, family was quite well-to-do but disaster struck in the world's tallest building, an indoor ski slope, 1929 Depression and much more, it's now one of the world's foremost cities five- but as headlines showed last year, -old Ronnie had to adjust to a very different lifestyle. One thing he did inherit from his father was his need to be well-turned-out and this would stay with him throughout his life. He joined the stellar growth may have been extremely costly, army at eighteen in terms of finances, environmental problems, and the quality of life for some of its inhabitants1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848870094</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Frances Stonor Saunders1980891117|title=The Woman Who Shot MussoliniG Engleheart Pinxit 1805: A year in the life of George Engleheart|author=John Webley
|rating=4.5
|genre=HistoryArt|summary=Most British titled families George Engleheart was one of the 19th and 20th centuries have produced their fair share leading portrait miniaturists of rebels. Yet few came as close Georgian London, with a career lasting from the 1770s to changing the course Regency era. He was also one of European history as the Honourable Violet Gibsonmost prolific, one painting nearly 5,000 miniatures altogether (over twenty of them being of King George III). Throughout most of that time he carefully recorded the names of eight children each of Baron Ashbournehis clients, a Protestant Anglo-Irish peer and MP in Disraeli's government during the 1870ssubsequently transcribed them into what is referred to as his fee book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571239773</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Josephine Wilkinson1789016304|title=The Early Loves War and Love: A family's testament of Anne Boleynanguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam|author=Melanie Martin|rating=3.5
|genre=History
|summary=Before her marriage Melanie Martin read about what happened to King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn had already been courted Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and was entranced by three suitorswhat she discovered, any particularly in ''The Diary of whom might have become Ann Frank'' but then realised that her husband - own family's stories were equally fascinating. A hundred and possibly saved her seven thousand Jews were deported from her eventual end on the scaffold. The first was her Irish cousin James Butlercity during the war years, later Earl of Ormond, whom she was at one time intended but only five thousand survived and Martin could not understand how this could be allowed to marry happen in order a country with liberal values who were resistant to settle a family dispute over German occupation. Most people believed that the occupation could never happen: even those who thought that the Germans might reach the title and estates of city were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, that the Earldom of Ormond. After their marriage negotiations came Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to an end escalate in the face of legal obstaclesway that it did, she but initial protests melted away as the organisers became betrothed to Henry Percy, heir to the Duke of Northumberlandmore circumspect. With It's an atrocity on a little help from the scheming Cardinal Wolsey, the Duke, who had little time for his son, insisted that any idea vast scale but made up of tens of marriage between them should be dismissed forthwith. Soon after this the poet Thomas Wyatt became enamoured thousands of her, but by this time there was fierce competition from his sovereign, and her destiny was sealedindividual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848684304</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Caroline Moorehead 1908745819|title=Dancing to the Precipice : Lucie De La Tour Du Pin and the French RevolutionSurfacing|author=Kathleen Jamie|rating=45
|genre=History
|summary=Two hundred years agoSometimes when people suggest that you read a certain book, with the fall of the monarchy and the Napoleonic wars, France underwent they tell you ''this one cataclysmic change after anotherhas your name on it''. There were many who witnessed and experienced the volatile age Mostly we take them at first handtheir word, or not, but few left rarely do we ask them why they thought so unless it turns out that we didn't like the book. That's a more detailed record than the subject of rare experience. People who are sensitive to hearing a book calling your name, rarely get it wrong. In this biographycase, Lucie-Henriette Dillon, Marquise Marchioness de La Tour du PinI was told why.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099490528</amazonuk>}} {{newreview| The blurb speaks of the author=John Van der Kiste|title=William and Mary: Heroes considering ''an older, less tethered sense of the Glorious Revolution|rating=4herself.5|genre=Biography|summary=At school I remember spending a lot of time on the Tudors and the early Stuarts – obviously great favourites of the history teacher and then galloping unceremoniously through the intervening years until we reached another ''meaningful Older. Less tethered. That'' period – the Victorian eras not a bad description of where I am. The importance Add to that my love of William and Mary was completely overlooked in favour the natural world, of a quick mention those aspects of the fact poetic and lyrical that William wasn't in direct line are about style not form, and substance most of succession to the throne and Mary all, about connection. Of course, this book had never wanted my name on it. It was written for me. It would have found its way to marry him in the first placeme eventually. Their successor, Queen Anne I remember simply as 'tables'am pleased to have it fall onto my path so quickly.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>075094577X</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=James Delgado0857058320|title=Kamikaze: History's Greatest Naval DisasterLord Of All the Dead|ratingauthor=4.5|genre=History|summary=When Mongol leader, Khubilai Khan, achieved what his Grandfather Genghis had failed to do in conquering China, he inherited the world's largest and most sophisticated navy. However, in attempting to utilise this to expand his empire further to Java, Vietnam Javier Cercas and mainly Japan, he lost the entire armada in a few short years. New marine archeological evidence from Japan, ironically with the site discovered in the 1990s in the construction of new defences from the weather, has raised questions on the traditional view that the defeat of the two Japanese invasion forces of 1274 and particlularly 1281 were solely due to the intervention of the weather and what Japanese culture claim was a Kamikaze Anne McLean (or ''divine wind''translator) summoned by the Gods.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099532581</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=David Baldwin|title=The Kingmaker's Sisters: Six Powerful Women in the Wars of the Roses
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=The interaction between three very different, not ''Lord Of All the Dead'' is a journey to say contrasting, personalities of uncover the Renaissance period sets the scene author's lost ancestor's life and death. Cercas is searching for what promises to be an intriguing title. In 1502 the paths of Cesare Borgia, notorious son of meaning behind his great uncle's death in the equally infamous Pope Alexander VISpanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, Niccolò MachiavelliCercas' great uncle, is the figure who looms large over the intellectual and diplomat, and Leonardo da Vinci, book. He died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's forces. Cercas ruminates on why his uncle fought for this dictator. The question at the time best known as a military engineer though remembered today primarily as a centre of this book is whether it is possible for his great artist, were destined uncle to crossbe a hero whilst having fought for the wrong side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951212</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Timothy W Ryback0008294011|title=Hitler's Private LibraryHow to Lose a Country: The Books That Shaped His Life7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship|author=Ece Temelkuran
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=As A little while ago a friend asked me if I thought that we were living through what in years to come would be discussed by A level history students when faced with the question ''Discuss the fictional schoolboy hero Nigel Molesworth might have said, factors which led to...''any fule kno I agreed that she was right and wasn' t certain whether it was a good or bad thing that Adolf Hitler we didn't know what all 'this' was notorious for burning booksleading to. Nevertheless he was also an avid collector and passionate reader, as around 1200 surviving volumes once in his possession I think now that I do know. We are in the Rare Book Division danger of the Library losing democracy and whilst it's a flawed system I can't think of Congress, and a smaller quantity in Brown University, Rhode Islandbetter one, demonstrate. Among them were world literature classics, such particularly as the 'Robinson Crusoebenevolent dictator', 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', and 'Gulliveris as rare as hen's Travels'. He also owned an edition of the collected works of Shakespeare, in hand-tooled Moroccan leather with a gold-embossed eagle flanked by his initials on the spine. The Bard, he once said, was greatly superior to Goethe and Schillerteeth.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099532174</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Druin Burch1788037812|title=Taking The Fraternity of the MedicineEstranged: The Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908|author=Brian Anderson
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=The Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was Originally passed in Britain 1885, the law that had made homosexual relations a crime remained in March 1807place for 82 years. But during this time, restrictions on same-sex relationships did not go unchallenged. Between 1891 and 1908, three books on the last legal British slave ship left Africa seven months laternature of homosexuality appeared. Other countries They were slow to follow suitwritten by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, as well as the heterosexual Havelock Ellis. Everyone in Britain knew there would be resistance, Exploring the margins of society and when studying homosexuality was common on the abolitionist Granville Sharpe purchased land in Sierra Leone to 'repatriate' freed slavesEuropean Continent, Ottobah Cugoana, a former slave living but barely talked about in Londonthe UK, asked if it was possible for 'a fountain so the publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to send forth both sweet water the scientific understanding of homosexuality, and bitter.' Could beginning the slave tradestruggle for recognition and equality, he wondered, be abolished from West Africa leading to the milestone legalisation of same- when West Africa was its source?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951174</amazonuk>sex relationships in 1967.
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Grimson1910593508|title=The Isle of Man: Portrait of a NationApollo|author=Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=To many of us, This incredible graphic novel is a love letter to the Moon landings and the Isle of Man is probably best known passion for the Tynwald, the annual TT motorcycle racessubject drips off every Apollo by Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and as Mike Collins. This is a holiday resort. I must admit that my knowledge story we know well and because of it extended little further than that, and therefore found this book invaluable. In these 550 pages, profusely illustrated with photographs and maps, I imagine the authors take a few narrative shortcuts knowing that few if any questions on we can fill in the subject blanks. These shortcuts are left unansweredthe only downside to the book. John Grimson has lived If you've ever read a comic book adaptation of a film you will be familiar with the slight feeling that there for nearly forty years, are scenes missing and that dialogue has been trimmed. This is a graphic novel that could easily have been three times as well as working with several of the island's local authorities, was active as a long-distance runner and cyclist until his early seventiesstill felt too short.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0709081030</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Thomas Asbridge1786331047|title=The CrusadesRace to Save the Romanovs: The War for Truth Behind the Holy LandSecret Plans to Rescue Russia's Imperial Family|author=Helen Rappaport|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=The word 'Crusades' has been misappropriated and often used in various other contexts over basic facts about the passing years. In their original meaning they were a series deaths of holy wars during the medieval era between the Christian Nicholas and Muslim worldAlexandra, fighting for dominion over the Holy Land between 1095 and 1291 as the defenders some of western civilization formed expeditions travelling across which were deliberately obscured at the face of the known world from Europetime for various reasons, their sole aim being to conquer and defend an isolated swathe of territory centred on Jerusalem.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0743268601</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=John Van der Kiste|title=Sons, Servants and Statesmen: The Men in Queen Victoria's Life|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Like the first Elizabeth more books than are strictly necessary have long since been written about Queen Victoria, but John Van der Kiste has taken established. For the unusual step last few months of using the men their lives in her life to illuminate some dark corners which might other wise have remained unexplored. Of course Russia the most famous man in her lifeformer Tsar and Tsarina, husband their children and Prince Consort Albert isn't 'son, servant or statesman' as promised by the title of the bookfew remaining servants were held in increasingly squalid, but he established a trendhumiliating captivity. VictoriaTo prevent them from being rescued, often regarded as a difficult woman in July 1918 the revolutionary regime had them all shot and bayoneted to please, would always have a man death in her life who wouldcircumstances which, to a greater or lesser extentonce the news was confirmed beyond all doubt, dominate herhorrified their relatives in Europe.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0750937882</amazonuk>
}}