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[[Category:History|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|History]]==History==__NOTOC__{{newreview|author=Gordon Weiss|title=The Cage|rating=4|genre=History|summary=The history of Ceylon, and latterly Sri Lanka has at its centre an undeniable contradiction. A nation which espoused and proclaimed peaceful Buddhism was caught in one of the bloodiest conflicts in the recent past, a conflict peppered with suicide bombings, mass killings, rapes, torture and imprisonment, and more than a hint of genocide. Gordon Weiss was intimately involved as a journalist and as the United Nations Spokesman in Sri Lanka for two years of the almost 40 years conflict, and has produced a detailed account of the background and eventual denouement of this conflict.|amazonuk=<amazonuk!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->009954847X</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Frank McLynn1785633457|title=The Road Not TakenCharging Around: How Britain narrowly missed a revolution|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=Since the Norman conquest, there have been no successful invasions of Britain. Yet according to this book, during that era the country has come close to revolution on seven occasions. These were the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, Jack Cade's rebellion of 1450, the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536, the English Civil War in the 1640s, the Jacobite rising in 1745-6, Exploring the Chartist Movement Edges of the early Victorian era, and finally the General Strike of 1926. In each case, social turbulence threatened the status quo but went no further. Why and how did they ultimately fail?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224072935</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewEngland by Electric Car|author=Bernard Wasserstein|title=On the Eve: The Jews of Europe before the Second World WarClive Wilkinson
|rating=5
|genre=HistoryTravel|summary=The introduction to 'On the Eve' begins with the controversial statement, 'Nor is anti-Semitism, by itself, a satisfactory explanation of the Jew's predicament'. The author Clive Wilkinson has written a history of the post-war Jewry called the ''Vanishing Diaspora'' but this book examines the collective failure travelling by unconventional means with a preference for slow travel. As he neared his eightieth birthday the Jewish people before 1939 'to attain at least some control over idea of exploring the threatening vagaries edges of fate'. It examines their failure to establish cohesive social links, political parties, hospitals, newspapers and schools. Jewish culture and religious practice weakened during the very period when they advocated loyalty to the states where they were citizens; the USSR, Poland, Germany and France. Their population too England in an electric car was in declinenot totally outrageous. WassersteinIn fact, who is it should be a master at pointing out intriguing pleasant holiday for Clive and surprising detailhis wife, explains that on the brink of annihilationJoan, there were actually more Jews held in camps outside the Third Reich than within shouldn't it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846681804</amazonuk>?
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nigel SaulB09BLBP3P8|title=For Honour and FameNeville Chamberlain's War: Chivalry in England 1066How Great Britain Opposed Hitler, 1939-15001940|author=Frederic Seager
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=Chivalry, Saul tells us in Received wisdom and simplified narrative often lead to misconceptions about history. One such is the scrubbing from the popular imagination of the opening sentences early days of World War II from 1939-40, known as the preface''Phoney War''. We remember Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler, war breaking out, is associated first and foremost with Churchill coming in to save the estate of knighthood day. Very little time is spent on this period in cultural reflections and with fighting on horseback. In yet, as Frederic Seager argues in this book he aims to present an account , it was of English aristocratic society vital significance in how the Middle Ages, from the Norman conquest to the first years of the Tudor dynasty, which puts chivalry centre-stagewar played out.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951891</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert K Massie3756228711|title=Catherine the GreatCDC: Portrait of The happy years with a Woman|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Already known for major biographies of Nicholas and Alexandra, and of Peter the Great, Massie has now written an equally full and absorbing life of the late eighteenth-century reigning Empress.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0679456724</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewspectacular IT 'Phenomena'|author=Eamon Duffy|title=Saints, Sacrilege and SeditionHans Bodmer
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=In ''The history of the introduction to this book Eamon Duffy, Professor development of the History IT could fill books of Christianity at Cambridge History, points out several hundred pages.'' Author Hans Bodmer is quite right about that all too often historians have written . He has chosen to tell us about the English Reformation from strongly polarised views. Taking two extreme examplesshort, but explosive, he cites one which states that history of the people of England, formerly happy medieval Catholics, were forced by King Henry to abandon their religionControl Data Company, and England was never merry againCDC, alongside another which speaks of the English being oppressed by corrupt churchmen until King Henry gave them the Protestant nation for which they longedwhom he worked. On the following pageIt's a fascinating tale, he suggests that it had long been an axiom of historical writing that the success of the Reformation told in England was an inevitable consequence a mixture of the dysfunction technological summary and unpopularity of late medieval Catholicism. Such remarks were evidently made by writers with an axe to grindwry anecdote. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441181172</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Paul WinterJeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene|title=Defeating Hitler: Whitehall's Top Secret Report on Why Hitler Lost the WarFritz and Kurt
|rating=4
|genre=HistoryConfident Readers|summary=Just how We start with the pair of brothers Fritz and Kurt, and why did Hitler lose 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 Second World War? synagogue choir and at a vocational school. The message in [[Fatherland by Robert Harris]] is that he spent too much effort killing Jews Kurt has to concentrate make sure the lamps are turned on at their very Orthodox neighbours' each Friday night – the Sabbath preventing them for using anything elsenearly as mechanical and workmanlike as a light switch. Remarkably, But this look at more explicit reasons for is the time just before the end Austrian leader is going to cave to Hitler's will, and instead of having a national vote to keep the Third Reich barely mentions the HolocaustNazis out, invite them in with open arms. What we have is ''Some Weaknesses in German Strategy and Organisation 1933-1945Kristallnacht'' happened in Vienna just as much as in Germany, as did all the round- a document drawn up by what would now have to be called Whitehall Mandarins, written during a year ups of war Jews. These in their turn leave the younger Kurt at home with his mother and a year sisters anxious to hear word of peace, that itemises for those with enough security clearance just what Hitler's chain of command wasan evacuation to Britain or the US, while Fritz and what his thinking was for father are, unknown initially to each theatre of other, packed off on the same train to Buchenwald and the Warstone quarry there. It was never Top Secret, but was classified for thirty years and has spent about as long waiting And us wondering how the titular event for the adult variant of all this hardback version.could come about…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1441196358</amazonuk>024156574X
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 {{newreview|author=Jean-Paul Kauffmann|title=A Journey to Nowhere: Among the Lands and History of Courland|rating=4.5|genre=Travel|summary=When I turn to travel writing, it is a healthy balance of that about places I have been to, and places I've not. But without sounding too big-headed it is seldom places I have never heard of in any context - especially those I have passed through, what's more. The 'nowhere' in focus here is Courland, which was more-or-less the coastal slither of the top of Latvia, and was once an independent Duchy. In one fell swoop Kauffmann seems to become the only travel writer to have written a book about the place, at least for many a generation, and, it's pleasant to say, probably the best one could have hoped for.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050362</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Penelope Hughes-HallettJohn Henry Phillips|title=The Immortal Dinner: A famous evening of genius and laughter in literary London, 1817Search|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=A book based around just one dinner sounds a little extraordinary. But Archaeology cannot be child's play, when you're scraping in the hostdirt looking to find what you can find, painter Benjamin Robert Haydon, was no ordinary artistoften knowing there should be something there but not always confident what. Archaeology must be a fair bit harder when you set out to find some specific thing. He was This book is a friend of many of the major artistic and literary figures case of the daylatter, in addition as our author promises to being an ambitious painter locate the topic of historical scenesthe titular search. SadlyAnd he really hasn't made it easy for himself – the search area is a wide one, his ambition was the target might not matched by popularity or good fortuneexist any more – oh, and despite or perhaps parly because an exaggerated belief in his own abilitiesit's underwater, when he cannot dive. Latching on to a particular D-Day veteran through helping the heroic old man's visit back to France, our author has promised to find the landing craft that delivered him to Normandy, one and a half centuries after his death that he was lucky to survive when it sank from beneath him. The secondary aim is largely forgotten except for his suicide after years to erect a memorial to everyone else aboard, the vast majority of despair, and perhaps his diary as wellwhom perished.Who else would make such promises to someone in their nineties?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009956372X</amazonuk>1472146182
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Andrew MartinB09F4CTKJR|title=Underground Overground: A Passenger's History of the Tube Flights for Freedom|author= Steven Burgauer
|rating=4.5
|genre=HistoryHistorical Fiction|summary=Although he was born in Yorkshire, Andrew Martin has long been enthralled by It's the London Underground. His father worked on British Rail, later stages of World War I and Andrew himself therefore had free travel on the system as well as a Privilege Pass which entitled him to free first-class train travel on United States has just entered the national rail networkconflict. Having lived in London for twenty-five years, commuting to various newspaper offices in his employment as a journalist, Petrol Petronus is a job which young American who has included writing a regular magazine column, Tube Talk, he is well qualified to write this entertaining signed up and enlightening social history of joined the world's most famous underground railway17 Aero Squadron.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684773</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Mary Beard|title=All in a Don's Day|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=Mary Beard's latest collection, 'All in a Don's Day', of her assembled blog pieces from 2009 until This company was the end of 2011, covers similar concerns first US Aero Squadron to her previous selection, [[It's A Don's Life by Mary Beard|It's a Don's Life]]. Professor Beard is a fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge and became Classics Professor at there be trained in 2004. She is also an expert in Roman laughterCanada, an interest which she fully indulges in the pages of her TLS blog. In her latest collection she bemoans the parlous current state of both Education and the Academy, and makes witty observations on matters as various as television chefs, what and how first to be attached to visit in Rome and the art and worth of completing references in an age when only positive things may be said about postgraduate job-seekers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685362</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=R I Moore|title=The War On Heresy: Faith RAF and Power in Medieval Europe|rating=4|genre=History|summary=At the end of the first millennium, Western Europe was a place which had barely ever encountered heresy. It took just a couple of centuries for it to become a major problem in be sent into the eyes of church leaders, leading skies to fight the persecution of individuals and groupsGermans in active combat. Was heresy such a fast-growing problem? In this volumeBut before that can happen, R I Moore provides a thoughtful analysis of Petrol has to master flying the issues and makes a powerful case that many supposed heretics were merely victims of a paranoid church which created propaganda to justify so many deathsnotoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846681960</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Julius Norwich0578761718|title=The Popes: A Inspiring Historyof a Special Relationship|author=Nancy Carver
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=Historian [[:Category:John Julius Norwich|John Julius Norwich]] (or Rt Hon/Viscount John Julius NorwichThe church of St Mary Aldermanbuy had existed in the City of London from at least 1181, when it was first mentioned in records. Sadly, to give him his full title) doesn't write the original church was destroyed in the sort Great Fire of history books one associates with school daysLondon in 1666. He doesn't do dry It was rebuilt in Portland stone from a design by Sir Christopher Wren soon after the fire and dustythen survived for centuries until World War II, when it was again ruined by bombs during the Blitz. In fact But that wasn''The Popest the end of its story: A Historyafter a phenomenal fundraising effort, the stones from the church'' isn't ''just'' a history book but a romp through s walls were transported to Fulton, Missouri. There, in the ages with some great trivia nuggets scattered throughout grounds of Westminster College, the informative goldchurch was rebuilt and today serves as a memorial to Winston Churchill.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099565870</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Emma Smith1784385166|title=The Cambridge Shakespeare GuideThird Reich in 100 Objects: A Material History of Nazi Germany|author=Roger Moorhouse
|rating=5
|genre=Home and Family
|summary=Does the world need another guide to Shakespeare's plays? There are plenty about and students these days have the added resource of the Internet to get the basics. However, if it does, then this is as good as any you will find. It's nicely written and beautifully clear and above all, succinct. In fact I'm doing a disservice to Emma Smith already by terming it a guide to his plays, because she also includes the poems and sonnets.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>052114972X</amazonuk>
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{{newreview
|author=Peter Ackroyd
|title=London Under
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=Peter Ackroyd What is already well-known as a historian the first image that comes to mind when you think of London. As a kind of adjunct the Third Reich? Hitler? A swastika? The Nazi salute? The gate to his mammoth work on the city, here we have a comparatively slender tome on one specific aspect. Underneath the city is a world concentration camp? None of its own, these are comfortable images but they are emblematic of springs, streams, Roman amphitheatres, Victorian sewers, gang hideouts, the creatures which have dwelt Third Reich's fascist regime in all its darkness iniquity. But some objects and images from rats and eels that time may be less familiar to monsters and hostsyou. In this short volume, and last but not least Roger Moorhouse has attempted to illustrate the period of the modern Underground railway systemThird Reich through one hundred of its material artefacts.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099287374</amazonuk> 
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Peter AckroydLun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane and Edward Gauvin (translator)|title=LondonTiananmen 1989: The Concise BiographyOur Shattered Hopes
|rating=4.5
|genre=HistoryGraphic Novels|summary=As is I never really followed the case events of Tiananmen Square with his recent volume on Charles Dickensmuch attention when it was playing out – someone in the second half of their teens has other priorities, Ackroydyou know. I certainly didn's London is an abridged version t know of the weeks of protests and hunger strikes from the students before the massacre and the birth of the full book originally published twelve years agoTank Man image, I didn't know how the area had long been a venue for political protest, and I didn't know more than a spit about the people involved on either side. Nevertheless, at over 600 pages This book is practically flawless in giving a general browser's context for the whole season of fairly close print protests back in paperback, it is still a very full read1989.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099570386</amazonuk>1684056993
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Stafford0648684806|title=Mission AccomplishedClara Colby: SOE and Italy 1943 - 1945The International Suffragist|author=John Holliday|rating=3.54|genre=HistoryBiography|summary=The work path of Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the USA. At the secret services is always going time she was just three-years-old but because of some childhood ailment, she wasn't allowed to be shadysail with her parents and three brothers. Instead, she remained with her grandparents, who doted on her and saw that she received a good education, dark both in and murkyout of school. Books like David Stafford's Mission Accomplished: SOE She was the only child in the household and Italy 1943 her childhood was glorious. By contrast, her family had become pioneer farmers in the mid- 1945 make an effort west of the United States and life was hard, as Clara was to shine a light on the shadows find out when she and bring her grandparents eventually went to join the facts into viewfamily. Stafford's admirably honest introduction claims that he has 'done [his] best to ensure that what appears here is accurate Clara would only know her mother for a few months: she was married for fifteen years, had ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and truthful'died in childbirth not long after Clara arrived. As the eldest girl, but reminds his reader that 'history is indeed intrinsically messy'; even more so when his sources were writing with secrecy in minda heavy burden would fall on Clara and Wisconsin was a rude awakening. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099531836</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Paul Bushkovitch1783784350|title=This Golden Fleece: A Concise Journey Through Britain's Knitted History of Russia|author=Esther Rutter|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=RussiaIt was December and Esther Rutter was stuck in her office job, writing to people she's recent history, especially since d never met and preparing spreadsheets. The job frustrated her and even her knitting did not soothe her mind. January was going to be a time for making changes and she decided that she would travel the end length and breadth of the Cold WarBritish Isles with occasional forays abroad, has been so full of new developments that there is probably little if any limit to discovering and telling the number story of fresh histories wool's history and how it had made and changed the market can absorblandscape. This most recent, from She'd grown up on a Professor of History at Yale University, take sheep farm in Suffolk - '' a little over 450 pages to tell free-range child on the story from the earliest days of Kiev Rus, the territory which was farm'' - and learned to become the ancestor of the present nation state around the 10th century ADspin, to Vladimir Putinknit and weave from her mother and her mother's assumption of office as President friend. This was in 2000her blood.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0521543231</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chil Rajchman1789017977|title=Treblinka: A SurvivorRonnie and Hilda's MemoryRomance: Towards a New Life after World War II|author=Wendy Williams|rating=54
|genre=History
|summary=Here comes yet another book about Ronnie Williams was the Holocaust, and yet another with more than enough damning indictment son of those events Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and their perpetratorsEthel Wall. There's some doubt as to whether or not they were ever married or even Harry's birthdate: he claimed to have been born in 1863, with more but he was already many years older than enough horrific reportage Ethel and he might well have shaved a few years off his age. For a while the family was quite well-to make your blood run cold, -do but disaster struck in the 1929 Depression and with more than enough distinguishing features five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to make it a necessary purchasevery different lifestyle. The latter is partly down One thing he did inherit from his father was his need to where it came from be well-turned- while Dachau started out as a camp for political prisoners, and Auschwitz I was a work camp based round barrack blocks that you can squint at and see a bad private school, this is coming from Treblinka, which was constructed purely and simply to killwould stay with him throughout his life. It has rightly been called a 'conveyer-belt executioner's block'He joined the army at eighteen in 1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849163995</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Johanna Adorjan1980891117|title=An Exclusive LoveG Engleheart Pinxit 1805: A year in the life of George Engleheart|author=John Webley
|rating=4.5
|genre=BiographyArt|summary=This moving memoir tells George Engleheart was one of the double suicide of both István (a Hungarian-Jewish form leading portrait miniaturists of Stephen) and his wife Vera one Sunday morning in October. The story is told by their granddaughterGeorgian London, Joanna Adorján and tells of her close fondness for them both but in particular with Vera, with whom a career lasting from the 1770s to the author shares many characteristicsRegency era. The story begins with the systematic persecution He was also one of such Hungarian Jews in Budapest under the Nazi occupation and describes their perilous flight to Denmark after the Soviet occupation most prolific, painting nearly 5,000 miniatures altogether (over twenty of Hungary in 1956. It ends with the police reports them being of the duty officer dated 15.10King George III).91 with the discovery Throughout most of their bodies in their bungalow in that time he carefully recorded the Charlottenlund, a town names of the Capital Region each of Denmark. Entry is gained by a local locksmith who charged 297.02 kroner. It is the charm his clients, and lyricism with which this tale subsequently transcribed them into what is related which makes this fateful, haunting and profoundly moving story about identity both sad and memorablereferred to as his fee book. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099552671</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Loades1789016304|title=The TudorsWar and Love: History A family's testament of a Dynasty|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=For several years David Loades has written and published extensively about the Tudors, individually and collectivelyanguish, from almost every angle possible. This title is not a chronological biography or history of the five monarchs whose reigns gave their name to the era. As he endurance and his publisher make clear devotion in the preface, it is rather a study of Tudor policies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441136908</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewoccupied Amsterdam|author=Francesca Beauman|title=Shapely Ankle Preferr'd: A History of the Lonely Hearts AdvertisementMelanie Martin
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=You might think the Lonely Hearts ad a trivial matter. You might think it should appear Melanie Martin read about what happened to Dutch Jews in lower case occupied Amsterdam during World War II and not be capitalisedwas entranced by what she discovered, particularly in ''The Diary of Ann Frank'' but youthen realised that her own family'd s stories were equally fascinating. A hundred and seven thousand Jews were deported from the city during the war years, but only five thousand survived and Martin could not understand how this could be allowed to happen in disagreement a country with Ms Beaumanliberal values who were resistant to German occupation. Most people believed that the occupation could never happen: even those who thought that the Germans might reach the city were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, who gives a big L and a big H that the Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in the way that it every time she writes of it in her survey of its historydid, but initial protests melted away as the organisers became more circumspect. WhatIt's more, she gets to write about an atrocity on a lot more than just the contents vast scale but made up of tens of thousands of the adverts in this brilliant bookindividual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009951334X</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Roman Krznaric1908745819|title=The Wonderbox: Curious Histories of How to LiveSurfacing|author=Kathleen Jamie
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=Sometimes when people suggest that you read a certain book, they tell you 'How should 'this one has your name on it''. Mostly we live?take them at their word, or not, but rarely do we ask them why they thought so unless it turns out that we didn' asks author Roman Krznarict like the book. That's a rare experience. People who are sensitive to hearing a book calling your name, rarely get it wrong. To answer In this ancient questioncase, he looks to historyI was told why. 'I believe that the future The blurb speaks of the art of living can be found by gazing into the pastauthor considering ''an older, he saysless tethered sense of herself. Creating a book which is as full of curiosities as a Renaissance 'Wunderkammer', he has Older. Less tethered. That's not a stab at the big questions: bad description of where I am. Add to that my loveof the natural world, beliefof those aspects of the poetic and lyrical that are about style not form, moneyand substance most of all, familyabout connection. Of course, deaththis book had my name on it. The result is a pot-pourri of delights which left this particular reader stimulated and invigorated It was written for me. It would have found its way to me eventually. I am pleased to have it fall onto my path so quickly.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846683939</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=James Palmer0857058320|title=The Death of Mao: The Tangshan Earthquake Lord Of All the Dead|author=Javier Cercas and the Birth of the New ChinaAnne McLean (translator)|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=Welcome ''Lord Of All the Dead'' is a journey to China, where uncover the populous are busy leaving a rural country full of prosperous mineral resources author's lost ancestor's life and coal mines, and shoddily-built hydro-electric dams in environmentally dubious locations, death. Cercas is searching for the burgeoning, mechanised cities. But this isnmeaning behind his great uncle't s death in the birth of 2012Spanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, itCercas's great uncle, is the figure who looms large over the dawn of 1976book. Chairman Mao is dying, Premier Zhou Enlai has just He died, and relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's forces. Cercas ruminates on why his uncle fought for this dictator. The question at the cauldron centre of power this book is whether it is being stirred as never before. Among the momentous events of the year however will possible for his great uncle to be a huge earthquake directly centred on hero whilst having fought for the city of Tangshan, which will kill something like two thirds of a million peoplewrong side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571243991</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Phillip Thomas Tucker0008294011|title=Exodus From the Alamo|rating=3.5|genre=History|summary=Remember the Alamo!  How to Lose a Country: The war-cry of generations of Americans is based upon the idea of the hugely outnumbered defenders of the Texan mission against the marauding Mexicans standing in defence of an ideal until death.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1612000762</amazonuk>}} {{newreview7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship|author=Louise Foxcroft|title=Calories and Corsets: A history of dieting over two thousand yearsEce Temelkuran
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=We’re in that post-Christmas period when all the socialising and indulging is over and all you’re left with is a pasty, bloated, over-fed but under-nourished complexion, a wardrobe full of clothes just a little too tight and a new year’s resolution to Get Healthy. So it’s the perfect time for a new diet book to hit the shelves. The title of this one might make you think it’s going to be full of useful tips, and the cover does little to dispel this idea, groaning as it is with the weight of plump jellies, lavish cupcakes and even a decadent lobster or two, but take a moment to note the subtitle, if you will: '''a history of dieting over 2000 years'''.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684250</amazonuk>
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{{newreview
|author=Kenneth D Alford and Theodore P Savas
|title=Nazi Millionaires: The Allied Search for Hidden SS Gold
|rating=3.5
|genre=History
|summary=We are all doubtless aware of 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 six million or so dead at question ''Discuss the hands of the Nazis, both through death camps and death squadsfactors which led to... '' We are all probably conscious I agreed that before they were taken to the forests to be shot, she was right and wasn't certain whether it was a good or bad thing that we didn't know what all 'this' was leading to the train station, never to be seen again, the Jewish and other communities captured in the Holocaust were ransacked for everything they had. It started early, I think now that I do know. We are in danger of course, with the denial losing democracy and whilst it's a flawed system I can't think of rights for Jewish people to own businessesa better one, then houses, paintings, other valuables, cash - and in particularly as the end their own gold dental fillings. The story of what happened to everything 'benevolent dictator' is as complex rare as retelling the ends of six million people, but this book opens up several windows on to those stories, through the more notable exampleshen's teeth.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1935149350</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sarah Bradford1788037812|title=Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life in Our Times|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=As a biographer who has previously written substantial biographies The Fraternity of the Queen (published Estranged: The Fight for Homosexual Rights in 1996), of her father George VIEngland, and her daughter1891-in-law Diana, Sarah Bradford needs little introduction. At around 260 pages of text, this is barely half the length of her other titles, and probably aimed more at the general reader with an eye on the Diamond Jubilee market.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>067091911X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview1908|author=Denise Kiernan|title=Signing Their Rights AwayBrian Anderson|rating=45
|genre=History
|summary=Many Americans believe Originally passed in 1885, the law that had made homosexual relations a crime remained in place for 82 years. But during this time, restrictions on same-sex relationships did not go unchallenged. Between 1891 and 1908, three books on the Declaration nature of Independence is homosexuality appeared. They were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, as well as the heterosexual Havelock Ellis. Exploring the cornerstone margins of society and studying homosexuality was common on the American democracyEuropean Continent, but barely talked about in the fountain-head UK, so the publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to the American Way scientific understanding of Life homosexuality, and beginning the American Dream. The 4th of July is the national holiday struggle for recognition and often thought equality, leading to be the single most important date milestone legalisation of same-sex relationships in American history1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>159474520X</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Toby Lester1910593508|title=Da Vinci's Ghost: The untold story of Vitruvian ManApollo|author=Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins|rating=45
|genre=History
|summary=As This incredible graphic novel is a love letter to the Moon landings and the passion for the number subject drips off every Apollo by Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins. This is a story we know well and because of popular non-fiction titles growsthis, the authors on take a few narrative shortcuts knowing that we can fill in the blanks. These shortcuts are the only downside to the hunt for new-book material often use . If you've ever read a comic book adaptation of a ''concept'' approach, trying to come up film you will be familiar with an USP for a new titlethe slight feeling that there are scenes missing and that dialogue has been trimmed. This uniqueness is often achieved by adopting an obscure subject, or an unusual perspective from which to view a popular themegraphic novel that could easily have been three times as long and still felt too short. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684544</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Neil Monnery1786331047|title=Safe As Houses? A Historical Analysis of Property PricesThe Race to Save the Romanovs: The Truth Behind the Secret Plans to Rescue Russia's Imperial Family|author=Helen Rappaport|rating=45
|genre=History
|summary=Neil Monnery was asked to become a trustee The basic facts about the deaths of Nicholas and Alexandra, some of a local charity with most which were deliberately obscured at the time for various reasons, have long since been established. For the last few months of its assets their lives in local residential property. Over Russia the years this had yielded good results former Tsar and the charity was concerned as to whether or not they should continue on the same basis or diversify Tsarina, their children and Monnery said that he would look into thisfew remaining servants were held in increasingly squalid, humiliating captivity. That discussion was the genesis for this book as he began to research the history of house prices – To prevent them from being rescued, in July 1918 the UK revolutionary regime had them all shot and elsewhere – for as far back as he could go bayoneted to establish whether or not house weredeath in circumstances which, wellonce the news was confirmed beyond all doubt, as safe as houseshorrified their relatives in Europe.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907994017</amazonuk>
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{{newreview|author=Andrew Wilson|title=Shadow of the Titanic|rating=4|genre=History|summary=Lesson one in writing non-fiction articles and journalism seems to be to find out what is topical. April 2012 is the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic, and there are going to be hoards of people finding it topical to celebrate that. Lesson two seems to be to find your own unique angle Move on the story. Wilson approaches the Titanic disaster by sinking her at the end of chapter one, for he looks more at the lives of the people on board, and how they took the calamity and dealt with it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847377300</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Peter Englund|title=The Beauty and the Sorrow: An intimate history of the first world war|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=In simple terms the First World War, like most (if not all) conflicts has come down to us largely as a four-year sequence of events, an acknowledgement of defeat by one side, and a peace agreement. Yet there are many different ways of telling its history, and as Englund tells us in his preface, this is not a book about what it '''was''', but about what it was '''like'''. Though a series of snapshots in words, he shows us various stages of the conflict and its effect on people. His emphasis is not so much events and processes, but more the feelings, impressions, experiences [[Newest Home and moods of individuals caught up in the period.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846683424</amazonuk>}}Family Reviews]]