Difference between revisions of "Newest History Reviews"

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[[Category:History|*]]
 
[[Category:History|*]]
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{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Martin Wall
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|isbn=1785633457
|title= The Anglo-Saxons in 100 Facts
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|title=Charging Around: Exploring the Edges of England by Electric Car
|rating= 4.5
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|author=Clive Wilkinson
|genre= History
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|rating=5
|summary= As one of the generation who was introduced to English history through the 'Kings and Queens' principle, and thoroughly enjoyed it, I have long since regarded the period between the Roman invasion and the Norman conquest as a bit of a blur. For me it is a rather murky area, punctuated by the likes of Hengist and Horsa, Alfred the Great and Ethelred the Unready, not to mention the Athelstans, Edgars, Egberts and others who are so often little more than names.  In order words, what exactly did they do?  This admirable title brings it all into focus.
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|genre=Travel
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445656388</amazonuk>
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|summary=Clive Wilkinson has a history of travelling by unconventional means with a preference for slow travel. As he neared his eightieth birthday the idea of exploring the edges of England in an electric car was not totally outrageous. In fact, it should be a pleasant holiday for Clive and his wife, Joan, shouldn't it?
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{{Frontpage
 +
|isbn=B09BLBP3P8
 +
|title=Neville Chamberlain's War: How Great Britain Opposed Hitler, 1939-1940
 +
|author=Frederic Seager
 +
|rating=4.5
 +
|genre=History
 +
|summary=Received wisdom and simplified narrative often lead to misconceptions about history. One such is the scrubbing from the popular imagination of the early days of World War II from 1939-40, known as the ''Phoney War''. We remember Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler, war breaking out, and Churchill coming in to save the day. Very little time is spent on this period in cultural reflections and yet, as Frederic Seager argues in this book, it was of vital significance in how the war played out.
 
}}
 
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{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Robert Kershaw
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|isbn=3756228711
|title= 24 Hours at the Somme
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|title=CDC: The happy years with a spectacular IT 'Phenomena'
|rating= 5
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|author=Hans Bodmer
|genre= Reference
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|rating=4
|summary=''They came past one by one...walking lumps of clay, with torn clothing, hollow cheeks and sunken eyes...There was a dreadful weariness, but a wildness burning in their fevered eyes, showing what this appalling hand to hand fighting had cost them. Utterly unforgivable for me...''
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|genre=History
 +
|summary=''The history of the development of IT could fill books of several hundred pages.''
  
So goes the description of the men, the ''ghosts,'' at the end of the first day of the Somme. July 1 2016 will mark 100 years since this most bloody of battles took place. It was supposed to be the optimistic 'Big Push' that would end the Great War, but by sunset of the first day the British casualties numbered 57,470. The battle would rage until November that year, with the total number of casualties on all sides exceeding one million.
+
Author Hans Bodmer is quite right about that. He has chosen to tell us about the short, but explosive, history of the Control Data Company, CDC, for whom he worked. It's a fascinating tale, told in a mixture of technological summary and wry anecdote.  
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0753555476</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Christopher McGrath
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|author=Jeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene
|title=Mr Darley's Arabian: High Life, Low Life, Sporting Life: A History of Racing in 25 Horses
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|title=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…
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|isbn=024156574X
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}}
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{{Frontpage
 +
|author=John Henry Phillips
 +
|title=The Search
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Sport
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|genre=History
|summary=All thoroughbred racehorses are descended from one of just three stallions which came to England about three hundred years ago; The Byerley Turk, The Darley Arabian and The Godolphin Arabian. The last century or so has seen a decline in the lines from the first and last of these stallions, to the extent that some 95% of all thoroughbreds worldwide - not just in England - are descended from The Darley Arabian, which was originally bought in Aleppo from Bedouin tribesmen and shipped to Yorkshire in 1704, by Thomas Darley, who died, in difficult financial circumstances before he could follow his horse home.
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|summary=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 fair bit harder when you set out to find some specific thing. This book is a case of the latter, as our author promises to locate the topic of the titular search. And he really hasn't made it easy for himself – the search area is a wide one, the target 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 heroic old man's visit back to France, our author has promised to find the landing craft that delivered him to Normandy, and that he was lucky to survive when it sank from beneath him. The secondary aim is to erect a memorial to everyone else aboard, the vast majority of whom perished. Who else would make such promises to someone in their nineties?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848549830</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1472146182
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Wade Graham
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|isbn= B09F4CTKJR
|title=Dream Cities: Seven Urban Ideas That Shape the World
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|title= Flights for Freedom
 +
|author= Steven Burgauer
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre= History
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|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Between 1950 and 2014 the world's urban population increased from 746 million to 3.9 billion. The urbanising trend is set to continue with the United Nations predicting that by the middle of the century 66% of us will be city dwellers, a massive six billion people. How have city planners and architects tried to cope with the recent surge? How can they avoid repeating mistakes from the past? Both of those questions are considered in Dream Cities – Seven Urban Ideas That Shape The World, Wade Graham's excellent field guide to the modern world.  
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|summary=It'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 be trained in Canada, the first to be attached to the RAF and the first to be sent into the skies to fight the Germans in active combat. But before that can happen, Petrol has to master flying the notoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camel.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445659735</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Kathleen Chater
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|isbn=0578761718
|title= The Reformation in 100 Facts
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|title=The Inspiring History of a Special Relationship
|rating= 4.5
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|author=Nancy Carver
|genre= History
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|rating=4.5
|summary=The Reformation was one of the major events, if not themes of European history, that has decisively shaped the modern world, and has inevitably provided material for many a detailed account in print.  This handy little volume, one of a new series from Amberley, reduces a very complex subject to a series of short chapters which make an ideal introduction.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445651343</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author= John Casson and William D Rubinstein
 
|title= Sir Henry Neville Was Shakespeare: The Evidence
 
|rating= 4.5
 
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary= Debunking the Bard of Avon on the grounds that he did not write the plays attributed to him is nothing new. This scholarly work, based on several years' research and new evidence, is by no means the first to suggest otherwise, and provides a compelling argument as to who really was the author.
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|summary=The church of St Mary Aldermanbuy had existed in the City of London from at least 1181, when it was first mentioned in records. Sadly,  the original church was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. It was rebuilt in Portland stone from a design by Sir Christopher Wren soon after the fire and then survived for centuries until World War II, when it was again ruined by bombs during the Blitz. But that wasn't the end of its story: after a phenomenal fundraising effort, the stones from the church's walls were transported to Fulton, Missouri. There, in the grounds of Westminster College, the church was rebuilt and today serves as a memorial to Winston Churchill.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445654660</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Clinton Romesha
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|isbn=1784385166
|title=Red Platoon
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|title=The Third Reich in 100 Objects: A Material History of Nazi Germany
 +
|author=Roger Moorhouse
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary= When the soldiers of Red Platoon arrived at Combat Outpost Keating, in Nuristan Province, Afghanistan, the vulnerabilities of the outpost were frighteningly obvious. It was surrounded on all sides by steep and wooded hills, giving the Taliban excellent vantage points to observe the outpost and fire into it; the helicopter landing zone, essential for bringing in supplies and evacuating the wounded, was situated outside the base across a river; and the perimeter was too large to be sufficiently defended. These weaknesses were also obvious to the Taliban, and on the 3rd October 2009, just after dawn, they launched a full-out assault to capture the base. Red Platoon is a first-hand account of the frantic battle that followed, written by Staff Sergeant Clinton Romesha who received the Medal of Honor for his actions.
+
|summary=What is the first image that comes to mind when you think of the 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 the Third Reich's fascist regime in all its iniquity. But some objects and images from that time may be less familiar to you. In this short volume, Roger Moorhouse has attempted to illustrate the period of the Third Reich through one hundred of its material artefacts. 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848094647</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Teresa Cole
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|author=Lun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane and Edward Gauvin (translator)
|title= Henry V: The Life of the Warrior King & the Battle of Agincourt
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|title=Tiananmen 1989: Our Shattered Hopes
|rating= 4.5
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|rating=4.5
|genre= Biography
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|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary= Henry V is remembered as one of England's greatest warrior kings, not least as a result of his immortalisation in the play by Shakespeare (as well as by two film versions of the drama)Ironically he was one of several great-grandchildren of Edward III, and as he was considered relatively unimportant at the time of his birth, exactly when he arrived in the world was not recorded and two different dates have been givenIt was the deposition of his father's childless cousin Richard II in 1399 which placed him directly in the line of succession.
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|summary=I never really followed the events of Tiananmen Square with much attention when it was playing out – someone in the second half of their teens has other priorities, you knowI certainly didn't know of the weeks of protests and hunger strikes from the students before the massacre and the birth of the Tank 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 sideThis book is practically flawless in giving a general browser's context for the whole season of protests back in 1989.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445655411</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1684056993
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Kathryn Warner
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|isbn=0648684806
|title=Isabella of France: The Rebel Queen
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|title=Clara Colby: The International Suffragist
|rating= 5
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|author=John Holliday
|genre= History
 
|summary= Ask almost anyone what they know about Isabella, Queen of King Edward II.  The chances are that they will tell you she was ‘the she-wolf of France’ who was so infuriated by her gay husband’s propensity for disastrous favourites that she took a lover and they conspired to depose him, then have him murdered in captivity.  The truth is somewhat different.  To use an old cliché, if you throw enough mud it will stick.  A good deal has adhered to this seemingly much-maligned couple over the years.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445647400</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Penrose Halson
 
|title=Marriages Are Made in Bond Street: True Stories from a 1940's Marriage Bureau
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=History
 
|summary=Audrey Parsons had no desire to marry. Her mother, however, had quite different ideas and was insistent that her daughter find a husband, as their would be no place for her at the family farm when she was older. Frustrated by her lack of options, Audrey bowed to pressure and went to stay with her uncle in India in the hope of finding a husband. When she arrived she was overwhelmed by all of the male attention she received. In the colonies, eligible women were few and far between and men were desperate for wives. Although she didn't find a husband, she hit upon an idea that would kill two birds with one stone: she would find wives for these lonely men, whilst at the same time creating a business that would allow her the financial independence she craved. The Marriage Bureau was born.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447282620</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Peter Popham
 
|title=The Lady and the Generals: Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma's Struggle for Freedom
 
|rating=4.5
 
 
|genre=Biography
 
|genre=Biography
|summary=On 13 November 2010, Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest after spending 15 of the previous 21 years as a prisoner of Burma's military junta. Political reforms soon followed, culminating with Suu (as she prefers to be known) being elected to parliament. The West rejoiced; leaders, business men, and tourists poured in; and Suu entered the pantheon of modern-day political heroes. Burma was a burgeoning democracy, and Suu was a saint. In reality, as Peter Popham argues in 'The Lady and the Generals', the situation was far more complex.
+
|summary=The path of Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the USA.  At the time she was just three-years-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 good education, both in and out of school. She was the only child in the household and her childhood was glorious.  By contrast, her family had become pioneer farmers in the mid-west of the United States and life was hard, as Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to join the 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 childbirth not long after Clara arrived.  As the eldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on Clara and Wisconsin was a rude awakening.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846043719</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Kristie Dean
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|isbn=1783784350
|title= On the Trail of the Yorks
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|title=This Golden Fleece: A Journey Through Britain's Knitted History
|rating= 4.5
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|author=Esther Rutter
|genre= History
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|rating=5
|summary= Just when you wondered whether there was room on your shelves for another book on the Yorkist dynasty, here comes a very enterprising addition.  Part biography, part travel guide, this is a guidebook comprising a tour of various places at home and abroad associated with the major figures.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445647133</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Edith Hall
 
|title=The Ancient Greeks: Ten Ways They Shaped the Modern World
 
|rating= 5
 
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary= Reading Edith Hall's book on the Ancient Greeks, develops a deep respect for the power of poetry. No poet was more effective in this regard than Homer recounting the sea adventures contained in the ''The Odyssey''. It shaped the self-definition of a nation and engendered self-confidence. The mariners set out in their beautiful ships across the Aegean and established colonies to the West, in the Mediterranean as far as the Pillars of Hercules, to the East as far as the Levant and built trading cities in natural harbours along the fertile edges of the Black Sea. They were, as Plato wrote in the Phaedo, ''around the sea, like frogs and ants around a pond.'' They were encouraged by Delphic oracles and inspired by the company of diving dolphins.
+
|summary=It was December and Esther Rutter was stuck in her office job, writing to people she'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 length and breadth of the British Isles with occasional forays abroad, discovering and telling the story of wool's history and how it had made and changed the landscape. She'd grown up on a sheep farm in Suffolk - '' a free-range child on the farm'' - and learned to spin, knit and weave from her mother and her mother's friend. This was in her blood.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009958364X</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Lyuba Vinogradova and Arch Tait (translator)
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|isbn=1789017977
|title=Defending the Motherland: The Soviet Women Who Fought Hitler's Aces
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|title=Ronnie and Hilda's Romance: Towards a New Life after World War II
|rating=2.5
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|author=Wendy Williams
 +
|rating=4
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=If you picture a wartime fighter ace in your mind, chances are it will hold to a few certain characteristicsThe chutzpah on the face of a Han Solo, a fluffy pilot's jacket perhaps, the swagger of a person who's faced and dealt death and come out the other side only stronger, someone who can carry off the look of pilot's goggles – and whatever your visual impression, pretty much certainly a maleBut consider the Soviet war machine, facing the Nazis easily absorbing Ukrainian territories and closing on Moscow with surprising rapidityThis is a country where all jobs are gender neutral, and where young girls fresh out of school had been building the Moscow Underground stationsNo wonder, then, that that place and that cause were the locations for the world's first, and apparently, only female air regiments.
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|summary=Ronnie Williams was the son of Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel WallThere'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, but he was already many years older than Ethel and he might well have shaved a few years off his ageFor a while the family was quite well-to-do but disaster struck in the 1929 Depression and five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to a very different lifestyleOne thing he did inherit from his father was his need to be well-turned-out and this would stay with him throughout his lifeHe joined the army at eighteen in 1942.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857051954</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
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{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= John Aubrey
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|isbn=1980891117
|title= Brief Lives
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|title=G Engleheart Pinxit 1805: A year in the life of George Engleheart
|rating= 4
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|author=John Webley
|genre= Biography
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|rating=4.5
|summary= John Aubrey was a modest man, an antiquarian and the inventor of modern biography. His lives of the prominent figures of his generation include Shakespeare, Milton, and Sir Walter Raleigh. Funny, illuminating and full of historical details, they have been plundered by historians for centuries. Here Aubrey's biographical writings are collected, painting a series of unforgettable portraits of the characters of his day – all more alive and kicking than in a conventional history book.  
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|genre=Art
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784870331</amazonuk>
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|summary=George Engleheart was one of the leading portrait miniaturists of Georgian London, with a career lasting from the 1770s to the Regency era. He was also one of the most prolific, 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 each of his clients, and subsequently transcribed them into what is referred to as his fee book.
 
}}
 
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{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Lauren Johnson
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|isbn=1789016304
|title= So Great a Prince: England and the Accession of Henry VIII
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|title=War and Love: A family's testament of anguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam
|rating= 4.5
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|author=Melanie Martin
|genre= History
 
|summary= King Henry VII, whose victory at the battle of Bosworth in 1485 brought the curtain down on the Wars of the Roses, brought peace and stability to a divided country, but his last few years were marked by corruption and repression.  When he died in 1509, there were hopes that his eighteen-year-old heir, now Henry VIII, would mark the end of medieval England and the start of a new era.  The age of Protestantism and the Renaissance would indeed fulfil these aspirations.  Lauren Johnson's book examines in fascinating detail the transitional year between the old and the new.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178185985X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Delia Garratt and Tara Hamling (editors)
 
|title=Shakespeare and the Stuff of Life: Treasures from the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=You remember that thing the British Museum did a few years back, where they picked the best of the best they owned – 100 objects that most epitomised both the riches of the place and the cultures it was designed to represent? Well, it seems that idea has legs.  It’s been repeated, even, for the purpose of illuminating just one man – and you can probably guess that man was Mr Shakespeare.  There has indeed been a project to pick a hundred limelights to illuminate his texts and his times, although for the purpose of this book they have been whittled down to fifty – and arranged by theme according to Jaques' 'Seven Ages of Man' speech from ''As You Like It''.  And the chances are, seeing as the results are almost more powerful here than in the best museum, you will like it very much indeed.
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|summary=Melanie Martin read about what happened to Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and was entranced by what she discovered, particularly in ''The Diary of Ann Frank'' but then realised that her own family'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 a country with liberal 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, that the Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in the way that it did, but initial protests melted away as the organisers became more circumspect.  It's an atrocity on a vast scale but made up of tens of thousands of individual tragedies.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1474222269</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
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{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Peggy Caravantes
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|isbn=1908745819
|title=Marooned in the Arctic
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|title=Surfacing
 +
|author=Kathleen Jamie
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
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|genre=History
|summary=Misogynists are manmade.  And if anyone was in a position to hate men and the lot they put on their shoulders, it was Ava Blackjack.  Her surname spoke of an abusive man she had a son by, but it was her time with four other men that made for one of the last century's more remarkable stories. An Inuit native, but one brought up in a city and with English lessons, she was invited on an excursion alongside many other 'Eskimo' and four intrepid Westerners, to the uninhabited Wrangel Island, perched off the northern Siberian coast.  They were there just to stick a flag in it and call it British, even if they were pretty much fully American and Canadian, and the chap whose ideas these all were bore an Icelandic name; she was along to provide native expertise, especially waterproof fur clothingAnd that was it – none of her kin joined her, leaving her in one tent and four men in another, in one of the world's most remote and inhospitable places. And that was just the start of her worries…
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|summary=Sometimes when people suggest that you read a certain book, they tell you ''this one has your name on it''. Mostly we take them at their word, or not, but rarely do we ask them why they thought so unless it turns out that we didn't like the book. That's a rare experience. People who are sensitive to hearing a book calling your name, rarely get it wrong. In this case, I was told why.  The blurb speaks of the author considering ''an older, less tethered sense of herself.'' Older. Less tethered. That's not a bad description of where I am.  Add to that my love of the natural world, of those aspects of the poetic and lyrical that are about style not form, and substance most of all, about connection. Of course, this book had my name on it.  It was written for me. It would have found its way to me eventuallyI am pleased to have it fall onto my path so quickly.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1613730985</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
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{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Margaret MacMillan
+
|isbn=0857058320
|title= History's People: Personalities and the Past
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|title=Lord Of All the Dead
|rating= 4.5
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|author=Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)
|genre= History
 
|summary= According to the 19th century historian Thomas Carlyle, 'the history of the world is but the biography of great men'.  Historian Margaret McMillan acknowledges in her introduction to this volume, based on a series of recent lectures, that there is a long-standing debate in history over whether events are moved either by individuals or by economic and social changes or technological and scientific advances, and suggests that there is no right or wrong answer.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781255121</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=David P Colley
 
|title=Seeing the War: The Stories Behind the Famous Photographs from World War II
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=As anybody could tell, a still photograph is only part of the truth, if that.  There is a beforehand we don't see, and an after we can only fantasise about unless we know otherwise. Take the famous image of wartime grunts pushing the flag pole upright – an icon of the War in the Pacific for the US soldiers, and the films made about Iwo Jima since.  But other images of the war have been just as long-lasting, and the people in the photos don't always have movies made of their full story arc.  This book is a collection of the images, and a corrective to that narrative lack, giving much more of a full biography with which to pay tribute.
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|summary=''Lord Of All the Dead'' is a journey to uncover the author's lost ancestor's life and death. Cercas is searching for the meaning behind his great uncle's death in the Spanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, Cercas' great uncle, is the figure who looms large over the 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 centre of this book is whether it is possible for his great uncle to be a hero whilst having fought for the wrong side.  
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1611687268</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
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{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Timothy W Ryback
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|isbn=0008294011
|title=Hitler's First Victims: And One Man's Race for Justice
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|title=How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship
|rating=4
+
|author=Ece Temelkuran
 +
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=Four people, taken to a sheltered corner of the place they're trapped, and shot in the back of the head by fresh-faced guards and soldiers with far too little experience of anything, let alone treating other men on the wrong end of a gun.  Three people ''unceremoniously dumped, like slain game, on the floor of a nearby ammunition shed'' the fourth had two hellish days with at least one bullet wound to the brain before he passed awayAll four over-worked from being in a Nazi establishment, all four probably killed merely for being Jewish.  Not a remarkable story, it's horrid to think, due to there being about six million cases of this happeningWhat is remarkable about this instance is that it was the first, at the incredible time of April 1933And if it seems the first in a long chain of such murders, you would think people might have noticed that at the time, and tried to do something about it.  Well, they did.
+
|summary=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 factors which led to...'' I agreed that 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.  I think now that I do knowWe are in danger of losing democracy and whilst it's a flawed system I can't think of a better one, particularly as the 'benevolent dictator' is as rare as hen's teeth.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784700169</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Jason Burke
+
|isbn=1788037812
|title=The New Threat From Islamic Militancy
+
|title=The Fraternity of the Estranged: The Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908
|rating=4
+
|author=Brian Anderson
|genre=Politics and Society
+
|rating=5
|summary=Barely a day passes without Islamic militancy making headlines somewhere in the world, and yet it can be a hard subject to grasp. The sudden rise of Islamic State and their campaign of shocking violence both in the Middle East and further afield has left many confused and fearful, and has provoked a sometimes extreme political response. In "The New Threat From Islamic Militancy", Jason Burke, a journalist with two decades of experience reporting on the Islamic world, attempts to correct the many misconceptions about Islamic extremism to give a true understanding of the threat we now face.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784701475</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Simon Horobin
 
|title=How English Became English: A short history of a global language
 
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=Angle se yon lang konfizyon. Mwen konnen, paske mwen li liv sa a tout sou li. Now, I know a lot of you understood that, and it's thanks to a certain search engine's 'translate' facility that it exists here in the first place, but hardly any of you would recognise it as Haitian Creole. But pretty much all of the words in the two sentences have come into English through one way or another, through an invasion either literal or lingual.  ''Angle'' – the Anglo-Saxons were the first speakers of what we now call Old English, which is pretty much impenetrable certainly harder to read than Creole.  The ''konfizyon'' in the ''lang''uage are equally easy to decipher, and the second half is pretty close to the French with what seems a German verb in it.  If you do use regular English, that's what you're doing – using French with some German, and Latin, and Indian, and the rest, even if that's only as far as vocabulary goes; our grammar is too Germanic to be called anything but.  It's at this stage one reels out the old gag about English being the 'lingua franca' and thus proves that however global English is, it doesn't really stand as its own entity if you give it the slightest scrutiny.
+
|summary=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 nature of homosexuality appeared. They were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, as well as the heterosexual Havelock Ellis. Exploring the margins of society and studying homosexuality was common on the European Continent, but barely talked about in the UK, so the publications of these men were hugely significant contributing to the scientific understanding of homosexuality, and beginning the struggle for recognition and equality, leading to the milestone legalisation of same-sex relationships in 1967.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0198754272</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Jason Quinn and Naresh Kumar
+
|isbn=1910593508
|title=World War Two: Against the Rising Sun (Campfire Graphic Novels)
+
|title=Apollo
|rating=4.5
+
|author=Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
+
|rating=5
|summary=World War Two – so often a lesson subject for our primary school children, even after all this time.  Nazis, Soviets, Pearl Harbor – but wait.  That last wasn't just the clarion call to the Americans to join in with the rest of our Allies – it was a mere episode in a fuller story – the half of the war that was never seen by those in Europe, beyond the fact the British Empire was certainly changed forever.  The War in the Pacific is something I was certainly never taught much about in school, at any age.  And here's a graphic novel version of the tale from a publisher in India that can serve at last as a salutary lesson.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>9381182051</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Lewis Helfand and Lalit Kumar Sharma
 
|title=World War Two: Under the Shadow of the Swastika (Campfire Graphic Novels)
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
 
|summary=One of the most common subjects at primary school, getting on for three generations since it happened, is of course World War Two.  It has the impact that sixty million dead people deserve – but only if it's taught correctly.  One of the ways to present it is this book, which comes from a slightly surprising place – an Indian publisher completely new to me – but succeeds in being remarkably competent, complete and really quite readable.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>9381182140</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author= Stacy Schiff
 
|title= The Witches: Salem 1692
 
|rating= 5
 
|genre= History
 
|summary= Like most people I know the story of Salem through the very particular lens of _The Crucible_.  That particular lens was the very current witch-hunt that was going on at the time.  Arthur Miller's play is rightly seen as an allegory of the McCarthyism in 1950s America – but having read Schiff's more academic approach to the source tale, it's easy to see that Miller's drama is much more about the hunting down of the 'red menace' than about what might have happened in New England two hundred and fifty years earlier.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>147460224X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Roger Moorhouse
 
|title=The Devils' Alliance: Hitler's Pact with Stalin, 1939-1941
 
|rating=3.5
 
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=Before WWII started, you didn't really have peace.  Tensions had hardly settled down since the Great War, and there had been conflicts several times since, particularly in what would become the Theatre of War in eastern Europe.  Nazi Germany and the Soviet regime were already at loggerheads, with the former supporting Japanese aggression in eastern Asia. They were bedfellows in evil, but very much on opposing sides.  But with things stirring like never before under Hitler's expansionist activities, and despite numerous instances of this side talking to that potential enemy about the other, Nazi and Communist seemed to be firm foes. Both had publicly been denouncing the other – the Soviets deeming Nazis one side of the same corrupt, capitalist coin as us Brits, the Hitlerites already equating Communism with Jewry. But from under that period when the sides were ''pouring buckets of shit on each other's heads'' (sorry for the language, but it’s me quoting Stalin, believe it or not) came an extraordinary Pact – one of a handful in fact, that deemed Germany and Russia non-aggressors and collaborators,  - just in time for them to share Poland between themselves.  The initial document was short, but had an impact to affect 50 million people then, and many millions now – and yet it's hardly been the subject of a full look before now.
+
|summary=This incredible graphic novel is a love letter to the Moon landings and the passion for the subject drips off every Apollo by Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins. This is a story we know well and because of this, the authors take a few narrative shortcuts knowing that we can fill in the blanks. These shortcuts are the only downside to the book. If you've ever read a comic book adaptation of a film you will be familiar with the slight feeling that there are scenes missing and that dialogue has been trimmed. This is a graphic novel that could easily have been three times as long and still felt too short.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099571897</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Hugh Bicheno
+
|isbn=1786331047
|title=Battle Royal: The Wars of Lancaster and York, 1450-1464 (Wars of the Roses Book 1)
+
|title=The Race to Save the Romanovs: The Truth Behind the Secret Plans to Rescue Russia's Imperial Family
|rating=4.5
+
|author=Helen Rappaport
 +
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=Lancastrian Henry VI is an ailing king. Politically his popularity waivers as he spends English money on apparently fruitless wars in France and physically his poor mental health translates as unreliability and physical weakness. His queen, Marguerite d'Anjou is determined to shore up any shortfall for the sake of the country and her children but the House of York has other ideas. And so begins bloody (and rather fascinating) civil war…
+
|summary=The basic facts about the deaths of Nicholas and Alexandra, some of which were deliberately obscured at the time for various reasons, have long since been established. For the last few months of their lives in Russia the former Tsar and Tsarina, their children and few remaining servants were held in increasingly squalid, humiliating captivity. To prevent them from being rescued, in July 1918 the revolutionary regime had them all shot and bayoneted to death in circumstances which, once the news was confirmed beyond all doubt, horrified their relatives in Europe.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781859655</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 +
 +
Move on to [[Newest Home and Family Reviews]]

Latest revision as of 12:03, 20 March 2023

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Review of

Charging Around: Exploring the Edges of England by Electric Car by Clive Wilkinson

5star.jpg Travel

Clive Wilkinson has a history of travelling by unconventional means with a preference for slow travel. As he neared his eightieth birthday the idea of exploring the edges of England in an electric car was not totally outrageous. In fact, it should be a pleasant holiday for Clive and his wife, Joan, shouldn't it? Full Review

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Review of

Neville Chamberlain's War: How Great Britain Opposed Hitler, 1939-1940 by Frederic Seager

4.5star.jpg History

Received wisdom and simplified narrative often lead to misconceptions about history. One such is the scrubbing from the popular imagination of the early days of World War II from 1939-40, known as the Phoney War. We remember Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler, war breaking out, and Churchill coming in to save the day. Very little time is spent on this period in cultural reflections and yet, as Frederic Seager argues in this book, it was of vital significance in how the war played out. Full Review

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Review of

CDC: The happy years with a spectacular IT 'Phenomena' by Hans Bodmer

4star.jpg History

The history of the development of IT could fill books of several hundred pages.

Author Hans Bodmer is quite right about that. He has chosen to tell us about the short, but explosive, history of the Control Data Company, CDC, for whom he worked. It's a fascinating tale, told in a mixture of technological summary and wry anecdote. Full Review

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Review of

Fritz and Kurt by Jeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene

4star.jpg Confident Readers

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… Full Review

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Review of

The Search by John Henry Phillips

5star.jpg History

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 fair bit harder when you set out to find some specific thing. This book is a case of the latter, as our author promises to locate the topic of the titular search. And he really hasn't made it easy for himself – the search area is a wide one, the target 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 heroic old man's visit back to France, our author has promised to find the landing craft that delivered him to Normandy, and that he was lucky to survive when it sank from beneath him. The secondary aim is to erect a memorial to everyone else aboard, the vast majority of whom perished. Who else would make such promises to someone in their nineties? Full Review

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Review of

Flights for Freedom by Steven Burgauer

4.5star.jpg Historical Fiction

It'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 be trained in Canada, the first to be attached to the RAF and the first to be sent into the skies to fight the Germans in active combat. But before that can happen, Petrol has to master flying the notoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camel. Full Review

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Review of

The Inspiring History of a Special Relationship by Nancy Carver

4.5star.jpg History

The church of St Mary Aldermanbuy had existed in the City of London from at least 1181, when it was first mentioned in records. Sadly, the original church was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. It was rebuilt in Portland stone from a design by Sir Christopher Wren soon after the fire and then survived for centuries until World War II, when it was again ruined by bombs during the Blitz. But that wasn't the end of its story: after a phenomenal fundraising effort, the stones from the church's walls were transported to Fulton, Missouri. There, in the grounds of Westminster College, the church was rebuilt and today serves as a memorial to Winston Churchill. Full Review

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Review of

The Third Reich in 100 Objects: A Material History of Nazi Germany by Roger Moorhouse

5star.jpg History

What is the first image that comes to mind when you think of the 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 the Third Reich's fascist regime in all its iniquity. But some objects and images from that time may be less familiar to you. In this short volume, Roger Moorhouse has attempted to illustrate the period of the Third Reich through one hundred of its material artefacts.  Full Review

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Review of

Tiananmen 1989: Our Shattered Hopes by Lun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane and Edward Gauvin (translator)

4.5star.jpg Graphic Novels

I never really followed the events of Tiananmen Square with much attention when it was playing out – someone in the second half of their teens has other priorities, you know. I certainly didn't know of the weeks of protests and hunger strikes from the students before the massacre and the birth of the Tank 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. This book is practically flawless in giving a general browser's context for the whole season of protests back in 1989. Full Review

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Review of

Clara Colby: The International Suffragist by John Holliday

4star.jpg Biography

The path of Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the USA. At the time she was just three-years-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 good education, both in and out of school. She was the only child in the household and her childhood was glorious. By contrast, her family had become pioneer farmers in the mid-west of the United States and life was hard, as Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to join the 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 childbirth not long after Clara arrived. As the eldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on Clara and Wisconsin was a rude awakening. Full Review

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Review of

This Golden Fleece: A Journey Through Britain's Knitted History by Esther Rutter

5star.jpg History

It was December and Esther Rutter was stuck in her office job, writing to people she'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 length and breadth of the British Isles with occasional forays abroad, discovering and telling the story of wool's history and how it had made and changed the landscape. She'd grown up on a sheep farm in Suffolk - a free-range child on the farm - and learned to spin, knit and weave from her mother and her mother's friend. This was in her blood. Full Review

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Review of

Ronnie and Hilda's Romance: Towards a New Life after World War II by Wendy Williams

4star.jpg History

Ronnie Williams was the son 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 birthdate: he claimed to have been born in 1863, but he was already many years older than Ethel and he might well have shaved a few years off his age. For a while the family was quite well-to-do but disaster struck in the 1929 Depression and five-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 army at eighteen in 1942. Full Review

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Review of

G Engleheart Pinxit 1805: A year in the life of George Engleheart by John Webley

4.5star.jpg Art

George Engleheart was one of the leading portrait miniaturists of Georgian London, with a career lasting from the 1770s to the Regency era. He was also one of the most prolific, 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 each of his clients, and subsequently transcribed them into what is referred to as his fee book. Full Review

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Review of

War and Love: A family's testament of anguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam by Melanie Martin

5star.jpg History

Melanie Martin read about what happened to Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and was entranced by what she discovered, particularly in The Diary of Ann Frank but then realised that her own family'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 a country with liberal 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, that the Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in the way that it did, but initial protests melted away as the organisers became more circumspect. It's an atrocity on a vast scale but made up of tens of thousands of individual tragedies. Full Review

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Review of

Surfacing by Kathleen Jamie

5star.jpg History

Sometimes when people suggest that you read a certain book, they tell you this one has your name on it. Mostly we take them at their word, or not, but rarely do we ask them why they thought so unless it turns out that we didn't like the book. That's a rare experience. People who are sensitive to hearing a book calling your name, rarely get it wrong. In this case, I was told why. The blurb speaks of the author considering an older, less tethered sense of herself. Older. Less tethered. That's not a bad description of where I am. Add to that my love of the natural world, of those aspects of the poetic and lyrical that are about style not form, and substance most of all, about connection. Of course, this book had my name on it. 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. Full Review

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Review of

Lord Of All the Dead by Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)

4star.jpg History

Lord Of All the Dead is a journey to uncover the author's lost ancestor's life and death. Cercas is searching for the meaning behind his great uncle's death in the Spanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, Cercas' great uncle, is the figure who looms large over the 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 centre of this book is whether it is possible for his great uncle to be a hero whilst having fought for the wrong side. Full Review

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Review of

How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship by Ece Temelkuran

4.5star.jpg History

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 factors which led to... I agreed that 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. I think now that I do know. We are in danger of losing democracy and whilst it's a flawed system I can't think of a better one, particularly as the 'benevolent dictator' is as rare as hen's teeth. Full Review

1788037812.jpg

Review of

The Fraternity of the Estranged: The Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908 by Brian Anderson

5star.jpg History

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 nature of homosexuality appeared. They were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, as well as the heterosexual Havelock Ellis. Exploring the margins of society and studying homosexuality was common on the European Continent, but barely talked about in the UK, so the publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to the scientific understanding of homosexuality, and beginning the struggle for recognition and equality, leading to the milestone legalisation of same-sex relationships in 1967. Full Review

1910593508.jpg

Review of

Apollo by Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins

5star.jpg History

This incredible graphic novel is a love letter to the Moon landings and the passion for the subject drips off every Apollo by Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins. This is a story we know well and because of this, the authors take a few narrative shortcuts knowing that we can fill in the blanks. These shortcuts are the only downside to the book. If you've ever read a comic book adaptation of a film you will be familiar with the slight feeling that there are scenes missing and that dialogue has been trimmed. This is a graphic novel that could easily have been three times as long and still felt too short. Full Review

1786331047.jpg

Review of

The Race to Save the Romanovs: The Truth Behind the Secret Plans to Rescue Russia's Imperial Family by Helen Rappaport

5star.jpg History

The basic facts about the deaths of Nicholas and Alexandra, some of which were deliberately obscured at the time for various reasons, have long since been established. For the last few months of their lives in Russia the former Tsar and Tsarina, their children and few remaining servants were held in increasingly squalid, humiliating captivity. To prevent them from being rescued, in July 1918 the revolutionary regime had them all shot and bayoneted to death in circumstances which, once the news was confirmed beyond all doubt, horrified their relatives in Europe. Full Review

Move on to Newest Home and Family Reviews