Difference between revisions of "Newest History Reviews"

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[[Category:History|*]]
 
[[Category:History|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|History]]
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[[Category:New Reviews|History]]__NOTOC__ <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->
==History==
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{{Frontpage
 
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|isbn=1785633457
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|title=Charging Around: Exploring the Edges of England by Electric Car
{{newreview
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|author=Clive Wilkinson
|author=Jenifer Roberts
 
|title=The Madness of Queen Maria: The Remarkable Life of Maria I of Portugal
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Biography
 
|summary=Born in 1734 in Lisbon, at that time the richest and most opulent city in Europe, Maria was destined to become the first female monarch in Portuguese history.  Married to her uncle Infante Pedro, seventeen years her senior, she had six children (outliving all but one of them), and became Queen in 1777.  A conscientious woman, she had the misfortune to be born in during the 'age of reason', when church and state were vying for supremacy.  Instinctively a supporter of the old religion, with a humanitarian approach to state affairs, she was no Queen Elizabeth, no Catherine the Great, and wore her crown rather reluctantly.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095455891X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Steven M Gillon
 
|title=The Kennedy Assassination: 24 Hours After
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=The assassination of President Kennedy came at a pivotal moment in my life and for more than forty years I've read most of what has been written about the event.  It's been of variable quality, but the books fed the curiosity of people entranced by the charismatic young President who died so publicly.  I'd come to the point of wondering if there was anything new to be said, but Stephen Gillom has looked at what happened from an unusual and largely overlooked angle – the first twenty four hours of Lyndon Johnson's Presidency.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>046501870X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Stella Tillyard
 
|title=A Royal Affair: George III and His Troublesome Siblings
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Biography
 
|summary=King George III was not the luckiest of English sovereigns.  America, and then his sons, in that order, gave him no end of grief, and the last few years of his life were clouded by madness.  It is thus often overlooked that, before these troubles arose to haunt this most conscientious monarch, he also had a thankless task in trying to control his siblings.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099428563</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Andy Beckett
 
|title=When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=History
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|genre=Travel
|summary=Having grown up during the era and followed the major news stories in the papers as they happened, I was fascinated to find everything (well, nearly everything) in the 500-page narrative that comprises this book.  It was quite a rocky ride from the election of Edward Heath in June 1970 through the three-day week, record British inflation and the IMF rescue, industrial disputes and picket battles at Saltley and Grunwick, the Gay Liberation Front and the stirrings of the green movement, the rise of Arthur Scargill, and the discovery of North Sea oil. Then there was the survival of James Callaghan's minority administration despite the odds, and thanks largely to his adroit handling of the situation in keeping both Tony Benn and the Lib-Lab pact on board, followed by the winter of discontent, culminating in Thatcher at No 10.
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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?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>057122136X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Ian Mortimer
 
|title=The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=What would happen if we twenty-first century people took a trip back in time to the fourteenth century?  It would be very like visiting another country.  Even our landscape would be greatly changed.  Ian Mortimer takes this approach and, applying his theory of living history, treats his readers to an objective and entertaining view of one of the most stereotypical centuries in medieval history.  The fourteenth century has not only castles, knights, tournaments, and wars, but also gave birth to many of the creative minds associated with medieval England like Chaucer and the Gawain-poet.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845950992</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Alison Weir
 
|title=The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=Wot? More Tudors? Sorry, yes. Come on, be honest: you love 'em, I love 'em, we all love 'em.
 
 
 
My favourite writer of popular history is adding to the market writing for a third time about possibly history's most dramatic rise and fall - that of Anne Boleyn, second of Henry VIII's six wives. The book covers only a very short period, covering her arrest, trial and execution. She had been the scandal of Europe, this woman; had captured a king, unseated a queen, and promoted a new religion. Her fall couldn't have been swifter, harder or more ruthless and her little neck was severed on a scaffold at the Tower of London.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224063197</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=B09BLBP3P8
|author=Tracy Borman
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|title=Neville Chamberlain's War: How Great Britain Opposed Hitler, 1939-1940
|title=Elizabeth's Women: The Hidden Story of the Virgin Queen
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|author=Frederic Seager
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
 
|summary=So many biographies have been written about the life and times of England's longest-lived and longest reigning sovereign that one might wonder whether there is anything new left to say about her.  However Tracy Borman has found an interesting new angle – by telling the story of her life through the women closest to her.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224082264</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Tamim Ansary
 
|title=Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes
 
|rating=5
 
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=I enjoyed history at school and whilst we didn't always work our way through it chronologically I came, over time, to have a working knowledge of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans.  I knew about the rise of Christianity and spoke knowledgeably about medieval England, the Renaissance and the Reformation but was perhaps less taken by the Industrial Revolution and all that followed. I was au fait with the east but it was mainly from the perspective of exploration – or even exploitation.  It was an education based on the virtues of the solid, white, English, Christian middle classes and it completely ignored histories from the perspective of other religions.
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|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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1586486063</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=3756228711
|author=Elliott J Gorn
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|title=CDC: The happy years with a spectacular IT 'Phenomena'
|title=Dillinger's Wild Ride: The Year That Made America's Public Enemy Number One
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|author=Hans Bodmer
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=John Dillinger was born and brought up in Indiana.  His childhood was no better and no worse than most but the early part of his adult life was to be blighted by a spell in prison when he was convicted of an attack on a man in a botched hold-up. Hoping for leniency he pleaded guilty but was sentenced to a lengthy term of imprisonment, whilst the man with him pleaded not guilty and when convicted received a shorter sentence.  It's easy to see where Dillinger's contempt for the law was spawned.
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|summary=''The history of the development of IT could fill books of several hundred pages.''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0195304837</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
  
{{newreview
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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.  
|author=Anthony Read
 
|title=The World on Fire: 1919 and the Battle with Bolshevism
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=In 1919 the world was an extremely unstable place.  They say history often repeats itself, and there were parallels with 1789 - but on a far greater scale.
 
 
 
During the First World War, with the Russian revolution and the overthrow of the Tsarist regime, one tyranny was supplanted by another which was even worse.  Lenin took the new upstart socialist republic out of the conflict, accepting unbelievably harsh peace terms from Germany in order to save and nurture the still fragile Bolshevik revolution.  Consolidating his power was no easy task.  Much as the people might have been glad to see the end of imperial Russia (if not the cold-blooded butchery of the former sovereign, his consort and their children), they were less than enthusiastic about Bolshevism, which secured only 24% of the votes in the new assembly.  Lenin dealt promptly with the problem by shutting the assembly down.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844138321</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Conn Iggulden and David Iggulden
 
|title=The Dangerous Book of Heroes
 
|rating=3
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=For most of us (well, for me certainly) the word 'hero' summons an image of capes, spandex and garish primary colours. Conn and David Iggulden have written a book about the other kind – the every day heroes from history, who achieve incredible things without the aid of superpowers.
 
 
 
From household names like Horatio Nelson and Winston Churchill, to lesser known people, like Aphra Behn and Hereward the Wake, ''The Dangerous Book of Heroes'' covers a comprehensive range of characters from the history of the British Empire. From campaigners for political change, brilliant battle strategists to daring explorers, each and every one of the people in this book lived brilliant lives and changed the world forever.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>000726092X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Timothy Brook
 
|title=Vermeer's Hat: The seventeenth century and the dawn of the global world
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=If a picture paints a thousand words, then Timothy Brook provides the dictionary we can use to make sense of the vocabulary. Using five paintings by the seventeenth century Delft artist Johannes Vermeer along with a blue and white porcelain plate and the works of two of Vermeer's contemporaries, Brook demonstrates how the far flung corners of the seventeenth century world were drawn together by the ambitions of European merchants and the ability of Asia, Africa and the Americas to provided the materials to fulfil them.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846681200</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Jeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene
|author=Pete Brown
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|title=Fritz and Kurt
|title=Hops and Glory: One Man's Search for the Beer That Built the British Empire
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Travel
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|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Being a beer writer can't be the easiest route to respect in journalism. But with this book Pete Brown has done much to counter the sceptical, even dismissive, attitudes which must surround his trade and its subject matter. He has attempted to combine a history of British imperialism and the brewing industry with the comic 'quest' genre of travel writing.  
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|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…
Against all the odds, he has largely succeeded.
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|isbn=024156574X
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230706355</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=John Henry Phillips
|author=Michael Haag
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|title=The Search
|title=The Templars: History and Myth: From Solomon's Temple to the Freemasons
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|rating=5
|rating=4.5
 
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=Despite being very descriptive, the title of 'The Templars: History and Myth: From Solomon's Temple to the Freemasons' still doesn't cover the full scope of Michael Haag's book. Notwithstanding its relatively modest page count, ''Templars'' not only manages to place the fascinating tale of the Knights' astonishing rise and spectacular fall in a rich historical context, but also provides an entertaining account of the Templars' 'afterlife': from the Masonic lore of the title to novels, films and games to conspiracy theories. There is also a travel guide and good list of source materials for further reading.
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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>1846681537</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1472146182
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn= B09F4CTKJR
|author=Andrew Wheatcroft
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|title= Flights for Freedom
|title=The Enemy at the Gate: Habsburgs, Ottomans and the Battle for Europe
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|author= Steven Burgauer
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
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|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=The battle for Europe which Andrew Wheatcroft describes in such vivid detail is the culmination of a power struggle between the Ottoman empire, based in Constantinople, and the Habsburg domain in Vienna, which had lasted for around 250 years prior to the final solution.  These two centuries and more of struggle between them led to the decision by the sultan of Turkey, hungry for more territory, and his ministers in 1682 to lead their army against the Habsburgs at Vienna with the ultimate objective of capturing the city, and the ensuing siege a year later.  Some historians have seen this as a crucial moment in the history of conflicts between the east and the west, although others consider its status as one of the defining events somewhat over-estimated. Whatever the truth of the matter, the book that tells the story is a vivid chronicle of war in the 17th century.
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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>1844137414</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Matthew Cobb
 
|title=The Resistance: The French Fight Against the Nazis
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=''Allo, Allo'', ''The Secret Army'' and numerous films have painted a fairly romantic picture of the resistance — beret-wearing men and women who dart about blowing up trains and shooting Nazis. The reality, according to Matthew Cobb's ''The Resistance'', was somewhat different.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184737123X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=David Downing
 
|title=Sealing Their Fate: 22 Days That Decided the Second World War
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=In this detailed volume, David Downing makes a convincing argument that in the brief 22-day period between 17 November and 8 December 1941, the actions of the various Axis powers and their Allied opponents marked the beginning of the end of a war that still had several years left to run – the turning point famously described by Churchill as ''the end of the beginning''. After Pearl Harbor, America entered the war, making it a true world war - though it was actually Hitler that declared war on America, ironically – on 11 December, just after these events take place. ''Sealing Their Fate'' opens with the launch of the Japanese fleet and ends with that same fleet's attack on Pearl Harbor, but it's not specifically about Japan and America.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847371310</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=0578761718
|author=Richard D Ryder
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|title=The Inspiring History of a Special Relationship
|title=Nelson, Hitler and Diana
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|author=Nancy Carver
|rating=4
 
|genre=Popular Science
 
|summary=Was Horatio Nelson, a navy officer of great renown, forever thrusting himself into the limelight, doing it because his mother passed away when he was nine?  Was Hitler overly affected by his father dying in a time of paternal disapproval, and a kind of Oedipal reaction to being the man in the house making him suffer when she herself died?  And can Diana, Princess of Wales' parents' divorce lead to a claim she was a sufferer of borderline personality disorder?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845401662</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=William Blades, Randolph G. Adams, Bagher Bachchha (Editor) 
 
|title=Enemies of Books
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=William Blades, a Victorian printer and bibliographer, is best remembered as the biographer of William Caxton.  He also wrote this very concise work on the threats to books from such enemies as fire, water, gas and heat, dust and neglect, and ignorance and bigotry.  In the process he slips in several interesting historical factsThe chapter on fire notes the vast destruction of books in the Great Fire of London in 1666, as well as in the Gordon Riots just over a century later, and closer to his own time, the destruction of a priceless law library at Strasbourg, ravaged by the shells of the German army during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870.
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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>1904799361</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1784385166
|author=Paul R Spiring (Editor)
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|title=The Third Reich in 100 Objects: A Material History of Nazi Germany
|title=The World of Vanity Fair - Bertram Fletcher Robinson
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|author=Roger Moorhouse
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
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|genre=History
|summary=Every now and then, you comes across a really sumptuous book, where just turning and looking at the pages takes you into another world.
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|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. 
 
 
Such is the case with this one.  ''Vanity Fair'' was a gentler Victorian forerunner of ''Private Eye''.  Subtitled, ''A Weekly'' ''Show of Political, Social, and Literary Wares'', it appeared between 1868 and 1914.  Like the more successful, longer-lasting ''Punch'', it began with radical aspirations, intending ''to expose what'' [the editor] ''perceived to be the'' ''vanities of the elite social classes''.  However its satire was gently humorous rather than malicious, and almost everybody who was portrayed in its pages was flattered.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904312535</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Phil Robins
 
|title=Can I Come Home, Please?
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
 
|summary=Using the sound archives of the Imperial War Museum and other primary sources, this affecting volume gives an overview of the progress of Nazism as seen through the eyes of children in different parts of Europe. The simplicity of the language used in the transcribed interviews means it is accessible to children from Y6, yet remains useful to GCSE students as a succinct, linear timeline of WW2.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1407109030</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Lun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane and Edward Gauvin (translator)
|author=Keith Miller
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|title=Tiananmen 1989: Our Shattered Hopes
|title=St Peter's (Wonders of the World)
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
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|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=It is huge: not only in space but in time and structure; and in the non-material sphere of the complex interplay of meanings, symbols and significances. Miller's book, intentionally combining cultural and political history, art criticism and travel writing, manages to reflect that hugeness without weighting the reader down with too much austere detail.
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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 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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1861979088</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1684056993
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Richard Mullen and James Munson
 
|title=The Smell of the Continent
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=When Frances Trollope landed at Calais in the 1830s, she overheard a conversation between two travellers, the younger commenting on the dreadful smell, the older and more experienced telling him it was ''the smell of'' ''the continent''.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230741908</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Jennifer Worth
 
|title=Farewell To The East End
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Autobiography
 
|summary=I am interested in social history and, as a mother, the job of midwives fascinates me. Combining these two subjects, ''Farewell to the East End'' is a riveting read. The author Jennifer Worth was a midwife and nurse, working with the nuns at Nonnatus House in the East End of London and this volume (her third book on this topic) covers the 1950s.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297844652</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=0648684806
|author=Kate Williams
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|title=Clara Colby: The International Suffragist
|title=Becoming Queen
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|author=John Holliday
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Biography
 
|genre=Biography
|summary=It's a story which has been told by many authors during the last century.  The Victorian age, or at any rate the woman who gave her name to the era, came about largely if not wholly because of a crisis of sorts among King George III's familyBy the time his seven surviving sons reached middle age, they had managed to produce one legitimate child between them, namely Princess CharlotteHer unexpected death, and the need for at least some if not all of the others to do their dynastic duty and produce an heir or two, resulted in an undignified mass scramble to the altar.  Edward, Duke of Kent won the lotteryIt was he and his wife, a widow with two small children by her first marriage, whose daughter Victoria became the saviour of the royal succession.
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|summary=The path of Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the USAAt 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 brothersInstead, she remained with her grandparents, who doted on her and saw that she received a good education, both in and out of schoolShe was the only child in the household and her childhood was gloriousBy 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>0099451824</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Martyn Downer
 
|title=The Queen's Knight
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Biography
 
|summary=The title sounds more indicative of a novel by [[:Category:Dorothy Dunnett|Dorothy Dunnett]] or Jean Plaidy than a biographyThen a brief prologue starts the story at the very end, when Queen Victoria receives the unexpected news of the death of Sir Howard Elphinstone.  An equally short first chapter gives us a glimpse of the man some thirty years earlier in the thick of battle at the Crimea.  Only after that do we 'reach' his birth in 1829.  Sometimes rules are meant to be broken, and it's a good way of introducing this very interesting life.  As the husband of his subject's great-great-granddaughter, the author is well qualified to write it.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>055215508X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Ruth Maier, Jamie Bulloch (Translator) and Jan Erik Vold (Editor)
 
|title=Ruth Maier's Diary: A Young Girl's Life Under Nazism
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Autobiography
 
|summary=I was looking forward to reading Ruth Maier's Diary as I am interested in the history surrounding World War Two and its victims and survivors. I am especially fascinated by social history and how the lives of ordinary people were affected by events beyond therir control.
 
 
 
Ruth was born in 1920 and died on arrival in Auschwitz in 1942, aged only twenty-two. She was born in Austria and lived there with her parents and sister, Judith. But in 1939, life there was becoming much harder for Jews, so Judith was sent to England and Ruth to Norway, where she lived with the Strom family in Lillestrom.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846552141</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1783784350
|author=Katherine Ashenburg
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|title=This Golden Fleece: A Journey Through Britain's Knitted History
|title=Clean: An Unsanitised History of Washing
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|author=Esther Rutter
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=Although maybe not the first book you'd be drawn to – a history of personal hygiene perhaps doesn't seem that appealing – but if you had overlooked this excellent book, you would have missed out on an enjoyable and informative book, full of fascinating facts and a jolly good read.
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|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.
 
 
Attitudes towards and rituals of cleanliness have certainly changed over the last two thousand years and this book chronicles many of them, largely in Europe and the US. Cultural differences with regard to cleanliness and body odour (and yes, Napoleon and Josephine do get a mention here, although it transpires that they both took daily baths) are discussed at length, from the Greeks and Romans to the present day.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846681014</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Jean Hatzfeld
 
|title=The Strategy Of Antelopes: Rwanda After the Genocide
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Politics and Society
 
|summary=''Life offers me smiles, and I owe it my gratitude for not having abandoned me in the marshes.''
 
 
 
''I've known the defilement of a bestial existence.''
 
 
 
''Who's going to say that word, forgiveness? It's outside of human nature.''
 
 
 
So say some of the survivors of the Rwandan genocide of 1994, when 800,000 Tutsis were murdered by their fellow Hutu citizens. Jean Hatzfeld talked to both Tutsis and Hutus then, publishing two award-winning books. In The Strategy of Antelopes, he returns to Rwanda to talk to the same people and explore life after genocide.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846686865</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Iain McCalman
 
|title=Darwin's Armada: Four Voyagers to the Southern Oceans and Their Battle for the Theory of Evolution
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Biography
 
|summary=A look at Darwin's journey on The Beagle, as well as journeys by Joseph Hooker, Thomas Huxley and Alfred Wallace. Darwin's Armada provides a broad overview that strikes a different tone to other books in a crowded market. Casual readers who usually steer clear of non-fiction will enjoy it.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184737266X</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1789017977
|author=Thomas Robisheaux
+
|title=Ronnie and Hilda's Romance: Towards a New Life after World War II
|title=The Last Witch of Langenburg: Murder in a German Village
+
|author=Wendy Williams
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=In rural Germany, a long long time ago…  A woman passes through the village, handing out good cheer and cakesOne family dismiss the food, and even their dog is seen to avoid itShe visits a second family, and urges Anna, a young new mother, still convalescing as is the norm, to try one of the cakesAnna does.  But the friends by her bedside seem to think this might not be a good ideaThey may be correct, as before the night is out she is dead.
+
|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>0393065510</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1980891117
|author=Doris Kearns Goodwin
+
|title=G Engleheart Pinxit 1805: A year in the life of George Engleheart
|title=Team of Rivals
+
|author=John Webley
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
+
|genre=Art
|summary=This hefty tome, the cover tells us, is 'the book that inspired Barack Obama'. For what it's worth, Obama's name appears no less than nine times on the cover and spine, while Lincoln's appears only six, and that of the author a mere two.
+
|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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141043725</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1789016304
|author=James J O'Donnell
+
|title=War and Love: A family's testament of anguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam
|title=The Ruin of the Roman Empire
+
|author=Melanie Martin
|rating=4
+
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=''The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'' is the traditional starting point for those studying the demise of Rome. Gibbon's masterwork suggests that the great empire collapsed in large part due to violent invasions from barbarians such as the Visigoths, Vandals and other non-Romans. In ''The Ruin of the Roman Empire'' classical scholar James J. O'Donnell, in line with much modern revisionist thinking, turns this argument on it head. Rather than being a destructive influence, the barbarian kings within the empire tried to retain the good things about Roman rule. The real blame for the fall of Rome can in fact be attributed to Emperor Justinian.
+
|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>1861979355</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Patrick Wright
 
|title=A Journey Through Ruins: The Last Days of London
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Politics and Society
 
|summary=My good mood evaporated when Sue, my Bookbag partner, asked me if I'd read and review A Journey Through Ruins. She was right to ask because Thatcher's Britain is certainly an area of interest to me. The thing is, times are depressing enough. Margaret Hilda's neo-liberal legacy is crashing around us. Jobless queues are lengthening. Roofs are disappearing from over people's heads. The rampant cronyism and venal nature of our economic and political elites are slowly exposing themselves in ways likely to send my blood pressure soaring.  
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0199541949</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1908745819
|author=David Grann
+
|title=Surfacing
|title=The Lost City of Z: A Legendary British Explorer's Deadly Quest to Uncover the Secrets of the Amazon
+
|author=Kathleen Jamie
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
 
|summary=For Lieutenant-Colonel Percy Fawcett there was more to the Amazonian jungle than El Dorado.  His target was a treasure of a different nature – a lost city to be discovered because it was a city, not for any spurious material wealth it might hold.  Could an entire civilisation have been founded in the inhospitable tracks of rain forest, and left remains he might find fame in locating?  As this brilliant biography shows, Fawcett was the best man around to find it.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847374360</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Brian MacArthur
 
|title=For King and Country: Voices from the First World War
 
|rating=3
 
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=''For King and Country – Voices from the First World War'' is an anthology of writings edited by Brian MacArthur. It features around 450 pages of journals, poems, articles and memories of those involved in WWI. These factual accounts cover all kinds of styles, lengths and subject matter, but each one is hopefully able to give the reader a real taste of a time most of us are too young to remember first-hand.
+
|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 eventually.  I am pleased to have it fall onto my path so quickly.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0349120293</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=0857058320
|author=Nechama Tec
+
|title=Lord Of All the Dead
|title=Defiance
+
|author=Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)
|rating=4.5
+
|rating=4
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=In this thoroughly researched history, Nechama Tec challenges the notion that European Jews went passively to their deaths during WW2. Instead, she presents us with a history of the activities of the Bielski brothers, headed by the charismatic Tuvia Bielski, which resulted in the saving of around 1,200 Jews who spent the latter part of WW2 hidden in nomadic villages in the forests of western Belorussia. No Jew was turned away by the Bielskis – the camp worked together to provide for the sick, elderly and children. Through mutual cooperation, great bravery and huge physical effort, these Polish Jews survived, turning notions of Jewish passivity on their head.
+
|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>0195385233</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=0008294011
|author=Thomas Buergenthal
+
|title=How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship
|title=A Lucky Child
+
|author=Ece Temelkuran
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=I have read a lot of books on the Holocaust and many survivors' tales, as well as biographies and memoirs of those who didn't survive – most famously, ''The Diary of Anne Frank''. So I was very interested to read A Lucky Child by Thomas Buergenthal, who was only ten years old when he was incarcerated in Auschwitz in August 1944.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846681782</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Quentin Letts
 
|title=50 People Who Buggered Up Britain
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=In a rather less permissive age, 20 or 30 years ago, I suspect that the author might have been at the top of some people's list of culprits for using that naughty b-word.  Good grief, man, you can't possibly have that in a book title, what!
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845298551</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Nicola Sly
 
|title=Dorset Murders (True Crime History)
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=Having examined a number of true crime cases from Bristol in her [[Bristol Murders by Nicola Sly|last book]], the author now does the same for largely rural yet not always idyllic DorsetTwenty two murders, committed between 1818 and 1946, come under the microscope in these pages.
+
|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>0750951079</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1788037812
|author=Adrian Desmond and James Moore
+
|title=The Fraternity of the Estranged: The Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908
|title=Darwin's Sacred Cause: Race, Slavery and the Quest for Human Origins
+
|author=Brian Anderson
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Popular Science
+
|genre=History
|summary=This probably won't be the only time you are told through 2009 that it would have been Charles Darwin's 200th birthday this year, and that it is 150 years since ''On The Origin of Species'' first appeared. This book however declares that second anniversary to be slightly of less importance, when you factor in the biggest section of his evolutionary thinking Darwin left out of that book – that of human evolution.
+
|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>1846140358</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1910593508
|author=Stefan Aust
+
|title=Apollo
|title=The Baader-Meinhof Complex
+
|author=Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=There are not that many non-fiction books in translation concerning vaguely-remembered foreign terrorist gangs that become eminently faithful, successful and dramatic cinema films, for the simple reason that it would be impossible to make such movies from the great majority of such books. Here, though, it comes across as seeming almost easy.
+
|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>1847920454</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1786331047
|author=Adam Roberts
+
|title=The Race to Save the Romanovs: The Truth Behind the Secret Plans to Rescue Russia's Imperial Family
|title=The Wonga Coup
+
|author=Helen Rappaport
|rating=4.5
+
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=The chances are that you've never heard of Macias Nguema. You probably don't know his nephew, Obiang Nguema either. They're certainly up there in the Premier League of killing and disappearance, alongside the likes of Pol Pot and modern day tyrants like Robert Mugabe. The fact that the Nguemas are dictators from the tiny west African state of Equatorial Guinea meant they largely slipped off the radar of western consciousness.
+
|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>1846682347</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
+
Move on to [[Newest Home and Family Reviews]]
|author=Megan Hutching
 
|title=Over the Wide and Trackless Sea: the Pioneer Women and Girls of New Zealand
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Biography
 
|summary=This book offers a valuable insight into the lives of twelve pioneer women who suffered, endured and triumphed in New Zealand.
 
 
 
Their journey by boat from Europe to New Zealand was a long and sometimes perilous one. The European explorers had previously been certain that their destination existed, mainly because they abhorred a vacuum, and couldn't believe there could be such a vast expanse of ocean without the existence of a great land. Some also believed that without a land mass south of the Tropic of Capricorn, the world would be tipped upside down, while others were fearful they would burn up whilst crossing the equator, a myth finally dispelled by the Portuguese voyaging around Africa.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1869507061</amazonuk>
 
}}
 

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

1980891117.jpg

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

1789016304.jpg

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

1908745819.jpg

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

0857058320.jpg

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

0008294011.jpg

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

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Review of

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

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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

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Review of

Apollo by Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins

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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

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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

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