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[[Category:History|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|History]]==History==__NOTOC__<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mark Griffiths1785633457|title=The Lotus QuestCharging Around: Exploring the Edges of England by Electric Car|author=Clive Wilkinson|rating=45
|genre=Travel
|summary=Mark Griffiths is one Clive Wilkinson has a history of Britain's leading plant expertstravelling by unconventional means with a preference for slow travel. I know this because As he neared his brief biog in eightieth birthday the front idea of The Lotus Quest tells me so; just as it tells me that he is exploring the editor edges of The New Royal Horticultural Society Dictionary of Gardening 'the largest work on horticulture ever published'England in an electric car was not totally outrageous. His prior works list includes five other plant book creditsIn fact, three of them it should be a pleasant holiday for the RHS. I shall take all of this on trust, since attempts to find out more about the author Clive and his background through the usual internet search mechanisms has failed miserably. He remains as elusive as the sacred flower that is the subject of this latest work: the lotus.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184595100X</amazonuk>wife, Joan, shouldn't it?
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Archie BrownB09BLBP3P8|title=The Rise and Fall of CommunismNeville Chamberlain's War: How Great Britain Opposed Hitler, 1939-1940|author=Frederic Seager
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary='A source Received wisdom and simplified narrative often lead to misconceptions about history. One such is the scrubbing from the popular imagination of hope for a radiant future or…the greatest threat on the face early days of World War II from 1939-40, known as the earth''Phoney War''. Whichever of these descriptions you would apply We remember Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler, war breaking out, and Churchill coming in to Communism you will find Archie Brown's detailed and largely objective study enlightening save the day. Very little time is spent on this period in cultural reflections and engrossing. On one levelyet, as Frederic Seager argues in this is a chronological description book, it was of vital significance in how a political force grew to dominate a third of the world's population then virtually disappeared within a period of less than a centurywar played out.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845950674</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Welshman3756228711|title=Churchill's ChildrenCDC: The Evacuee Experience in Wartime Britain happy years with a spectacular IT 'Phenomena'|author=Hans Bodmer
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=As a little girl I was fascinated by stories from the second world war. My Nan would tell me tales of her work doing welding, my mum's uncle had exciting adventure stories from his years in the RAF, and the book Carrie's War was one I returned to again and again. So I was intrigued by this title which looks at the stories The history of thirteen children and adults through World War Two, from the first wave development of evacuations through to the end IT could fill books of the warseveral hundred pages.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0199574413</amazonuk>}}''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chris SkidmoreJeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene|title=Death and the Virgin: Elizabeth, Dudley Fritz and the Mysterious Fate of Amy Robsart Kurt|rating=4.5|genre=BiographyConfident Readers|summary=When Elizabeth I ascended We start with the throne pair of brothers Fritz and Kurt, and their muckers, doing things any Jewish lad in November 15581930s Vienna would want to do – kicking things around the empty market place, helping the neighbours, everyonebeing 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's dominant concern was each Friday night – the matter of her taking an appropriate husband Sabbath preventing them for using anything nearly as mechanical and securing the successionworkmanlike as a light switch. The man most likely But this is the time just before the Austrian leader is going to become her husband was Robert Dudleycave to Hitler's will, whom she made her Master and instead of having a national vote to keep the Horse and entrusted Nazis out, invite them in with considerable responsibility for her coronation festivitiesopen arms. ''Kristallnacht'' happened in Vienna just as much as in Germany, as did all the round-ups of Jews. The fact that he was already married These in their turn leave the younger Kurt at home with his mother and sisters anxious to Amy Robsart did little hear word of an evacuation to quell Britain or the speculationUS, while Fritz and his father are, unknown initially to each other, especially since she was believed packed off on the same train to be dying Buchenwald and the stone quarry there. And us wondering how the titular event for the adult variant of breast cancer.all this could come about…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0297846507</amazonuk>024156574X
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=R A ScottiJohn Henry Phillips|title=The Lost Mona LisaSearch|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=One of Archaeology cannot be child's play, when you're scraping in the few things I remember from those writers' courses and advice books – and I dirt looking to find what you can hear from here find, often knowing there should be something there but not always confident what. Archaeology must be a fair bit harder when you wished I remembered more set out to find some specific thing. This book is a case of them – was the merit in being aware of anniversarieslatter, especially in your area as our author promises to locate the topic of expertise, and having the ability to sell articles concerning historical events linked into centenaries, modern comparisons, and so ontitular search. WellAnd he really hasn't made it easy for himself – the search area is a wide one, here is the book equivalenttarget might not exist any more – oh, and although it's early – itunderwater, when he cannot dive. Latching on to a particular D-Day veteran through helping the heroic old man's looking visit back on 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 summer vast majority of 1911 – this stands as quality enough whom perished. Who else would make such promises to deny any latecomers shelf room.someone in their nineties?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0553818309</amazonuk>1472146182
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Greg GrandinB09F4CTKJR|title=Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle CityFlights for Freedom|author= Steven Burgauer
|rating=4.5
|genre=HistoryHistorical Fiction|summary=In 1927, It's the Ford Motor company bought a huge tract later stages of land in Brazil, for World War I and the purpose of United States has just entered the company growing its own rubber for use in making its carsconflict. They planted rubber trees and built Petrol Petronus is a factory young American who has signed up and housesjoined 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 a number of top managers from the company were posted first to Fordlandia be sent into the skies to run fight the operationGermans in active combat. Huge amounts of money were pumped into Fordlandia, and Ford made great claims for their plans. HoweverBut before that can happen, Petrol has to master flying the project was a spectacular failure, and it lasted less than twenty yearsnotoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848311478</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Dominique Lapierre0578761718|title=A Rainbow in the Night The Inspiring History of a Special Relationship|author=Nancy Carver
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and SocietyHistory|summary=A book integrating otherwise piecemeal news stories picked up over 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 past forty years into Great Fire of London in 1666. It was rebuilt in Portland stone from a coherent explanation is always welcomedesign 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. This book explores South AfricaBut that wasn's history and developmentt the end of its story: after a phenomenal fundraising effort, the stones from the earliest Dutch arrivals church's walls were transported to Fulton, Missouri. There, in 1652 the grounds of Westminster College, the church was rebuilt and today serves as a memorial to the first racially integrated elections in 1994Winston Churchill.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0306818477</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Doug Stewart1784385166|title=The Boy Who Would Be ShakespeareThird Reich in 100 Objects: A Material History of Nazi Germany|author=Roger Moorhouse
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=In What is the late 18th century, keen first image that comes to impress mind when you think of the Shakespeare-obsessed father who paid him little attention, 19 year old William Henry Ireland forged a couple of Elizabethan documents Third Reich? Hitler? A swastika? The Nazi salute? The gate to show him. With the older man completely taken in, his child then pretended he'd found a trunk full concentration camp? None of lost artefacts belonging to the Bard – love letters to Anne Hathaway, a declaration these are comfortable images but they are emblematic of his Protestant faith, the manuscript of King Lear, Third Reich's fascist regime in all its iniquity. But some objects and even entirely new playsimages from that time may be less familiar to you. Ireland fooled not only his fatherIn this short volume, but also many Roger Moorhouse has attempted to illustrate the period of the prominent Londoners Third Reich through one hundred of the time, including Robert Southey, James Boswell, and the future William IVits material artefacts.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0306818310</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jim KraneLun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane and Edward Gauvin (translator)|title=DubaiTiananmen 1989: The Story of the World's Fastest CityOur Shattered Hopes
|rating=4.5
|genre=HistoryGraphic Novels|summary=In I never really followed the 1950's, Dubai contained just a few thousand inhabitants scraping a living. By 1985, events of Tiananmen Square with much attention when it had grownwas playing out – someone in the second half of their teens has other priorities, but Sheikh Mohammed was still laughed at when he said that he wanted to make it a popular destination for touristsyou know. With I certainly didn't know of the addition weeks of artificial islands, protests and hunger strikes from the students before the world's tallest building, an indoor ski slope, massacre and much more, it's now one the birth of the worldTank Man image, I didn's foremost cities - but as headlines showed last year, t know how the stellar growth may have area had long been extremely costly, in terms of finances, environmental problemsa venue for political protest, and I didn't know more than a spit about the quality of life people involved on either side. This book is practically flawless in giving a general browser's context for some the whole season of its inhabitantsprotests back in 1989.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848870094</amazonuk>1684056993
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Frances Stonor Saunders0648684806|title=Clara Colby: The Woman Who Shot Mussolini|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=Most British titled families of the 19th and 20th centuries have produced their fair share of rebels. Yet few came as close to changing the course of European history as the Honourable Violet Gibson, one of eight children of Baron Ashbourne, a Protestant Anglo-Irish peer and MP in Disraeli's government during the 1870s.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571239773</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewInternational Suffragist|author=Josephine Wilkinson|title=The Early Loves of Anne Boleyn|rating=3.5|genre=History|summary=Before her marriage to King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn had already been courted by three suitors, any of whom might have become her husband - and possibly saved her from her eventual end on the scaffold. The first was her Irish cousin James Butler, later Earl of Ormond, whom she was at one time intended to marry in order to settle a family dispute over the title and estates of the Earldom of Ormond. After their marriage negotiations came to an end in the face of legal obstacles, she became betrothed to Henry Percy, heir to the Duke of Northumberland. With a little help from the scheming Cardinal Wolsey, the Duke, who had little time for his son, insisted that any idea of marriage between them should be dismissed forthwith. Soon after this the poet Thomas Wyatt became enamoured of her, but by this time there was fierce competition from his sovereign, and her destiny was sealed.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848684304</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Caroline Moorehead |title=Dancing to the Precipice : Lucie De La Tour Du Pin and the French RevolutionJohn Holliday
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=At school I remember spending a lot The path of time on Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the Tudors and USA. At the early Stuarts – obviously great favourites time she was just three-years-old but because of the history teacher some childhood ailment, she wasn't allowed to sail with her parents and then galloping unceremoniously through the intervening years until we reached another ''meaningful'' period – the Victorian erathree brothers. The importance Instead, she remained with her grandparents, who doted on her and saw that she received a good education, both in and out of William school. She was the only child in the household and Mary her childhood was completely overlooked glorious. By contrast, her family had become pioneer farmers in favour of a quick mention the mid-west of the fact that William wasn't in direct line of succession United States and life was hard, as Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to join the throne family. Clara would only know her mother for a few months: she was married for fifteen years, had ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and Mary had never wanted to marry him died in the first placechildbirth not long after Clara arrived. Their successorAs the eldest girl, Queen Anne I remember simply as 'tables'a heavy burden would fall on Clara and Wisconsin was a rude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>075094577X</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=James Delgado1783784350|title=KamikazeThis Golden Fleece: HistoryA Journey Through Britain's Greatest Naval DisasterKnitted History|author=Esther Rutter|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=When Mongol leaderIt was December and Esther Rutter was stuck in her office job, Khubilai Khan, achieved what his Grandfather Genghis had failed writing to do in conquering China, he inherited the worldpeople she's largest d never met and preparing spreadsheets. The job frustrated her and most sophisticated navyeven her knitting did not soothe her mind. However, in attempting January was going to utilise this to expand his empire further to Java, Vietnam be a time for making changes and mainly Japan, he lost she decided that she would travel the entire armada in a few short years. New marine archeological evidence from Japan, ironically with the site discovered in the 1990s in the construction length and breadth of new defences from the weatherBritish Isles with occasional forays abroad, has raised questions on discovering and telling the traditional view that the defeat story of the two Japanese invasion forces of 1274 wool's history and how it had made and particlularly 1281 were solely due to changed the intervention of the weather and what Japanese culture claim was landscape. She'd grown up on a Kamikaze (or sheep farm in Suffolk - ''divine winda free-range child on the farm'') summoned by the Gods- and learned to spin, knit and weave from her mother and her mother's friend. This was in her blood.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099532581</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Baldwin1789017977|title=The KingmakerRonnie and Hilda's SistersRomance: Six Powerful Women in the Wars of the RosesTowards a New Life after World War II|author=Wendy Williams
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=The interaction between three very different, 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 say contrastinghave been born in 1863, personalities of 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 Renaissance period sets family was quite well-to-do but disaster struck in the scene for what promises 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 an intriguing titlewell-turned-out and this would stay with him throughout his life. In 1502 He joined the paths of Cesare Borgia, notorious son of the equally infamous Pope Alexander VI, Niccolò Machiavelli, the intellectual and diplomat, and Leonardo da Vinci, army at the time best known as a military engineer though remembered today primarily as a great artist, were destined to crosseighteen in 1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951212</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Timothy W Ryback1980891117|title=Hitler's Private LibraryG Engleheart Pinxit 1805: The Books That Shaped His LifeA year in the life of George Engleheart|author=John Webley
|rating=4.5
|genre=HistoryArt|summary=As George Engleheart was one of the fictional schoolboy hero Nigel Molesworth might have saidleading portrait miniaturists of Georgian London, 'any fule kno' that Adolf Hitler was notorious for burning bookswith a career lasting from the 1770s to the Regency era. Nevertheless he He was also an avid collector and passionate reader, as around 1200 surviving volumes once in his possession now in the Rare Book Division one of the Library of Congress, and a smaller quantity in Brown Universitymost prolific, Rhode Islandpainting nearly 5, demonstrate. Among 000 miniatures altogether (over twenty of them were world literature classics, such as 'Robinson Crusoe', 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', and 'Gulliver's Travels'being of King George III). He also owned an edition Throughout most of that time he carefully recorded the collected works names of each of Shakespeare, in hand-tooled Moroccan leather with a gold-embossed eagle flanked by his initials on the spine. The Bardclients, he once said, was greatly superior and subsequently transcribed them into what is referred to Goethe and Schilleras his fee book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099532174</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Druin Burch1789016304|title=Taking the MedicineWar and Love: A family's testament of anguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam|author=Melanie Martin
|rating=5
|genre=History
|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 Act for 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 Abolition of city during the Slave Trade was passed in Britain in March 1807war years, but only five thousand survived and the last legal British slave ship left Africa seven months later. Other countries Martin could not understand how this could be allowed to happen in a country with liberal values who were slow resistant to follow suitGerman occupation. Everyone in Britain knew there 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 resistancepushed back, and when that the abolitionist Granville Sharpe purchased land in Sierra Leone Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to 'repatriate' freed slaves, Ottobah Cugoana, a former slave living escalate in Londonthe way that it did, asked if it was possible for but initial protests melted away as the organisers became more circumspect. It's an atrocity on a fountain to send forth both sweet water and bittervast scale but made up of tens of thousands of individual tragedies.' Could the slave trade, he wondered, be abolished from West Africa - when West Africa was its source?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951174</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Grimson1908745819|title=The Isle of Man: Portrait of a NationSurfacing|author=Kathleen Jamie
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=To many of usSometimes 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 Isle 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 Man is probably best known for the Tynwaldauthor considering ''an older, the annual TT motorcycle races, and as less tethered sense of herself.'' Older. Less tethered. That's not a holiday resortbad description of where I am. I must admit Add to that my knowledge love of it extended little further than the natural world, of those aspects of the poetic and lyrical thatare about style not form, and therefore found substance most of all, about connection. Of course, this book invaluablehad my name on it. In these 550 pages, profusely illustrated with photographs and maps, I imagine that few if any questions on the subject are left unansweredIt was written for me. It would have found its way to me eventually. John Grimson has lived there for nearly forty years, and as well as working with several of the island's local authorities, was active as a long-distance runner and cyclist until his early seventiesI am pleased to have it fall onto my path so quickly.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0709081030</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Thomas Asbridge0857058320|title=The Crusades: The War for Lord Of All the Holy LandDead|author=Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=The word 'Crusades' has been misappropriated Lord Of All the Dead'' is a journey to uncover the author's lost ancestor's life and often used death. Cercas is searching for the meaning behind his great uncle's death in various other contexts over the passing yearsSpanish Civil War. In their original meaning they were a series of holy wars during Manuel Mena, Cercas' great uncle, is the medieval era between figure who looms large over the Christian and Muslim world, book. He died relatively young whilst fighting for dominion over the Holy Land between 1095 and 1291 as Francisco Franco's forces. Cercas ruminates on why his uncle fought for this dictator. The question at the defenders centre of western civilization formed expeditions travelling across this book is whether it is possible for his great uncle to be a hero whilst having fought for the face of the known world from Europe, their sole aim being to conquer and defend an isolated swathe of territory centred on Jerusalemwrong side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0743268601</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Van der Kiste0008294011|title=Sons, Servants and StatesmenHow to Lose a Country: The Men in Queen Victoria's Life|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Like the first Elizabeth more books than are strictly necessary have been written about Queen Victoria, but John Van der Kiste has taken the unusual step of using the men in her life 7 Steps from Democracy to illuminate some dark corners which might other wise have remained unexplored. Of course the most famous man in her life, husband and Prince Consort Albert isn't 'son, servant or statesman' as promised by the title of the book, but he established a trend. Victoria, often regarded as a difficult woman to please, would always have a man in her life who would, to a greater or lesser extent, dominate her.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0750937882</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewDictatorship|author=Andrew Marr|title=The Making of Modern Britain: From Queen Victoria to V.E. DayEce Temelkuran
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=This book, and 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 BBC TV series which complements it, must confirm Andrew Marrquestion ''s status as one of Discuss the most entertaining and compulsive historian-cum-presenters working todayfactors which led to... '' His previous project, on postwar Britain, I agreed that she was hard to fault, right and anyone who enjoyed wasn't certain whether it was a good or bad thing that will certainly relish 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.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230709427</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Patrick Casey and Richard I Hale1788037812|title=For CollegeThe Fraternity of the Estranged: The Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, Club & Country 1891- A History of Clifton Rugby Football Club1908|author=Brian Anderson|rating=45
|genre=History
|summary=Clifton Rugby Football Club can proudly trace its history back to Originally passed in 1885, the very emergence of 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 sport nature of rugby unionhomosexuality appeared. Founded in September 1872They were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, as well as the same year that William Webb heterosexual Havelock Ellis, who is reputed to have been . Exploring the rebellious Rugby schoolboy who first ran with margins of society and studying homosexuality was common on the ballEuropean Continent, died. In realitybut barely talked about in the UK, it is highly likely that so the Webb Ellis story is something publications of a spin job on behalf these men were hugely significant – contributing to the scientific understanding of Rugby Schoolhomosexuality, although it did mean that Rugby School was able and beginning the struggle for recognition and equality, leading to impose its rules on the game at a time when most public schools had their own rules for playing versions milestone legalisation of the gamesame-sex relationships in 1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904312756</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Gay1910593508|title=Modernism: The Lure of Heresy - From Baudelaire to Beckett and Beyond|rating=4|genre=History|summary=It is impossible not to be impressed by the sheer scope of cultural historian Peter Gay's 2007 study of Modernism, newly released in this paperback edition. He notes in the introduction that it is not a 'comprehensive history' but rather 'a study of its rise, triumphs, and decline'. What is remarkable though, is the attempt to include the whole gamut of artistic fields in this coherent study.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099441969</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewApollo|author=John Van der Kiste|title=Jonathan Wild: Conman and Cutpurse|rating=4|genre=History|summary=Born towards the end of the seventeenth century Jonathan Wild was to become the eighteenth century's most famous criminalMatt Fitch, plying his trade in a rather curious fashion. He was born in Wolverhampton of parents described as ''mean but honest''. It seems likely that he first travelled to London as the servant of a lawyer where he was eventually to settle, leaving his wife Chris Baker and child to fend for themselves. It was whilst serving a term of imprisonment in Wood Street Compter that he mixed with the cream of London's criminal underclass and learned the rudiments of his trade.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848682190</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Bonnie Greer|title=Obama MusicMike Collins|rating=35
|genre=History
|summary=This incredible graphic novel is an interesting read, but unless I'm missing something, the focus of the book seems a little difficult love letter to grasp. It's best if I start with the author's intentions as set out in her Prologue. It is a mixture of tales of her own life growing up on Moon landings and the South Side, she writes, interspersed with stories and observations about Obama, linking it with passion for the musicsubject drips off every Apollo by Matt Fitch, musicians Chris Baker and music scene, past Mike Collins. This is a story we know well and present, including hip hop, country, classical, and rock'n'roll. All because of thesethis, she notes, were heard on the President's Inauguration Dayauthors take a few narrative shortcuts knowing that we can fill in the blanks. To them she adds These shortcuts are the only downside to the blues, gospel, soul and jazz book. If you've ever read a comic book adaptation of a film you will be familiar with the South Side, when the people began to build the great institutions slight feeling that there are scenes missing and great solidarity that enabled him to become the most powerful man on the planetdialogue has been trimmed. This is a graphic novel that could easily have been three times as long and still felt too short.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906558248</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ian Mortimer1786331047|title=1415The Race to Save the Romanovs: Henry VThe Truth Behind the Secret Plans to Rescue Russia's Year of GloryImperial Family|author=Helen Rappaport
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=The medieval, in fact time-honoured, view basic facts about the deaths of King Henry V as one of England's greatest heroes was propagated though not originated by ShakespeareNicholas and Alexandra, and again more recently to some extent by Olivier's portrayal in film. At least one historian has called him ''the greatest man that ever ruled England''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224079921</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Toby Lester|title=The Fourth Part of which were deliberately obscured at the World: The Epic Story of History's Greatest Map|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=In 2003 a map was bought time for $10 millionvarious reasons, the highest price ever paid publicly for a historical document, by the Library of Congress, where it is now on permanent public display. No ordinary map, this is sometimes described as America's birth certificatehave long since been established. It is For the sole survivor last few months of a thousand copies printed early their lives in Russia the 16th centuryformer Tsar and Tsarina, their children and was discovered by accident in some archives in a German castle few remaining servants were held in 1901. The sale and story behind it intrigued Toby Lester so much that he was inspired to discover moreincreasingly squalid, and this book is the resulthumiliating captivity.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1861978030</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|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 LisbonTo prevent them from being rescued, at that time the richest and most opulent city in Europe, Maria was destined to become July 1918 the first female monarch in Portuguese history. Married to her uncle Infante Pedro, seventeen years her senior, she revolutionary regime had six children (outliving them all but one of them), shot and became Queen in 1777. A conscientious woman, she had the misfortune bayoneted to be born death in during the 'age of reason'circumstances which, when church and state were vying for supremacy. Instinctively a supporter of once the old religion, with a humanitarian approach to state affairs, she news was no Queen Elizabeth, no Catherine the Greatconfirmed beyond all doubt, 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 horrified their relatives 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 PresidencyEurope.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>046501870X</amazonuk>
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