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[[Category:History|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|History]]__NOTOC__ <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{Frontpage|isbn=1785633457|title=HistoryCharging Around: Exploring the Edges of England by Electric Car|author=Clive Wilkinson|rating=5__NOTOC__|genre=Travel|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?}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tony Judt and Timothy SnyderB09BLBP3P8|title=Thinking the Twentieth CenturyNeville Chamberlain's War: How Great Britain Opposed Hitler, 1939-1940|author=Frederic Seager
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=In emulating historians Received wisdom and simplified narrative often lead to misconceptions about history. One such is the scrubbing from his geographical area the popular imagination of interest, Timothy Snyder poses questions to, and discusses ideas with, the highly esteemed British historian and writer Tony Judtearly days of World War II from 1939-40, best known for his 2005 as the ''PostwarPhoney War''. This collaboration of the older We remember Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler, war breaking out, and Churchill coming in to save the younger thinker engenders the spoken book ''Thinking the Twentieth Century'', a rather intriguing exploration of said day. Very little time is spent on this period. Each of its ten chapters begins with Judt’s narrative of a specific point in his personal lifecultural reflections and yet, as Frederic Seager argues in this book, and continues into debates it was of specific facets of history; a healthy mix of thematic and chronological approaches is used for vital significance in how the latterwar played out.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009956355X</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=3756228711
|title=CDC: The happy years with a spectacular IT 'Phenomena'
|author=Hans Bodmer
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=''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. }}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Cathryn J PrinceJeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene|title=Death in the Baltic: The World War II Sinking of the Wilhelm GustloffFritz and Kurt
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=We start with the pair of brothers Fritz and Kurt, and their muckers, doing things any Jewish lad in 1930s Vienna would want to do – kicking things around the empty market place, helping the neighbours, being dutiful when it comes to the synagogue choir and at a vocational school. Kurt has to make sure the lamps are turned on at their very Orthodox neighbours' each Friday night – the Sabbath preventing them for using anything nearly as mechanical and workmanlike as a light switch. But this is the time just before the Austrian leader is going to cave to Hitler's will, and instead of having a national vote to keep the Nazis out, invite them in with open arms. ''Kristallnacht'' happened in Vienna just as much as in Germany, as did all the round-ups of Jews. These in their turn leave the younger Kurt at home with his mother and sisters anxious to hear word of an evacuation to Britain or the US, while Fritz and his father are, unknown initially to each other, packed off on the same train to Buchenwald and the stone quarry there. And us wondering how the titular event for the adult variant of all this could come about…
|isbn=024156574X
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=John Henry Phillips
|title=The Search
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=There is no pun intended Archaeology cannot be child's play, when I describe you're scraping in the ship ''Wilhelm Gustloff'' as sterndirt looking to find what you can find, often knowing there should be something there but not always confident what. It just seems from looking at her hard and rigid lines that if Archaeology must be a fair bit harder when you were set out to design find some specific thing. This book is a ship that case of the Nazi party would use latter, as an ideological tool, our author promises to take their favoured workers on pleasure cruises around locate the topic of the Mediterranean, you would naturally end up with something that looked like hertitular search. However fate had And he really hasn't made it that within years she became easy for himself – the search area is a hospital shipwide one, the target might not exist any more – oh, and it wasn't much longer after that that she was stationed in the northern Polish port now known as Gdynias underwater, ready when he cannot dive. Latching on to help in a major evacuation of thousands of desperateparticular D-Day veteran through helping the heroic old man's visit back to France, starving and fevered people fleeing our author has promised to find the advancing Soviet army. All they wanted landing craft that delivered him to do Normandy, and that he was lucky to avoid the perilous snowy overland route survive when it sank from beneath him. The secondary aim is to get erect a few miles along memorial to everyone else aboard, the coast, but they weren't to know that within hours vast majority of sailing the ''Wilhelm Gustloff'' whom perished. Who else would be torpedoed, and many thousands would perish make such promises to someone in the near-frozen Baltic waters.their nineties?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>023034156X</amazonuk>1472146182
}}
{{Frontpage|isbn= B09F4CTKJR|title= Flights for Freedom|author= Steven Burgauer|rating=4.5|genre=Historical Fiction|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.}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Frankopan0578761718|title=The First Crusade: The Call from the EastInspiring History of a Special Relationship|author=Nancy Carver|rating=34.5
|genre=History
|summary=At The church of St Mary Aldermanbuy had existed in the now famous Council City of Clermont London from at least 1181, when it was first mentioned in November 1095records. Sadly, Pope Urban II responded to calls the original church was destroyed in the Great Fire of distress London in 1666. It was rebuilt in Portland stone from a design by Sir Christopher Wren soon after the eastern Byzantine Empire fire and then survived for centuries until World War II, when it was again ruined by issuing bombs during the dramatic call to arms that sparked the First CrusadeBlitz. But there are at least two sides to every story, especially in history. Western histories of the Crusades have concentrated on that Council and wasn't the journeys end of Crusaders across Europeits story: Peter Frankopan's 'The Call after a phenomenal fundraising effort, the stones from the Eastchurch' instead draws attention s walls were transported to Emperor Alexios I Komnenus and Fulton, Missouri. There, in the plight grounds of his Byzantine EmpireWestminster College, the church was rebuilt and today serves as a memorial to Winston Churchill.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099555034</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Christopher de Bellaigue1784385166|title=Patriot The Third Reich in 100 Objects: A Material History of Persia: Muhammad Mossadegh and a Very British CoupNazi Germany|author=Roger Moorhouse
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=A good historian will take a single important fact and make good use of it What is the first image that comes to expound his general thesis. De Bellaigue demonstrates this masterfully mind when he states, 'Between 1876 and 1915 a quarter you think of the world changed ownership, with a half a dozen European states taking the lion’s share.' Persia, however, during this time was judged Third Reich? Hitler? A swastika? The Nazi salute? The gate to be too poor to be worth occupying. It had, for instance, only a few miles concentration camp? None of railway track. Secondly, Russia and Britain both had schemes for control these are comfortable images but their mutual animosity gave they are emblematic of the Persians room for manoeuvreThird Reich's fascist regime in all its iniquity. The latter were skilled at playing each off against the other But some objects and obtaining concessionsimages from that time may be less familiar to you. HoweverIn this short volume, Roger Moorhouse has attempted to illustrate the conflict sharpened over the control of a critical resource, oil. This was controlled upon the outbreak period of the First World War by the major share held in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, later to become BP, held by the British. It was Muhammad Mossadegh, Third Reich through one hundred of the first liberals of the Middle East was determined that this resource beneath his native land had to belong to his own peopleits material artefacts.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099540487</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Marc MorrisLun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane and Edward Gauvin (translator)|title=The Norman ConquestTiananmen 1989: Our Shattered Hopes
|rating=4.5
|genre=Graphic Novels
|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.
|isbn=1684056993
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0648684806
|title=Clara Colby: The International Suffragist
|author=John Holliday
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=The path of Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the USA. At the time she was just three-years-old but because of some childhood ailment, she wasn't allowed to sail with her parents and three brothers. Instead, she remained with her grandparents, who doted on her and saw that she received a good education, both in and out of school. She was the only child in the household and her childhood was glorious. By contrast, her family had become pioneer farmers in the mid-west of the United States and life was hard, as Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to join the family. Clara would only know her mother for a few months: she was married for fifteen years, had ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and died in childbirth not long after Clara arrived. As the eldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on Clara and Wisconsin was a rude awakening.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1783784350
|title=This Golden Fleece: A Journey Through Britain's Knitted History
|author=Esther Rutter
|rating=5
|genre=History
|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.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1789017977
|title=Ronnie and Hilda's Romance: Towards a New Life after World War II
|author=Wendy Williams
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=When did Ronnie Williams was the Norman conquest son of England start Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and end? Ethel Wall. This generous panoramic history takes a wide sweep of almost the whole of the eleventh century 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 England1863, although as the title indicates, the focal point is that pivotal date of 1066but he was already many years older than Ethel and he might well have shaved a few years off his age. Morris begins his narrative at around the year 1000, For a time when while the Anglofamily was quite well-Saxon kingdoms were under threat from to-do but disaster struck in the Viking invasions from Alfred 1929 Depression and Ethelred the Unreadyfive-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to a very different lifestyle. Having long been vulnerable to raids One thing he did inherit from Scandinavia, England then had his father was his need to contend be well-turned-out and this would stay with the same from Francehim throughout his life. The power struggles that followed the illness and death of He joined the childless Edward the Confessor (who had nominated William of Normandy as his preferred successor in 1051), the apparent seizure of the English throne by Harold Godwinson who then had himself crowned with remarkable haste, the invasion led by Harold’s brother Tostig and Harald Hardrada of Norway and the death of both the latter army at Stamford Bridge, are dealt with eighteen in painstaking detail1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099537443</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jerry White1980891117|title=London G Engleheart Pinxit 1805: A year in the 18th centurylife of George Engleheart|author=John Webley
|rating=4.5
|genre=Art
|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.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1789016304
|title=War and Love: A family's testament of anguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam
|author=Melanie Martin
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=White has already written accounts of London Melanie Martin read about what happened to Dutch Jews in the 19th occupied Amsterdam during World War II and 20th centurieswas 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 this is seven thousand Jews were deported from the last in a planned trilogy. In 1700, according to an unnamed contemporary source, it was one of city during the ‘most Spacious, Populous, Rich, Beautifulwar years, Renowned but only five thousand survived and Noble Citys that we know of at Martin could not understand how this day could be allowed to happen in the World’a country with liberal values who were resistant to German occupation. It was also Most people believed that the largest city in Europe. By occupation could never happen: even those who thought that the end of Germans might reach the century, it city were convinced that they would double in extent and populationsoon be pushed back, and become that the largest Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in the universe. Carl Phillipp Moritz, a visitor from Germany in 1782, could climb St Paul's Cathedral and comment with amazement way that he found it impossible to ascertain where London began or endeddid, ‘or where the circumjacent villages began; far but initial protests melted away as the eye could reach, it seemed to be all one continued chain’organisers became more circumspect. It's an atrocity on a vast scale but made up of tens of thousands of individual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847921809</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Catherine Fletcher1908745819|title=The Divorce of Henry VIII: The Untold StorySurfacing|author=Kathleen Jamie|rating=45
|genre=History
|summary=Henry VIII’s protracted divorce from Catherine of AragonSometimes 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, often referred 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 as ‘The King’s Great Matter’hearing a book calling your name, has been described in detail many times beforerarely get it wrong. In this book on the subjectcase, the focus is on the role of Italian diplomat, Gregorio Casali, ‘our man in Rome’, as the hardback edition I was titledtold why. In The blurb speaks of the prefaceauthor considering ''an older, Ms Fletcher explains 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 average reader may be conversant with natural world, of those aspects of the basic facts of Henry poetic and his six wiveslyrical that are about style not form, but has probably never heard and substance most of Casaliall, who played a lengthy role in the proceedingsabout 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>0099554895</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Pam Weaver0857058320|title=Bath Times Lord Of All the Dead|author=Javier Cercas and Nursery RhymesAnne McLean (translator)
|rating=4
|genre=AutobiographyHistory|summary=In 1961, a young 16 year old girl called Pam Weaver embarks on a career path that will change her life. Fed up with the tedium of working on the broken biscuit counter at Woolworths, she decides to train for her NNEB. ''Bath Times and Nursery RhymesLord Of All the Dead'' sees Pam progress from is a shy and awkward teenager journey to a competent uncover the author's lost ancestor's life and caring nursery nursedeath. Reluctant to stay too long Cercas is searching for the meaning behind his great uncle's death in any positionthe Spanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, Pam tries her hand 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 a variety the centre of jobs, including her initial employment in a Council-run children’s home, working as a private nanny this book is whether it is possible for his great uncle to be a rich young widow and an eventful but emotional stint in a premature baby wardhero whilst having fought for the wrong side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007488440</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Derek Niemann0008294011|title=Birds in How to Lose a CageCountry: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship|author=Ece Temelkuran
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=''Birds A little while ago a friend asked me if I thought that we were living through what in a Cageyears to come would be discussed by A level history students when faced with the question '' introduces Discuss the reader factors which led to John ...'' I agreed that she was right and his fellow officers: Peter Conder, George Waterston and John Henry Barrett and shows how their shared love of birds enabled them wasn't certain whether it was a good or bad thing that we didn't know what all 'this' was leading to create an emotional escape from the gruelling conditions . I think now that surrounded them I do know. We are in the prisoner danger of war camp at Warburg. The men banded together to form losing democracy and whilst it's a birdwatching society within the camp, making meticulous observations flawed system I can't think of the lives of the birds nesting in and around the area. These detailed records went on to become valuable scientific documentsa better one, particularly as they recorded the lives and habits of birds in painstaking detail, revealing previously unknown facts about species such 'benevolent dictator' is as rare as the redstart and goldfinchhen's teeth.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780720939</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick1788037812|title=The Untold History Fraternity of the United StatesEstranged: The Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908|author=Brian Anderson|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=It's been said Originally passed in 1885, the law that history is 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 victorsheterosexual Havelock Ellis. It would also be pertinent to add that Exploring the writing will always polish up margins of society and studying homosexuality was common on the worthy parts whilst whilst finding a convenient carpet under which can be swept European Continent, but barely talked about in the events which are best forgotten. There's no country with a victory under its belt which is above this practice: I've just been brought up very sharply as I considered UK, so the Irish potato famine from publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to the [[The Famine Plot: England's Role in Ireland's Greatest Tragedy by Tim Pat Coogan|Irish perspective]]. That's a story you'll not read in many British history books. The majority scientific understanding of British people would accept though that their country has had an imperialist past - homosexuality, and beginning the struggle for recognition and that equality, leading to the natives have not always thrown themselves down in front milestone legalisation of us same-sex relationships in their joy at our arrival1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091949297</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jacob F Field1910593508|title=One Bloody Thing After AnotherApollo|author=Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins|rating=3.5
|genre=History
|summary=While other authors have made This incredible graphic novel is a love letter to the Moon landings and the case passion for mankind easing the subject drips off in the destruction stakes recentlyevery Apollo by Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and becoming less hostileMike Collins. This is a story we know well and because of this, bloodthirsty and cruel than the authors take a few narrative shortcuts knowing that we can fill in the past, it doesn’t mean that our global history is not littered with detail, about mutinies, massacres and murdersblanks. Mr Field here gathers the gamut of gore from the time when These shortcuts are the only people writing down their history were downside to the Chinese, up until book. If you've ever read a comic book adaptation of a film you will be familiar with the late nineteenth century, slight feeling that there are scenes missing and covers the planet in search of slicing, dicing that dialogue has been trimmed. This is a graphic novel that could easily have been three times as long and deathly devices. It certainly lives up to its titlestill felt too short.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843178842</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Graeme Donald1786331047|title=When The Race to Save the Romanovs: The Truth Behind the Earth Was FlatSecret Plans to Rescue Russia's Imperial Family|author=Helen Rappaport|rating=45
|genre=History
|summary=Mankind has often had some quite ridiculous ideas. Once upon a time people deemed it sensible for doctors to go from an autopsy room to help give birth without washing hands in between – who'd have thought it might be beneficial? Those self-same medical scientists were within generations going to extol The basic facts about the virtues deaths of cocaine Nicholas and opium as harmless boosts to medicineAlexandra, and in the interim proudly induce enemas some of tobacco smoke – which were deliberately obscured at the early version of colonic irrigation so beloved of some dodgy ex-Princess-type peopletime for various reasons, have long since been established. Outside For the medical room, there was once last few months of their lives in Russia the notion that the Earth was flat – although not as might be popularly believedformer Tsar and Tsarina, a regular idea their children and few remaining servants were held in Columbus's daysincreasingly squalid, but certainly at times before thenhumiliating captivity. The spread of man's idiocy where wrongTo prevent them from being rescued, faulty in July 1918 the revolutionary regime had them all shot and dodgy science is concernedbayoneted to death in circumstances which, and once the history of news was confirmed beyond all the false ideasdoubt, is touched on horrified their relatives in this fascinating volumeEurope.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843178680</amazonuk>
}}