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
__NOTOC__
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|isbn=1785633457
{{newreview
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|title=Charging Around: Exploring the Edges of England by Electric Car
|author=Polly Morland
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|author=Clive Wilkinson
|title=The Society of Timid Souls: Or, How to be Brave
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|rating=5
|rating=3.5
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|genre=Travel
|genre=Reference
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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?
|summary='I see no reason why the shy and timid in any community couldn’t get together and help each other.'
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=B09BLBP3P8
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|title=Neville Chamberlain's War: How Great Britain Opposed Hitler, 1939-1940
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|author=Frederic Seager
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|rating=4.5
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|genre=History
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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.
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=3756228711
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|title=CDC: The happy years with a spectacular IT 'Phenomena'
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|author=Hans Bodmer
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|rating=4
 +
|genre=History
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|summary=''The history of the development of IT could fill books of several hundred pages.''
  
The above words were uttered in 1943 by a gentleman called Bernard Gabriel. Mr Gabriel was a piano player who founded a unique club, ''The Society of Timid Souls'' that encouraged timid performers and fear-wracked musicians to come in out of the cold 'to play, to criticise and be criticised in order to conquer that old bogey of stage fright.' The method evidently worked, as many a timid soul claimed to be cured by these unorthodox methods and club membership grew considerably in the years that followed.
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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.  
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781251908</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Jeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene
|author=Paul Strathern
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|title=Fritz and Kurt
|title=The Spirit of Venice: From Marco Polo to Casanova
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=History
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|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=There are several ways of telling the history of the republic of Venice, which is generally regarded as the first great economic and naval power of the western worldStrathern has chosen to do so largely through the lives of various famous (and also infamous) people from Marco Polo in the late thirteenth century to what he calls its destruction, 'both political and symbolic', at the hands of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1797On the whole, the major events such as its wars are covered fairly brieflyAn exception, fittingly enough, is made in the case of a chapter on the war which began its decline in the fifteenth century, when it tried to hold Thessalonica against the Ottomans, and sent ships to help defend Constantinople against the Turkish army but found itself heavily defeated in the subsequent lengthy war, as a result of which it lost most of its possessions.
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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 schoolKurt 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 JewsThese 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…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951921</amazonuk>
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|isbn=024156574X
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=John Henry Phillips
|author=Peter Hart
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|title=The Search
|title=The Great War
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=There are certain aspects of world history that we are duty-bound to teach to each generation. World War I was called 'The Great War' for a reason; it changed the world scene irrevocably and is regarded as the single most important event of the twentieth century. The war introduced dreadful new weapons designed to slaughter as many people as possible with maximum efficiency, resulting in tens of millions of deaths.
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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>1846682460</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1472146182
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn= B09F4CTKJR
|author=Mark Palmer
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|title= Flights for Freedom
|title=Made to last: The story of Britain's best-known shoe firm
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|author= Steven Burgauer
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Business and Finance
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|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=From its founding by the Quaker brothers Cyrus and James Clark in the Somerset village of Street, to its present-day status as a global shoe brand, the name of Clark has weathered many a storm as it draws close to its bicentenary. This account of the company, by a distant kinsman of the two original founders, has drawn heavily on the archives and on in-depth interviews with the family to tell the full story.
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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>1846685206</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=0578761718
|author=Emily Cockayne
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|title=The Inspiring History of a Special Relationship
|title=Cheek by Jowl: A History of Neighbours
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|author=Nancy Carver
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=As Emily Cockayne emphasises at the beginning of the first chapter, almost everyone has a neighbour; if you have a neighbour, you are one yourself; and neighbours can enrich or ruin our lives. In this engaging book, she takes various case studies and anecdotes of living side by side in Britain from around 1200 to the present day.
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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>0099546949</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1784385166
|author=Ian Mortimer
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|title=The Third Reich in 100 Objects: A Material History of Nazi Germany
|title=The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England
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|author=Roger Moorhouse
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=For many of us, the Elizabethan age which comprised almost half of the Tudor era seems bathed in sunlight, the gilded era of Queen Elizabeth's 'sceptred isle'. It was the period in which Gloriana presided over Sir Francis Drake's circumnavigation of the globe, the defeat of the Spanish Armada, and the literary epoch of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Spenser and Sidney.
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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. 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099542072</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Lun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane and Edward Gauvin (translator)
|author=Tony Judt and Timothy Snyder
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|title=Tiananmen 1989: Our Shattered Hopes
|title=Thinking the Twentieth Century
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
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|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=In emulating historians from his geographical area of interest, Timothy Snyder poses questions to, and discusses ideas with, the highly esteemed British historian and writer Tony Judt, best known for his 2005 ''Postwar''. This collaboration of the older and the younger thinker engenders the spoken book ''Thinking the Twentieth Century'', a rather intriguing exploration of said time period. Each of its ten chapters begins with Judt’s narrative of a specific point in his personal life, and continues into debates of specific facets of history; a healthy mix of thematic and chronological approaches is used for the latter.
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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>009956355X</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1684056993
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=0648684806
|author=Cathryn J Prince
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|title=Clara Colby: The International Suffragist
|title=Death in the Baltic: The World War II Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff
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|author=John Holliday
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=History
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|genre=Biography
|summary=There is no pun intended when I describe the ship ''Wilhelm Gustloff'' as sternIt just seems from looking at her hard and rigid lines that if you were to design a ship that the Nazi party would use as an ideological tool, to take their favoured workers on pleasure cruises around the Mediterranean, you would naturally end up with something that looked like her.  However fate had it that within years she became a hospital ship, and it wasn't much longer after that that she was stationed in the northern Polish port now known as Gdynia, ready to help in a major evacuation of thousands of desperate, starving and fevered people fleeing the advancing Soviet armyAll they wanted to do was to avoid the perilous snowy overland route to get a few miles along the coast, but they weren't to know that within hours of sailing the ''Wilhelm Gustloff'' would be torpedoed, and many thousands would perish in the near-frozen Baltic waters.
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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 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 familyClara 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>023034156X</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1783784350
|author=Peter Frankopan
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|title=This Golden Fleece: A Journey Through Britain's Knitted History
|title=The First Crusade: The Call from the East
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|author=Esther Rutter
|rating=3.5
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|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=At the now famous Council of Clermont in November 1095, Pope Urban II responded to calls of distress from the eastern Byzantine Empire by issuing the dramatic call to arms that sparked the First Crusade. But there are at least two sides to every story, especially in history. Western histories of the Crusades have concentrated on that Council and the journeys of Crusaders across Europe: Peter Frankopan's 'The Call from the East' instead draws attention to Emperor Alexios I Komnenus and the plight of his Byzantine Empire.
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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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099555034</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1789017977
|author=Christopher de Bellaigue
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|title=Ronnie and Hilda's Romance: Towards a New Life after World War II
|title=Patriot of Persia: Muhammad Mossadegh and a Very British Coup
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|author=Wendy Williams
|rating=5
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|rating=4
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=A good historian will take a single important fact and make good use of it to expound his general thesis. De Bellaigue demonstrates this masterfully when he states, 'Between 1876 and 1915 a quarter of the world changed ownership, with a half a dozen European states taking the lion’s share.' Persia, however, during this time was judged to be too poor to be worth occupying. It had, for instance, only a few miles of railway track. Secondly, Russia and Britain both had schemes for control but their mutual animosity gave the Persians room for manoeuvre. The latter were skilled at playing each off against the other and obtaining concessions. However, the conflict sharpened over the control of a critical resource, oil. This was controlled upon the outbreak 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, one of the first liberals of the Middle East was determined that this resource beneath his native land had to belong to his own people.
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|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099540487</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1980891117
|author=Marc Morris
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|title=G Engleheart Pinxit 1805: A year in the life of George Engleheart
|title=The Norman Conquest
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|author=John Webley
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
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|genre=Art
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|summary=George Engleheart was one of the leading portrait miniaturists of Georgian London, with a career lasting from the 1770s to the Regency era. He was also one of the most prolific, painting nearly 5,000 miniatures altogether (over twenty of them being of King George III). Throughout most of that time he carefully recorded the names of each of his clients, and subsequently transcribed them into what is referred to as his fee book.
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=1789016304
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|title=War and Love: A family's testament of anguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam
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|author=Melanie Martin
 +
|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=When did the Norman conquest of England start and end?  This generous panoramic history takes a wide sweep of almost the whole of the eleventh century in England, although as the title indicates, the focal point is that pivotal date of 1066. Morris begins his narrative at around the year 1000, a time when the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were under threat from the Viking invasions from Alfred and Ethelred the Unready.  Having long been vulnerable to raids from Scandinavia, England then had to contend with the same from FranceThe power struggles that followed the illness and death of 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 at Stamford Bridge, are dealt with in painstaking detail.
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|summary=Melanie Martin read about what happened to Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and was entranced by what she discovered, particularly in ''The Diary of Ann Frank'' but then realised that her own family's stories were equally fascinating. A hundred and seven thousand Jews were deported from the city during the war years, but only five thousand survived and Martin could not understand how this could be allowed to happen in a country with liberal values who were resistant to German occupationMost 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>0099537443</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1908745819
|author=Jerry White
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|title=Surfacing
|title=London in the 18th century
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|author=Kathleen Jamie
|rating=4.5
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|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=White has already written accounts of London in the 19th and 20th centuries, and this is the last in a planned trilogy. In 1700, according to an unnamed contemporary source, it was one of the ‘most Spacious, Populous, Rich, Beautiful, Renowned and Noble Citys that we know of at this day in the World’It was also the largest city in EuropeBy the end of the century, it would double in extent and population, and become the largest in the universeCarl Phillipp Moritz, a visitor from Germany in 1782, could climb St Paul's Cathedral and comment with amazement that he found it impossible to ascertain where London began or ended, ‘or where the circumjacent villages began; far as the eye could reach, it seemed to be all one continued chain’.
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|summary=Sometimes when people suggest that you read a certain book, they tell you ''this one has your name on it''. Mostly we take them at their word, or not, but rarely do we ask them why they thought so unless it turns out that we didn't like the book. That's a rare experience. People who are sensitive to hearing a book calling your name, rarely get it wrong. In this case, I was told why.  The blurb speaks of the author considering ''an older, less tethered sense of herself.'' Older. Less tethered. That's not a bad description of where I amAdd 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 itIt 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>1847921809</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=0857058320
|author=Catherine Fletcher
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|title=Lord Of All the Dead
|title=The Divorce of Henry VIII: The Untold Story
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|author=Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=Henry VIII’s protracted divorce from Catherine of Aragon, often referred to as ‘The King’s Great Matter’, has been described in detail many times before. In this book on the subject, the focus is on the role of Italian diplomat, Gregorio Casali, ‘our man in Rome’, as the hardback edition was titled. In the preface, Ms Fletcher explains that the average reader may be conversant with the basic facts of Henry and his six wives, but has probably never heard of Casali, who played a lengthy role in the proceedings.
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|summary=''Lord Of All the Dead'' is a journey to uncover the author's lost ancestor's life and death. Cercas is searching for the meaning behind his great uncle's death in the Spanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, Cercas' great uncle, is the figure who looms large over the book. He died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's forces. Cercas ruminates on why his uncle fought for this dictator. The question at the centre of this book is whether it is possible for his great uncle to be a hero whilst having fought for the wrong side.  
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099554895</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=0008294011
|author=Pam Weaver
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|title=How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship
|title=Bath Times and Nursery Rhymes
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|author=Ece Temelkuran
|rating=4
 
|genre=Autobiography
 
|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 Rhymes'' sees Pam progress from a shy and awkward teenager to a competent and caring nursery nurse. Reluctant to stay too long in any position, Pam tries her hand at a variety of jobs, including her initial employment in a Council-run children’s home, working as a private nanny to a rich young widow and an eventful but emotional stint in a premature baby ward.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007488440</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Derek Niemann
 
|title=Birds in a Cage
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=
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|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 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.
''Birds in a Cage'' introduces the reader to John and his fellow officers: Peter Conder, George Waterston and John Henry Barrett and shows how their shared love of birds enabled them to create an emotional escape from the gruelling conditions that surrounded them in the prisoner of war camp at Warburg. The men banded together to form a birdwatching society within the camp, making meticulous observations of the lives of the birds nesting in and around the area. These detailed records went on to become valuable scientific documents, as they recorded the lives and habits of birds in painstaking detail, revealing previously unknown facts about species such as the redstart and goldfinch.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780720939</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1788037812
|author=Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick
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|title=The Fraternity of the Estranged: The Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908
|title=The Untold History of the United States
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|author=Brian Anderson
|rating=4.5
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|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=It's been said that history is written by the victors. It would also be pertinent to add that the writing will always polish up the worthy parts whilst whilst finding a convenient carpet under which can be swept 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 the Irish potato famine from 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 of British people would accept though that their country has had an imperialist past - and that the natives have not always thrown themselves down in front of us in their joy at our arrival.
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|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>0091949297</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1910593508
|author=Jacob F Field
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|title=Apollo
|title=One Bloody Thing After Another
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|author=Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins
|rating=3.5
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|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=While other authors have made the case for mankind easing off in the destruction stakes recently, and becoming less hostile, bloodthirsty and cruel than in the past, it doesn’t mean that our global history is not littered with detail, about mutinies, massacres and murders. Mr Field here gathers the gamut of gore from the time when the only people writing down their history were the Chinese, up until the late nineteenth century, and covers the planet in search of slicing, dicing and deathly devices.  It certainly lives up to its title.
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|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>1843178842</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1786331047
|author=Graeme Donald
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|title=The Race to Save the Romanovs: The Truth Behind the Secret Plans to Rescue Russia's Imperial Family
|title=When the Earth Was Flat
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|author=Helen Rappaport
|rating=4
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|rating=5
 
|genre=History
 
|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 virtues of cocaine and opium as harmless boosts to medicine, and in the interim proudly induce enemas of tobacco smoke – the early version of colonic irrigation so beloved of some dodgy ex-Princess-type people. Outside the medical room, there was once the notion that the Earth was flat – although not as might be popularly believed, a regular idea in Columbus's days, but certainly at times before then. The spread of man's idiocy where wrong, faulty and dodgy science is concerned, and the history of all the false ideas, is touched on in this fascinating volume.
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|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>1843178680</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 +
 +
Move on to [[Newest Home and Family Reviews]]

Latest revision as of 12:03, 20 March 2023

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Review of

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

5star.jpg Travel

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

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Review of

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

4.5star.jpg History

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

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Review of

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

4star.jpg History

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

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

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Review of

Fritz and Kurt by Jeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene

4star.jpg Confident Readers

We start with the pair of brothers Fritz and Kurt, and their muckers, doing things any Jewish lad in 1930s Vienna would want to do – kicking things around the empty market place, helping the neighbours, being dutiful when it comes to the synagogue choir and at a vocational school. Kurt has to make sure the lamps are turned on at their very Orthodox neighbours' each Friday night – the Sabbath preventing them for using anything nearly as mechanical and workmanlike as a light switch. But this is the time just before the Austrian leader is going to cave to Hitler's will, and instead of having a national vote to keep the Nazis out, invite them in with open arms. Kristallnacht happened in Vienna just as much as in Germany, as did all the round-ups of Jews. These in their turn leave the younger Kurt at home with his mother and sisters anxious to hear word of an evacuation to Britain or the US, while Fritz and his father are, unknown initially to each other, packed off on the same train to Buchenwald and the stone quarry there. And us wondering how the titular event for the adult variant of all this could come about… Full Review

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Review of

The Search by John Henry Phillips

5star.jpg History

Archaeology cannot be child's play, when you're scraping in the dirt looking to find what you can find, often knowing there should be something there but not always confident what. Archaeology must be a fair bit harder when you set out to find some specific thing. This book is a case of the latter, as our author promises to locate the topic of the titular search. And he really hasn't made it easy for himself – the search area is a wide one, the target might not exist any more – oh, and it's underwater, when he cannot dive. Latching on to a particular D-Day veteran through helping the heroic old man's visit back to France, our author has promised to find the landing craft that delivered him to Normandy, and that he was lucky to survive when it sank from beneath him. The secondary aim is to erect a memorial to everyone else aboard, the vast majority of whom perished. Who else would make such promises to someone in their nineties? Full Review

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Review of

Flights for Freedom by Steven Burgauer

4.5star.jpg Historical Fiction

It's the later stages of World War I and the United States has just entered the conflict. Petrol Petronus is a young American who has signed up and joined the 17 Aero Squadron. This company was the first US Aero Squadron to be trained in Canada, the first to be attached to the RAF and the first to be sent into the skies to fight the Germans in active combat. But before that can happen, Petrol has to master flying the notoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camel. Full Review

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Review of

The Inspiring History of a Special Relationship by Nancy Carver

4.5star.jpg History

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

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Review of

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

5star.jpg History

What is the first image that comes to mind when you think of the Third Reich? Hitler? A swastika? The Nazi salute? The gate to a concentration camp? None of these are comfortable images but they are emblematic of the Third Reich's fascist regime in all its iniquity. But some objects and images from that time may be less familiar to you. In this short volume, Roger Moorhouse has attempted to illustrate the period of the Third Reich through one hundred of its material artefacts.  Full Review

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Review of

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

4.5star.jpg Graphic Novels

I never really followed the events of Tiananmen Square with much attention when it was playing out – someone in the second half of their teens has other priorities, you know. I certainly didn't know of the weeks of protests and hunger strikes from the students before the massacre and the birth of the Tank Man image, I didn't know how the area had long been a venue for political protest, and I didn't know more than a spit about the people involved on either side. This book is practically flawless in giving a general browser's context for the whole season of protests back in 1989. Full Review

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Review of

Clara Colby: The International Suffragist by John Holliday

4star.jpg Biography

The path of Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the USA. At the time she was just three-years-old but because of some childhood ailment, she wasn't allowed to sail with her parents and three brothers. Instead, she remained with her grandparents, who doted on her and saw that she received a good education, both in and out of school. She was the only child in the household and her childhood was glorious. By contrast, her family had become pioneer farmers in the mid-west of the United States and life was hard, as Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to join the family. Clara would only know her mother for a few months: she was married for fifteen years, had ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and died in childbirth not long after Clara arrived. As the eldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on Clara and Wisconsin was a rude awakening. Full Review

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Review of

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

5star.jpg History

It was December and Esther Rutter was stuck in her office job, writing to people she'd never met and preparing spreadsheets. The job frustrated her and even her knitting did not soothe her mind. January was going to be a time for making changes and she decided that she would travel the length and breadth of the British Isles with occasional forays abroad, discovering and telling the story of wool's history and how it had made and changed the landscape. She'd grown up on a sheep farm in Suffolk - a free-range child on the farm - and learned to spin, knit and weave from her mother and her mother's friend. This was in her blood. Full Review

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Review of

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

4star.jpg History

Ronnie Williams was the son of Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall. There's some doubt as to whether or not they were ever married or even Harry's birthdate: he claimed to have been born in 1863, but he was already many years older than Ethel and he might well have shaved a few years off his age. For a while the family was quite well-to-do but disaster struck in the 1929 Depression and five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to a very different lifestyle. One thing he did inherit from his father was his need to be well-turned-out and this would stay with him throughout his life. He joined the army at eighteen in 1942. Full Review

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Review of

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

4.5star.jpg Art

George Engleheart was one of the leading portrait miniaturists of Georgian London, with a career lasting from the 1770s to the Regency era. He was also one of the most prolific, painting nearly 5,000 miniatures altogether (over twenty of them being of King George III). Throughout most of that time he carefully recorded the names of each of his clients, and subsequently transcribed them into what is referred to as his fee book. Full Review

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Review of

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

5star.jpg History

Melanie Martin read about what happened to Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and was entranced by what she discovered, particularly in The Diary of Ann Frank but then realised that her own family's stories were equally fascinating. A hundred and seven thousand Jews were deported from the city during the war years, but only five thousand survived and Martin could not understand how this could be allowed to happen in a country with liberal values who were resistant to German occupation. Most people believed that the occupation could never happen: even those who thought that the Germans might reach the city were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, that the Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in the way that it did, but initial protests melted away as the organisers became more circumspect. It's an atrocity on a vast scale but made up of tens of thousands of individual tragedies. Full Review

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Review of

Surfacing by Kathleen Jamie

5star.jpg History

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

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Review of

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

4star.jpg History

Lord Of All the Dead is a journey to uncover the author's lost ancestor's life and death. Cercas is searching for the meaning behind his great uncle's death in the Spanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, Cercas' great uncle, is the figure who looms large over the book. He died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's forces. Cercas ruminates on why his uncle fought for this dictator. The question at the centre of this book is whether it is possible for his great uncle to be a hero whilst having fought for the wrong side. Full Review

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Review of

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

4.5star.jpg History

A little while ago a friend asked me if I thought that we were living through what in years to come would be discussed by A level history students when faced with the question Discuss the factors which led to... I agreed that she was right and wasn't certain whether it was a good or bad thing that we didn't know what all 'this' was leading to. I think now that I do know. We are in danger of losing democracy and whilst it's a flawed system I can't think of a better one, particularly as the 'benevolent dictator' is as rare as hen's teeth. Full Review

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Review of

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

5star.jpg History

Originally passed in 1885, the law that had made homosexual relations a crime remained in place for 82 years. But during this time, restrictions on same-sex relationships did not go unchallenged. Between 1891 and 1908, three books on the nature of homosexuality appeared. They were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, as well as the heterosexual Havelock Ellis. Exploring the margins of society and studying homosexuality was common on the European Continent, but barely talked about in the UK, so the publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to the scientific understanding of homosexuality, and beginning the struggle for recognition and equality, leading to the milestone legalisation of same-sex relationships in 1967. Full Review

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Review of

Apollo by Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins

5star.jpg History

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

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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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