Difference between revisions of "Newest History Reviews"
| Line 3: | Line 3: | ||
==History== | ==History== | ||
__NOTOC__ | __NOTOC__ | ||
| + | {{newreview | ||
| + | |author=Robert Shepherd | ||
| + | |title=Westminster: A biography, from earliest times to the present | ||
| + | |rating=5 | ||
| + | |genre=History | ||
| + | |summary=There seems to be no shortage of ways in which the history of London can be told, and as befitting an experienced historical and political biographer, Shepherd has found another interesting variation on the theme. In this superbly detailed and exhaustively researched volume, he brings us the story of Westminster, the royal capital that became the birthplace of parliamentary government and the centre of a world power. Over 1500 years ago it was Thorney Island, a secluded area on the banks of the Thames. It then became a village, yet a very grand one comprising a spiritual centre, a royal ceremonial stage and later a political capital, encompassing buildings such as the Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, and 10 Downing Street. Against this stage has been enacted the history of a nation, of the monarchs and politicians who for better and worse shaped the events of the last thousand years. | ||
| + | |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0826423809</amazonuk> | ||
| + | }} | ||
| + | |||
{{newreview | {{newreview | ||
|author=Ann Wroe | |author=Ann Wroe | ||
Revision as of 13:01, 24 August 2012
History
Westminster: A biography, from earliest times to the present by Robert Shepherd
There seems to be no shortage of ways in which the history of London can be told, and as befitting an experienced historical and political biographer, Shepherd has found another interesting variation on the theme. In this superbly detailed and exhaustively researched volume, he brings us the story of Westminster, the royal capital that became the birthplace of parliamentary government and the centre of a world power. Over 1500 years ago it was Thorney Island, a secluded area on the banks of the Thames. It then became a village, yet a very grand one comprising a spiritual centre, a royal ceremonial stage and later a political capital, encompassing buildings such as the Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, and 10 Downing Street. Against this stage has been enacted the history of a nation, of the monarchs and politicians who for better and worse shaped the events of the last thousand years. Full review...
Orpheus, The Song Of Life by Ann Wroe
Orpheus is one of the most memorable and recognisable figures of Greek mythology. He was a legendary musician and poet, whose song could charm all living things and indeed the very stones of the earth. He had a dramatic life, including joining the Argonauts as they searched for the golden fleece. Most memorably, he travelled to Hades to rescue his dead wife Eurydice from the underworld. However, he was unable to obey Pluto’s command not to look at her. He couldn’t resist turning around, only to see her sucked back into the depths and death. This tale of romantic tragedy and thwarted love has intrigued and delighted artists and writers through the centuries, and they have portrayed Orpheus and his life in music, paintings, plays, poems, operas and films ever since. Full review...
Bright Young Things by Alison Maloney
According to the summary I read of Bright Young Things before choosing the book to read, it 'takes a sweeping look at the changing world of the Jazz Age'. I was expecting it to be something of a narrative account of the Roaring Twenties – in actual fact, it's set out as a collection of trivia about the decade. Similarly, the 'first person accounts' mentioned on the inside front cover are limited to two or three sentence quotes. Full review...
Frenzy!: How the tabloid press turned three evil serial killers into celebrities by Neil Root
It was forever thus. Only last year, 2011, did the News of the World and the Sunday Mirror stop being the double-headed monster of tabloid journalism, and very little was different in the 1950s, beyond the inclusion of boobies, and the fact the Mirror was then just the Sunday Pictorial. Both formed a duopoly for those in their audience seeking all the salacious details of the scandals of the day, and the crimes and criminals people would talk about over their breakfasts. Three men stood out in those days for the ways in which they achieved their notoriety, and this book is an account of their goings-on, and how the press reported the stories – at times paying large fortunes for the privilege. Full review...
London: A Social and Cultural History, 1550-1750 by Robert O Bucholz and Joseph P Ward
It seems hard to visualise a time when London was just a city of no major importance, except as England’s capital. The main thrust of this book is only about halfway through the Tudor area did it really rise to global prominence and come to dominate the economic, political, social and cultural life of the nation as it never had before – and arguably since. By 1750 it had also surpassed Amsterdam as Europe’s financial and banking hub, and become 'a cornucopia of culture' through its vibrant concert and theatre life, to say nothing of a thriving and relatively free press. Before long it would also become the home of the British Museum and the Royal Academy of Arts. Lest this testimonial seems too gilded, we are reminded at the same time that the city was one of palaces and slums, concert halls and gin joints, churches and brothels, possibility and fear. Good and evil were always side by side. Full review...
The Cage by Gordon Weiss
The history of Ceylon, and latterly Sri Lanka has at its centre an undeniable contradiction. A nation which espoused and proclaimed peaceful Buddhism was caught in one of the bloodiest conflicts in the recent past, a conflict peppered with suicide bombings, mass killings, rapes, torture and imprisonment, and more than a hint of genocide. Gordon Weiss was intimately involved as a journalist and as the United Nations Spokesman in Sri Lanka for two years of the almost 40 years conflict, and has produced a detailed account of the background and eventual denouement of this conflict. Full review...
The Road Not Taken: How Britain narrowly missed a revolution by Frank McLynn
Since the Norman conquest, there have been no successful invasions of Britain. Yet according to this book, during that era the country has come close to revolution on seven occasions. These were the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, Jack Cade's rebellion of 1450, the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536, the English Civil War in the 1640s, the Jacobite rising in 1745-6, the Chartist Movement of the early Victorian era, and finally the General Strike of 1926. In each case, social turbulence threatened the status quo but went no further. Why and how did they ultimately fail? Full review...
On the Eve: The Jews of Europe before the Second World War by Bernard Wasserstein
The introduction to 'On the Eve' begins with the controversial statement, 'Nor is anti-Semitism, by itself, a satisfactory explanation of the Jew's predicament'. The author has written a history of the post-war Jewry called the Vanishing Diaspora but this book examines the collective failure by the Jewish people before 1939 'to attain at least some control over the threatening vagaries of fate'. It examines their failure to establish cohesive social links, political parties, hospitals, newspapers and schools. Jewish culture and religious practice weakened during the very period when they advocated loyalty to the states where they were citizens; the USSR, Poland, Germany and France. Their population too was in decline. Wasserstein, who is a master at pointing out intriguing and surprising detail, explains that on the brink of annihilation, there were actually more Jews held in camps outside the Third Reich than within it. Full review...
For Honour and Fame: Chivalry in England 1066-1500 by Nigel Saul
Chivalry, Saul tells us in the opening sentences of the preface, is associated first and foremost with the estate of knighthood and with fighting on horseback. In this book he aims to present an account of English aristocratic society in the Middle Ages, from the Norman conquest to the first years of the Tudor dynasty, which puts chivalry centre-stage. Full review...
Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K Massie
Already known for major biographies of Nicholas and Alexandra, and of Peter the Great, Massie has now written an equally full and absorbing life of the late eighteenth-century reigning Empress. Full review...
Saints, Sacrilege and Sedition by Eamon Duffy
In the introduction to this book Eamon Duffy, Professor of the History of Christianity at Cambridge History, points out that all too often historians have written about the English Reformation from strongly polarised views. Taking two extreme examples, he cites one which states that the people of England, formerly happy medieval Catholics, were forced by King Henry to abandon their religion, and England was never merry again, alongside another which speaks of the English being oppressed by corrupt churchmen until King Henry gave them the Protestant nation for which they longed. On the following page, he suggests that it had long been an axiom of historical writing that the success of the Reformation in England was an inevitable consequence of the dysfunction and unpopularity of late medieval Catholicism. Such remarks were evidently made by writers with an axe to grind. Full review...
Defeating Hitler: Whitehall's Top Secret Report on Why Hitler Lost the War by Paul Winter
Just how and why did Hitler lose the Second World War? The message in Fatherland by Robert Harris is that he spent too much effort killing Jews to concentrate on anything else. Remarkably, this look at more explicit reasons for the end of the Third Reich barely mentions the Holocaust. What we have is Some Weaknesses in German Strategy and Organisation 1933-1945 - a document drawn up by what would now have to be called Whitehall Mandarins, written during a year of war and a year of peace, that itemises for those with enough security clearance just what Hitler's chain of command was, and what his thinking was for each theatre of the War. It was never Top Secret, but was classified for thirty years and has spent about as long waiting for this hardback version. Full review...
A Journey to Nowhere: Among the Lands and History of Courland by Jean-Paul Kauffmann
When I turn to travel writing, it is a healthy balance of that about places I have been to, and places I've not. But without sounding too big-headed it is seldom places I have never heard of in any context - especially those I have passed through, what's more. The 'nowhere' in focus here is Courland, which was more-or-less the coastal slither of the top of Latvia, and was once an independent Duchy. In one fell swoop Kauffmann seems to become the only travel writer to have written a book about the place, at least for many a generation, and, it's pleasant to say, probably the best one could have hoped for. Full review...
The Immortal Dinner: A famous evening of genius and laughter in literary London, 1817 by Penelope Hughes-Hallett
A book based around just one dinner sounds a little extraordinary. But the host, painter Benjamin Robert Haydon, was no ordinary artist. He was a friend of many of the major artistic and literary figures of the day, in addition to being an ambitious painter of historical scenes. Sadly, his ambition was not matched by popularity or good fortune, and despite or perhaps parly because an exaggerated belief in his own abilities, one and a half centuries after his death he is largely forgotten except for his suicide after years of despair, and perhaps his diary as well. Full review...
Underground Overground: A Passenger's History of the Tube by Andrew Martin
Although he was born in Yorkshire, Andrew Martin has long been enthralled by the London Underground. His father worked on British Rail, and Andrew himself therefore had free travel on the system as well as a Privilege Pass which entitled him to free first-class train travel on the national rail network. Having lived in London for twenty-five years, commuting to various newspaper offices in his employment as a journalist, a job which has included writing a regular magazine column, Tube Talk, he is well qualified to write this entertaining and enlightening social history of the world's most famous underground railway. Full review...
All in a Don's Day by Mary Beard
Mary Beard's latest collection, 'All in a Don's Day', of her assembled blog pieces from 2009 until the end of 2011, covers similar concerns to her previous selection, It's a Don's Life. Professor Beard is a fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge and became Classics Professor at there in 2004. She is also an expert in Roman laughter, an interest which she fully indulges in the pages of her TLS blog. In her latest collection she bemoans the parlous current state of both Education and the Academy, and makes witty observations on matters as various as television chefs, what and how to visit in Rome and the art and worth of completing references in an age when only positive things may be said about postgraduate job-seekers. Full review...
The War On Heresy: Faith and Power in Medieval Europe by R I Moore
At the end of the first millennium, Western Europe was a place which had barely ever encountered heresy. It took just a couple of centuries for it to become a major problem in the eyes of church leaders, leading to the persecution of individuals and groups. Was heresy such a fast-growing problem? In this volume, R I Moore provides a thoughtful analysis of the issues and makes a powerful case that many supposed heretics were merely victims of a paranoid church which created propaganda to justify so many deaths. Full review...
The Popes: A History by John Julius Norwich
Historian John Julius Norwich (or Rt Hon/Viscount John Julius Norwich, to give him his full title) doesn't write the sort of history books one associates with school days. He doesn't do dry and dusty. In fact The Popes: A History isn't just a history book but a romp through the ages with some great trivia nuggets scattered throughout the informative gold. Full review...
The Cambridge Shakespeare Guide by Emma Smith
Does the world need another guide to Shakespeare's plays? There are plenty about and students these days have the added resource of the Internet to get the basics. However, if it does, then this is as good as any you will find. It's nicely written and beautifully clear and above all, succinct. In fact I'm doing a disservice to Emma Smith already by terming it a guide to his plays, because she also includes the poems and sonnets. Full review...
London Under by Peter Ackroyd
Peter Ackroyd is already well-known as a historian of London. As a kind of adjunct to his mammoth work on the city, here we have a comparatively slender tome on one specific aspect. Underneath the city is a world of its own, of springs, streams, Roman amphitheatres, Victorian sewers, gang hideouts, the creatures which have dwelt in its darkness from rats and eels to monsters and hosts, and last but not least the modern Underground railway system. Full review...
London: The Concise Biography by Peter Ackroyd
As is the case with his recent volume on Charles Dickens, Ackroyd's London is an abridged version of the full book originally published twelve years ago. Nevertheless, at over 600 pages of fairly close print in paperback, it is still a very full read. Full review...
Mission Accomplished: SOE and Italy 1943 - 1945 by David Stafford
The work of the secret services is always going to be shady, dark and murky. Books like David Stafford's Mission Accomplished: SOE and Italy 1943 - 1945 make an effort to shine a light on the shadows and bring the facts into view. Stafford's admirably honest introduction claims that he has 'done [his] best to ensure that what appears here is accurate and truthful', but reminds his reader that 'history is indeed intrinsically messy'; even more so when his sources were writing with secrecy in mind. Full review...
A Concise History of Russia by Paul Bushkovitch
Russia's recent history, especially since the end of the Cold War, has been so full of new developments that there is probably little if any limit to the number of fresh histories the market can absorb. This most recent, from a Professor of History at Yale University, take a little over 450 pages to tell the story from the earliest days of Kiev Rus, the territory which was to become the ancestor of the present nation state around the 10th century AD, to Vladimir Putin's assumption of office as President in 2000. Full review...
Treblinka: A Survivor's Memory by Chil Rajchman
Here comes yet another book about the Holocaust, and yet another with more than enough damning indictment of those events and their perpetrators, with more than enough horrific reportage to make your blood run cold, and with more than enough distinguishing features to make it a necessary purchase. The latter is partly down to where it came from - while Dachau started out as a camp for political prisoners, and Auschwitz I was a work camp based round barrack blocks that you can squint at and see a bad private school, this is coming from Treblinka, which was constructed purely and simply to kill. It has rightly been called a 'conveyer-belt executioner's block'. Full review...
An Exclusive Love by Johanna Adorjan
This moving memoir tells of the double suicide of both István (a Hungarian-Jewish form of Stephen) and his wife Vera one Sunday morning in October. The story is told by their granddaughter, Joanna Adorján and tells of her close fondness for them both but in particular with Vera, with whom the author shares many characteristics. The story begins with the systematic persecution of such Hungarian Jews in Budapest under the Nazi occupation and describes their perilous flight to Denmark after the Soviet occupation of Hungary in 1956. It ends with the police reports of the duty officer dated 15.10.91 with the discovery of their bodies in their bungalow in the Charlottenlund, a town of the Capital Region of Denmark. Entry is gained by a local locksmith who charged 297.02 kroner. It is the charm and lyricism with which this tale is related which makes this fateful, haunting and profoundly moving story about identity both sad and memorable. Full review...
The Tudors: History of a Dynasty by David Loades
For several years David Loades has written and published extensively about the Tudors, individually and collectively, from almost every angle possible. This title is not a chronological biography or history of the five monarchs whose reigns gave their name to the era. As he and his publisher make clear in the preface, it is rather a study of Tudor policies. Full review...
Shapely Ankle Preferr'd: A History of the Lonely Hearts Advertisement by Francesca Beauman
You might think the Lonely Hearts ad a trivial matter. You might think it should appear in lower case and not be capitalised, but you'd be in disagreement with Ms Beauman, who gives a big L and a big H to it every time she writes of it in her survey of its history. What's more, she gets to write about a lot more than just the contents of the adverts in this brilliant book. Full review...
The Wonderbox: Curious Histories of How to Live by Roman Krznaric
'How should we live?' asks author Roman Krznaric. To answer this ancient question, he looks to history. 'I believe that the future of the art of living can be found by gazing into the past', he says. Creating a book which is as full of curiosities as a Renaissance 'Wunderkammer', he has a stab at the big questions: love, belief, money, family, death. The result is a pot-pourri of delights which left this particular reader stimulated and invigorated. Full review...
The Death of Mao: The Tangshan Earthquake and the Birth of the New China by James Palmer
Welcome to China, where the populous are busy leaving a rural country full of prosperous mineral resources and coal mines, and shoddily-built hydro-electric dams in environmentally dubious locations, for the burgeoning, mechanised cities. But this isn't the birth of 2012, it's the dawn of 1976. Chairman Mao is dying, Premier Zhou Enlai has just died, and the cauldron of power is being stirred as never before. Among the momentous events of the year however will be a huge earthquake directly centred on the city of Tangshan, which will kill something like two thirds of a million people. Full review...
Exodus From the Alamo by Phillip Thomas Tucker
Remember the Alamo!
The war-cry of generations of Americans is based upon the idea of the hugely outnumbered defenders of the Texan mission against the marauding Mexicans standing in defence of an ideal until death. Full review...
Calories and Corsets: A history of dieting over two thousand years by Louise Foxcroft
We’re in that post-Christmas period when all the socialising and indulging is over and all you’re left with is a pasty, bloated, over-fed but under-nourished complexion, a wardrobe full of clothes just a little too tight and a new year’s resolution to Get Healthy. So it’s the perfect time for a new diet book to hit the shelves. The title of this one might make you think it’s going to be full of useful tips, and the cover does little to dispel this idea, groaning as it is with the weight of plump jellies, lavish cupcakes and even a decadent lobster or two, but take a moment to note the subtitle, if you will: a history of dieting over 2000 years. Full review...
Nazi Millionaires: The Allied Search for Hidden SS Gold by Kenneth D Alford and Theodore P Savas
We are all doubtless aware of the six million or so dead at the hands of the Nazis, both through death camps and death squads. We are all probably conscious that before they were taken to the forests to be shot, or to the train station, never to be seen again, the Jewish and other communities captured in the Holocaust were ransacked for everything they had. It started early, of course, with the denial of rights for Jewish people to own businesses, then houses, paintings, other valuables, cash - and in the end their own gold dental fillings. The story of what happened to everything is as complex as retelling the ends of six million people, but this book opens up several windows on to those stories, through the more notable examples. Full review...
Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life in Our Times by Sarah Bradford
As a biographer who has previously written substantial biographies of the Queen (published in 1996), of her father George VI, and her daughter-in-law Diana, Sarah Bradford needs little introduction. At around 260 pages of text, this is barely half the length of her other titles, and probably aimed more at the general reader with an eye on the Diamond Jubilee market. Full review...
Signing Their Rights Away by Denise Kiernan
Many Americans believe that the Declaration of Independence is the cornerstone of the American democracy, the fountain-head of the American Way of Life and the American Dream. The 4th of July is the national holiday and often thought to be the single most important date in American history. Full review...
Da Vinci's Ghost: The untold story of Vitruvian Man by Toby Lester
As the number of popular non-fiction titles grows, the authors on the hunt for new-book material often use a concept approach, trying to come up with an USP for a new title. This uniqueness is often achieved by adopting an obscure subject, or an unusual perspective from which to view a popular theme. Full review...
Safe As Houses? A Historical Analysis of Property Prices by Neil Monnery
Neil Monnery was asked to become a trustee of a local charity with most of its assets in local residential property. Over the years this had yielded good results and the charity was concerned as to whether or not they should continue on the same basis or diversify and Monnery said that he would look into this. That discussion was the genesis for this book as he began to research the history of house prices – in the UK and elsewhere – for as far back as he could go to establish whether or not house were, well, as safe as houses. Full review...
Shadow of the Titanic by Andrew Wilson
Lesson one in writing non-fiction articles and journalism seems to be to find out what is topical. April 2012 is the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic, and there are going to be hoards of people finding it topical to celebrate that. Lesson two seems to be to find your own unique angle on the story. Wilson approaches the Titanic disaster by sinking her at the end of chapter one, for he looks more at the lives of the people on board, and how they took the calamity and dealt with it. Full review...
The Beauty and the Sorrow: An intimate history of the first world war by Peter Englund
In simple terms the First World War, like most (if not all) conflicts has come down to us largely as a four-year sequence of events, an acknowledgement of defeat by one side, and a peace agreement. Yet there are many different ways of telling its history, and as Englund tells us in his preface, this is not a book about what it was, but about what it was like. Though a series of snapshots in words, he shows us various stages of the conflict and its effect on people. His emphasis is not so much events and processes, but more the feelings, impressions, experiences and moods of individuals caught up in the period. Full review...
