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Newest History Reviews (view source)

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[[Category:History|*]]

[[Category:New Reviews|History]] __NOTOC__

{{newreview

|title=Empress Dowager Cixi

|author=Jung Chang

|rating=5

|genre=Biography

|summary=It’s easy to see why Jung Chang selected Cixi as the focal point for her study of China’s tumultuous modern history. Cixi is a truly fascinating woman, one of few human beings whose existence can be honestly said to have shaped the course of history. Cixi’s biography is not only a fascinating read due to her own political machinations, but also because of the immense transformations that occurred in China during her lifetime. Jung Chang offers a detailed exploration of the period from Cixi’s entrance to court in 1852 to her death in 1908, during which time the ancient dynastic customs of China gave way to the advent of the industrial age.

|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224087436</amazonuk>

}}

{{newreview

|title=The Explorer Gene

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.

|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781251908</amazonuk>

}}

~~{{newreview~~

~~|author=Paul Strathern~~

~~|title=The Spirit of Venice: From Marco Polo to Casanova~~

~~|rating=4~~

~~|genre=History~~

|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 world. Strathern 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 1797. On the whole, the major events such as its wars are covered fairly briefly. An 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.

~~|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951921</amazonuk>~~

}}

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