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[[Category:History|*]]
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Roman KrznaricJacqueline Rose|title=The Wonderbox: Curious Histories of How to Live|rating=5|genre=History|summary='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.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846683939</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=James Palmer|title=The Death of Mao: The Tangshan Earthquake and the Birth of the New China|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=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.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571243991</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Phillip Thomas Tucker|title=Exodus From the Alamo|rating=3.5|genre=History|summary=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.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1612000762</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Louise Foxcroft|title=Calories and Corsets: A history of dieting over two thousand years|rating=4.5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=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'''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684250</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Kenneth D Alford and Theodore P Savas|title=Nazi Millionaires: The Allied Search for Hidden SS Gold |rating=3.5|genre=History|summary=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.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1935149350</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Sarah Bradford|title=Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life Women in Our Dark Times
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=As a biographer who has previously written substantial biographies ''The world of the unconscious is not the antagonist of political life, but its steadfast companion, the Queen (published hidden place or backdrop where any true revolution must begin…'' Women in 1996)Dark Times is Jacqueline Rose's homage to courageous women throughout history, particularly women of her father George VIthe 21st, 20th and her daughter-in-law Diana19th centuries. Her historical and political backdrop is, thus, Sarah Bradford needs little introduction. At around 260 pages of textexpansive, this yet she navigates it with intelligence and an acknowledgment that feminism's lengthy mission is barely half the length of her other titlesa testament to its successes, and probably aimed more at not its failures: ''the general reader with an eye on the Diamond Jubilee marketongoing force of feminism''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>067091911X</amazonuk>1804271713
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Denise KiernanMary McCarthy|title=Signing Their Rights AwayMemories of a Catholic Girlhood
|rating=4
|genre=HistoryAutobiography|summary=Many Americans believe that Mary McCarthy describes herself as an ''amateur architect'', obsessively digging into the Declaration of Independence is past to piece together the cornerstone broken mosaic of her life. She attributes her ''burning interest in the American democracypast'' to her orphanhood, as she lacked any second-hand memories from her parents, who died in the fountain-head of 1918 flu epidemic. This memoir chronicles her early years, beginning with her orphanhood in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she lived under the American Way harsh guardianship of Life her late father's Irish Catholic parents and the American Dreamher abusive Uncle Myers and Aunt Margaret. The 4th Later, she moved to Seattle to live with her maternal grandparents—her grandmother being Jewish and her grandfather Presbyterian—who provided her with a different kind of July is the national holiday and often thought to be the single most important date in American historyupbringing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>159474520X</amazonuk>1804271659
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Toby Lester1785633457|title=Da Vinci's GhostCharging Around: The untold story Exploring the Edges of Vitruvian ManEngland by Electric Car|author=Clive Wilkinson|rating=45|genre=HistoryTravel|summary=Clive Wilkinson has a history of travelling by unconventional means with a preference for slow travel. As he neared his eightieth birthday the number idea of popular non-fiction titles grows, exploring the authors on the hunt for new-book material often use a ''concept'' approach, trying to come up with edges of England in an USP for a new titleelectric car was not totally outrageous. This uniqueness is often achieved by adopting an obscure subjectIn fact, or an unusual perspective from which to view it should be a popular theme. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684544</amazonuk>pleasant holiday for Clive and his wife, Joan, shouldn't it?
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Neil MonneryB09BLBP3P8|title=Safe As Houses? A Historical Analysis of Property PricesNeville Chamberlain's War: How Great Britain Opposed Hitler, 1939-1940|author=Frederic Seager|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=Neil Monnery was asked Received wisdom and simplified narrative often lead to become a trustee misconceptions about history. One such is the scrubbing from the popular imagination of a local charity with most the early days of its assets World War II from 1939-40, known as the ''Phoney War''. We remember Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler, war breaking out, and Churchill coming in local residential propertyto save the day. Over the years Very little time is spent on this had yielded good results period in cultural reflections and the charity was concerned yet, as to whether or not they should continue on the same basis or diversify and Monnery said that he would look into Frederic Seager argues in this. That discussion book, it was the genesis for this book as he began to research the history of house prices – vital significance in how the UK and elsewhere – for as far back as he could go to establish whether or not house were, well, as safe as houseswar played out.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907994017</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Andrew Wilson3756228711|title=Shadow of the TitanicCDC: The happy years with a spectacular IT 'Phenomena'|author=Hans Bodmer
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=Lesson one in writing non-fiction articles and journalism seems to be to find out what is topical. April 2012 is the centenary ''The history of the sinking development of the Titanic, and there are going to be hoards IT could fill books 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 itseveral hundred pages.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847377300</amazonuk>}}''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Paul OppenheimerJeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene|title=Machiavelli: A Life Beyond Ideology Fritz and Kurt
|rating=4
|genre=BiographyConfident Readers|summary=MachiavelliWe 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 first philosopher to define politics as treachery'empty market place, has probably been better known as an adjectivehelping the neighbours, Machiavellian being dutiful when it comes to the synagogue choir and at a synonym 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 duplicity in statecraft, than using anything nearly as mechanical and workmanlike as a historical personlight switch. InterestinglyBut 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 term Nazis out, invite them in with open arms. ''Kristallnacht'Machiavel' became common happened in English usage 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 adjective evacuation to Britain or the US, while Fritz and noun around 1570his father are, unknown initially to each other, although none of his works were translated into packed off on the same train to Buchenwald and the stone quarry there. And us wondering how the language titular event for another seventy years or so after that.the adult variant of all this could come about…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847252214</amazonuk>024156574X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Clarissa Dickson WrightJohn Henry Phillips|title=A History of English FoodThe Search
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=Writing a history of English foodArchaeology cannot be child's play, and when you're scraping in the dirt looking to some extent drinkfind what you can find, often knowing there should be something there but not always confident what. Archaeology must be a daunting taskfair bit harder when you set out to find some specific thing. This book is a case of the latter, but as an experienced TV presenter (as one 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'Two Fat Ladiess underwater, when he cannot dive. Latching on to a particular D-Day veteran through helping the heroic old man'' with s visit back to France, our author has promised to find the late Jennifer Paterson) landing craft that delivered him to Normandy, and as one who that he was born in the post-war rationing world in 1947, Clarissa Dickson Wright lucky to survive when it sank from beneath him. The secondary aim is well placed to do soerect a memorial to everyone else aboard, the vast majority of whom perished.Who else would make such promises to someone in their nineties?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1905211856</amazonuk>1472146182
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Art SpiegelmanB09F4CTKJR|title=MetaMAUSFlights for Freedom|author= Steven Burgauer|rating=4.5|genre=Graphic NovelsHistorical Fiction|summary=Before It's the later stages of World War I and the Holocaust was turned into [[The Boy in United States has just entered the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne|conflict. Petrol Petronus is a child-like near-fable for all]], young American who has signed up and before it joined the 17 Aero Squadron. This company was the focus of superb history books such as [[Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler first US Aero Squadron to be trained in Canada, the first to be attached to the RAF and Stalin by Timothy Snyder|this]], it became a family saga of a father relating his experiences the first to be sent into the skies to a son, who then drew it all - featuring animals not humans - [[Maus by Art Spiegelman|Maus]]fight the Germans in active combat. To celebrate the twenty-five years since thenBut before that can happen, we have this brilliant look back at Petrol has to master flying the creation of an equally brilliant volumenotoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670916838</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Philip Ardagh0578761718|title=Philip Ardagh's Book of Kings, Queens, Emperors and Rotten Wart-Nosed Commoners|rating=3.5|genre=Children's Non-Fiction|summary=If you deem a good children's historical trivia book to be one that tells you, the adult, something they didn't know about historical trivia, then this is a good example. I didn't know George V broke his pelvis when his horse fell on him, startled by some post-WWI huzzahs. I didn't know Charles VI of France nearly got torched in some drunken bacchanal. The length Inspiring History of time Charlemagne sat on a throne (over 400 whole years (even if he wasn't wholly whole all that time)) was news to me, as was the raffle that was held (more or less) for being the unknown soldier. Therefore this is a good book for children and the adults willing to instill some historical trivia into them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330471732</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewSpecial Relationship|author=Timothy Snyder|title=Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and StalinNancy Carver|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=The church of St Mary Aldermanbuy had existed in the City of London from at least 1181, when it was first chapter is enoughmentioned in records. Sadly, I don't mean the preface, or introduction, that mean you start reading chapter one about an hour original church was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. It was rebuilt inPortland stone from a design by Sir Christopher Wren soon after the fire and then survived for centuries until World War II, but chapter one itself, detailing as when it does was again ruined by bombs during the way Stalin blatantly enforced collectivization on UkraineBlitz. But that wasn's farmst the end of its story: after a phenomenal fundraising effort, thus killing off millions of local civilians. The seed stock ended up being taken away as part of the grain quota stones from the church's walls were transported to feed the rest of the Soviet UnionFulton, and hardly anybody failed to go without at some point as a resultMissouri. The first chapter here, thenThere, is more than enough in telling us what we didn't know, explaining perfectly lucidly yet academically how and why what happened happened, and at times the grounds of quite gruesome anecdote and contemporary reportageWestminster College, churning our stomachs the church was rebuilt and making us have second thoughts about reading ontoday serves as a memorial to Winston Churchill.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099551799</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jeremy Paxman1784385166|title=EmpireThe Third Reich in 100 Objects: What Ruling the World Did to the British|rating=5|genre=A Material History|summary=In the 21st century, the British Empire may be an anachronism, something for which hand-wringing politicians and church leaders may be ever ready to apologise. Many of us have grown up just as the last imperial remnants were crumbling away. Yet its legacy is everywhere, and for better or worse will always be part of the very fabric of Britain. As Jeremy Paxman demonstrates in this excellent overview, published as a curtain-raiser to his series on the subject, it is never very far away from us. After a period of trying to distance ourselves from it, we seem to be on the verge of coming to terms with the simple truth that it was not so bad as it has sometimes been painted. Moreover, it should be remembered that even if Britain emerged from the Second World War battered and broke, it still possessed sufficient imperial presence to become one of the Permanent Five on the United Nations Security Council.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670919578</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewNazi Germany|author=Sam Willis|title=The Glorious First of June: Fleet Battle in the Reign of TerrorRoger Moorhouse
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=To be frank, I was not expecting a lot from this account 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 famous maritime battle. Marine warfare histories can be rather dull, with lists concentration camp? None of ships and mind-numbing detail that may appeal if you have an intimate knowledge these are comfortable images but they are emblematic of a warshipthe Third Reich's anatomy, but quite deathly for the rest of usfascist regime in all its iniquity. But I was gripped some objects and images from the first page that time may be less familiar to you. In this short volume, Roger Moorhouse has attempted to illustrate the last by this really insightful account not just period of the battle but Third Reich through one hundred of the whole political and historical events which inspired itits material artefacts. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849160384</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=John Julius NorwichLun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane and Edward Gauvin (translator)|title=A History of England in 100 PlacesTiananmen 1989: From Stonehenge to the GherkinOur Shattered Hopes
|rating=4.5
|genre=HistoryGraphic Novels|summary=There are many different ways I never really followed the events of telling Tiananmen Square with much attention when it was playing out – someone in the history second half of England (indeed just Englandtheir teens has other priorities, not Wales you know. I certainly didn't know of the weeks of protests and hunger strikes from the students before the massacre and Scotlandthe birth of the Tank Man image, as I didn't know how the author makes clear). This takes area had long been a very simple venue for political protest, and very effective approach to I didn't know more than a spit about the matter, by focusing people involved on either side. This book is practically flawless in giving a hundred specific places which somehow illustrate the nationgeneral browser's progress from prehistoric times to today, context for the whole season of protests back in chronological order1989.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848546068</amazonuk>1684056993
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nancy Mitford0648684806|title=Clara Colby: The Sun KingInternational Suffragist|author=John Holliday
|rating=4
|genre=HistoryBiography|summary=Nancy Mitford assumes that youThe path of Clara Dorothy Bewick'll need no introduction s life was probably determined when her family emigrated to Louis XIV, who ascended the throne when he USA. At the time she was four just three-years -old but because of some childhood ailment, she wasn't allowed to sail with her parents and reigned for well over seventy two yearsthree brothers. To put him in context his reign began before Charles I was executed in WhitehallInstead, lasted through the English Civil Warshe remained with her grandparents, Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealthwho doted on her and saw that she received a good education, the reigns of Charles I, James II, William III both in and into the beginning out of the reign of Queen Anneschool. He bridged She was the gap between only child in the middle ages household and the early modern eraher childhood was glorious.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099528886</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Stephen O'Shea|title=The Friar of Carcassonne: Revolt Against the Inquisition By contrast, her family had become pioneer farmers in the Last Days mid-west of the Cathars|rating=4|genre=History|summary=It starts with a painting. The painting isn't United States and life was hard, as Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to join the point: the subject isfamily. In the Autumn of 1319 Clara would only know her mother for a Franciscan Friar stands before his accusers. Entitled ''L'Agitateur du Languedoc'' the artwork portrays the trial of Bernard Délicieuxfew months: she was married for fifteen years, had ten pregnancies, the eponymous Friar of Carcassonneseven surviving children and died in childbirth not long after Clara arrived. Although O'Shea veers clear of telling us the outcome of As the trialeldest girl, one cannot help feeling that it wasn't an acquittal. Such things tended not to go down in history quite so resoundingly. Not in those daysa heavy burden would fall on Clara and Wisconsin was a rude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668319X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Matthew Kelly1783784350|title=Finding PolandThis Golden Fleece: A Journey Through Britain's Knitted History|author=Esther Rutter
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=Looking at any historical map of Poland anyone may see how its borders have changed over the centuries. Where will you find the Polish home? One answer must be that it is founded deep It was December and Esther Rutter was stuck in the hearts of the Polish her office job, writing to people who fought for the liberty she'd never met and the integrity of the Polish homelandpreparing spreadsheets. Now consider the promontory of land around Vilnius, or Wilno as it was then known, which was contained inside Poland in 1921 The job frustrated her and even her knitting did not soothe her mind. It January was an area in which the small market town of Hruzdowa, comprising some 52 buildings and just large enough going to warrant be a town hall, was situated. These wild borderlands – known as the Kresy - were fought over time for centuries by Austrians, Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians making changes and Lithuanians. It was here she decided that Matthew Kelly's great-grandfather, who had imbibed she would travel the values length and élan breadth of the dashing officer class, Rafal Ryzewscy, came to teach British Isles with his clever young wifeoccasional forays abroad, Hannadiscovering and telling the story of wool's history and how it had made and changed the landscape. They were deeply committed to progress through education She'd grown up on a sheep farm in Suffolk - '' a free-range child on the farm'' - and learned to peaceably raising their two little daughters. Howeverspin, the dreadful knit and weave from her mother and calamitous year of 1939, her mother's friend. This was approaching when Hitler and Stalin partitioned Poland in the most cynical pacther blood.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099515997</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mick Conefrey1789017977|title=How to Climb Mont Blanc in Ronnie and Hilda's Romance: Towards a Skirt: A Handbook for the Lady AdventurerNew Life after World War II|author=Wendy Williams
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=Operation Market Garden, September 1944 is encapsulated for most people in Ronnie Williams was the Hollywood movie "A Bridge Too Far" which, like most movies, gets some son of it right Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall. There's some of it wrong. Such anyway is Bennettdoubt as to whether or not they were ever married or even Harry's assessmentbirthdate: 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. So what is For a while the true story of what one Major Norton called a magnificent family was quite well-to-do but disaster, perhaps consciously echoing that judgement on struck in the charge of 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 Light Brigade army at eighteen in a far earlier conflict "C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre"?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>193514989X</amazonuk>1942.
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lynn Peril1980891117|title=Swimming in the Steno PoolG Engleheart Pinxit 1805: A Retro Guide to Making It year in the Officelife of George Engleheart|author=John Webley
|rating=4.5
|genre=HistoryArt|summary=The subtitle George Engleheart was one of this book suggests a survival guide to secretarial work. Howeverthe leading portrait miniaturists of Georgian London, this is definitely not with a handbook, but an examination of career lasting from the portrayal of the job and those who do it in the media and in handbooks over 1770s to the last 100 yearsRegency era. It is an American book and all He was also one of the references are to handbooksmost prolific, mediapainting nearly 5, popular fiction and advertising from the US, but as a secretary in Britain, I still found it relevant, interesting and very entertaining000 miniatures altogether (over twenty of them being of King George III).|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393338541</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Niall McCrae|title=The Moon and Madness|rating=4|genre=Popular Science|summary=A book entitled ''The Moon and Madness'' has Throughout most of that time he carefully recorded the potential to be a pile names of each of New Age hokum. This learned and academic treatise by Niall McCrae is very far from hokumhis clients, and there subsequently transcribed them into what is not a whiff of New Age hanging over it. We probably all have an old folklore image in our minds of lunatics in the asylum howling at the full moon. Of course, the very word 'lunatic' has its origins in the moon. McCrae tries referred to separate myth and fact in this fascinating as his fee book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845402146</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nigel Jones1789016304|title=TowerWar and Love: A family's testament of anguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam|author=Melanie Martin
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=If you had Melanie Martin read about what happened to name one particular artefact which personifies the history of England, it would be hard to choose anything more appropriate than the building which has at various times been a castle, a palace, a prison, a torture chamber, Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and execution sitewas entranced by what she discovered, an armoury, and is now the most visited tourist attraction particularly in the nation.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091936659</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Annelise Freisenbruch|title=''The First Ladies Diary of Rome: The Women Behind the Caesars|rating=5|genre=History|summary=Perhaps the most shocking thing to be gleaned Ann Frank'' but then realised that her own family's stories were equally fascinating. A hundred and seven thousand Jews were deported from this fascinating history of the women who surrounded city during the Caesars is how easily their reputations were createdwar years, moulded but only five thousand survived and destroyed. Any woman who put a foot out of line in a culture where men held almost all the power Martin could not understand how this could be accused of allowed to happen in a litany of crimes which bore curious similarities country with those of many another woman in similar circumstances. Incest and adultery liberal values who were charges regularly levied against them, and the very fact that the details were identical in almost every case should give rise resistant to suspicion about their accuracyGerman occupation. And yet history has accepted and spread these scandals as fact.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099523930</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Daniel Allen Butler|title=The Other Side of Most people believed that the Nightoccupation could never happen: The Carpathia, even those who thought that the Germans might reach the Californiancity were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, and the Night the Titanic Was Lost|rating=4|genre=History|summary=It's now almost a century since the loss of the ''Titanic'' and although much has been written about almost every aspect of that dreadful night one point has remained a mystery. When the wireless operator on Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in the 'unsinkable' Titanic radioed way that the ship had hit an icebergit did, had too few lifeboats for all passengers and was sinking fast there were two ships in but initial protests melted away as the vicinityorganisers became more circumspect. Captain Arthur Rostron on the ''Carpathia'' responded to the distress signal and hastened to the TitanicIt's aid. But Captain Stanley Lord an atrocity on a vast scale but made up of tens of thousands of the ''Californian'' did not respond. The ship's radio officer had retired for the night and Lord failed to take decisive action later that night when told about distress flares from the Titanic. The controversy as to why the two captains should have acted so differently has raged across the intervening yearsindividual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1935149857</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=D R Thorpe1908745819|title=Supermac: The Life of Harold MacmillanSurfacing|author=Kathleen Jamie
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=Most of us see history rather like Sometimes when people suggest that you read a cloud. Wecertain book, they tell you ''re aware of the great mass of this one has your name on it''. Mostly we take them at their word, seeing some parts more clearly than othersor not, but perhaps struggling 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 bring hearing a book calling your name, rarely get it into 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 straight linebad description of where I am. Some parts we will have studied at schoolAdd to that my love of the natural world, or read about out of interest but these parts will be balanced by other periods when we will be woefully ignorant of some those aspects of the poetic and lyrical that are about style not form, and substance most basic factsof all, about connection. I've studied the Tudors in some depth at various points in Of course, this book had my life – but I would struggle to tell you much about the Stuartsname on it. What was needed It was a concise history of England in one volume and written for the adult reader who me. It would simply like have found its way to me eventually. I am pleased to be more informed, but not over-burdenedhave it fall onto my path so quickly.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684617</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Bettany Hughes0857058320|title=The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=We don't know much about Socrates. For someone whose ideas are still so relevant so long after his death, his life is something of a mystery. He didn't like to write things down, and so Hughes begins this book by saying that it may have something of a 'Socrates-sized hole' in it. What we do see is the city of Athens, and the hugely important changes which were going on there while Socrates was alive. In Athens we see the beginnings of democracy, Lord Of All the seedlings of some of the ideas that we take for granted today, such as freedom of speech, and the right to a fair trial. This was an important time in the development of modern values, and Socrates was an important man. He was not only a brilliant thinker, he was also a man that didn't quite fit, infuriating to converse with, yet fascinating to be around.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099554054</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewDead|author=Derek Wilson|title=Calamities Javier Cercas and Catastrophes: The Ten Absolutely Worst Years in HistoryAnne McLean (translator)
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=As Wilson rightly points out, history ''Lord Of All the Dead'' is generally written by a journey to uncover the winnersauthor's lost ancestor's life and death. This book turns Cercas is searching for the tables by looking at ten of meaning behind his great uncle's death in the worst episodes from Spanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, Cercas' great uncle, is the point of view of those figure who were looms large over the book. He died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's forces. Cercas ruminates on the losing side, from the sixth to the late twentieth centurieswhy his uncle fought for this dictator. Starting with The question at the plague and war centre of 541-2 which accelerated the collapse of the Roman Empire, this book is whether it is possible for his great uncle to be a hero whilst having fought for the recent Rwandan genocide in which the death toll over just a few months probably exceeded a million, history has had an uncomfortable habit of repeating itselfwrong side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907595457</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Roger Moorhouse0008294011|title=Berlin at WarHow to Lose a Country: Life and Death in Hitler's Capital, 1939-45The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship|author=Ece Temelkuran
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=Berlin at War is an account of the day A little while ago a friend asked me if I thought that we were living through what in years to day lives of come would be discussed by A level history students when faced with the ordinary people of Berlin, question ''Discuss the then capital of Nazi Germany, during the Second World Warfactors which led to... Berlin '' I agreed that she was heavily bombed throughout much 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 the warlosing democracy and whilst it's a flawed system I can't think of a better one, and suffered greatly particularly as the symbolic target of Allied forces at the end'benevolent dictator' is as rare as hen's teeth.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099551896</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jacqueline Percival1788037812|title=Elbow GreaseThe Fraternity of the Estranged: How our Grandmothers and GreatThe Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-Grandmothers Kept House1908|author=Brian Anderson|rating=3.5
|genre=History
|summary=Sometimes I look at Originally passed in 1885, the housework law that needs to be done and it seems like had made homosexual relations a mountain that has to be climbedcrime remained in place for 82 years. It's But during this time, restrictions on same-sex relationships did not until I look back at the work that my mothergo unchallenged. Between 1891 and 1908, her mother and even my great grandmother had to do to keep three books on the house clean nature of homosexuality appeared. They were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and free of pests John Addington Symonds, as well as doing all the laundry that I realise that my problems are more heterosexual Havelock Ellis. Exploring the margins of a molehill society and a lot less strenuous than their daily grind ever studying homosexuality was. Jacqueline Percival has taken a look back at common on the European Continent, but barely talked about in the UK, so the way that things really publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to the scientific understanding of homosexuality, and beginning the struggle for the women who went before us – recognition and in those days housework generally was down equality, leading to the woman milestone legalisation of same-sex relationships in the house1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956559530</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Laura Schwartz1910593508|title=A Serious Endeavour: GenderApollo|author=Matt Fitch, Education Chris Baker and Community at St Hugh's, 1886-2011Mike Collins|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary='A Serious Endeavour' This incredible graphic novel is an account of a love letter to the role of one Oxford college in Moon landings and the history of higher education passion for womenthe subject drips off every Apollo by Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins. When it was first founded This is a story we know well and because of this, the authors take a few narrative shortcuts knowing that we can fill in 1886 there were very different views on what such education should be, even among its supportersthe blanks. The university would not even grant female students degrees until 1920, and students were allowed These shortcuts are the only downside to choose their own course the book. If you've ever read a comic book adaptation of study a film you will be familiar with the slight feeling that there are scenes missing and whether they would take formal exams or not before thisthat 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>184668515X</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Elizabeth Cooke1786331047|title=The Damnation of John DonellanRace to Save the Romanovs: A Mysterious Case of Death and Scandal in Georgian EnglandThe Truth Behind the Secret Plans to Rescue Russia's Imperial Family|author=Helen Rappaport
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=Truth is stranger than fiction - but it is not always this gripping. The Boughtons basic facts about the deaths of Lawford HallNicholas and Alexandra, Warwickshiresome of which were deliberately obscured at the time for various reasons, have a colourful history, including long since been established. For the ghost last few months of One-Handed Boughton, who haunted their land long before this new misfortune befell them. With marriages creating more branches of family, delicate relationships abound and help to shape the complex events detailed lives in Russia the book. We begin with Sir Theodosius Boughton, heir to the estate when he comes of age, suffering from venereal disease. He is obliged to take medication former Tsar and is well known for neglecting the recommendations of physicians. One fateful morning, he takes a new medicineTsarina, their children and dies few remaining servants were held in agonyincreasingly squalid, humiliating captivity.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668482X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Stacy Schiff|title=Cleopatra: A Life|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Stacey Schiff's biography starts more of less To prevent them from Cleopatra's infamous meeting with Caesarbeing rescued, where she sneaks into his rooms in a sack. This is one of July 1918 the most popular images of Cleopatra in the public consciousness revolutionary regime had them all shot and Schiff happily refutes the image of her emerging as a well polished seductress, pointing out that anyone who had been carried in a sack for a considerable period of time will more likely be fairly dishevelled. Schiff takes us through from this moment up bayoneted to Cleopatra's much dramatised death, and beyond, to the end of the Ptolemaic dynasty.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>075353956X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Shirin Ebadi|title=The Golden Cage: Three Brothers, Three Choices, One Destiny|rating=4|genre=Politics and Society|summary=Dr Ebadi is currently living in exile, fearing for her safetycircumstances which, should she return to Iran in once the foreseeable future. Her Prologue describes a violent and bloody reaction to what news was a peaceful situation involving wivesconfirmed beyond all doubt, mothers and sisters. Boulders and large stones were thrown at elderly, defenseless women without a moment's hesitation. A taste of things to come?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0979845645</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Frances Wilson|title=How to Survive the Titanic or the Sinking of J. Bruce Ismay|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=As I read 'How to Survive the Titanic' I was conscious that we're only a matter of months away from the centenary of the sinking – and a slew of media to mark the occasion. Given that the subject has been mined extensively over the years it will be interesting to see whether there's anything new to be said about the tragedy. It's a subject which has always fascinated me – and it was with a sense of anticipation that I opened the bookhorrified their relatives in Europe.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408809222</amazonuk>
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