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[[Category:New Reviews__NOTOC__{{Frontpage|author=Jacqueline Rose|title=Women in Dark Times|rating=4|History]] __NOTOC__ <!-- Remove -->genre=Biography|summary=''The world of the unconscious is not the antagonist of political life, but its steadfast companion, the hidden place or backdrop where any true revolution must begin…''

{{newreview|author=James Evans|title=Merchant Adventurers: The Voyage Women in Dark Times is Jacqueline Rose's homage to courageous women throughout history, particularly women of Discovery that Transformed Tudor England |rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=We tend to associate the golden age of global navigation 21st, 20th and exploration with the Elizabethan age 19th centuries. Her historical and such luminaries as Drakepolitical backdrop is, Raleigh thus, expansive, yet she navigates it with intelligence and Hawkins. This book does us all an acknowledgment that feminism's lengthy mission is a service in reminding us of the original pioneerstestament to its successes, whom they overshadowed and who seem less well-remembered these daysnot its failures: ''the ongoing force of feminism''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780221029</amazonuk>1804271713

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Emma MarriottMary McCarthy|title=A History Memories of the World in Numbersa Catholic Girlhood

|genre=HistoryAutobiography|summary=Make no mistake, this book does what it says on the cover. That also goes to say that it is Mary McCarthy describes herself as an ''notamateur architect'' A History , obsessively digging into the past to piece together the broken mosaic of the World her life. She attributes her ''ofburning interest in the past'' Numbersto her orphanhood, as she lacked any second-hand memories from her parents, who died in the 1918 flu epidemic. This memoir chronicles her early years, beginning with her orphanhood in Minneapolis, Minnesota, or A History where she lived under the harsh guardianship of the Worldher late father's Numbers Irish Catholic parents and what they might meanher abusive Uncle Myers and Aunt Margaret. Later, as other books provide. This is she moved to Seattle to live with her maternal grandparents—her grandmother being Jewish and her grandfather Presbyterian—who provided her with a primer different kind of upbringing.|isbn=1804271659}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1785633457|title=Charging Around: Exploring the world's Edges of England by Electric Car|author=Clive Wilkinson|rating=5|genre=Travel|summary=Clive Wilkinson has a history, right from of travelling by unconventional means with a preference for slow travel. As he neared his eightieth birthday the earliest days idea of civilisation up to exploring the close edges of World War Two, England in handy bite-sized chunksan electric car was not totally outrageous. In fact, where the headline data can it should be given using a number.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782432175</amazonuk>pleasant holiday for Clive and his wife, Joan, shouldn't it?

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B09BLBP3P8|title=Serving the ReichNeville Chamberlain's War: The Struggle for the Soul of Physics under How Great Britain Opposed Hitler, 1939-1940|author=Philip BallFrederic Seager

|summary=Picture yourself in Nazi Germany, at any time of the Reich's powersReceived wisdom and simplified narrative often lead to misconceptions about history. What do you do, and how do you behave? Do you recognise One such is the fact Jews are being oppressed and have been since scrubbing from the first days popular imagination of the Nazi regime? Do you do anything about this, or are you aware early days of the problems the country has had due to losing the Great World War and having the whole Weimar Republic and hyperinflationII from 1939-40, and just look after number one? Now picture yourself known as a scientistthe ''Phoney War''. All you've known your adult life has been to furthering your knowledge inWe remember Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler, saywar breaking out, physicsand Churchill coming in to save the day. Do you again work purely for your own ends? For the country's – knowing all about its rulers? Or can you segregate your bosses Very little time is spent on this period in cultural reflections and their leaders from your needsyet, and perhaps seek knowledge for the sake of the world? It's probably not a conundrum that has hit you before, given its scientific bentas Frederic Seager argues in this book, but it's worth looking at what was going on at that timeof vital significance in how the war played out. Which way did Planck walk? Did Heisenberg have principles?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099581647</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=3756228711|title=SlideshowCDC: Memories of The happy years with a Wartime Childhoodspectacular IT 'Phenomena'|author=Marjorie Ann WattsHans Bodmer|rating=3.54

|summary=''Slideshow'' may seem an unusual title for a book about growing up during The history of the Second World War, but author Marjorie Ann Watts is quick to explain why it was chosendevelopment of IT could fill books of several hundred pages. Her job as a book illustrator and artist requires astute observation skills and she has what might be known as a 'photographic memory', or a gift for recalling specific scenes from her past in great detail. She explains it this way:

'All I have Author Hans Bodmer is quite right about that. He has chosen to do is pull a 'slide' from tell us about the accumulated silt short, but explosive, history of memorythe Control Data Company, CDC, for whom he worked...there it is: It's a varnish-clear image as vivid as the day it was recordedfascinating tale, however long agotold in a mixture of technological summary and wry anecdote.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0704373599</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene|title=Fritz and Kurt|rating=4|genre=Confident Readers|summary=We start with the pair of brothers Fritz and Kurt, and their muckers, doing things any Jewish lad in 1930s Vienna would want to do – kicking things around the empty market place, helping the neighbours, being dutiful when it comes to the synagogue choir and at a vocational school. Kurt has to make sure the lamps are turned on at their very Orthodox neighbours' each Friday night – the Sabbath preventing them for using anything nearly as mechanical and workmanlike as a light switch. But this is the time just before the Austrian leader is going to cave to Hitler's Furies: German Women 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 Nazi Killing Fieldsadult variant of all this could come about…|isbn=024156574X}}{{Frontpage|author=Wendy LowerJohn Henry Phillips|title=The Search|rating=3.5

|summary=If one were to describe the Nazi regime with oneArchaeology cannot be child's own adjectivesplay, Iwhen you'm sure that sooner or later, after all re scraping in the ruder and more pejorative emotional ones had been thought ofdirt looking to find what you can find, 'masculine' would come upoften knowing there should be something there but not always confident what. Let's face it, it would Archaeology must be a scholar who could name any leading female Nazis beyond Eva Braun and Mrs Goebbelsfair bit harder when you set out to find some specific thing. This book is a case of the latter, who nobody I think has ever put at as our author promises to locate the forefront topic of actual policythe titular search. And he really hasn't made it easy for himself – the search area is a wide one, thinking or actions. But there were females at the front target might not exist any more – many thousandsoh, and it seems's underwater, taking themselves away from Germany with ideas of when he cannot dive. Latching on to a particular D-Day veteran through helping the heroic old man''Lebensraum'' being opened up out East; moving their skills as either secretarys visit back to France, nurse, teacher or just willing ''Hausfrau'' our author has promised to find the occupied territories, where… welllanding craft that delivered him to Normandy, and that would be tellinghe was lucky to survive when it sank from beneath him. This book The secondary aim is the one to read if you want that tolderect a memorial to everyone else aboard, but it doesn't do it in the most brilliant wayvast majority of whom perished.Who else would make such promises to someone in their nineties?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099572281</amazonuk>1472146182

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn= B09F4CTKJR|title=Hitler's Last Witness: The Memoirs of Hitler's BodyguardFlights for Freedom|author=Rochus MischSteven Burgauer

|genre=AutobiographyHistorical Fiction|summary=I am proud to declare an interest in all things Holocaust, one of It's the key areas later stages of which was World War I and the last days of Hitler – United States has just entered the Downfall, if you like, way before youtube satiristsconflict. So this book, from Petrol Petronus is a young American who has signed up and joined the man who for some unspecified years 17 Aero Squadron. This company was the last eye-witness first US Aero Squadron to have been be trained in Canada, the Fuhrerbunker at first to be attached to the end of RAF and the Nazi regime, was always going first to be a great read. It remained that even after sent into the foreword dismissed its own book, pointing out differences here skies to fight the canon of thought about the timings etc of April/May 1945, and declaring the author somewhat naïve Germans in not being so awareactive combat. But before that can happen, circumspect and authoritative about Petrol has to master flying the major points of WWIInotoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848327498</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0578761718|title=The Making Inspiring History of Homea Special Relationship|author=Judith FlandersNancy Carver

|genre=LifestyleHistory|summary=In 1900 a young girl in a strange land told the people around her that she The church of St Mary Aldermanbuy had decided she no longer wanted to live existed in their lovely country, but would much rather return to the ‘dry, grey’ place she had come City of London fromat least 1181, because there when it was ‘no place like home’first mentioned in records. Sadly, The girl the original church was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. It was Dorothyrebuilt in Portland stone from a design by Sir Christopher Wren soon after the fire and then survived for centuries until World War II, while when it was again ruined by bombs during the people around her were Blitz. But that wasn't the citizens end of Oz – andits story: after a phenomenal fundraising effort, yesthe stones from the church's walls were transported to Fulton, it was all fictionMissouri. There, in the creation grounds of author L. Frank Baum. Nevertheless he had put into words something which many people deeply felt but had not yet expressedWestminster College, the church was rebuilt and today serves as a memorial to Winston Churchill.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848877986</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1784385166|title=Sherlock HolmesThe Third Reich in 100 Objects: The Man Who Never Lived and Will Never DieA Material History of Nazi Germany|author=Alex WernerRoger Moorhouse|rating=45

|summary=It has been over 125 years since What is the first Sherlock Holmes story was written and since then, the character has been subject image that comes to countless interpretations on stage, screen and in literature. Such was the popularity mind when you think of the famous detective, that his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, attempted on more than one occasion Third Reich? Hitler? A swastika? The Nazi salute? The gate to 'free himself' from Holmes, a concentration camp? None of these are comfortable images but they are emblematic of the most notable example being his Third Reich'death' at Reichenbach Fallss fascist regime in all its iniquity. Readers were most upset But some objects and Doyle eventually bowed images from that time may be less familiar to public pressure, reviving the eponymous hero for further adventuresyou. In this short volume, Roger Moorhouse has attempted to illustrate the years that followed, Holmes took on a life independent period of his author, as his stories were adapted for stage and film. An unconcerned Doyle allowed free rein with the character, famously saying: 'You may marry or murder or do whatever you like with himThird Reich through one hundred of its material artefacts.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091958725</amazonuk> 

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Witches: James I Lun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane and the English Witch HuntsEdward Gauvin (translator)|authortitle=Tracy BormanTiananmen 1989: Our Shattered Hopes

|genre=HistoryGraphic Novels|summary=Gossip is as old as human nature, but generally harmless. It was a different matter in medieval times, I never really followed the events of Tiananmen Square with much attention when what might start as relatively innocuous tittle-tattle could breed suspicion, paranoia, and ultimately accusations against women and girls of witchcraft. More often than not, it would end was playing out – someone in a horrible death by execution - drowning, strangulation on the gallowssecond half of their teens has other priorities, or being burned aliveyou know. The unsavoury business I certainly didn't know of witchcraft trials in early seventeenth-century England was encouraged by King James I, who with his obsession with the weeks of protests and knowledge of hunger strikes from the students before the black arts massacre and his firm belief in the threat birth of demonic forces believed that witches the Tank Man image, I didn't know how the area had long been responsible a venue for fierce storms that had come close to drowning his future bride political protest, and I didn't know more than a spit about the people involved on her voyage by sea from Scotland to Englandeither side. This book is practically flawless in giving a general browser's context for the whole season of protests back in 1989.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009954914X</amazonuk>1684056993

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0648684806|title=Rest in PiecesClara Colby: The International Suffragist|author=Bess LovejoyJohn Holliday

|genre=HistoryBiography|summary=All sorts has happened The path of Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her family emigrated to deceased famous people the USA. At the time she was just three- stolenyears-old but because of some childhood ailment, soldshe wasn't allowed to sail with her parents and three brothers. Instead, stuffedshe remained with her grandparents, etcwho 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. Bess Lovejoy has collected By contrast, her family had become pioneer farmers in the fates mid-west of the celebrity deceased United States and life was hard, as Clara was to find out when she and tells them here - 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 cracking little book that will be ideal as heavy burden would fall on Clara and Wisconsin was a stocking filler or small gift for those who enjoy slightly gruesome talesrude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715648489</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1783784350|title=The Last EscaperThis Golden Fleece: A Journey Through Britain's Knitted History|author=Peter TunstallEsther Rutter|rating=4.5

|summary=It was December and Esther Rutter was stuck in her office job, writing to people she''d never met and preparing spreadsheets. The Last Escaper'' opens differently job frustrated her and even her knitting did not soothe her mind. January was going to many be a time for making changes and she decided that she would travel the length and breadth of the great escape biographies that were released soon after British Isles with occasional forays abroad, discovering and telling the war as story of wool's history and how it is told some 70 years laterhad made and changed the landscape. Peter Tunstall was an RAF pilot who was shot down and spent many years as She'd grown up on a Prisoner Of War across occupied Europe, including sheep farm in Colditz. He lived through Suffolk - '' a free-range child on the warfarm'' - and learned to spin, but also lived through many decades of peaceknit and weave from her mother and her mother's friend. Will these years of the relative quiet life lesson the tales of bravery and dare doing of the war? Of course not!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>071564923X</amazonuk>This was in her blood.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1789017977|title=The Shop GirlsRonnie and Hilda's Romance: Towards a New Life after World War II|author=Elee SeymourWendy Williams

|summary=Heyworth's Department Store. The chances are, you have never heard Ronnie Williams was the son of it beforeThomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall. I know that I hadn There't, before I picked up this book. And yet, there was a time, s some doubt as to whether or not so long ago, when everyone in Cambridge would they were ever married or even Harry's birthdate: he claimed to have been familiar with Heyworth'sborn in 1863, even if they couldn't afford 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 shop there themselves. Smaller than most department stores, it offered high-end fashion, childrenswear do but disaster struck in the 1929 Depression and millinery, with a staff of smiling, smartlyfive-year-dressed sales assistants ready old Ronnie had to cater adjust to the customer's every whima very different lifestyle. It seems sad that 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 passing of generations, the very existence of the store seems to have slipped away from the collective consciousness; ask most people army at eighteen in Cambridge if they remember Heyworth's and the majority response would be negative1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751554960</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Elizabeth Drew1980891117|title=Washington JournalG Engleheart Pinxit 1805: reporting Watergate and Richard Nixon's downfallA year in the life of George Engleheart|author=John Webley|rating=4.5|genre=HistoryArt|summary=In early August 1974 I George Engleheart was in what was then Yugoslavia. There was a group one of us, all interested in the political newsleading portrait miniaturists of Georgian London, but essentially cut off with a career lasting from the outside world apart from 1770s to the previous day's English newspapers which arrived mid morningRegency era. It He was on also one of the 11th most prolific, painting nearly 5,000 miniatures altogether (over twenty of August that one them being of our number dashed onto the beach yelling ''He's resignedKing George III). He's RESIGNED!!!'' No one had any need to ask who Throughout most of that time he was talking about. We'd all been following carefully recorded the news about Richard Nixon's doings and wrongdoings for a year, with no one certain that he would be forced out names of each of office. The investigative journalism (ohhis clients, for the days when journalists uncovered rather than merely covered) was done by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, but some of the most insightful reportage came from Elizabeth Drew writing for ''The New Yorker''subsequently transcribed them into what is referred to as his fee book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715649167</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1789016304|title=Golden ParasolWar and Love: A family's testament of anguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam|author=Wendy Law-YoneMelanie Martin

|summary=If you look her up Wendy Law-Yone is described as a Burmese-born American author. That 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 ''Burmese-born AmericanThe Diary of Ann Frank'' might be an accurate description of but then realised that her current citizenshipown family's stories were equally fascinating. A hundred and seven thousand Jews were deported from the city during the war years, but it barely hints at 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 ethnic mix of her heritagecity were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, nor of her personal closeness (through her father) that the Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to her original homelandescalate in the way that it did, but initial protests melted away as the organisers became more circumspect. It's struggle for freedom and democracyan atrocity on a vast scale but made up of tens of thousands of individual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099555999</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1908745819|title=The Great War: The People's StorySurfacing|author=Isobel CharmanKathleen Jamie

|summary=During Sometimes when people suggest that you read a certain book, they tell you ''this centenary yearone has your name on it''. Mostly we take them at their word, or not, but rarely do we have seen many ways of telling ask them why they thought so unless it turns out that we didn't like the history 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 conflict which broke out among the Great Powers author considering ''an older, less tethered sense of Europe and soon involved all four corners of the worldherself. '' This volume, based on Older. Less tethered. That's not a recent ITV series bad description of the same title, approaches it from an angle which where I have not seen befoream. It follows the course Add to that my love of events over the four years through the lettersnatural world, memoirs and diaries of about a dozen individuals as it presents their story against the background those aspects of fighting on the continental mainlandpoetic and lyrical that are about style not form, and substance most of bereavementall, shortages and more at homeabout connection. Of course, this book had my name on it. It was written for me. It would have found its way to me eventually. I am pleased to have it fall onto my path so quickly. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847947255</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0857058320|title=Elizabeth of YorkLord Of All the Dead|author=Alison WeirJavier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)|rating=4.5

|summary=Elizabeth of York could have ruled England were she not ''Lord Of All the Dead'' is a woman journey to uncover the author's lost ancestor's life and were she not born in the fifteenth centurydeath. Oldest daughter of Edward IV, she was the heiress of the Yorkist dynasty after Cercas is searching for the meaning behind his great uncle's death of Richard III at Bosworth (and her own younger brothers in the Tower of London)Spanish Civil War. Henry VIIManuel Mena, Cercas' great uncle, is the first Tudor king and victor by conquest, had at best a tenuous claim to figure who looms large over the English thronebook. He legitimised 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 by is possible for his marriage great uncle to Elizabeth and proclaimed it through be a hero whilst having fought for the Tudor rose, that joining of the emblems of York and Lancaster. Elizabeth's marriage to Henry produced one of our most famous kings in Henry VIIIwrong side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099546477</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0008294011|title=A Broken WorldHow to Lose a Country: Letters, diaries and memories of the Great WarThe 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship|author=Sebastian Faulks and Hope WolfEce Temelkuran

|summary=Sebastian Faulks and Dr Hope Wolf have expertly brought together this far-reaching collection of memories, diaries, letters and postcards written during and after the First World War. While Faulks is 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 author of novels such as question ''BirdsongDiscuss 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'Charlotte Grayt know what all 'this', Dr Hope Wolf is a research fellow was leading to. I think now that I do know. We are in English at the University danger of Cambridge, whose doctoral research focused on archives at the Imperial War Museum. The combination losing democracy and whilst it's a flawed system I can't think of such a respected authorbetter one, whose most famous (and arguably his best) novel is set in particularly as the First World War, and an academic whose expertise 'benevolent dictator' is the in the same area, means that this fascinating collection hits all the right notes. Itas rare as hen's commemorative, poignant and very humanteeth.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091954223</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1788037812|title=The Greatest Escape: How one French community saved thousands Fraternity of lives from the NazisEstranged: The Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908|author=Peter GroseBrian Anderson|rating=35

|summary=We've read it before and been gratefulOriginally passed in 1885, and now we can read it againthe law that had made homosexual relations a crime remained in place for 82 years. But during this time, and for the restrictions on same reasons – educational, entertainment, moralistic – we can be grateful-sex relationships did not go unchallenged. We've probably all heard how one place or circumstance – most famouslyBetween 1891 and 1908, Oscar Schindler's factory – led to a major underhand rescue operation to keep Jews from being three books on the victims nature of the Final Solution in World War Twohomosexuality appeared. This book is a further exampleThey were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, but one of a whole French district being complicit in helping defy as well as the Nazi authoritiesheterosexual Havelock Ellis. Centred around Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in Exploring the heart margins of southern Francesociety and studying homosexuality was common on the European Continent, a very rural community based around Huguenot Protestants with their own experiences of religious persecution decided en masse to act as shelter for a whole host of people – mostly children rescued from transit and internment camps elsewhere but barely talked about in Francethe UK, and so the Jewish victims publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to the Vichy government rules demanding they be stateless or, worse, victims scientific understanding of a certain one-way train ride. But beyond becoming an idyllic place to hide out in plain viewhomosexuality, and beginning the towns struggle for recognition and villages also conspired equality, leading to actively export the Jews themselves – to places milestone legalisation of safetysame-sex relationships in 1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1857886267</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1910593508|title=The Mill GirlsApollo|author=Tracy JohnsonMatt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins

|summary=''The Mill Girls'' This incredible graphic novel is a collection of true stories based on interviews with women who worked at Lancashire's cotton mills during love letter to the war years. Leaving school at the tender age of 14, Moon landings and the girls were thrown headlong into passion for the world of worksubject drips off every Apollo by Matt Fitch, at Chris Baker and Mike Collins. This is a time when jobs were plentiful and the benefits culture story we know today was non-existent. The choice was a simple one: work or starve. Conditions were harsh, the mills noisy, dangerous well and dirty and pay was low. Despite because of this, many of the women look back at their time 'authors take a few narrative shortcuts knowing that we can fill in millthe 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 warm fondness 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 nostalgiastill felt too short.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091958288</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleisbn=Money: The Unauthorised Biography1786331047|author=Felix Martin|ratingtitle=4|genre=Business and Finance|summary=Occasionally books are not exactly what they seem. When I picked this up, read the blurb and began the contents inside, I was expecting a kind of biography or history of money through the ages. The opening chapter, a brief sketch of the economy of the Pacific island of Yap and how it worked, seemed Race to confirm this. It tells us how in Save the late nineteenth century Yap, east of the Philippine Islands, had an unwieldy coinage consisting of stone wheels around 12ft in diameter, called fei. The population did not carry these around, let alone own them like we possess pounds and pence, as they were part of a sophisticated system of credit management.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099578522</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=How Britain Kept Calm and Carried OnRomanovs: Real-life stories from the Home Front|author=Anton Rippon|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=My generation is now at saturation point with 'Keep Calm and Carry On' posters and all the accompanying variations. So much so, I was surprised to learn from this book was that the now ubiquitous poster was never actually distributed. The poster had been planned as part of a campaign to raise morale, but after they were printed, Truth Behind the government felt it would have been seen as patronising, given that Britons were doing exactly that without the government message Secret Plans to bolster them up.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178243190X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=Tudor: The Rescue Russia's Imperial Family Story|author=Leanda de LisleHelen Rappaport

|summary=With so many recent books published on various aspects The basic facts about the deaths of Tudor historyNicholas and Alexandra, it becomes harder to find a new angle or approach to some of which were deliberately obscured at the subjecttime for various reasons, have long since been established. Leanda de Lisle has thus pulled off For the almost-impossible. Her starting point is not last few months of their lives in Russia the battle of Bosworth former Tsar and Tsarina, their children and Henry Tudor’s claiming of the throne as King Henry VII few remaining servants were held in 1485increasingly squalid, but an event nearly fifty years earlierhumiliating captivity. To prevent them from being rescued, in July 1918 the death revolutionary regime had them all shot and funeral of Catherine de Valois. The widow of King Henry V, Catherine married secondly the Welsh squire Owain ap Maredudd ap Tudur, known bayoneted to posterity as Owen Tudor. Their elder son Edmund later married Margaret Beaufortdeath in circumstances which, a descendant of John of Gaunt, one of King Edward III’s several sons, and it was once the only child of this union, born when his mother news was a mere girl thirteen years of ageconfirmed beyond all doubt, who would become the victor on Bosworth Fieldhorrified their relatives in Europe.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009955528X</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Francis Russell|title=101 Places in Italy : A Private Grand Tour|rating=4.5|genre=Travel|summary=Initially I struggled to describe this book. It's not a guide book: maps are intended only to give you a rough idea of where the towns, cities and villages are - even major rivers are not shown. There are no opening times of museums or other details which the visitor might need and whilst it's a tremendous help to the tourist there's a sense throughout the book of their being people who are best avoided if at all possible. November and February seem to be the best months for your visit in many cases. The 101 places you'll visit in the book are given no wider importance than the works of art within them. Finally I accepted that the subtitle of the book - ''A Private Grand Tour'' was the most appropriate.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908524324</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=Steaming to Victory: How Britain's Railways Won the War|author=Michael Williams|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=Soon after the end of the First World War, the British railways entered what is generally regarded as their golden age, with the heyday of the ‘Big Four’ companies, the LNER (London and North Eastern), LMS (London, Midlands and Scottish), GWR (Great Western) and Southern Railways. By 1939 they were beginning to lose their virtual monopoly of land-based transport to lorries, buses and coaches. Nevertheless, as war became increasingly inevitable, they played a vital part in the preparation to keep the country moving, keeping industry and the war effort supplied, helping in the evacuation of Dunkirk, or as their press office put it in a pamphlet of 1943, 'tackling the biggest job in transport history'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099557673</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=The Boys In The Boat: An Epic Journey to the Heart of Hitler's Berlin|author=Daniel James Brown|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=You see, Jesse Owens had it easy – all he had to do was run fast. Alright, he did have to face unknown hardship, heinous prejudice at home and abroad, and make sure he was fast enough to outdo the rest of his compatriots then the world's best to win gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, but others who wished to do the same had to do more. People such as those rowers in the coxed eights squad – people such as young Joe Rantz. He certainly had to face hardship, the prejudice borne by those in the moneyed east coast yacht clubs against an upstart from the NW USA, and when he got to compete he had to use so many more muscles, and operate at varying tempi, with the temperament of the weather and water against him, all in perfect synchronicity with seven other beefcakes. Despite rowing being the second greatest ticket at those Games, Joe's story is a lot less well known, and probably a lot more entertaining.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447210980</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=The Last Days of Detroit: Motor Cars, Motown and the Collapse of an Industrial Giant|author=Mark Binelli|rating=4|genre=History|summary=Moving back to his native Detroit, Mark Binelli tries to see where it all went wrong for a city which was once ''America's capitalist dream town'' but has shrunk more significantly than anywhere else in the country over recent years. How did this happen, and what effect has it had Move on the residents there? Is the decline irreversible, or can those who want to bring about a changed and improved Detroit succeed?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099553880</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=Penny Loaves and Butter Cheap: Britain in 1846|author=Stephen Bates|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=Until I picked up this book, I would never have really thought of 1846 as a pivotal year in British history. Stephen Bates has proved convincingly in these pages that if it was not exactly a watershed one, it nevertheless marked an era of change.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781852545</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=Books that Changed the World: The 50 Most Influential Books in Human History|author=Andrew Taylor|rating=4.5|genre=Entertainment|summary=Oh the pleasure when, as a book reviewer, one can simply point to the title and say – 'yup, that'. Or, I suppose, as in the non-existent follow-up, Adverts That Changed the World, simply repeat the mantra 'it does exactly what it says on the tin'. This paperback edition of the six year old original, fresh with several typos they had time to iron out alongside putting in Seamus Heaney's departure, makes life even easier, given that subtitle. I'm sure the more bibliophilic are already sold, and there is little influence I can bear on things. I will, however, soldier on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782069429</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=Letters to the Midwife: Correspondence with the author of ''Call the Midwife''|author=Jennifer Worth|rating=4|genre=History|summary=[[:Category:Jennifer Worth|Jennifer Worth]], author of the bestselling ''Call the Midwife'', sadly passed away in May 2011 following a short illness. Her books have gained a great deal of popularity in recent years with their mixture of warmth, sadness and humour based on her experiences working as a midwife in the East End of London. ''Letters to the Midwife'' features some of the treasured letters received by Worth from former work colleagues and fans of her books. The resulting book is a rich testament to a life lived fully Newest Home and to a very special lady whose memories have managed to inspire and touch so many.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297869086</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Robert A Caro|title=The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent|rating=5|genre=Autobiography|summary=It's only a matter of days since I finished listening to [[The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power by Robert A Caro|The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to PowerFamily Reviews]], the first part of Robert A Caro's definitive work on the President and despite having just spent over forty hours on the book I wanted to learn more. I was torn though - the second book in a series is not often as good as the first and it struck me that these might not be the most exciting years in Johnson's life. Was this book going to be the link which took us on to the more exciting times? Not a bit of it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00GSHD0U6</amazonuk>}}