History Recent Picks

December 2004

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	The embarrassment of riches : an interpretation of Dutch culture in the Golden Age, by Simon Schama. (1987) "Innkeepers often die popular, and Gerrit van Uyl was no exception. Even by the liberal standards of small town wakes, his funeral at Sloten in Friesland on May 21, 1660, was a bumper send-off. According to a contemporary, the procession... must have included virtually the entire town together with patrons from far and near - with the local vagabond population bringing up the rear... But even so, van Uyl's estate had seen to it that they were decently catered. The bill included: 20 oxheads of French and Rhenish wine, 70 half-casks of ale, 1100 pounds of meat 'roasted on the Koningsplein', 550 pounds of sirloin, 28 breasts of veal, 12 whole sheep, 18 great venison in white pastry 200 pounds of 'fricadelle' (mince meat). Together with bread, mustard, cheese, butter and tobacco 'in full abundance.' No wonder that the beggars staggered off happy." (Page 150-151)
	The exception to the rulers : exposing oily politicians, war profiteers, and the media that love them, by Amy Goodman with David Goodman. (2004) "Some unlikely heroes have stepped forward to defend our civil liberties: librarians. In George Bush's war on terror, libraries have become a battlefront. According to Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, and FBI agent can enter a library or bookstore and demand records of the books patrons read and what internet sites they visit. If an agent makes such a request, librarians are forbidden to tell anyone about the visit. They can't tell fellow librarians, they can't tell journalists, and they certainly can't tell the patrons... The American Library association has found a clever way to fight back and protect the privacy of their patrons. The ALA has been encouraging libraries not to keep any unnecessary paper trails, and to use circulation software that automatically erases any record of a patron's book use - provided that the book is returned and all fines are paid. It's a great idea for a national library ad campaign: Get your library book back on time... or else." (Page 112)
	The Black Sea : a history, by Charles King. (2004) "Ancient writers dated the earliest Greek encounters with the Black Sea to the mythical Heroic age, and they imbued the sea with the same fantastic qualities that defined all the outer limits of the world. The sea was the locus of many of the myths that formed the warp and weft of Greek popular religion. A rocky island at the mouth of the Danube was said to hold the grave of Achilles. On the south coast, Hercules descended into Hades in order to tame the guard dog Cerberus. The Amazons lived in the same neighbourhood, at the mouth of the Thermodon (Terme) river in southern Russia. The Crimean peninsula was the home of the Tauri, whose blood-thirsty priestess Iphigeneia, sacrificed wayward travellers to Artemis. To the east, in the Caucasus mountains, the fire stealer Prometheus lay chained to a rock with an eagle feasting on his liver, until he was rescued by Hercules. When Mediterranean travellers encountered the real people who lived along the shores, they described them in terms not far removed from such fantastic stories." (Page 26)
	Our hidden lives : the everyday diaries of a forgotten Britain, 1945-1948, by Simon Garfield. (2004) "Saturday, 1 June, Edie Rutherford, 'Cricket balls rationed. What a calamity. Ha Ha...'" (Page 222) "Monday, 24 June, Herbert Brush, 'It has been spitting with rain all morning so I have done a few odd jobs under cover, such as soldering up a hole in a kettle and a couple of holes in a zinc bath. By the way, I noticed a word on the side of a bus today which looks like a mutilation of the English language; 'Schweppervesence'. It may be a good advertisement but it looks to me like German.'" (Page 240)
	The search for Nefertiti : the true story of a remarkable discovery, by Joann Fletcher. (2004) "Nefertiti (the "beautiful") - wife of the most unusual of pharaohs, Akhenaten - has long fascinated us. Living through a time of great upheaval and changes in Egyptian administration, art and religion, theories have abounded about the exact nature of her marriage and the extent of her influence during the Amarna Period. In this book, Dr Joann Fletcher pieces the evidence together to solve one of the biggest remaining mysteries of Egyptian history. Joann and a team of experts have helped identify the body which has been considered missing for more that 3000 years, and the story it confirms casts Nefertiti in astonishing new light. No mere wife of a pharaoh, Nefertiti herself became ruler of Egypt. Always the major player to a weak husband, following Akhenaten's death she held court in the new capital of Amarna enjoying unrivalled wealth and luxury while the country disintegrated around her." (Amazon)

The last valley : Dien Bien Phu and the French defeat in Vietnam, by Martin Windrow. (2004)
"Giap could have confidence in the resolve of his regular troops. The Peoples Army bo doi was ignorant of the world, fed and equipped only to a very basic level, and unpaid. He would have to walk many hundreds of miles through the roughest of terrain, sheltered only by the forest and always hunted by an enemy who had more destructive weapons... But he had confidence in his Leaders; and he was fighting in his own country, for his own country - for a future that he believed in.
The average soldier of the Expeditionary Corps waiting for him in the Delta generally had better equipment, and more of it; he was supported by heavy artillery, tanks and fighter bombers….He had little faith in his generals; he was fighting for his copains and his battalion. He might suspect that he was on the wrong side of the world, and he certainly knew that back home only his family gave a damn. Statistically, of course, it was unlikely that he was even a Frenchman." (Page 163)

Whose promised land? : the continuing crisis over Israel and Palestine, by Colin Chapman. (2002)
"Are we simply dealing with the 'war against terrorism'? Or are we prepared to understand the anger that lies behind the terrorism - anger over the occupation of the West Bank which is in defiance of U.N resolutions? Do we, in other words, have the patience to investigate the nature of the conflict in general and the root causes of the recent escalation in particular? If the Bible seems to say that the Jews have a divine right to the land for all time, is this the only way to interpret the Bible? Is there a direct connection between the children of Israel, the Jewish people and the State of Israel today? Is there only one way of reading the promises about the land and the predictions of a return to the land? Or is there another way of reading the text which is totally faithful to the scripture, but leads to a less one-sided political stance." (Page 10)

Stalin, the Russians, and their war : 1941-1945, by Marius Broekmeyer ; translated by Rosalind Buck. (2004)
"One bizarre story concerns Major Mikhail Novobranets, head of the information department of the Red Army intelligence service. He spent time in many German camps, escaped in northern Norway, where he founded a partisan group, liberated other prisoners of war and part of northern Norway, and stood at the head of a small army. On their way home he and all his people were arrested, locked up in prisoner's vans, guarded by dogs, and taken to camps. He spent ten years in Siberian camps. Years after the war his Norwegian resistance comrades were in Moscow and wanted to see their hero. Then a miracle happened. Within two days he was brought to Moscow by special plane, returned to the army, and given the rank of colonel. A meeting with his Norwegian friends was then arranged." (Page 154)

Weapons of mass deception : the uses of propaganda in Bush's war on Iraq, by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber. (2003)
"War by Disney: that is how Glenna, an artist I interviewed, described the Iraq War she had witnessed on television and read about in the Toronto newspapers. 'You could almost say this was a war invented and produced by Disney Studios. It was monumental, it was full of slogans and images, it was like a production. And it happened, and [they] got it over so fast, they got away with it too.' The House of Mickey had nothing to do with the actual war. But the way the war was presented, at least in North America, seemed very similar to the style of shows the Disney Studios, and other major production houses, had offered in recent years... This book discusses the peculiar nature of the war so neatly summarised by Glenna." (Introduction)

Bowler of Gallipoli : witness to the Anzac legend, by Frank Glen. (2004)
"Dearest Claris you will no doubt know from reading the papers where we are going - to the Dardanelles to fight the unspeakable Turk and to strike a blow for the empire.
This is the story of one man's experience of the Gallipoli campaign and its impact on his life and beliefs. Gallipoli broke him physically and spiritually and made him question everything he believed in terms of New Zealand and its place in the Empire. Frank Glen's study is the story of that collapse and questioning based on detailed research into Bowler's correspondence and diaries that is matched by an equally detailed examination of the writings and correspondence of those he served with during his five months on Gallipoli in 1915." (Page ix)

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