History Recent Picks

April 2009

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The ruin of the Roman Empire, by James J. O'Donnell.
"The Roman empire was not invaded by barbarians in the fifth century, says classical historian O'Donnell. Rather, these tribes—Visigoths, Vandals and others—were refugees who crossed into the empire in search of a place to settle. These migrants were turned into enemies by Rome. O'Donnell (Augustine), former provost of Georgetown, supports this controversial thesis by drawing on primary sources to analyze the geopolitical errors that led to Rome's fall. Emperor Theodoric, he says, had preserved social order and prosperity among the various peoples of the vast empire. But seven years later, Justinian squandered that good order. He failed to make peace with Persia in the east by not emphasizing a common interest of trade; he failed to establish good relations with the kings of the western Mediterranean and to develop his own homeland, the Balkans; finally, by banning certain Christian sects, he alienated some border regions and sowed the seeds of rebellion. These failures not only divided the empire, they made it vulnerable to attack from peoples that had once been friends. O'Donnell's richly layered book provides significant glimpses into the many factors that leveled a mighty empire." (Publishers Weekly Sept 2008)

The blackest streets : the life and death of a Victorian slum, by Sarah Wise.
"In 1887 Government inspectors were sent to explore the horrifying - often lethal - living conditions of the Old Nichol, a notorious 15-acre slum in London's East End. Among much else they found that the rotting 100-year-old houses were some of the most lucrative properties in the capital for their absent slumlords. Peers of the Realm, local politicians, churchmen and lawyers were making profits on these death-traps of as much as 150 per cent per annum. Before long, the Old Nichol became a focus of public attention. Journalists, the clergy, charity workers and others condemned its 6,000 inhabitants for their drunkenness and criminality. The solution to this 'problem' lay in internment camps, said some, or forced emigration - even policies designed to prevent breeding. Concentrating on the last fifteen years of the nineteenth century, The Blackest Streets is set in a turbulent period in London's history, when revolution was very much in the air - when unemployment, agricultural depression and a crackdown on parish relief provided a breeding ground for Communists and Anarchists. Author of the prize-winning The Italian Boy, Sarah Wise explores the real lives behind the statistics - the woodworkers, fish smokers, street hawkers and many more. She excavates the Old Nichol from the ruins of history, laying bare the social and political conditions that created and sustained this black hole which lay at the very heart of the Empire." (Amazon UK Book Description)

Sweet water and bitter : the ships that stopped the slave trade, by Sian Rees.
"When the abolitionist Granville Sharpe bought land in Sierra Leone to 'repatriate' freed slaves, one former slave living in London foresaw trouble. 'Is it possible', asked Ottobah Cugoano, biblically, 'that a fountain should send forth both sweet water and bitter?' Could the slave trade be abolished from West Africa when West Africa was its source? The answer was no...'Sweet Water and Bitter' is the extraordinary sequel to Britain's abolition of the slave trade in 1807. The last legal British slave-ship left Africa that year, but other countries and illegal slavers continued to trade. When the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815, British diplomats negotiated anti-slave-trade treaties and a 'Preventive Squadron' was formed to cruise the West African coast. In six decades, this small fleet liberated 150,000 Africans and lost 17,000 of its own men in doing so. This is the tale of their exciting and arduous campaign. It is also a story of unforeseen consequences.What to do with the freed slaves? How to manipulate international law so that you could board the ships of other nations? How to fight the intense hostility of African leaders to abolition?" (Amazon UK Book Description)

Children of the Revolution : the French, 1799-1914, by Robert Gildea.
"The French Revolution's cries of liberty, fraternity, and equality reverberated throughout Europe and America. Yet in France, as Oxford historian Gildea (Marianne in Chains) demonstrates in this elegant political and cultural history, the consequences of the revolution were far more ambiguous: its mixed legacy included hope for a new day as well as anarchy, bloodletting and despotism. Chronicling five generations, Gildea discovers diverse responses, including opposition and a longing for the monarchy in the first generation. The second generation after the revolutionthose born around 1800longed for liberty, equality and fraternity without the terror and dictatorship that called into question the revolutionary project. The third generation, born around 1830, was more pragmatic than ideological, but did develop a secular morality that challenged the political power of the church. Later in the 19th century, the revolution sharply divided the French Republic, but by WWI, both opponents and proponents laid aside their differences and fought side by side for France's greatness and unity. Invoking writers and thinkers from Musset to Flaubert to Péguy, Gildea's spellbinding book offers a challenging new portrait of the long-term impact of the French Revolution." (Publishers Weekly Sept 2008)

The white war : life and death on the Italian front 1915-1919, by Mark Thompson.
"The Western Front dominates our memories of the First World War. Yet, a million and half men died in North East Italy in a war that need never have happened, when Italy declared war on the Habsburg Empire in May 1915. Led by General Luigi Cadorna, the most ruthless of all the Great War commanders, waves of Italian conscripts were sent charging up the limestone hills north of Trieste to be massacred by troops fighting to save their homelands. This is a great, tragic military history of a war that gave birth to fascism. Mussolini fought in these trenches, but so did many of the greatest modernist writers in Italian and German - Ungaretti, Gadda, Musil, Hemingway. It is through these accounts that Mark Thompson, with great skill and empathy, brings to life this forgotten conflict." (Amazon UK Book Description)

The survivors : the story of the Belsen remnant, by Leslie H. Hardman.
"Leslie H Hardman, a Jewish chaplain, entered Belsen camp two days after its liberation by the British Army. This book tells the story of what he found there, and what he did. The horror which first confronts him is overwhelming, and something other than himself makes him stay and face it. In the beginning he feels he is making no inroads into the task he has set himself, that he is a pigmy grappling with a mountain. But with courage and patience he brings faith, comfort and help to the stricken survivors. In his mission he meets some remarkable men and women: Marta the woman doctor, Yankel the strong man, Eva whose love is oddly deflected, Joseph who rises to astonishing heights, and many others. He himself is enmeshed in the life of liberated Belsen, experiencing hope, despair, intolerance, inspiration. This book is an authentic record, written with compassionate understanding. The account of the rebirth of the almost dehumanised survivors is an inspiring, rather than a harrowing narrative. In the simplicity and sincerity of its writing, it tells a moving and vivid story of a crime which has shocked the world, but which should be read and remembered." (Amazon UK Book Description)

Great hatred, little room : making peace in Northern Ireland, by Jonathan Powell.
"The Blair administration's pursuit of a lasting settlement in Northern Ireland stands out as one of the great achievements in modern British politics. Even after the initial moves towards a peace, there was every chance that long-nursed grievances would break out again into paramilitary extremism. That they did not is a lasting monument to the determination and guile of many of those involved. As the government's key negotiator, Jonathan Powell is uniquely qualified to give the definitive account of the end of the Troubles. Great Hatred, Little Room: Making Peace in Northern Ireland will become a landmark in the literature of conflict resolution: an historical document of lasting importance that is also a vivid and dramatic account of fallible men and women working at the limits of their endurance." (Amazon UK Book Description)

Liberation or catastrophe? : reflections on the history of the twentieth century, by Michael Howard.
"Michael Howard presents a fascinating analysis of the history of the 20th Century- laying much emphasis on the USA, where the author has spent much time as a Professor at Yale. It was Michael Howard who brought the study of military history into the mainstream of historical research and his readers will expect this as an emphasis in his analysis. They will expect less about suffragettes, human rights and the role of women. Howard`s concern is substantially with the role of the military in the developing story of the twentieth century. At the beginning of the twentieth century, nostalgia for a lost past seems to have permeated the whole of European culture. This was the time of bucolic idylls of English musicians and poets of the Edwardian age with revivals of folk music and yearning for blue remembered hills. But thirteen million men died in the First World War and an entire world died with them. By then only rational, bureaucratic, effectively modernized states could fight such wars, with weapons designed to inflict maximum destruction . The tone for a new century was set. For if the old order died with the First World War, something else far more powerful and sinister was born, the 'rough beast' of Yeats' apocalyptic poem, that was to dominates Europe for the rest of the century. In spite of the peace of 1945, it remains alive and flourishing in many parts of the world. Such in part is the thesis of this powerfully argued book but its sub themes are skilfully interwoven and propounded." (Amazon US Book Description)

God’s crucible : Islam and the making of Europe, 570 to 1215, by David Levering Lewis.
"This superb portrayal by NYU history professor Lewis of the fraught half-millennium during which Islam and Christianity uneasily coexisted on the continent just beginning to be known as Europe displays the formidable scholarship and magisterial ability to synthesize vast quantities of material that won him Pulitzer Prizes for both volumes of W.E.B. Du Bois. In characteristically elegant prose, Lewis shows Islam arising in the power vacuum left by the death throes of the empires of newly Christianized Rome and Persian Iran, then sweeping out of the Middle East as a fighting religion, with jihad inspiring cultural pride in hitherto marginalized Arab tribes. After Charles Martel's victory at the Battle of Poitiers in 732 sent the Muslim invaders back south of the Pyrenees, the Umayyad dynasty consolidated its rule in al-Andalus (Muslim Spain), forging a religiously tolerant, intellectually sophisticated, socially diverse and economically dynamic culture whose achievements would eventually seed the Renaissance. Meanwhile, the virtually powerless Roman popes joined forces with ambitious Frankish leaders, from Pippin the Short to Charlemagne, to create the template for feudal Europe: a "religiously intolerant, intellectually impoverished, socially calcified, and economically primitive" society." The collapse of the Umayyad dynasty and the rise of local leaders who embraced Muslim fundamentalism as a means to power destroyed the vitality of al-Andalus, paving the way for the Crusades and the Christian reconquista of Spain. Lewis clear-sightedly lays out the strengths and weaknesses of both worlds, though his sympathies are clearly with cosmopolitan doctor/philosophers like Ibn Rushd and Musa ibn Maymun (better known in the West as Averroes and Maimonides), who represented "cultural eclecticism and creedal forbearance," sadly out of place in the increasingly fanatical 12th century." (Publishers Weekly Oct 2007)

Family of secrets : the Bush dynasty, the powerful forces that put it in the White House, and what their influence means for America, by Russ Baker.
"After eight disastrous years, George W. Bush leaves office as one of the most unpopular presidents in American history. Russ Baker asks the question that lingers even as this benighted administration winds down: Who really wanted this man at the helm of the country, and why did his backers promote him despite his obvious liabilities and limitations? This book goes deep behind the scenes to deliver an arresting new look at George W. Bush, his father George H. W. Bush, their family, and the network of figures in intelligence, the military, finance, and oil who enabled the family’s rise to power. Baker’s exhaustive investigation reveals a remarkable clan whose hermetic secrecy and code of absolute loyalty have concealed a far-reaching role in recent history that transcends the Bush presidencies. Baker offers new insights into lingering mysteries—from the death of John F. Kennedy to Richard Nixon’s downfall in Watergate. Here, too, are insider accounts of the backroom strategizing, and outright deception, that resulted in George W. Bush’s electoral success. Throughout, Baker helps us understand why we have not known these things before. Family of Secrets combines compelling narrative with eye-opening revelations. It offers the untold history of the machinations that have shaped American politics over much of the last century." (Amazon US Book Description)

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