History Recent Picks
August 2009
The title-underlined links will take you directly to our catalogue.
Some featured items are linked via a book cover to enable you to read more reviews.
Shakespeare's London: on five Groats a day , by Richard Tames (2009).
"This entertaining and fact-packed guide provides all the information you’ll need to travel back in time to Elizabethan London a booming city of courtiers, cutthroats, merchants, beggars, lawyers, dramatists, apprentices and adventurers. Find out the best way to the capital and where to stay. Saunter over London Bridge, with its hundreds of shops and houses. Glimpse Her Majesty at Whitehall, Europe’s largest palace. Watch the finest plays and players at the Rose Theatre, and marvel at the bustle of business in the Royal Exchange. Go down to Greenwich to stand on the deck of the Golden Hind, the ship that Sir Francis Drake sailed around the world. This intriguingly addictive guide provides all you need to know to sight see, shop and meet the famous in the capital of a nation stirring to greatness." (Amazon)
World history for dummies , by Peter Haugen (2009).
"Now updated–the one–stop guide to significant events in world history.
Written for students and lifelong learners, this detailed overview of human history takes readers from the discovery of fire to the birth of the Internet. It features new coverage of significant events that have reshaped our world view: the events of September 11, 2001; the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; recent responses to climate change; the rise of China, India, and Brazil as world economic powers; and the natural disasters of Hurricane Katrina and the tsunami that devastated Sri Lanka and Indonesia. It also explores the current trends in historical research and how researchers are re–examining everything from the writings of Marco Polo to the arrival of humans in the Americas." (Amazon)
Our world now 2, by Reuters (2009).
"Reuters photojournalists submit some 1,500 photos a day, creating an annual archive of over half a million images. This new Reuters anthology draws upon this unparalleled resource to document 2008, and the images cover the full range of news reporting - politics, commerce, conflict, the environment, accidents and disasters, faith and festivities, entertainment, celebrity, and lifestyle. Succinct captions summarize the story behind each picture." (Amazon)
After America: narratives for the next global age, by Paul Starobin (2009).
"The world is now at a hinge moment in its history, according to veteran international correspondent Paul Starobin. A once-dominant America has reached the end of its global ascendancy, and the question of what will come next, and how quickly, is not completely clear. Already the global economic crisis, in exposing the tarnished American model of unfettered free-market capitalism, is hastening the transition to the next, After America, phase of global historyn. According to Starobin, the After America world is being driven less by virulent anti- Americanism than by America’s middling status as a social, economic, and political innovator; by long-wave trends like resurgent nationalism in China, India, and Russia; and by the growth of transnational cultural, political, and economic institutions. While what is going to come next has not been resolved, we can discern certain narratives that are already advancing. In this sense, the After America age is already a work in progress—pregnant with multiple possibilities. In this book, which masterfully mixes fresh reportage with rigorous historical analysis, Starobin presents his farsighted and fascinating predictions for the After America world [...]" (Amazon)
The least worst place: how Guantanamo became the world's most notorious prison, by Karen Greenberg (2009).
"Ever since its foundation in 2002, the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility has become the symbol for many people around the world of all that is wrong with the 'war on terror'. Secretive, inhumane, and illegal by most international standards, it has been seen by many as a testament to American hubris in the post-9/11 era. Yet until now no one has written about the most revealing part of the story - the prison's first 100 days. It was during this time that a group of career military men and women tried to uphold the traditional military codes of honour and justice that informed their training in the face of a far more ruthless, less rule-bound, civilian leadership in the Pentagon. They were defeated. This book tells their story for the first time. It is a tale of how individual officers on the ground at Guantanamo, along with their direct superiors, struggled with their assignment from Washington, only to be unwittingly co-opted into the Pentagon's plan to turn the prison into an interrogation facility operating at the margins of the law and beyond." (Amazon)
The pharaohs, Joyce Tyldesley (2009).
"'Concerning Egypt itself, I shall extend my remarks to a great length, because there is no country that possesses so many wonders'. The Greek writer Herodotus wrote these words as long ago as the 5th century BC, and the ancient civilization of Egypt has continued to cast its spell on historians, archaeologists and visitors ever since. Thanks to its geographical isolation, Egypt developed a unique and self-contained culture whose religion, customs, art, architecture and social structures changed little over 3000 years. And its dry climate led to the preservation of a wealth of monuments including ancient cities, pyramids, temples and other sumptuous artefacts. "The Pharaohs" is an illustrated history of the kings who ruled over this extraordinary land, narrating the story of 30 dynasties starting around 3100 BC when the first pharaoh, Menes, unified Upper and Lower Egypt, and ending with the conquest of Egypt in 332 BC by Alexander the Great. It profiles powerful, and sometimes enigmatic, rulers such as Mentuhotep II, Thutmose III, Amenophis II, Akhenaten, Tutankhamun and Ramesses II. The story of these kings includes such seminal events in ancient Egyptian history as the development of the science of writing and the building of the first pyramid at Saqqara during the Archaic Period; the building of the pyramids at Giza by the centralized administration of the Old Kingdom; the expansion of trade with the Levant and Nubia during the Middle Kingdom (the 'classical' phase of pharaonic civilization); the rule of the foreign Hyksos kings and their introduction of technical innovations such as the horse-drawn chariot; the undertaking of grandiose building projects in the Valley of the Kings by the pharaohs of New Kingdom; expansion into Palestine and Syria which led to conflict with the Hittites; and, the long decline of Egypt during the Late Period, culminating in its invasion and annexation by Persia and its eventual conquest by Alexander the Great." (Amazon)
Anything goes: a biography of the roaring twenties, by Lucy Moore (2008).
"This is an exhilarating portrait of the era of invention, glamour and excess from one of the brightest young stars of mainstream history writing. Bracketed by the catastrophes of the Great War and the Wall Street Crash, the 1920s was a time of fear and hedonism. The decade glittered with seduction: jazz, flappers, wild all-night parties, the birth of Hollywood, and a glamorous gangster-led crime scene forced to flourish under prohibition. It was punctuated by terrifying events - the political show trials of Sacco and Vanzetti; the huge march down Washington DC's Pennsylvania Avenue by the Ku Klux Klan - and produced a glittering array of artists, musicians and film stars, from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Bessie Smith to Charlie Chaplin. Here, Lucy Moore interweaves the most compelling stories of the people and events that characterized the decade to produce a gripping account of an often-overlooked period. In doing so, she demonstrates that the jazz age was far more than just 'between wars'; it was an epoch of passion and change - an age, she observes, that was not unlike our own. The world she evokes is one of effortless allure and terrifying drama: a world that was desperate to escape itself." (Amazon)
Women in the warzone, by Anne Powell (2008).
"In our collective memory, the First World War is dominated by men. The sailors, soldiers, airmen and politicians about whom histories are written were male, and the first half of the twentieth century was still a time when a woman's place was thought to be in the home. It was not until the Second World War that women would start to play a major role both in the armed forces and in the factories and the fields. Yet there were some women who were able to contribute to the war effort between 1914 and 1918, mostly as doctors and nurses. In "Women in the War Zone", Anne Powell has selected extracts from first-hand accounts of the experiences of those female medical personnel who served abroad during the First World War. Covering both the Western and the Eastern Fronts, from Petrograd to Basra and from Antwerp to the Dardanelles, they include nursing casualties from the Battle of Ypres, a young doctor put in charge of a remote hospital in Serbia and a nurse who survived a torpedo attack, albeit with serious injuries. Filled with stories of bravery and kindliness, it is a book that honours the often unsung contribution made by the female doctors and nurses who helped to alleviate some of the suffering of the First World War." (Amazon)
When the lights went out: Britain in the seventies, by Andy Beckett (2009).
"The seventies are probably the most important and fascinating period in modern British political history.
They encompass strikes that brought down governments, shock general election results, the rise of Margaret Thatcher and the fall of Edward Heath, the IMF crisis, the Winter of Discontent and the three-day week.
But the seventies have also been frequently misunderstood, oversimplified and misrepresented. 'When the Lights Went Out' goes in search of what really happened, what it felt like at the time, and where it was all leading. It includes vivid interviews with many of the leading participants, many of them now dead, from Heath to Jack Jones to Arthur Scargill, and it travels from the once-famous factories where the great industrial confrontations took place to the suburbs where Thatcherism was created and to remote North Sea oil rigs.
The book also unearths the stories of the forgotten political actors away from Westminster who gave the decade so much of its volatility and excitement, from the Gay Liberation Front to the hippie anarchists of the free festival movement.
Over five years in the making, this book is not an academic history but something for the general reader, written with the vividness of a novel or the best works of American New Journalism, bringing the decade back to life in all its drama and complexity." (Amazon)
Raumati South, heart and soul: our community's story of our history, by Jacqueline Elliott (2008).
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