I also recommend it, it is very good. I know nothing about Chinese history and thought it was very enjoyable, but is has been a long time since I read it.

Going to be a bit of a lengthy post, but a lot of it is copied and pasted, as I've been reading a bit more than usual and I've finished a few books

Finished Blindfold and Alone: British Military Executions in the Great War by Cathryn Corns John Hughes-Wilson

>3.75/5. Maybe worth a read if very interested in WWI but it can be skipped. It's informative but not a must read.

>Writing style is fine, mostly matter of fact rather than emotional or outraged about the topic. First 100 or so pages covers the background and context - military law, shell shock, British views on mental health prewar etc. The next 300 pages, the bulk of the book, covers the various executions, with most of the chapters divided by the offence that led to execution - desertion, cowardice, murder etc or are dedicated to specific cases. These chapters tend to be the stories of the individuals and the trials, as well as the factors that led these specific men to be executed (mainly previous behaviour and offences, value as a soldier, the discipline of the unit) when the vast majority of death sentences (9 out of every 10) were not carried out. The final 50 pages covers the postwar debates around the death sentence for military crimes, and the legacy of the executions. This includes some discussion of the campaign at the time of publishing (2001) to pardon all the executed, which the authors opposed, but since that succeeded it doesn't really add anything now.

>The book doesn't particularly argue against the executions on moral grounds, saying that we shouldn't judge the past by today's standards and by the standards of the time many of the accused were clearly guilty of the offences they committed (the main reasons being long term desertion and murder, very few for cowardice) and that few soldiers had a problem with the sentences at the time. But the authors do include when they believe that actually carrying out the death sentence was unreasonably harsh or the mental health of the executed wasn't considered enough. Additionally towards the end of the book the authors also argue that the death sentence wasn't particularly effective as a tool of discipline anyway.

A long time after I started it I've finally finished The Western Front: A History of the Great War, 1914-1918 by Nick Lloyd

>(Read this as a Kindle commute read over the course of a month rather than focusing on it quickly at home, in case that affects my view on it)

>4.25/5

>Not much to say about it. In-depth military history of the Western Front, mostly focussed on the operational side of things and the factors behind successes and failures. While the experiences of the ordinary soldiers are mentioned they are secondary to the bigger picture topic and the views of the generals and leaders. It has a good balance between the generals of the various countries and doesn't overly focus on the views of one set of leaders. Well written but a bit too in-depth to recommend as a first book on World War One but if you like military history a lot then it is worth a read. I liked the book enough to read the other books Lloyd is intending to write about the Eastern Front and also the other fronts.

>(Personally I thought the author's Hundred Days: The End of the Great War was a bit better)

Also finished British Armoured Car Operations in World War One by Bryan Perrett

>3/5 niche but ok.

>Very short at 150 pages in the hardcover, plus a 1 page not very useful bibliography. Some maps at the front but fairly poor quality. 32 pictures of varying quality and interest, but all have longish captions which is nice. Despite the title the writing isn't as dry as you'd expect, at least in my opinion. It doesn't get bogged down in technical detail and tells a decent story. My favourite parts of the book (and these are a decent chunk of the book) were anything to do with the British armoured cars on the Eastern Front - the Caucasuses in 1916, Romania, and the Kerensky Offensive in 1917. Sticking with the Russian theme there is also a strong chapter on Dunsterforce in the Caucasus in 1918 after the Bolshevik takeover which I enjoyed. Outside of that the chapters on the Senussi campaign in Libya and the chapter on the Palestinian front were also decent. The parts of the book I didn't like were the Western Front bits as they were very brief and the Mesopotian front part, as for whatever reason (lack of personal accounts or other sources maybe?) it is less about the armoured cars and more just a brief overview of the whole campaign. There is also a chapter on the war in the German colonies in Africa which was ok I guess, not particularly memorable.

On Kindle I am now reading 24 Hours in Ancient Rome: A Day in the Life of the People Who Lived There by Phillip Matyszak which I am enjoying and making rapid progress through and for my physical read it is An Officer and A Spy by Robert Harris, historical fiction about the Dreyfus Affair in 1890s France (never read a Harris book before and I only know the bare basics about the Dreyfus story so this is all new to me)

Finished A Fiery & Furious People: A History of Violence in England by James Sharpe. Fairly long copy and pasted review

>5/5. Excellent, highly recommend if interested in English history or social history.

>Very well written, enjoyable to read with the stories being well told. Good selection of cases used as well as the right amount of statistics to get the point across without being bogged down in them. There is a lot of analysis in each chapter as to the change in the kind of particular kind of violence (murder moving from mostly between male strangers/ acquaintances to being more domestic based over the centuries for example) over time as well as the change in attitudes towards the specific violence (such as views on wife beating or infanticide).

>Part 1 is short and covers the medieval era - general violence but also the big events like the 1381 peasants revolt and the War of the Roses. It also has a bit on the ways that were meant to restrict violence like the Church or the ideal of chivalry and where these did and didn't work.

>Part 2 covers up to the end of Victorians and each chapter covers a specific kind of violence like duelling, crime, domestic etc and how these changed over time. The author argues that violence declined fairly rapidly after the English Civil War. The main reason for this is the emergence of capitalism which led to the growth of a middle class who valued 'respectability' and had more stake in preserving the status quo. Additionally they had different views from other economic groups, for example they believed that domestic violence was something the lower classes did but they also thought the duelling culture of the aristocracy was a bit ridiculous.

>Part 3 covers the 20th and 21st centuries with a similar style of each chapter focusing on a specific kind of crime. Personally my favourite chapter from this part of the book was focused on the depiction of violence in TV and movies (like the movie A Clockwork Orange) and the debates in society about if these contributed to violence in real life (the author argues they didn't/don't). In part 3 the author argues that for a variety of reasons (with an interesting theory that it is down to the deindustrialisation loosening the cohesion of society) violence rose in the 60s to 80s then declined rapidly, but this mainly reflects a decline in violence between strangers and acquaintances rather than a big decline in domestic violence.

>There is a nice further reading list for each chapter but since I read this to clear my British history unread pile I doubt I will read anything on it.

>Only complaint is that I personally found a couple of chapters to be boring (the slander/libel chapter and the historical sport related violence chapters), but that reflects my own interests rather than anything wrong with the book.

Hadn't planned it when I started reading a bit about British historical law and order but I remembered I had Blindfold and Alone: British Military Executions in the Great War by Cathryn Corns and John Hughes-Wilson which meant I could combine the law and order and get back to WWI at the same time. Most of the way through it but not enough to give it my longer thoughts, probably going to say a straight 4/5 by the time I'm done.

Finished Witchfinders: A Seventeenth-Century English Tragedy by Malcolm Gaskill

>3/5 stars, decent overall but not for me.

>Surprisingly in-depth and clearly well researched with a large number of individuals and cases covered. But I found it a bit boring to read and tried to read it quickly so I could move on to something else. There are only so many times you can read about women being searched for weird body parts and confessing to being suckled by imps before it gets a bit repetitive. The book argues that the chaos of the English Civil War, with the seemingly natural order of things going wrong allowed the witch hunt craze to begin. Prior to the civil war the paranoia was there but most witch trials went nowhere due to the legal demands for proof. The main witchfinders Matthew Hopkins and John Stearne are presented as catalysts that turn the paranoia into a witch hunt. The main reason presented for the witch hunts is genuine belief combined with guilt, as many of the accused witches were poor older women who had been refused aid. There is a lot of old woman asks for something, is refused, then bad things happen to the person who refused them (such as family or livestock getting ill or dying) which leads to the accusation. One thing I did like about the book was the financial side of things, as it turns out witch hunts were very expensive which is one of the reasons why they declined.

Now reading A Fiery & Furious People: A History of Violence in England by James Sharpe. About a third of the way through it and I am really enjoying it, so despite it being over 600 pages I am reading it fairly quickly and should have it finished by the end of the week.

Finished The Last Corsair: The Story of the Emden by Dan van der Dat

>3.5/5 being generous I'm rounding up for goodreads.

>Not that much to say about it. Just under 200 pages. An old blow by blow story of the German cruiser Emden's commerce raiding in the Indian Ocean during the early months of WWI as well as the story of the crew after the Emden was defeated. Decently well written and enjoyable to read. Overall I'd say it is worth a read if you are interested in naval history or WWI outside Europe.

On kindle I'm still reading The Western Front: A History of the Great War, 1914-1918 by Nick Lloyd which I am really enjoying but only reading a little bit a day (20% done). For physical books I've switched away from WWI for a week or two to British crime and punishment or law and order history.

Finished Execution: A History of Capital Punishment in Britain by Simon Webb

>3.5/5 rounding up for goodreads. Worth reading if you want a quick book about historical law and order.

>Well written and enjoyable to read despite the subject. Very short at 160 pages, and the bibliography is only 1 page. Each chapter covers a different kind of execution including the main ones, beheadings and hangings (there are several chapters on the different types of hanging) as well as the more unusual ones like boiling or crushing. There is also a chapter on things that weren't intended to kill but could be deadly, like the stocks and pillories or flogging. And a final chapter on the decline and abolition of the death penalty plus a short extra biographical section of all the main executioners/hangmen. Lots of interesting info and trivia despite the short length as the crimes of the executed are also mentioned.

Gave up on Murderous Tyneside: The Executed of the Twentieth Century by John J. Eddleston as while the stories are told in a matter of fact way it was just a boring read and as someone not normally into true crime stories I felt like I wasn't remembering anything from it.

Now reading Witchfinders: A Seventeenth Century English Tragedy by Malcom Gaskill. Focused on Essex around 1645. Enjoying it so far.

While it is very good based on what I've read so far I'd say no it isn't accessible. It's very indepth and heavy on the operational details (army movements, generals etc). I'd say The Western Front book by Richard Holmes I mentioned is probably more accessible. If books about WWI that aren't focused on the Western Front are ok then I'd say 'Short History of the First World War by Gary Sheffield' or 'The First World War by Hew Strachan' are good options (but Strachan has another book called First World War - Vol 1 To Arms which I'd avoid because it's like 1000 pages) .

Finished The Western Front by Richard Holmes

>4.5/5 rounding down for Goodreads.

>Very good. Written alongside a documentary series so it is accessible. It is good at describing the details of the battles as well as broader analysis on things such as the conditions that led to trench warfare. Mostly focused on the British perspective but does have a good chapter on Verdun. Plenty of maps and photos that are pretty good in quality. Sometimes it mentions the historical debates about things like tactics or leadership, but this book is 20 years old now so views and scholarship have probably changed a bit since then. It does have a further reading list as well for each chapter but again it is an old book and will not have newer books on it. Overall I'd say it is a good place to start if you are interested in the Western Front of WWI.

>Sidenote - Holmes' Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front 1914-18 is very good but a lot longer and more indepth and I'd also recommend reading that if you are interested in WWI. His books 'Sahib: The British Soldier in India 1750-1914' and 'Redcoat: The British Soldier in the Age of Horse and Musket' are also very good.

Finished today The Zimmerman Telegram by Barbara Tuchman

>3/5. For a £1 Kindle book it was fine but I wouldn't recommend specifically seeking it out.

>OK from a story telling point of view but it is very old and there are probably newer and better books on the subject. For example her descriptions of the situation on the Western Front were pretty simplistic and bad. A lot of the book focuses on what was going on in Mexico as well as US-Mexico relations and US-Japanese relations prior to Zimmerman sending the telegram. These parts felt fine to me but I don't know a lot about the Americas or the Mexican revolution in this period so I probably won't have noticed anything wrong or any outdated historical views. Also a lot on the lives and feelings of the various diplomats, ambassadors and advisors.

On Kindle I've now started The Western Front: A History of the Great War, 1914-1918 by Nick Lloyd but it will probably take me a long time to read (I read his Hundred Days: The End of the Great War earlier this year and really liked it and would recomend it if into WWI). Physical I've started The Last Corsair: The Story of the Emden by Dan van der Vat which seems fine so far (40 pages in) and is rather shorter.

I've been reading quite a few WWI books recently - but all on the shorter side and one was only 100 pages . Trying to make a dent in my unread WWI book pile. Reviews copied and pasted

They Shall Not Pass: The French Army on the Western Front 1914-1918 by Ian Sumner

>4.5/5 rounding down for goodreads.

>Overall very good, definitely worth a read if you are interested in WWI. Focuses a lot more on the personal accounts of soldiers, mainly accounts from the time (diaries, letters) not sources from after the war. There is a decent amount on combat but also on the day to day life in the trenches. There is some stuff about the thinking of the generals, to explain the logic behind the attacks, but this is secondary to the soldier's experiences. Because of the more personal, on the ground focus I thought it was accessible and that you don't need to know much about WWI to read this. It also isn't particularly long at 220 pages and 5 chapters - a chapter for each year which covers the main battles as well as a related broader topic like morale or discipline.

Douglas Haig: Defeat Into Victory by Gordon Corrigan

>3.5/5 rounding down for goodreads. I got it for £1 on a kindle deal and for that I'm happy with it.

>Very short, about 100 pages total. Enjoyable to read. Corrigan takes a VERY pro-Haig point of view, trying to defend Haig against his critics. His main argument is that Haig was a good leader but constrained by factors outside his control as Britain was the junior partner (on land) compared to the French. So the Somme campaign had to be fought to relieve Verdun and Passchendaele had to be fought to buy time for the French army to recover from the mutinies - and in the end these battles did more damage to the Germans than the British anyway. Corrigan also argues against the more personal criticisms of Haig, such as him not leading from close enough to the frontline or him not being interested in technology. I think he argues the case mostly well, although I happened to agree with this point of view before reading this, but he takes it a bit far in the other direction at times.

Just finished now Disputed Earth: Geology and Trench Warfare on the Western Front 1914-18 by Peter Doyle

>Charity shop find. Enjoyment 3/5 stars. Detail and info 4.5/5. Only read if you are very interested in the WWI Western Front. I'm quite into WWI and I still found it a bit of a struggle.

>It isn't that long at 230 pages plus another 50 for notes/sources. There are a lot of photographs, maps, diagrams - some from the time and some more recent and they tend to be pretty high quality (at least in the Uniform edition). There is plenty of info and lots of detail but it is rather dry to read and at times rather hard to read, but I don't know a lot about geology. There is a lot about how the different terrains (clay regions, chalky regions etc) responded to water (drainage, water levels. runoff etc) and how this affected the war, for things like mining, making dugouts and trenches, tanks etc. Even as a WWI nerd it started to get a bit repetitive reading about the different kinds of soil or clay and how wet it was.

I'm now doing a new thing of one kindle book, one physical book at the same time so I'm now reading The Zimmerman Telegram by Barbara Tuchman (Kindle) and I might start July 1914: Countdown to War by Sean McKeekin

Thank you, it was interesting. I've added one of the books (The Last Great War) to my WWI to-read list.

World War One specifically but the late 19th Century to the early 20th century more broadly. I'm not German but from 1871 when Germany became one country to either the end of Weimar Germany in 1933 or the beginning of the Second World War in 1939 are good markers of the period I mean.

There is just a lot going on in terms of colonialism, technological growth, ideologies, the international politics before WWI and the consequences of the war. A lot of class based stuff as well. In the UK there was all kinds of reform going on, the Labour party becoming important and other countries catching up with the British Empire economically.

Finished Fracture: Life and Culture in the West, 1918-1938 by Philipp Blom review copied and pasted

>4.5/5 rounding up for Goodreads. I really liked it and would recommend it to anyone interested in the interwar period. I also liked it a lot more than Blom's earlier book The Vertigo Years: Europe 1900-1914 as it has more politics. Possibly one of the better history books I've read in 2022.

>The basic style of the book is that each year is a chapter and an event from that year is used to talk about and analyze a specific theme across the whole period. So 1918 is the end of WWI so the chapter is a lot about trauma, the impact of so many dead or crippled and the feeling of a 'lost generation' which affected the whole period, 1920 uses the beginning of prohibition to talk about prohibition across the whole 20s and its impact on morality etc. It's not an 'X happened then Y happened' sort of book. There is a good mix of cultural, scientific (the Scopes Monkey trial about teaching evolution in 1925 for example), ideological (1919 chapter starts with D'Annunzio's capture of Fiume so it is about the beginning of fascist movements and other conservative views like Spengler's Decline of the West) and political topics. The author is good at bringing the cultural and scientific topics back to how people felt politically and how they responded to the changes of the 20s and 30s. Morality and the reaction to the new movements, arts and lifestyles get a lot of mention in the book. .There isn't really anything about international politics between countries, aside from the 1937 chapter on the Spanish Civil War but I like the focus on the other stuff for a change. Despite the title saying it is focused on the west there is still quite a bit on the Soviet Union, with the 1921 Kronstadt rebellion (the theme is failed leftwing or worker uprisings, Germany's communist March Action and the USA's Battle of Blair Mountain is also mentioned), the beginning of the 5 year plans (mainly focused around the founding of the steel plant at Magnitogorsk) and the holodomor. The writing style is very good and the descriptions/depictions are also very good for things like the Dust Bowl in the USA.

Now for a shorter military history book - They Shall Not Pass: The French Army on the Western Front 1914-1918 by Ian Sumner. Mostly focusing on the soldier's personal experiences. Enjoying it so far and have finished the chapter on 1914.

Read 2 books this week reviews copied and pasted

A while back in another of these posts I asked for suggestions about East Germany and someone suggested The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall by Mary Elise Sarotte which I've got round to reading and it was good.

>4/5

>Pretty good. Not very long, 180 pages of main text and another 100 pages for the notes and sources. The first chapter sets out the longer term context and history of the wall and then the book basically covers all of 1989 and the process that led to the end of the Berlin Wall. The book leans heavily and convincingly into the fall of the Berlin Wall. being a total accident, with a lot of focus on the things that seem trivial and the various cockups by the GDR leadership. Has a good mix of points of view, the leadership, foreign journalists, activists etc. Personally I enjoyed the bits about the Polituburo and the leadership with the high level politics the most.

I've just now finished The Habsburgs: The Rise and Fall of a World Power, by Martyn Rady

>4.25/5

>Overall pretty good. 330 pages plus another 70 for sources. First book I've read specifically about the Habsburgs so I can't really compare it to anything else. Goes all the way from the medieval era to the end of WWI. The writing is good and accessible. Good mix of info both personal to the Habsburg's lives as well as their policy and territory. It also has a few chapters on secondary topics like freemasonry in Habsburg lands or scientific exploration. It took me a while to enjoy the book, it didn't do anything wrong but maybe I just wasn't as interested in the medieval stuff or the 16th century. But once I got to the Thirty Years War I thought it got a lot more enjoyable. It also has a good further reading list, which is divided by chapter, so if you really want to learn a lot about the Habsburgs this is probably a good place to start.

Next up will be Fracture: Life and Culture in the West 1918-1938, by Phillip Blom.

No particular organisation, I just went through Goodreads and picked out my favourites from my read list.

Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front 1914-1918 by Richard Holmes

The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy by Adam Tooze (not the easiest read, lots of economic termoninolgy and statistics)

The Coming of the Third Reich (The History of the Third Reich, #1) Richard Evans

Peter the Great: His Life and World by Robert K. Massie

The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915 - 1919 by Mark Thompson

The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century by Ian Mortimer

The Crusades: The War for the Holy Land by Thomas Asbridge

Afgantsy: The Russians In Afghanistan, 1979-1989 by Rodric Braithwaite

Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II by Keith Lowe

The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 by Margaret MacMillan

The German War: A Nation Under Arms by Nicholas Stargardt (WWII)

A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal by Ben Macintyre

Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I by Alexander Watson

July Crisis: The World's Descent into War, Summer 1914 by T.G Otte (advanced, little background context provided and pretty much 500 pages from the assassination of Franz Ferdinand to just before Britain declares war in early August)

The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End, 1917-1923 by Robert Gerwarth

The Fortress: The Great Siege of Przemysl by Alexander Watson

Statesman of Europe: A Life of Sir Edward Grey by T.G Otte (probably need a bit of knowledge of the late Victorian and Edwardian domestic and international politics though)

The Northumbrians: North-East England and its People - A New History by Dan Jackson

Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire 1871–1918 by Katja Hoyer

While it doesn't specifically focus on the former SSRs I liked Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse 1970-2000 by Stephen Kotkin when I read it a few years ago. Short but has a lot of info.

I've read quite a few books recently, but they are shorter ones as I am trying to clear space

The Shortest History of England by James Hawes (review copied from Goodreads)

>2/5, would not recommend. Will not be keeping.

>Got it new on clearance, if I had paid full price for it I would be very annoyed. I know it is a short pop-history book but it has a lot of flaws. No listed sources or even sources for economic/number graphs for things like for amount of gold paid to the Danes or aircraft production before WWII. The only source I saw was with a graph was about the ethnic makeup of the American colonies vs the makeup of the British army. It also misses out a lot of details, for example it mentions the Mayflower ship and just says the group wanted to be away from royal control, no mention of puritans or religion at all. There are a lot of simple maps and diagrams, the kind that would be on a powerpoint presentation. The main argument of the book is basically the north-south divide and the (often foreign or at least more Europeanised in culture) elites vs the poorer native English, rather than focusing on major events or political policies. The author also argues that English (and broader British) history is basically a power stuggle between London+ the South East vs the rest of England+the other celtic areas. There is a point to it but the author takes it way too far (I don't entirely disagree with him but I wanted more history, less political argument). The medieval bit is just a long rant of oppressive Norman colonisers and the suppression of the English. The more modern stuff is basically another rant about how the north-south divide and the culturally different elites led to Brexit (which the author clearly opposes, but that is politics not history). Years ago I read Hawe's 'Shortest History of Germany' and liked it, but now I'm thinking less of it as his book about my own country was so lacking in detail so what did he get wrong about another country?

True Stories of the Second World War by Paul Dowsell (3/5 stars)

True Stories of the Blitz by Henry Brook (2/5 stars)

True Stories of D-Day by Henry Brook (3/5 stars)

>The 'True Stories' books is a box set. About 150-170 pages each. Aimed at a sort of older child audience I think (this was not clear on the box) - swearing is censored and while it mentions death (I mean they are WWII books) it isn't particularly graphic in terms of descriptions. Overall they were fine. The 'True Stories of the Second World War' was the best as it had the most variety and it also had a short further reading section at the end for each of the stories (like the Bismarck or snipers in Stalingrad).

I'm just about done with Palaces of Pleasure: From Music Halls to the Seaside to Football, How the Victorians Invented Mass Entertainment, by Lee Jackson. I've got about 50 pages ago but that is football (I''m not generally interested in sports) plus a short conclusion. (I got it for free, but not as a gift or anything just left behind in a hotel for anyone who wanted it, in case of bias)

>3.75/5 stars. Short at 260 pages. Overall I enjoyed it more than I expected. Entertaining and academic at the same time, covers a good mix of stories as well as policiy and legislation towards the various forms of entertainment, such as music halls, dance halls, gin palaces etc. It sort of front loads the stuff that didn't last as long like music halls, the stuff that had a longer lifespan such as British seaside resorts (which started to decline in the 1960s-70s) or football comes right at the end of the book. Covers a lot of themes such as profitabilty, class, perceptions of morality, reasons for long-term decline, prostitution (prostitutes seem to be a constant presence for the first half of the book) etc. Also I liked that included groups that opposed the various new forms of entertainment for more practical than moral reasons, such as old brewers and pub owners vs the new gin shop owners. I don't consider myself to know a lot about the Victorian era but I found accessible.

>Probably worth a read if interested in the Victorian period or social history in general.

Anyway now a short fiction break as I've got a Discworld and Expanse book to look forward to

Took me a while but I've finally finished Crucible: The Long End of the Great War and the Birth of a New World, 1917–1924 by Charles Emmerson. Review copied from my goodreads -

>4/5

>Rather good but unusual for a history book. The chapters go year by year and are divided by season (Autumn 1917, Summer 1919) etc. Each year gets 80-100 pages apart from 1924 which is a short (15 page in the paperback) epilogue giving the situation for each person the book focuses on in that year. The style of the book is almost present tense and chronological so like 'Moscow - Lenin arrives and starts preaching his belief in peace and bread' then 'The Western Front - The French army begins to mutiny over poor leadership and bad conditions'. The book is also heavily focused on famous individuals, some political (Lenin, Hitler, Woodrow Wilson etc), others cultural or scientific (Hemmingway, Einstein, Freud etc). This approach does the advantage of showing their story over the course of several years, such as how Hitler changed from army runner to failed putsch leader or Lenin going from political exile to Russian leader to being side lined by Stalin due to poor health. It also has the advantage of showing the political change over the course of several years and how much had changed. There is some stuff on American racial politics at the time, including famous lynchings or race riots, but it is more focused on disputes within the various American black movements (basically how much Marcus Garvey and Du Bois despised each other). Good amount of sources and select bibliography, a lot of endnotes as well but a bit hard to read (probably to save space since there is a lot of them).

>There are some downsides to the book. The style means there isn't much analysis like in a traditional history book. It is heavily focused on North America and Europe, plus Turkey (through the eyes of Mustpaha Kemal/Ataturk) and a little bit of Palestine (but the book is already 600 pages of main text plus 150 pages of notes and bibliography so fair enough). Depending on your interests some people or topics might not interest you and be very boring, I ended up basically skipping anything on Freud or the Dada artistic movement. Personally I vastly preferred the political side of things. I also found the book at times to be sort of vague on specific dates of events or names of people (For example the anti-treaty IRA assassinated a British general during the Irish nationalists peace negotiations with the UK government, but the book just refers to him as a British general instead of giving an actual name, it was Henry Wilson btw)

To clear out some space on my British history shelf and for a more casual read I am now reading Portillo's Hidden History of Britain by Michael Portillo. I am mostly done (3 chapters / 40 pages left) so this is basically my final thoughts (not copied and pasted) and I won't be mentioning it after this -

>3/5

>I either got it for free or very cheap. If you aren't British for context the author was a former prominent conservative politician in the 90s, lost his seat very suprisingly in the 1997 election, and nowadays does railway/travel/history documentaries for old people. The book was written alongside one of these documentaries which I haven't watched. The basic premise is that the author goes to somewhere attached to Britain's history, such as a prison, hospital, or military site, but is either no longer in use or is being turned into something else (like housing). He talks a bit about the history and interviews people who are either experts on the place or have a connection to it (such as a prisoner or a descendant of villagers forced out of an area as it was turned into military training site etc). Occasionally brings up his time in politics, especially in the defence themed bits, and what thoughts he brings from that.

>Overall the book is fine I guess. The writing is pretty entertaining and the areas chosen are interesting. There is nothing particularly bad about the book but it is not a must read and not worth specifically seeking out, and for create some more space I won't be keeping it.

I haven't read it (but a relative who doesn't read much otherwise really enjoyed it) Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe

Finished The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia by Peter Hopkirk

>3.75/5

>The writing is good. The book focuses mainly on the stories of the British and Russian agents in central Asia. Not that much perspective from the natives. Covers the entire 19th century and ends with the British invasion of Tibet in 1904 and the Russo-Japanese War . Good if you want a history book that feels like a narrative but if you want an academic view of the period I would look elsewhere.

Now reading a book I bought very recently (rather than having it for ages before reading it) - Crucible: The Long End of the Great War and the Birth of a New World, 1917–1924 by Charles Emmerson. Really enjoying it so far but it is an unusual style for a history book. Each chapter is a year with the subsections being seasons (winter 1917, summer 1919 etc). About 200 pages (out of 600 or so) and it is up to the winter of 1918-19. Jumps around a lot and covers the events as they happened, rather than covering something like the Russian Civil War all in one go. When I say it jumps around I mean it will be something like 'Russia - The Czechoslovak Legion falls out with the Bolsheviks' then 'Washington - Woodrow Wilson begins planning his outline for his peace plan and comes up with his 14 points' (obviously in full paragraphs and more detail than I did but that is the basic style, I think the Amazon storepage for it has a look inside if you want to see what I mean). Focuses a lot on famous people, Lenin, Hemmingway, Rosa Luxemburg etc.

Sidenote - Emmerson's 1913: The Year Before the Great War is very good if you are interested the culture/society/life of pre-WWI world without the focus on international relations.