I've been reading some of the volumes of the new Penguin History of Britain (ed. David Cannadine). I've now read the first five volumes which cover the Roman occupation to the end of Elizabeth's reign. I'm struck by what seems to me a massive disconnect between the first two volumes and the three subsequent ones. David Mattingly's Roman Britain ( Read more... )

Once in a while I read a book that makes me go "wow!" because the author has taken a complex topic, presented it in a comprehensible way and caused me to think differently about some pretty big issues. Göran Therborn's Between Sex and Power; Family in the World 1900-2000 is one of those books. It's what the title says; a sociological history of ( Read more... )

I have spent a goodly chunk of the last two weeks reading Jonathan Israel's The Dutch Republic: It's Rise, Greatness and Fall 1477-1806. It's part of my long term project to broaden my understanding of the history of early modern Europe. My knowledge of the history of the Netherlands in this period was largely as a sort of adjunct to Anglo-French ( Read more... )

Adam Tooze The Wages of Destruction - The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy

Looking at the cover of this one one would think one had strayed into Ilse, Shewolf of the SS territory rather than dealing with a massive 773pp, not including bibliography, scholarly tome. Rest assured, this is a serious and thought provoking piece of scholarship ( Read more... )

I want to learn more about the early history of Italy in general and Rome in particular. I'm talking about before the First Punic War and I'm after history not legend. I know the canonical myths and legends. Anybody got any good suggestions?

I don't spend a lot of time looking at genealogical tables but I was intrigued by part of a table of the Scottish royal line in David Carpenter's The Struggle for Mastery. It's all about the names and their ethnic/linguistic origin ( Read more... )

I've just finished reading John Hale's Lords of the Sea. It's one of those rare books that brings genuinely new light to a well worked over topic. In this case the topic is the various wars between Greeks and Persians and Greeks and Greeks in the two hundred years or so after Marathon. Probably few other historical subjects have a comparable ( Read more... )

I've just finished PJ Cain and AG Hopkins British Imperialism 1688-2000. I would have to say it's one of the most interesting books I've read in a long time. The book deals with how British domestic and overseas policies were shaped by the financial imperatives of the economic system that developed in and out of London during the period in ( Read more... )

Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947 is a brilliant book. It's a really nuanced and comprehensive account of the rise of the Kingdom of Prussia from the Mark Brandenberg to the dominant player in the German Reich. Like most English speaking people of my generation (who know anything at all about German history) I was brought ( Read more... )

Norman Naimark - "The Russians in Germany A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949", Cambridge, Mass 1995This a hefty read; almost five hundred pages plus apparatus. It's a good reminder too that history is not inevitable. Few events seem more inevitable in hindsight than the division of Germany or the collapse of Soviet communism ( Read more... )