A History Of Christianity, Diarmid MacCulloch, 978-0-141-02189-8

Set aside some time to read this; at comfortably over a thousand pages, you’re unlikely polish it off in a weekend.

MacCulloch nominally starts his history in 1000BCE, though devotes just a few dozen pages to the Greek/Roman and Jewish background. The following 2000 years get ( Read more... )

We visited the Centre for Computing History in October. Although a bit haphazard in places there's a lot to look at and much of it was familiar.

naath playing Atic Atac. You run around a castle collecting keys (to get through doors) and the fragments of a quest object. I spent a lot of time playing this; I remember one of my brother and I finishing ( Read more... )

A Savage War of Peace, Alistair Horne, ISBN 978-1-447-23343-5

This is an account of the Algerian War of Independence.

It covers the background quickly: French colonization in the 19th century (an attempt to shore up the Bourbon monarchy, which did not really work), the establishment of the Pieds Noirs (i.e. European-origin colonists, not all French ( Read more... )

The Anatomy of a Moment, Javier Cercas, 978-1-4088-2210-4

Some time ago I read The Battle for Spain by Anthony Beevor, an account of the Spanish civil war leading to the triumph of Franco. I don’t think I wrote a review but I did post a choice quote.The eventual sequel to that conflict was the Spanish transition to democracy after Franco’s death. I ( Read more... )

Muhammad: A Biography Of The Prophet, Karen Armstrong, 1-84212-608-3

This is a sympathetic biography of the Prophet Muhammad. While the (very broad) outlines of his life and achievements are familiar to me from a variety of works, I didn’t really have any of the detail, so there was much here that was new to me.

The book is specifically aimed at ( Read more... )

The Last Empire, Serhii Plokhy, 978-1-78074-529-9 ( Read more... )

(A bit sketchy in places but if I don’t post it now I suspect I never will...)
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Afgantsy: The Russians In Afghanistan 1979-89, Rodric Braithwaite

I didn’t really know much about the Soviet campaign in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and what I did know was, of course, very from much a Western viewpoint. Despite the British author this book presents a Soviet perspective.

There is a good chunk of narrative history here; if you want ( Read more... )

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Visigothic Spain, Roger Collins, ISBN 0-631-18185-7
( Review )