==History==
__NOTOC__
{{newreview
|author=John Grimson
|title=The Isle of Man: Portrait of a Nation
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=To many of us, the Isle of Man is probably best known for the Tynwald, the annual TT motorcycle races, and as a holiday resort. I must admit that my knowledge of it extended little further than that, and therefore found this book invaluable. In these 550 pages, profusely illustrated with photographs and maps, I imagine that few if any questions on the subject are left unanswered. John Grimson has lived there for nearly forty years, and as well as working with several of the island's local authorities, was active as a long-distance runner and cyclist until his early seventies.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0709081030</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Thomas Asbridge
|summary=I am interested in social history and, as a mother, the job of midwives fascinates me. Combining these two subjects, ''Farewell to the East End'' is a riveting read. The author Jennifer Worth was a midwife and nurse, working with the nuns at Nonnatus House in the East End of London and this volume (her third book on this topic) covers the 1950s.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297844652</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Kate Williams
|title=Becoming Queen
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=It's a story which has been told by many authors during the last century. The Victorian age, or at any rate the woman who gave her name to the era, came about largely if not wholly because of a crisis of sorts among King George III's family. By the time his seven surviving sons reached middle age, they had managed to produce one legitimate child between them, namely Princess Charlotte. Her unexpected death, and the need for at least some if not all of the others to do their dynastic duty and produce an heir or two, resulted in an undignified mass scramble to the altar. Edward, Duke of Kent won the lottery. It was he and his wife, a widow with two small children by her first marriage, whose daughter Victoria became the saviour of the royal succession.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099451824</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Martyn Downer
|title=The Queen's Knight
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=The title sounds more indicative of a novel by [[:Category:Dorothy Dunnett|Dorothy Dunnett]] or Jean Plaidy than a biography. Then a brief prologue starts the story at the very end, when Queen Victoria receives the unexpected news of the death of Sir Howard Elphinstone. An equally short first chapter gives us a glimpse of the man some thirty years earlier in the thick of battle at the Crimea. Only after that do we 'reach' his birth in 1829. Sometimes rules are meant to be broken, and it's a good way of introducing this very interesting life. As the husband of his subject's great-great-granddaughter, the author is well qualified to write it.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>055215508X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ruth Maier, Jamie Bulloch (Translator) and Jan Erik Vold (Editor)
|title=Ruth Maier's Diary: A Young Girl's Life Under Nazism
|rating=3.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=I was looking forward to reading Ruth Maier's Diary as I am interested in the history surrounding World War Two and its victims and survivors. I am especially fascinated by social history and how the lives of ordinary people were affected by events beyond therir control.
Ruth was born in 1920 and died on arrival in Auschwitz in 1942, aged only twenty-two. She was born in Austria and lived there with her parents and sister, Judith. But in 1939, life there was becoming much harder for Jews, so Judith was sent to England and Ruth to Norway, where she lived with the Strom family in Lillestrom.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846552141</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Katherine Ashenburg
|title=Clean: An Unsanitised History of Washing
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=Although maybe not the first book you'd be drawn to – a history of personal hygiene perhaps doesn't seem that appealing – but if you had overlooked this excellent book, you would have missed out on an enjoyable and informative book, full of fascinating facts and a jolly good read.
Attitudes towards and rituals of cleanliness have certainly changed over the last two thousand years and this book chronicles many of them, largely in Europe and the US. Cultural differences with regard to cleanliness and body odour (and yes, Napoleon and Josephine do get a mention here, although it transpires that they both took daily baths) are discussed at length, from the Greeks and Romans to the present day.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846681014</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jean Hatzfeld
|title=The Strategy Of Antelopes: Rwanda After the Genocide
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=''Life offers me smiles, and I owe it my gratitude for not having abandoned me in the marshes.''
''I've known the defilement of a bestial existence.''
''Who's going to say that word, forgiveness? It's outside of human nature.''
So say some of the survivors of the Rwandan genocide of 1994, when 800,000 Tutsis were murdered by their fellow Hutu citizens. Jean Hatzfeld talked to both Tutsis and Hutus then, publishing two award-winning books. In The Strategy of Antelopes, he returns to Rwanda to talk to the same people and explore life after genocide.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846686865</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Iain McCalman
|title=Darwin's Armada: Four Voyagers to the Southern Oceans and Their Battle for the Theory of Evolution
|rating=3.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=A look at Darwin's journey on The Beagle, as well as journeys by Joseph Hooker, Thomas Huxley and Alfred Wallace. Darwin's Armada provides a broad overview that strikes a different tone to other books in a crowded market. Casual readers who usually steer clear of non-fiction will enjoy it.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184737266X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Thomas Robisheaux
|title=The Last Witch of Langenburg: Murder in a German Village
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=In rural Germany, a long long time ago… A woman passes through the village, handing out good cheer and cakes. One family dismiss the food, and even their dog is seen to avoid it. She visits a second family, and urges Anna, a young new mother, still convalescing as is the norm, to try one of the cakes. Anna does. But the friends by her bedside seem to think this might not be a good idea. They may be correct, as before the night is out she is dead.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393065510</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Doris Kearns Goodwin
|title=Team of Rivals
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=This hefty tome, the cover tells us, is 'the book that inspired Barack Obama'. For what it's worth, Obama's name appears no less than nine times on the cover and spine, while Lincoln's appears only six, and that of the author a mere two.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141043725</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=James J O'Donnell
|title=The Ruin of the Roman Empire
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=''The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'' is the traditional starting point for those studying the demise of Rome. Gibbon's masterwork suggests that the great empire collapsed in large part due to violent invasions from barbarians such as the Visigoths, Vandals and other non-Romans. In ''The Ruin of the Roman Empire'' classical scholar James J. O'Donnell, in line with much modern revisionist thinking, turns this argument on it head. Rather than being a destructive influence, the barbarian kings within the empire tried to retain the good things about Roman rule. The real blame for the fall of Rome can in fact be attributed to Emperor Justinian.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1861979355</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Patrick Wright
|title=A Journey Through Ruins: The Last Days of London
|rating=4
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=My good mood evaporated when Sue, my Bookbag partner, asked me if I'd read and review A Journey Through Ruins. She was right to ask because Thatcher's Britain is certainly an area of interest to me. The thing is, times are depressing enough. Margaret Hilda's neo-liberal legacy is crashing around us. Jobless queues are lengthening. Roofs are disappearing from over people's heads. The rampant cronyism and venal nature of our economic and political elites are slowly exposing themselves in ways likely to send my blood pressure soaring.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0199541949</amazonuk>
}}