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[[Category:History|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|History]] __NOTOC__ <!-- Remove -->
{{newreview
|title=Money: The Unauthorised Biography
|author=Felix Martin
|rating=4
|genre=Business and Finance
|summary=Occasionally books are not exactly what they seem. When I picked this up, read the blurb and began the contents inside, I was expecting a kind of biography or history of money through the ages. The opening chapter, a brief sketch of the economy of the Pacific island of Yap and how it worked, seemed to confirm this. It tells us how in the late nineteenth century Yap, east of the Philippine Islands, had an unwieldy coinage consisting of stone wheels around 12ft in diameter, called fei. The population did not carry these around, let alone own them like we possess pounds and pence, as they were part of a sophisticated system of credit management.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099578522</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|title=How Britain Kept Calm and Carried On: Real-life stories from the Home Front
|summary=''The Explorer Gene'' relates the remarkable story of three generations of the Piccard family, each of whom managed to push the boundaries of travel and break new frontiers. The grandfather, Auguste Piccard was the first human to enter the stratosphere, using en experimental balloon of his own invention. His later work, designing submarines, enabled his son Jacques to become the first person to descend to the bottom of the infamous Mariana trench, setting a world record for the deepest dive. Grandson Bertrand became the first person to fly around the world in a balloon and now seeks to break new records by means of a solar-powered craft that he intends to pilot all the way around the earth.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780720890</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Ruth Goodman, Peter Ginn and Tom Pinfold
|title=Tudor Monastery Farm: Life in rural England 500 years ago
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=Think of it as time travel. Three professional historians have travelled back some five hundred years to put what they've learned into practice. On a monastery farm they've experienced what it was really like in rural Tudor England. It's a book to accompany the BBC television series but it's still a rich and rewarding experience if - like me - you missed the show. There's a wealth of experience between the three authors and they write about what they each know best and it's all supplemented by some sumptuous photographs of Bayleaf Farm in west Sussex and the surrounding farmland.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849906920</amazonuk>
}}