[[Category:History|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|History]] __NOTOC__ <!-- Remove -->
{{newreview
|author=Jan Bondeson
|title= Strange Victoriana: Tales of the Curious, the Weird and the Uncanny from Our Victorian Ancestors
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary= The Victorians, not surprisingly, had their own tabloid press. The most successful title of this nature was the 'Illustrated Police News', a weekly journal first published in 1864 and lasting seventy-four years. Not to be confused with the more upmarket 'Illustrated London News', its main stock-in-trade was weird, far-fetched and not always entirely genuine stories from Victorian life, generally in Britain but sometimes in Europe as well. This book is based on a recently-discovered archive of the paper. Prepare to be amazed, enthralled, sometimes horrified – and occasionally disbelieving.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445658852</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author= Anna Bikont
|summary= Reading Edith Hall's book on the Ancient Greeks, develops a deep respect for the power of poetry. No poet was more effective in this regard than Homer recounting the sea adventures contained in the ''The Odyssey''. It shaped the self-definition of a nation and engendered self-confidence. The mariners set out in their beautiful ships across the Aegean and established colonies to the West, in the Mediterranean as far as the Pillars of Hercules, to the East as far as the Levant and built trading cities in natural harbours along the fertile edges of the Black Sea. They were, as Plato wrote in the Phaedo, ''around the sea, like frogs and ants around a pond.'' They were encouraged by Delphic oracles and inspired by the company of diving dolphins.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009958364X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Lyuba Vinogradova and Arch Tait (translator)
|title=Defending the Motherland: The Soviet Women Who Fought Hitler's Aces
|rating=2.5
|genre=History
|summary=If you picture a wartime fighter ace in your mind, chances are it will hold to a few certain characteristics. The chutzpah on the face of a Han Solo, a fluffy pilot's jacket perhaps, the swagger of a person who's faced and dealt death and come out the other side only stronger, someone who can carry off the look of pilot's goggles – and whatever your visual impression, pretty much certainly a male. But consider the Soviet war machine, facing the Nazis easily absorbing Ukrainian territories and closing on Moscow with surprising rapidity. This is a country where all jobs are gender neutral, and where young girls fresh out of school had been building the Moscow Underground stations. No wonder, then, that that place and that cause were the locations for the world's first, and apparently, only female air regiments.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857051954</amazonuk>
}}