==History==
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{{newreview
|author=John Keegan
|title=The American Civil War
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=While before reading this book I considered myself to be vaguely familiar with the major facts about the American Civil War – the fight to liberate the slaves, the well-known battles, and the towering figures such as Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S Grant, and Robert E Lee – I was keen to learn more about the war and get an in-depth view of it from a renowned historian. After finishing the book, I certainly consider myself to be far better informed on the military, and tactical, side of things, but found it a little lacking in certain other areas such as the causes and effects.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0712616101</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=David Howarth
|summary=At school I remember spending a lot of time on the Tudors and the early Stuarts – obviously great favourites of the history teacher and then galloping unceremoniously through the intervening years until we reached another ''meaningful'' period – the Victorian era. The importance of William and Mary was completely overlooked in favour of a quick mention of the fact that William wasn't in direct line of succession to the throne and Mary had never wanted to marry him in the first place. Their successor, Queen Anne I remember simply as 'tables'.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>075094577X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=James Delgado
|title=Kamikaze: History's Greatest Naval Disaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=When Mongol leader, Khubilai Khan, achieved what his Grandfather Genghis had failed to do in conquering China, he inherited the world's largest and most sophisticated navy. However, in attempting to utilise this to expand his empire further to Java, Vietnam and mainly Japan, he lost the entire armada in a few short years. New marine archeological evidence from Japan, ironically with the site discovered in the 1990s in the construction of new defences from the weather, has raised questions on the traditional view that the defeat of the two Japanese invasion forces of 1274 and particlularly 1281 were solely due to the intervention of the weather and what Japanese culture claim was a Kamikaze (or ''divine wind'') summoned by the Gods.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099532581</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=David Baldwin
|title=The Kingmaker's Sisters: Six Powerful Women in the Wars of the Roses
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=Due to the small amount of surviving personal sources, any book which purports to be a biography of a 15-century subject is almost inevitably going to be more a 'life and times' than a life. In the case of women who were sisters but not sovereigns or consorts themselves, the lack of data will be even more acute.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0750950765</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Paul Strathern
|title=The Artist, The Philosopher and The Warrior
|rating=3.5
|genre=History
|summary=The interaction between three very different, not to say contrasting, personalities of the Renaissance period sets the scene for what promises to be an intriguing title. In 1502 the paths of Cesare Borgia, notorious son of the equally infamous Pope Alexander VI, Niccolò Machiavelli, the intellectual and diplomat, and Leonardo da Vinci, at the time best known as a military engineer though remembered today primarily as a great artist, were destined to cross.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951212</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Timothy W Ryback
|title=Hitler's Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=As the fictional schoolboy hero Nigel Molesworth might have said, 'any fule kno' that Adolf Hitler was notorious for burning books. Nevertheless he was also an avid collector and passionate reader, as around 1200 surviving volumes once in his possession now in the Rare Book Division of the Library of Congress, and a smaller quantity in Brown University, Rhode Island, demonstrate. Among them were world literature classics, such as 'Robinson Crusoe', 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', and 'Gulliver's Travels'. He also owned an edition of the collected works of Shakespeare, in hand-tooled Moroccan leather with a gold-embossed eagle flanked by his initials on the spine. The Bard, he once said, was greatly superior to Goethe and Schiller.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099532174</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Druin Burch
|title=Taking the Medicine
|rating=5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=In 1898, Burch points out that a new drug was developed and marketed for the treatment of tuberculosis by Bayer & Co. TB is such an ancient enemy of man that there is apparently evidence of an earlier strain to be found in Egyptian mummies. The German firm had discovered a chemical that seemed to work well, and patients and indeed their own staff, who were tested seemed to respond well - it was named Heroin - and its addictive effects were at first missed.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951506</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sian Rees
|title=Sweet Water and Bitter: The Ships That Stopped the Slave Trade
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=The Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was passed in Britain in March 1807, and the last legal British slave ship left Africa seven months later. Other countries were slow to follow suit. Everyone in Britain knew there would be resistance, and when the abolitionist Granville Sharpe purchased land in Sierra Leone to 'repatriate' freed slaves, Ottobah Cugoana, a former slave living in London, asked if it was possible for 'a fountain to send forth both sweet water and bitter.' Could the slave trade, he wondered, be abolished from West Africa - when West Africa was its source?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951174</amazonuk>
}}
{{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
|title=The Crusades: The War for the Holy Land
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=The word 'Crusades' has been misappropriated and often used in various other contexts over the passing years. In their original meaning they were a series of holy wars during the medieval era between the Christian and Muslim world, fighting for dominion over the Holy Land between 1095 and 1291 as the defenders of western civilization formed expeditions travelling across the face of the known world from Europe, their sole aim being to conquer and defend an isolated swathe of territory centred on Jerusalem.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0743268601</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=John Van der Kiste
|title=Sons, Servants and Statesmen: The Men in Queen Victoria's Life
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Like the first Elizabeth more books than are strictly necessary have been written about Queen Victoria, but John Van der Kiste has taken the unusual step of using the men in her life to illuminate some dark corners which might other wise have remained unexplored. Of course the most famous man in her life, husband and Prince Consort Albert isn't 'son, servant or statesman' as promised by the title of the book, but he established a trend. Victoria, often regarded as a difficult woman to please, would always have a man in her life who would, to a greater or lesser extent, dominate her.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0750937882</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Andrew Marr
|title=The Making of Modern Britain: From Queen Victoria to V.E. Day
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=This book, and the BBC TV series which complements it, must confirm Andrew Marr's status as one of the most entertaining and compulsive historian-cum-presenters working today. His previous project, on postwar Britain, was hard to fault, and anyone who enjoyed that will certainly relish this.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230709427</amazonuk>
}}
