==History==
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{{newreview
|author=Neil Monnery
|title=Safe As Houses? A Historical Analysis of Property Prices
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=Neil Monnery was asked to become a trustee of a local charity with most of its assets in local residential property. Over the years this had yielded good results and the charity was concerned as to whether or not they should continue on the same basis or diversify and Monnery said that he would look into this. That discussion was the genesis for this book as he began to research the history of house prices – in the UK and elsewhere – for as far back as he could go to establish whether or not house were, well, as safe as houses.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907994017</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Andrew Wilson
|summary=I'm no military historian; I'm not really interested in war. In the Second World War, if push came to shove, I would probably have claimed pacificism. But when this paperback version of the recently published hardback came up, by prolific and highly-esteemed historian Frank McLynn, I just had to read it. The subject is very special in our family, because “Grandad was there”. Grandad fought over the tennis court at Kohima, and he has carried the trauma in his head to this day. Frank McLynn describes that particular battle as “... a scene from Hieronymus Bosch out of Passchendaele”. I knew I had to steel myself to read this book, and was very pleased that the author wrote sensitively about the reality of close combat for lily livers like mine.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099551780</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Nathaniel Philbrick
|title=The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull and the Battle of the Little Big Horn
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=I have to admit that I was rather underinformed about Custer before reading this book; I knew that he was killed at the Battle of Little Big Horn and that opinion seemed to be split on whether he was an arrogant and over-confident commander or a dashing and brilliant one. From reading this admirably even-handed account, not just of his famous Last Stand but also of the events leading up to it, I found out a huge amount about him and the other personalities involved in his defeat.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099521245</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Robert Knapp
|title=Invisible Romans: Prostitutes, Outlaws, Slaves, Gladiators, Ordinary Men and Women … the Romans that History Forgot
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=This academic title by Robert Knapp, Professor Emeritus at the University of California, will be welcomed by serious students of the Roman Empire. It goes without saying that this research provides a valuable supplement to the existing academic literature. From the meticulous attention to detail, I suspect that amassing the material was a labour of love over a lifetime of analysing more prominent Roman citizens. Clues have been inferred from classical literature, culled from epitaphs and deduced from archaeological finds (particularly Pompeii), since hardly any evidence of ordinary folks' lives has otherwise survived.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684013</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Kevin Mitchell
|title=Jacobs Beach: The Mob, the Garden, and the Golden Age of Boxing
|rating=5
|genre=Sport
|summary=Despite not being a particular fan of the sport of boxing, Kevin Mitchell's compelling knowledge of the personalities involved in the fight game in the 20th century, coupled with a staccato writing style which got my attention quickly and kept it to the very last page, meant this book actually rose far above my expectations.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224075098</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=John Dickie
|title=Blood Brotherhoods: The Rise of the Italian Mafias
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=There can be few people who are unaware of the 'mafia' particularly as the word is used as a catch-all to cover the Italian criminal fraternity – and by extension the off-shoots which have spread throughout the world – but the south of Italy has three major mafias. Sicily is the birthplace of and home to Cosa Nostra, whilst Naples and its hinterland hosts the camorra. In Calabria, possibly the poorest region of Italy, you'll find the 'ndrangheta. There are plenty of myths and legends about the birth of the criminal organisations, but Professor John Dickie has looked at their early history from 1851 through to the liberation of Italy at the end of the Second World War. He looks at their rituals and their methods and much of what you will read has been a secret until now.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340963921</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Alex Kershaw
|title=To Save a People
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat of Jewish ancestry, was without doubt one of the heroes of the Second World War. This book, by one of the war's foremost modern historians, tells the story of his humanitarian work which began with his posting to Budapest in July 1944.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099539136</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Andrew Wheen
|title=Dot-Dash To Dot.Com
|rating=4
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=You know exactly what you're getting when you read the summary of Andrew Wheen's ''Dot-Dash To Dot.Com''. ''How Modern Telecommunications Evolved from the Telegraph to the Internet'' sums it up perfectly. This is a history of technology and the people involved in creating that technology. It serves as a primer for anyone with an interest or need to know about telecommunications.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441967591</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Nigel Hamilton
|title=American Caesars: Lives of the US Presidents, from Franklin D Roosevelt to George W Bush
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=The Premise is simple: take twelve men (and unfortunately they are all men, but that's not the author's fault) who have achieved high office and look at each of them. Firstly, take a look at the road to the high office, then how they performed once they reached their goal and finally a look at their private life. Suetonius did it first when he wrote ''The Twelve Caesars'' and now Nigel Hamilton has taken the same journey with ''American Caesars'', a remarkably in-depth look at twelve consecutive American presidents from the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, starting with Franklin D Roosevelt and finishing with George W Bush.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099520419</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ciaran O Murchadha
|title=The Great Famine: Ireland's Agony 1845-1852
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=In August 1845, reports began to circulate of the destruction of growing potatoes in the south of England, killed by a mysterious and so far unknown plant disease. As yet, the scientific aspects of what was given the name of 'blight' were not fully recognised, let alone understood. At the end of the month, small instances of failure in the potato crop in Ireland were reported, but there seemed to be no cause for alarm until the main crop was dug out in October. Only then did it become apparent that an 'awful plague' had appeared in several areas, with decomposing vegetables producing a strong, foul stench that assailed the nostrils of cultivators and passers-by alike.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847252176</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Richard Holmes
|title=Churchill's Bunker: The Secret Headquarters at the Heart of Britain's Victory
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=Nowadays, when there is a security threat it seems to be mandatory to whisk the leader and other important personages off to a secret location deep inside a mountain or in a distant forest, but Churchill fought his war – our war – from a series of basement rooms right in the heart of London and within sight of Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament. The Cabinet War Rooms didn't have their own air supply, were infested with vermin and lacked proper toilet facilities, but they were Churchill's choice. He spent a few nights down in the CWR but usually lived in the No 10 Annex upstairs – throughout the worst of the bombing.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846682312</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|title=Russia: A 1,000-Year Chronicle of the Wild East
|author=Martin Sixsmith
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=As a former BBC correspondent in Moscow at the time that the Cold War was ending, Sixsmith is in a unique position to write a history of Russia, based partly on research and partly on his own experiences, after having witnessed at first hand some of the upheavals in recent years which play such an important part in the story.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849900728</amazonuk>
}}
