|summary='How should we live?' asks author Roman Krznaric. To answer this ancient question, he looks to history. 'I believe that the future of the art of living can be found by gazing into the past', he says. Creating a book which is as full of curiosities as a Renaissance 'Wunderkammer', he has a stab at the big questions: love, belief, money, family, death. The result is a pot-pourri of delights which left this particular reader stimulated and invigorated.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846683939</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=James Palmer
|title=The Death of Mao: The Tangshan Earthquake and the Birth of the New China
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=Welcome to China, where the populous are busy leaving a rural country full of prosperous mineral resources and coal mines, and shoddily-built hydro-electric dams in environmentally dubious locations, for the burgeoning, mechanised cities. But this isn't the birth of 2012, it's the dawn of 1976. Chairman Mao is dying, Premier Zhou Enlai has just died, and the cauldron of power is being stirred as never before. Among the momentous events of the year however will be a huge earthquake directly centred on the city of Tangshan, which will kill something like two thirds of a million people.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571243991</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Phillip Thomas Tucker
|title=Exodus From the Alamo
|rating=3.5
|genre=History
|summary=Remember the Alamo!
The war-cry of generations of Americans is based upon the idea of the hugely outnumbered defenders of the Texan mission against the marauding Mexicans standing in defence of an ideal until death.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1612000762</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Louise Foxcroft
|title=Calories and Corsets: A history of dieting over two thousand years
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=We’re in that post-Christmas period when all the socialising and indulging is over and all you’re left with is a pasty, bloated, over-fed but under-nourished complexion, a wardrobe full of clothes just a little too tight and a new year’s resolution to Get Healthy. So it’s the perfect time for a new diet book to hit the shelves. The title of this one might make you think it’s going to be full of useful tips, and the cover does little to dispel this idea, groaning as it is with the weight of plump jellies, lavish cupcakes and even a decadent lobster or two, but take a moment to note the subtitle, if you will: '''a history of dieting over 2000 years'''.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684250</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Kenneth D Alford and Theodore P Savas
|title=Nazi Millionaires: The Allied Search for Hidden SS Gold
|rating=3.5
|genre=History
|summary=We are all doubtless aware of the six million or so dead at the hands of the Nazis, both through death camps and death squads. We are all probably conscious that before they were taken to the forests to be shot, or to the train station, never to be seen again, the Jewish and other communities captured in the Holocaust were ransacked for everything they had. It started early, of course, with the denial of rights for Jewish people to own businesses, then houses, paintings, other valuables, cash - and in the end their own gold dental fillings. The story of what happened to everything is as complex as retelling the ends of six million people, but this book opens up several windows on to those stories, through the more notable examples.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1935149350</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sarah Bradford
|title=Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life in Our Times
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=As a biographer who has previously written substantial biographies of the Queen (published in 1996), of her father George VI, and her daughter-in-law Diana, Sarah Bradford needs little introduction. At around 260 pages of text, this is barely half the length of her other titles, and probably aimed more at the general reader with an eye on the Diamond Jubilee market.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>067091911X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Denise Kiernan
|title=Signing Their Rights Away
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=
Many Americans believe that the Declaration of Independence is the cornerstone of the American democracy, the fountain-head of the American Way of Life and the American Dream. The 4th of July is the national holiday and often thought to be the single most important date in American history.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>159474520X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Toby Lester
|title=Da Vinci's Ghost: The untold story of Vitruvian Man
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=
As the number of popular non-fiction titles grows, the authors on the hunt for new-book material often use a ''concept'' approach, trying to come up with an USP for a new title. This uniqueness is often achieved by adopting an obscure subject, or an unusual perspective from which to view a popular theme.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684544</amazonuk>
}}
{{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
|title=Shadow of the Titanic
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=Lesson one in writing non-fiction articles and journalism seems to be to find out what is topical. April 2012 is the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic, and there are going to be hoards of people finding it topical to celebrate that. Lesson two seems to be to find your own unique angle on the story. Wilson approaches the Titanic disaster by sinking her at the end of chapter one, for he looks more at the lives of the people on board, and how they took the calamity and dealt with it.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847377300</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Peter Englund
|title=The Beauty and the Sorrow: An intimate history of the first world war
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=In simple terms the First World War, like most (if not all) conflicts has come down to us largely as a four-year sequence of events, an acknowledgement of defeat by one side, and a peace agreement. Yet there are many different ways of telling its history, and as Englund tells us in his preface, this is not a book about what it '''was''', but about what it was '''like'''. Though a series of snapshots in words, he shows us various stages of the conflict and its effect on people. His emphasis is not so much events and processes, but more the feelings, impressions, experiences and moods of individuals caught up in the period.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846683424</amazonuk>
}}
