==History==
__NOTOC__
{{newreview
|author=Timothy Snyder
|title=Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=The first chapter is enough. I don't mean the preface, or introduction, that mean you start reading chapter one about an hour in, but chapter one itself, detailing as it does the way Stalin blatantly enforced collectivization on Ukraine's farms, thus killing off millions of local civilians. The seed stock ended up being taken away as part of the grain quota to feed the rest of the Soviet Union, and hardly anybody failed to go without at some point as a result. The first chapter here, then, is more than enough in telling us what we didn't know, explaining perfectly lucidly yet academically how and why what happened happened, and at times of quite gruesome anecdote and contemporary reportage, churning our stomachs and making us have second thoughts about reading on.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099551799</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jeremy Paxman
|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>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ben Shephard
|title=The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War Europe was in tatters, and millions of its citizens were stranded far from home. How to cope with these Displaced Persons was one of the biggest issues of the immediate post-war period. In 'The Long Road Home' Ben Shephard tells their story.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0712600590</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Karen Blixen
|title=Out Of Africa
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=It's more than a quarter of a century since I first saw the film ''Out of Africa'' and it's one of the few that have stayed with me over the intervening years. It wasn't just the story, but the personality of Karen Blixen and the wonderful landscape of the Ngong Hills, south of Nairobi, in Kenya's Rift Valley. I remember looking for this book at the time, but being unable to find it, so the opportunity to read it now was too good to miss.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241951437</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Paul Addison and Jeremy A Crang
|title=Listening to Britain: Home Intelligence Reports on Britain's Finest Hour, May-September 1940
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=The Home Intelligence Department had been set up by the government to assess home morale by studying immediate reactions to specific events and to find out public opinion on important issues, including pacifism. One reason for this was 'to provide a basis for publicity', that is, to plan propaganda and test its effectiveness. The reports drew on various sources, including Mass Observation, a market research style Wartime Social Survey, staff listening to conversations on the way to work, and visiting pubs and other places where lots of people went and talked to each other.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548747</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Betty Lussier
|title=Intrepid Woman: Betty Lussier's Secret War, 1942-1945
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Betty Lussier was born in Alberta, Canada. At the height of the depression her father bought a Maryland farm at a bank foreclosure sale, they crossed the border to the States and settled down to the hard life of raising dairy cattle and the crops needed to feed them.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1591144493</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Martin Pugh
|title=Speak for Britain!: A New History of the Labour Party
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=Since the Labour Representation Committee came into existence in February 1900, the party in Britain which it spawned has had a chequered and often contrary existence. Ironically, as Pugh demonstrates, while it may have been formed to represent the workers, it never became a fully working class party. James Keir Hardie may have been a genuine socialist, but some of the senior figures who followed were recruited from middle and upper-class Conservative backgrounds.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099520788</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Benjamin Mandelkern
|title=Escape from the Nazis: The Incredible and Inspiring Saga of Two Young Jews on the Run in World War II Poland
|rating=3.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Do we all have it in us? Would you as a Pole in 1940s Poland, who like as not had been 'educated' in the horrendous evil of Jews by your church - would you ignore Nazi death threats and countless opportunities for the wrong thing to be said, for the truth to be let out, for betrayal - would you help a Jewish life survive?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1550280554</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Bernard Porter
|title=The Battle of the Styles: Society, Culture and the Design of a new Foreign Office, 1855 - 61
|rating=3.5
|genre=History
|summary=Back in the 1850s it was mooted that Whitehall required some new public buildings, primarily in the form of a new Foreign Office. Such matters are never quite so simple as deciding on the need and arranging the construction and completion: there was to be debate, occasionally about the need for a new building but primarily about the form it should take and the style in which it should be built. This proved to be acrimonious and devious and came to be known as 'The Battle of the Styles'.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441167390</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Richard Lucas
|title=Axis Sally: The American Voice of Nazi Germany
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=Take one personable failed actress, embittered by lack of success at home in the USA, and conspire to land her living in Germany as WW2 breaks out. What chance her becoming an American, female Lord Haw-Haw, being paid by Germany to broadcast entertaining, dissuasive propaganda worldwide on shortwave radio? Anybody could guess it would take innumerable factors, circumstances and events, and they're all here in this entertaining, eye-opening and educational biography.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1935149431</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Nick Bunker
|title=Making Haste from Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World: A New History
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=Using hundreds of previously overlooked documents, British historian Nick Bunker tells the story of the Pilgrim Fathers, starting from the religious climate in England which led to them leaving the country, and continuing through to show how they settled in America, trading beaver skins to let them settle in New England.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951182</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Alison Weir, Kate Williams, Sarah Gristwood and Tracy Borman
|title=The Ring and the Crown: A History of Royal Weddings 1066-2011
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=The Ring and the Crown is a look at almost a thousand years of royal weddings, at how they've changed and how, in many ways, they've remained the same. Generally the weddings are of kings, queens or heirs to the throne but sometimes there's a glimpse of how the minor royals have managed their nuptials. The book is lavishly illustrated and is probably as un-put-downable as anything which is basically a history book.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091943779</amazonuk>
}}
