I read this book from beginning to end, and I have almost nothing to say about it, except that French history after Napoleon is pretty boring.
Category: History
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/10/18/twentieth-century-france-by-james-mcmillan/
Oct 18 2014
The Second World War by J.F.C. Fuller
This is a tactical and strategic analysis of World War II, a purely military history without much in the way of human dimension. It makes some interesting arguments. Fuller believes air power is wasteful, immoral, and ineffective at deciding military conflict, and that the best use of it is in cargo transport rather than aerial …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/10/18/the-second-world-war-by-j-f-c-fuller/
Oct 12 2014
Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War by Max Hastings
This book only covers the first five months of World War I, but those five months were certainly horrendous enough to be worth remembering. The author does not buy into the the subsequent consensus that the war was pointless and not worth the cost; perhaps it never should have been fought, but in his view …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/10/12/catastrophe-1914-europe-goes-to-war-by-max-hastings/
Oct 11 2014
The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt by Toby Wilkinson
This is probably the best book on ancient Egypt I have read so far. The author is clearly passionate about Egyptian civilization, but he acknowledges its dark side; for all its artistic and architectural achievements, it was a repressive autocracy that cannot have been pleasant for ordinary people to live under. The continuity of this …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/10/11/the-rise-and-fall-of-ancient-egypt-by-toby-wilkinson/
Oct 07 2014
The Unquiet Ghost by Adam Hochschild
The Unquiet Ghost is both a terrific historical and journalistic investigation and a historical document itself, as the author acknowledges in a preface written in 2002, some eight years after the book’s first publication. More than eight more years have passed, and the conditions that made the book both possible and urgent slip ever further …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/10/07/the-unquiet-ghost-by-adam-hochschild/
Oct 06 2014
Paladin Of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold
After reading The Curse Of Chalion to prep myself for this book, that had come highly recommended to me by various sources, I made the mistake of reading the Wiki page and discovering that the Chalion saga is based very much on the historical House of Trastamara, the royal family that wound up uniting Spain …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/10/06/paladin-of-souls-by-lois-mcmaster-bujold/
Oct 03 2014
St Joan Of Arc by V Sackville-West
What student of English literature hasn’t felt the slightest prurient interest in the personal lives of the Bloomsbury group? My fascination with Vita Sackville-West stems, of course, from her role as muse to Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, but I found her own novel, All Passion Spent, to be tedious rather than reflective. But here in this …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/10/03/st-joan-of-arc-by-v-sackville-west/
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/10/03/just-send-me-word-by-orlando-figes/
Oct 02 2014
The Origins of the Second World War by A.J.P. Taylor
The author has done his homework. He marshals volumes of diplomatic correspondence and documentation in support of his argument. But what he ends up with is clearly a reductio ad absurdum. As Tony Judt has pointed out, the conclusion that Hitler was not the primary agent responsible for starting World War II simply defies common …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/10/02/the-origins-of-the-second-world-war-by-a-j-p-taylor/
Sep 27 2014
The War with Hannibal by Livy
Livy is too patriotic to be completely trusted as a historian, but even he cannot help but convey a grudging admiration for the towering figure of Hannibal. He has nothing good to say about Carthage in general, and he works in some malicious gossip about Hannibal that is probably nothing more than just that, but …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/09/27/the-war-with-hannibal-by-livy/
Al Singh
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Professor X
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The Shire