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A Small Town Near Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust by Mary Fulbrook

Reviewed on October 19, 2012

Fulbrook is a historian of German history. And here we have a quite complicated tale of a personal journey into the Holocaust. The story then regards the German Udo Klausa. During the war Udo is assigned the role of administrator for the town of Bedzin (Various spellings exist) and it surrounding countryside. As the title [...]

Why The West Rules – For Now: The Patterns of History and what they reveal about the Future, by Ian Morris

Reviewed on October 17, 2012

This is billed on the cover blurb as “The nearest thing history has to a unified field theory” – this perfectly sums up this rather wonderful work. If you love science and you love history then really you should have read this. Morris’s task is to look at the big picture of human progress and [...]

Angels: A Very Short Introduction, by David Albert Jones

Reviewed on December 3, 2011

I love the short introduction series and here is a classic of the genre – one of the finest. In common with the idea we are taken on a well planned but rather breathless journey on the history and meaning of Angels, those otherworldly beings send as messengers or as cohorts of Gods. Obviously there [...]

Made in Britain, by Gavin James Bower

Reviewed on November 30, 2011

Made in Britain follows three young protagonists who are growing up fast in an unspecified Northern town in Britain. It is a short snapshot of their lives. The three characters are in that GCSE final year at the same school – they know each other and have wildly different feelings for each other. They are [...]

Mafia State, by Luke Harding

Reviewed on November 11, 2011

This is an angry, personal and quickly put together book. Harding is a guardian journalist and much of the book is a travelogue made up of articles clearly bound for the newspaper, but perhaps given more editorial control. This is the side of Russia that we are not supposed to know about but have always [...]

A Home of Their Own, by Garry Jenkins

Reviewed on October 11, 2011

A home of their own is in its own subtitle “the heart warming 150 year history of the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home”. It should be said that I approached this book with some cynicism and not a lot of glee – being a lean month for non-fiction in the Bookgeeks vaults. But I like [...]

The Beautiful and the Damned: Life in the New India, by Siddhartha Deb

Reviewed on August 30, 2011

This book, by the journalist Siddhartha Deb, aims to explore and explain the lives of a handful of workers from across the spectrum. The workers come from the richest to the lowest. Deb was inspired by an assignment given to him while at the Guardian – to become a call centre operator for one of [...]

The Kings Speech, by Mark Logue and Peter Conradi

Reviewed on July 12, 2011

It is normal to be wary of any book of the film, after being impressed with the film you have just seen. The Kings Speech is a universally acknowledged great film.

This, however is not a book of the film or even a book that the film was based on, though for very sensible marketing reasons they go together. Logue’s grandson wrote this book when the researchers of the film came looking for information and he realised that he had little pieces of a great story, plus a box of letters and photos. A great deal of the content that makes up this rather interesting biography surfaced long after the scripts were written and production started.

A second look at From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor, by Jerry Della Femina

Reviewed on June 30, 2011

For lovers of MadMen here is the inspiration.

This book is a memoir by one of the Mad Men gods. An unedited piece of 1970 history – language and all. I am not sure how much is fact and how much embellishment – Femina takes us through the tale and it seems not to matter.

The Story of England, by Michael Wood

Reviewed on June 25, 2011

The Story of England is an epic tale tracing one village through pre-history to the present day, presented by a power house of a historian. The choice of village is interesting – firstly the village of Kibworth is roughly at the centre of England in the midlands (Wood is keen to point out that this [...]

Atoms and Eden: Conversations on Religion and Science, by Steve Paulson

Reviewed on May 8, 2011

Atoms and Eden is a series of interviews with some of the top names in the science vs religion debate. And I warn you now that you will be surprised at who you find yourself agreeing with. Often with this format of book you find yourself tiring of the same questions and second guessing what [...]

Britain’s War Machine, by David Edgerton

Reviewed on April 29, 2011

Edgerton is a man on a mission. He has spent the last 20 years in academia trying to dispel some of the myths that have cropped up about the Second World War and grown over the last 60 years. The myth: That we Brits have fixated on the idea of a lone island who against [...]

A Short History of Celebrity, by Fred Inglis

Reviewed on April 6, 2011

History of Celebrity does what it says on the tin, starting from Byron and the growing class society of the 17th century and ending up, logically enough with today’s instant but throwaway reality TV starlets. As described by Inglis the phases and progression of the celebrity sphere are perfectly logical and ordered – the result [...]

New York – A Novel, by Edward Rutherfurd

Reviewed on March 28, 2011

So a different location but the same old Rutherfurd, working his magic and weaving together fictional dynasties from across centuries of history. That said, this is the magic of Rutherfurd. No one else can match his style and ability – New York is a big enough subject for him to pick and choose the best [...]

At Home: A short history of private life, by Bill Bryson

Reviewed on March 19, 2011

At Home is a fascinating study of one house – in particular Bill Bryson’s house. The book is laid out much like the house – a vicarage built in that busy year of the Great Exhibition. He takes us on a journey through all the rooms, tells us how they have evolved from the original [...]

The Secret Life of Houdini, by William Kalush and Larry Ratso Sloman

Reviewed on January 3, 2011

This is a rather interesting, densely packed history of Houdini the man, lovingly crafted from seemingly hundreds of biographies and reams of material. The quote on the front of the book is from David Blaine (the authors are part of his team ) and almost says it all: “Amazing… Meticulously researched, imaginatively written and passionately [...]

Physics of the Impossible, by Michio Kaku

Reviewed on December 26, 2010

Michio Kaku is a wonderful character and one of my science heroes. His latest book delves into the very edge of our knowledge and what might be in centuries time. Ordered into classes of impossibility, the list of subjects in Physics of the Impossible make clear Michio Kaku’s and for that matter my TV and [...]

Russia Against Napoleon: The Battle for Europe, 1807 to 1814, by Dominic Lievin

Reviewed on November 17, 2010

This weighty tome is an award winning account of Napolean’s conflict with Russia. It is an epic tale spanning four years of campaigning that led to Napoleon’s demise – made famous by Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Lievin cuts through the dominant view that the un-defeatable Napoleon was beaten by the Russian winter. Not so – Napoleon [...]

God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science, by James Hannam

Reviewed on October 5, 2010

James Hannam brings to us an interesting history of what we now call science from that forgotten period of time we call mediaeval. The rather dry title and subject matter becomes, while not exactly gripping, an entertaining journey through what could very easily be dry and dull. For Hannam is a mediaeval gossip of the [...]

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, by David Mitchell

Reviewed on October 1, 2010

Mr Cloud Atlas David Mitchell excels at the multi-linking, multi-perspective and multi-timeline book. He likes to play with narratives in a way that would scare any normal author – and you could say that sometimes the linkages between narratives are not always as successful as they could be. Plus he doesn’t like to make life [...]

Conspirator: Lenin in Exile by Helen Rappaport

Reviewed on July 4, 2010

This is the story of the years before Lenin became the demigod of the Russian revolution. It is a tale of relative poverty, of moving from European capital city to European city and of avoidance of the Russian authorities. Also it is the tale of a strange individual whose personal life, habits and needs were actually pretty unique. Conversely here was a man driven by ideals who by luck, judgement or fate went on to inspire a whole nation also to follow those ideals.

Dark Matter, by Juli Zeh

Reviewed on June 6, 2010

Here is a strange hybrid of a book – a dark novel which centres on the odd relationship between two physicists. One, Oskar, continues to work at CERN in Switzerland on high level investigations into dark matter. The other, Sebastian, has a wife, a kid and has opted out of the high level physics world. We [...]

The Millennium Trilogy, by Stieg Larsson

Reviewed on May 29, 2010

It’s a film, a franchise, a phenomenon. But I also think a great set of books that deserve a review: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2008), The Girl Who Played With Fire (2009), and The The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (2010). The great thing about the series is to learn how Larson [...]

Isolarion: A Different Oxford Journey, by James Attlee

Reviewed on February 19, 2010

This is the book that I wanted to write. Like those books that tackle one subject thoroughly, and thereby pull in all of history – the potato, the pencil, Cod – Attlee has described the street in which he lives – a down at heel main artery into the cloistered city centre of Oxford – [...]

The Secret Symbol: The Original Masonic Documents Behind Dan Brown’s New Bestseller, by Peter Blackstock

Reviewed on December 8, 2009

Here is an oddity of a book, the kind that we only really get when a Dan Brown book or film remake comes out – Brown’s unique mastery of drama fiction matched equally by “the real story”. It is hard to fault this book, in that it does what it says on the cover. But [...]

The American Future, by Simon Schama

Reviewed on December 4, 2009

This is a powerhouse of a book. The crux of the book is that to understand the future we must look to the past. What we get is a series of interlocking biographies and episodes that illustrate, perfectly, one of Schama’s viewpoints about the history of the American ethos. We drift and rush through time [...]

Madresfield: One house, one family, one thousand years, by Jane Mulvagh

Reviewed on September 29, 2009

Madresfield is a grand country house situated by the Malvern Hills in Worcestershire. I live nearby and every year what seems like the whole of Malvern go there for its open day (upposedly to admire the daffodils but in reality to have a good nose). However this book is not simply a local history book [...]

The Google Story, by David A. Vise

Reviewed on July 22, 2009

The history of Google is something all of us should be looking at closely – especially those of us who work in marketing and the Internet. It is clear that we have been caught in the Google web, and that one company has become so powerful that it has changed and is changing some hitherto [...]

Hitler’s Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe, by Mark Mozower

Reviewed on July 9, 2009

A scholarly book of epic proportions, Hitler’s Empire deals with a story told by others many times before – that of the destruction wrought by Hitler and his cohorts during the Second World War, and the way they dealt with the territories they invaded and occupied. This is no dull text book though – this [...]

I’m With The Brand, by Rob Walker

Reviewed on May 15, 2009

I’m With The Brand deals with the thorny issue of why we love our brands so much. Brands are, argues Rob Walker, the closest thing that many of us have to a religion. Even though we know that, for example Macs really are just as good as PCs and that brands like Nike are much [...]

The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, by Kate Summerscale

Reviewed on April 21, 2009

The Suspicions of Mr Whicher is the true and disturbing tale of a well off Victorian family and murder in their midst. The book is really about the reaction to the shocking and unexplained murder at Road Hill House – from the general public and press to the police force, these reaction speak volumes about the [...]

Austerity Britain: Smoke in the Valley (Tales of a New Jerusalem 2), by David Kynaston

Reviewed on April 14, 2009

Smoke in the Valley marks the second in David Kynaston’s New Jerusalem trilogy. A World to Build was the first of the books. They form a history of the British postwar years from 1945 – 1979. There are many reasons why we should consider these two books as one – and I suspect the next [...]

Atomic: The First War of Physics and the Secret History of the Atom Bomb, 1939-49, by Jim Baggott

Reviewed on April 9, 2009

Atomic is the tale of the creation of the Atomic bomb during wartime, and the political fallout from the realisation of these powerful weapons. Baggott bills this as a book for lay-people, not scientists. It is true that this book concentrates largely on the people behind the bomb – the scientists driven in the most [...]

This Is Not A Game, by Walter Jon Williams

Reviewed on March 24, 2009

This Is Not A Game – the novel… It is not often that a book subject is truly unique. This book is the first ever to be written about ARGs or Alternate Reality Games. Like Williams we need to describe exactly what ARGs are before we can get on with the book proper. Put simply [...]

The Untold History of the Potato, by John Reader

Reviewed on March 11, 2009

A fascinating example of world history as focused on one object, in the same genre as Cod and The Pencil. In fact after reading this book its hard not to relate the whole existence of the industrial revolution, western dominance – in short world history – to the humble potato. But this is the joy and the problem with this genre; in the end everything is seen through the ‘eyes’ of the potato. To be fair to Reader, he is always at pains to say that the potato is not the cause but one of many factors in such occasions.