Category Archives: history

The Age of Voltaire

Posted on September 30, 2014 by smellincoffee

The Age of Voltaire: A History of Civilization in Western Europe from 1715 to 1756898 pages© 1965 Will and Ariel Durant             The ninth work in Will Durant’s sweeping Story of Civilization, The Age of Voltaire picks up … Continue reading →

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An Honourable Defeat

Posted on September 23, 2014 by smellincoffee

An Honorable Defeat: A Hiastory of German Resistance to Hitler© 1994 Anton Gill293 pages          No civilized nation on Earth is as haunted as its history as Germany. For twelve years, one of the worst governments conceivable … Continue reading →

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Collision of Empires

Posted on September 20, 2014 by smellincoffee

Collision of Empires488 pages© 2014 Prit Buttar                   A quirk of the Great War is that its initial contestants usually cease to be subjects of interest to the historical imagination once Europe’s titans … Continue reading →

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Tobacco

Posted on September 13, 2014 by smellincoffee

Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization416 pages© 2003 Iain Gateley The age of discovery opened an era of global domination by European culture and power, but in at least one instance, the new world had its … Continue reading →

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Living Downtown

Posted on September 11, 2014 by smellincoffee

Living Downtown: The History of Residential Hotels in the United States © 1994 Paul Groth 399 pages Although today hotels are thought of as places for travelers, at its most basic level a hotel is simply a rented room; an … Continue reading →

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The Age of Steam

Posted on August 22, 2014 by smellincoffee

A Brief History of the Age of Steam© 2007 Thomas Crump288 pages For most of human history, transportation over land has been prohibitively expensive, limited to highly lucrative goods like silk. Trade grew from the rivers, as did civilization. But … Continue reading →

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Drink

Posted on August 16, 2014 by smellincoffee

Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol© 2008 Ian Gately546 pages “We should thank God for beer and burgundy by not drinking too much of them.”  – G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy A substance that a third of the world institutionalizes as a … Continue reading →

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The Men Who Lost America

Posted on August 7, 2014 by smellincoffee

The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of an Empire© Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy480 pages The Men Who Lost America is a rare history of the American Revolution, one which follows not the revolutionaries, but their … Continue reading →

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Fighting Traffic

Posted on July 22, 2014 by smellincoffee

Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City© 2008 Peter Norton396 pages Stroll into the middle of any American city today, and provided you are not in Detroit, odds are better than not you will be … Continue reading →

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Daily Life in Early America

Posted on July 13, 2014 by smellincoffee

Daily Life in Early America193 pages© 1988 David Freeman Hawke             Daily Life in Early America examines up-close the new world European colonists were discovering and recreating for themselves.  A social history, focused on daily life, the author begins first … Continue reading →

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