Tag Archives: history

This and that

Posted on December 5, 2019 by

Well, good news and bad news. The good news is…my book buying ban is OVER, so I have five books on the way.   A few are for next year, but I may try a couple beforehand: Rubbish: The Archaeology of … Continue reading →

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Conquerors

Posted on October 25, 2019 by

Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire © 2015 Roger Crowley 364 pages Roger Crowley’s Conquerors is a history that starts with hope and ends in horror, at least of the slasher-film kind. Suffice it to say, if you … Continue reading →

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American Rifle

Posted on October 18, 2019 by

American Rifle: A Biography © 2008 Alexander Rose 512 pages The quintessential American firearm is the rifle,   which through centuries of colonization and growth,  has served in both myth and fact.  I use myth not in the modern disparaging sense, … Continue reading →

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The Histories of Herodotus

Posted on October 10, 2019 by

One doesn’t study history for very long, at least in the West,  before running into Herodotus.  I’ve meant to read him for years,  given his reputation as one of the earliest, if not the earliest,  historian —  that is, someone … Continue reading →

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The Sea Wolves

Posted on October 1, 2019 by

© 2014 Lars Brownsworth 300 pages “Deliver us, Lord, from the hands of the Northmen!”    While that exact prayer may be apocryphal,  the sentiment certainly resounded in communities from Ireland to Cordoba to Constantinople.  In two of the final centuries … Continue reading →

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Of Romans, manly saints, and the beginning of the end

Posted on September 4, 2019 by

I spent much of August crawling through the first volume of Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  I was very careful, in making my list, that I specified “Volume I”: I  had little interest in trying … Continue reading →

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Shutting Out the Sun

Posted on August 29, 2019 by

Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation © 2006 Michael Zielenziger 352 pages Shutting Out the Sun introduces itself with what readers will assume is its subject: the plight of an increasing number of young people who, … Continue reading →

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