- Follow Reading Freely on WordPress.com
Reading Now
-
Recent Posts
Categories
Blogroll
- Seeking a Little Truth
- The Social Porcupine
- Inspire Virtue
- Classics Considered
- With Freedom, Books, Flowers, and the Moon
- The Inquisitive Biologist
- Relevant Obscurity
- Trek Lit Reviews
- Stoic Meditations
- A Pilgrim in Narnia
- Gently Mad
- The Frugal Chariot
- Classical Carousel
- Lydia Schoch
- The Classics Club
- Fanda Classiclit
- Reading In Between the Life
- The Bilbiphibian
Archives
Meta
Tag Archives: history
Billy has Gone for a Soldier: the Life of Billy Yank
Shortly after Bell Irvin Wiley penned The Life of Johnny Reb, a social history of southern soldiery, he wondered: what about the other fellows? What brought them to the colors, pulled them away from lives of comfort to march thousands … Continue reading
Posted in history, Reviews
Tagged American Civil War, Bell Irwin Wiley, history, social history
3 Comments
For Cause and Comrade
The moment I saw this book at a university booksale I knew I wanted it, because in the second story of that same library I’d researched my senior seminar paper to earn my BA in history. For Cause and Comrades … Continue reading
Posted in history, Reviews
Tagged American Civil War, history, James McPherson, letters and diaries, military, primary sources
2 Comments
Springtime for Northheim
“Tomorrow Belongs to Me” is one of the more disturbing songs in the musical Cabaret, not because of the song itself, but because of what the viewer knows it portends. It begins simply, with one sweet voice singing at a … Continue reading
Posted in history, Reviews
Tagged 1920s, 1930s, Germany, history, Nazi, social history, William Sheridan Allen
3 Comments
Ten Strange Ways to Die In Colonial Alabama
I’d intended to post this list earlier in the week for the Top Ten Tuesday freebie, but couldn’t remember the name of the book I was using, Alabama Mortality Schedule (1850, Seventh Census of the United States). I stumbled on … Continue reading
From Raiders to Kings
I can still remember being scandalized in seventh grade when I opened the next chapter in our western civ text to discover we would be studying THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. England, conquered? At that age, for whatever reason, I had … Continue reading
In Distant Lands
When the Crusades are mentioned today, it is almost always in the context of weary self-flagellation by Westerners searching for some ersatz virtue in denouncing their own history. Forgotten are the Muslim assaults on the Eastern Empire, the conquest of … Continue reading
Posted in history, Reviews
Tagged Crusades, Eastern Rome/Byzantine, history, Medieval, Middle East, monastics
11 Comments
Dynasty
The names Caesar and Augustus have been known to me for as long as I can remember, from the Bible’s Christmas story to early world history texts with colorful illustrations of the Forum. Despite the long history of Rome, … Continue reading
The Day of Battle
Although I’ve been reading about World War 2 for most of my life at this point, beginning in middle school, the scope of my reading has never broached the Italian campaign. This is probably due to the huge role D-Day … Continue reading
The Storm of the Century
In 1900, a powerful hurricane swept Galveston Bay and destroyed a boomtown that in time may have become the New York of the Gulf. In ways, Al Roker’s Storm of the Century is rather similar to Isaac’s Storm, in that … Continue reading
SPQR
SPQR is an unusual history of Rome, one that largely ignores the imperial period to focus instead on ancient Rome — first, the early city-state, and then the expansive republic it grew into. It also ignores a general narrative, choosing … Continue reading
Reading Freely 