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While I’m waiting for a replacement copy of The Faithful River by Stefan Żeromski (the last 25 pages were missing), I think I’ll post my scattered notes on another book I’m reading: A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza’s Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age by Steven Nadler. When I become interested enough […]
I wanted to make a short post after listening to the audiobook version of Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England by Thomas Penn. Highly recommended. OK, maybe I should add a little bit to that… I knew very little about Henry VII before listening to the book, which probably reflects his position between the […]
The Physics of NASCAR: How to Make Steel + Gas + Rubber = Speed by Diandra Leslie-Pelecky Foreword by Ray EvernhamA few Saturdays ago I was sitting in the library while my boys were deciding on which books to check out when I saw this book in a science display. After leafing through a few […]
Ghost on the Throne: The Death of Alexander the Great and the War for Crown and Empire by James Romm Knopf, 341 pp., $28.95 This book covers in gripping detail the events that began on June 1, 323 B.C., when Alexander the Great became ill with what would be a fatal fever, and ended seven […]
Thanks to rogueclassicism for the following links, both of which cover some of the history of Carthage and one to Richard Miles’ Carthage Must be Destroyed. Richard Miles’ was on ABC Radio National’s program By Design discussing Carthage – and where is it now? (link is dead; broadcast not currently available). A wide ranging discussion, […]
I throw this out for anyone that was interested in Bloodlands since this book focuses on some of the same area but expands the history. Because of the price, I probably won’t be buying it any time soon but I’ll definitely look for this in nearby libraries. From the description at the Oxford University Press: […]
Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin Basic Books, Hardcover, 544 pages ISBN-10: 9780465002399 / ISBN-13: 978-0465002399 Each of the dead became a number. Between them, the Nazi and Stalinist regimes murdered more than fourteen million people in the bloodlands. The killing began with a political famine that Stalin directed at Soviet Ukraine, which […]
More quotes from Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder. Chapter 10 (“Ethnic Cleansings”) and Chapter 11 (“Stalinist Anti-Semitism”) look at Stalin’s actions post-World War II and how they impacted the “bloodlands.” With the relocations of ethnic populations, Stalin moved millions of people in order to create the client states he wanted. At […]
More quotes from Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder. Chapter 9 (“Resistance and Incineration”) looks at Jewish resistance, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (April/May 1943), the destruction of that ghetto and the construction of a concentration camp on the same spot, the Warsaw Uprising (August/September 1944), and the destruction of Warsaw just before […]
More quotes from Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder. Chapter 8 (“The Nazi Death Factories”) focuses on the evolution and operation of the death factories run by the German regime. While some facilities exploited those Jews healthy enough to work, others were solely intended to kill. As Snyder shrewdly put it, “Belźec […]
NOTE: This entry no longer updated. See my Works Covered page for a list of all books reviewed on this blog. Since I spend a lot of time with nonfiction and initially I did not make any comments on these books I wanted to have one page that provided an easy round-up for me to […]
More quotes from Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder. Chapter 6 (“Final Solution”) and Chapter 7 (“Holocaust and Revenge”) continue the look at the evolution of the “Jewish problem” and confrontations between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, particularly in Belarus (where half the pre-war population had been killed or moved by […]
More quotes from Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder. Chapter 5, titled “The Economics of Apocalypse”, looks at the plans and operations of Germany’s attack of the Soviet Union, focusing on the planned deaths of the Soviets through starvation. While the grand scale of the “Hunger Plan” was not faithfully carried out […]
More quotes from Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder. Most of Chapter 4 focuses on the carving up of Poland by Hitler and Stalin. One aspect briefly touched on in this chapter that I wanted to highlight involves the deliberate elimination of Polish intellectuals by both Germany and the USSR. The removal […]
More quotes from Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder. Chapter 3 looks at the expansion of the Great Terror from class persecution to national lines: People belonging to national minorities “should be forced to their knees and shot like mad dogs.” It was not an SS officer speaking but a communist party […]
A few more quotes from Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder. Chapter 2 follows the consolidation of power by Hitler and Stalin in the 1930s and the trail of bodies in their wake. For Hitler this meant jail time to threaten potential competitors. For Stalin it meant eliminating hundreds of thousands of […]
I’m listening to Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder during my commute as well as re-reading portions of it when I get home in the evening. While many of the parts are familiar to anyone with a passing interest in history, Snyder pulls the disparate and related strands together on the 14 […]
Pauline Maier, Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788 Simon & Schuster, Hardcover, 608 pages ISBN-10: 0684868547 / ISBN-13: 9780684868547 From Simon and Schuster’s page on the book: When the delegates left the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in September 1787, the new Constitution they had written was no more than a proposal. Elected conventions in […]
Coin portraying MithradatesThe Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy by Adrienne Mayor For audiobooks I’ve rarely gone beyond a couple of sentences on my reviews. I’m still feeling my way out on expanding any comments for a book I’ve listened to instead of read, but I’ll give it a try […]
At the risk of mentioning the book too often, Katie Low has a review of Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization by Richard Miles in The Oxonian Review (link is dead). Her review and summary are pretty spot on. Here’s part of the review: Miles weaves into his account […]