Eric Foner (http://www.ericfoner.com/) offers a sweep of American history with the idea of freedom as the main subject. He focuses on three major themes: 1) different meanings of freedom, 2) social conditions that made freedom possible, and 3) the boundaries and exclusions of freedom. The main understandings of freedom have been ‘civil liberties’; being free from outside coercion; economic liberty; […]
The Story of American Freedom Read More »
The mass emigrations from Scotland, beginning in earnest in the late 18th century and lasting through most of the 19th, have shaped the country we live in today. Marjory Harper (https://www.uhi.ac.uk/en/research-enterprise/cultural/centre-for-history/staff/professor-marjory-harper/) tells the story of the evictions and emigration from Highlands and Lowlands. She also understands the ambition that drove many to seek out a
Adventurers & Exiles Read More »
One of the texts from the Ancient world of lasting influence, and which can still be enjoyed with sympathy by the modern reader, is Meditations (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marcus-aurelius/#ChaMed) by Marcus Aurelius. This Roman Emperor spent most of his life campaigning against barbarians, dealing with conspiracy at home, and combating Christianity. Yet the most powerful man in the world
The Inner Citadel by Pierre Hadot Read More »
Anyone with a passion for understanding the ancient world will have this book on their shelves. It is a vivid account of the Jewish people from the conquest of Palestine by Alexander the Great in 332 BCE to the revolt of the Maccabees. With great skill and scholarship Elias J. Bickerman (http://www.nytimes.com/1981/09/02/obituaries/elias-j-bickerman-a-hellenic-scholar-on-columbia-staff.html) relates the story
The Jews in the Greek Age Read More »
In this sweeping history of Russia over the past four decades, Masha Gessen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masha_Gessen) argues that totalitarian Soviet mentality did not die out with the Soviet Union. Gessen reveals what life is like under the Putin tyranny through a cast of characters. For example Lyosha, a young gay man in a toxically anti-gay provincial
The Future is History Read More »
November 2018 will see the centenary of the Armistice of 11 November 1918 when the guns fell silent after 4 years of one the bloodiest conflicts in human history. There have been a huge number of histories of The First World War, and here is one with much to commend it. In Peter Englund’s
The Beauty and the Sorrow Read More »
The way we see the world is radically different from our medieval forebears. How was this transition made? How did we exchange organised superstition for a science of the world based on evidence, experimentation, prediction and control? Jonathan Israel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Israel) here offers a magisterial study of what became known as ‘The Enlightenment’ (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/enlightenment/). Israel lauds
Radical Enlightenment Read More »
First published in 1939 this classic study of the end of the Roman Republic still contains a wealth of scholarship for contemporary readers. The central thesis is that a political revolution occurred which transformed the Roman city state into a Imperial power, capable of fully developing its Empire and utilising the resources of the subjugated
The Roman Revolution Read More »
Some books of history have been so ground breaking and influential that they demand a place in your library even if they are decades old themselves and the period has been covered more recently. Peter Brown’s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Brown_(historian)) The World of Late Antiquity, published in 1971, is one such. The period in question (AD 150-750) had
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