City Travel Guides > Books > World History

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.Major and Mrs.Holt's Battlefield Guide to Normandy Landing Beaches (Major & Mrs Holt's Battlefield Guide)
City Travel Guides > Books > World History
by: Tonie Holt, Valmai Holt

1999-08
If you doing any battlefield tours you will never go far wrong with getting the books by Holt's. informative, factual, easy to understand and packed with hints and tips a must for all budding historians.
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.The Cold War
City Travel Guides > Books > World History
by: John Lewis Gaddis

January 25, 2007
I, like many others, had my interest in the cold war peaked by glamorous tales of espionage and horrific tales of near nuclear holocaust. The only problem was, I found myself lacking any real knowledge of events leading to the birth of the cold war or any real facts about the war itself other than 'Kennedy didn't really get on with those Russians and Cubans'.
This book gave me the opportunity to change that. Don't get me wrong; I do not, after reading this book, consider myself to now be an expert on the cold war, and if you consider yourself to be an expert, don't even give this book a second look, (I was going to say 'don't give this book a chance' but then felt that this was an unfair comment).
It's an information packed book ... Read More:
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.Seven Pillars of Wisdom (Wordsworth Classics of World Literature)
City Travel Guides > Books > World History
by: T.E. Lawrence

June 01, 1997
Brilliant. T E Lawrence poured his soul into this magnificently crafted autobiography. It takes you from his arrival in Cairo as an upstart academic, through his dramatic evolution into a desert soldier/strategist and leader of the Arab revolt against the Turks, to his ultimate failure to win justice for the people he'd grown to be part of. Lawrence was a gifted writer as well as an extraordinary soldier and I was fascinated by the insights that run through it: into his political naivety, his ambivalent loyalties, and the hints of concern (almost certainly ill-founded) about his own mental state. The combination of high politics and personal danger, played out in the dramatic and mysterious Arab world as it meets the West is quite magnificent. ... Read More:
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.History: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
City Travel Guides > Books > World History
by: John Arnold

February 24, 2000
Arnold takes 'historiography' to be the process of writing history, and 'history' to be the result of that process, i.e. to be a set of true stories about the past. If you enjoy reading history, then you should read at least something about historiography, to help you evaluate and interpret what you read. This short introduction to the subject is probably as good a place as any to start and for many readers will be as much historiography as they think they need.

Major figures such as Thucydides and von Ranke are discussed and central issues in the philosophy of history, such as the extent to which people of other times were essentially different from us, are introduced. Arnold presents a wide range of opinions on these various topics, but has ... Read More:
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.Constantinople: The Last Great Siege, 1453
City Travel Guides > Books > World History
by: Roger Crowley

November 02, 2006
An excellent read. Think of the sieges in LOTR's the twin towers and return of the king rolled into one, but this actually happened!. This is one of the most exciting, enthralling and entertaining histories I've ever read.
I cannot recommend this book highly enough, buy it and be amazed.
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.Auschwitz : The Nazis & The 'Final Solution'
City Travel Guides > Books > World History
by: Laurence Rees

September 01, 2005
I bought the book in one of the small bookshops at Auschwitz I, the main camp. I had just walked through the camp looking at the 2 tons of hair on display and all the other belongings of people that has suffered in the camp. The sight is sickening, but it wasn't the big shock that I had expected. I thought: "Maybe I know too much about the place before coming here".

The horror came with this book. All the personal stories combined with the hard facts of the book makes an interesting and disturbing read.

I have always thought that the people working in the Nazi camps were some kind of monsters or people that have been terrorized physically or mentally to become some kind of inhuman zombies. It turns out that most of them were quite ordinary ... Read More:
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.Hubbub: Filth, Noise and Stench in England, 1600-1770: Filth, Noise, and Stench in England, 1600-1770
City Travel Guides > Books > World History
by: Emily Cockayne

April 29, 2008
I finished reading this excellent book yesterday. I was slightly dubious about it at first, with the subject matter being what it was, but far from it being an out and out grime-fest it proved to be an insightful and well written social history of the very late Tudor and Stuart periods.
The text gives you a really good impression of wha life must have been like for 'ordinary' folks in these times and all the grisly, dirty and unhygienic things they were exposed to.
There is reliance on the work of Diarists and Social Commentators of the time and they prove to be helpful and amusing.
Thomas Tyron in particular stood out to me as a particular joy - with his neurotic and obsessive ideas (but in actual fact they turn out to be rather forward thinking ... Read More:
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.The Roman Empire: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
City Travel Guides > Books > World History
by: Christopher Kelly

August 24, 2006
This excellent introduction to the Roman Empire is succinct and selective rather than superficial. Its compass ranges from the iconography of the Imperial cult to contemporary perceptions of Rome in the cinema.

Far from being a conventional, political history centred on the Roman elite, Kelly is most impressive when trying to recreate the ordinary lives of the silent and all but invisible majority, who have left no historical trace and only the faintest of impressions in the archaeological record. He is especially interesting and perceptive when writing about elusive topics like population studies within the Empire. Hard evidence on such matters is, naturally, very scant. Kelly uses statistical models and contemporary demographic studies of the developing world ... Read More:
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.Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy, 1944 (Pan Grand Strategy Series)
City Travel Guides > Books > World History
by: Max Hastings

August 13, 1999
Hasting's 'Overlord' has earned a reputation of being almost as close as one can get to becoming a definitive history of the 1944 landings in Normandy.

Whilst far superior to the work of 'historians' such as Stephen Ambrose, there is still an overwhelming feeling of this book being authored by a journalist and not an historian. Hastings makes many sweeping statements, many of which are totally unfounded, yet does very little to substantiate his claims. He constantly enforces the popular misconception, which have almost become fashionable, to criticise rather than to focus on the positives. Reading 'Overlord' found me actually questioning myself as to whether or not the Allies actually won the Battle of Normandy or not.

There is far too much unbalanced ... Read More:
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.God's War: A New History of the Crusades
City Travel Guides > Books > World History
by: Christopher Tyerman

October 04, 2007
As with everything which happens in real history there is a spiritual basis to those crusades, and a philosophical explanation. History is philosophical, not factual. Because he ignores this, Tyreman is confused about why the various nobles and people left their homes to go on the crusade.

At the heart of Western life at the time of the First Crusade was the Mass, a ritual which is still perfomred today, and is still at the heart of Christian practice. It's purpose was to transport every Christian into God's love, and to the time when God was on earth, in Jerusalem.
The service uses objects to achieve this: bread and wine. Other objects were used outside the churches themlseves, such as relics, bones of saints, the holy lance and the grail. Being able to walk freely ... Read More:
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