8th April 2014
Cambridge University Press
Continue reading “ARC review: ‘I Freed Myself’ by David Williams”
Category Archives: History
April Fool’s Day
I saw this Tweet from the OED earlier and it got me thinking.
Our earliest recorded example of ‘April fool’ (the victim of a trick or hoax on the first of April) is from 1693. #AprilFoolsDay — The OED (@OED)
Review: ‘Guns, germs and steel’ by Jared Diamond
First published:
1997
Chatto & Windus
This edition:
2005
Vintage Books
Continue reading “Review: ‘Guns, germs and steel’ by Jared Diamond”
BBC History Magazine review of 12 Years a Slave
I’m hoping to see this film at some point so it’s good to hear it’s an accurate portrayal of the times. It makes a pleasant change.
Review: Bad Santas and other creepy Christmas characters, by Paul Hawkins
My Midwinter reading
I saw a tweet from Simon and Schuster yesterday afternoon asking for reviewers. The book in question is ‘Bad Santas’ by Paul Hawkins. It arrived this afternoon.
Review: ‘Slavery’s Exiles; The story of the American Maroons’ by Sylviane A Diouf
New York University Press
11th February 2014
Written by a scholar of the African diaspora, Slavery’s Exiles discusses the existence or otherwise of marronage among North American slaves. The maroons of Jamaica and Suriname have been extensively studied while evidence for maroons in the US (and the North American colonies before the War of Independence) is limited. This book looks at the evidence provided not only by former slaves interviewed in the early twentieth century, but at newspaper reports, court reports and legislation from the seventeenth century onwards.
Continue reading “Review: ‘Slavery’s Exiles; The story of the American Maroons’ by Sylviane A Diouf”
Two book reviews
I know I said I wasn’t reviewing any books this month because I’m concentrating on my novel but I got to 43000 words yesterday so I took some time off to finish reading an ARC I’d got from http://www.netgalley.com and another book I’d borrowed from the library. My reviews follow.
Review: ‘When Hollywood was Right: How movie stars, studio moguls and big business remade American politics’ by Donald T Critchlow
5th November 2013
Cambridge University Press
Donald Critchlow describes the history of Hollywood from a political perspective, a conservative Republican one. Hollywood hasn’t always been a liberal place; in the first half of the twentieth century the Republican party was very strong among actors and studio bosses. This is the story of the vacitudes of fate that took the Hollywood Right from repeated decline to success between the 30’s and 80’s. The political careers of key players such as Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, Cecil B DeMille, Barry Goldwater, and supporters like John Wayne and Hedda Hopper are interwoven in this account pf the changing fortunes of the Republican party not just in Hollywood, but in California as a whole.
Criminally good books
I’ve just finished reading a couple of good books:
Silent Witnesses
Nigel McCrery
and
The Burglar Caught by a Skeleton
And Other Singular Tales from the Victorian Press
Jeremy Clay
Everything Is Better With Dragons 