Kim Seabrook

Thank you so much to Pen and Sword and Netgalley for the advance copy! As always all opinions shared here are 100% my own.

"How To Survive in Georgian Britain" by Kim Seabrook was a fun introduction to ... well, what else, Georgian Britain. I admit that when I first picked it up, I thought it would be more focused on daily life in Georgian Britain. While it does cover that briefly on and off, this book is more of a primer for that period in England as a whole.

While it starts with shorter show more chapters that cover more cultural and daily life anecdotes, it quickly starts featuring other topics in more details such as crime, politics and economical changes. At first, I thought I would be turned off by those as I had been looking for something more focused on the culture, I quickly found myself learning about interesting figures from the era as well as some noteworthy events that I had longed heard about as someone that didn't grow up in England but never knew the details of.

The chapters' length varies from one to the next. One might be only two or three chapters long. Another may be ten pages or more. While this causes a bit of a bumpy pacing, I will say that none of the topics overstayed in welcome. And the result is the book introduced many topics in less than 200 pages. The expectation is that the reader would then pick and choose which subject to dig deeper into using other books.

While it wasn't what I originally expected, I did enjoy it as a whole and was introduced to many interesting names and events that I now look forward to learning more about.

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2.5 stars Has potential
Deadlier than the Male: Women in History (Prisoners of Eternity) is a compilation of over 40 stories of women throughout world history including such notables as Agrippina, Bloody Mary, Salome, Calamity Jane, Joan of Arc, and Lucretia Borgea. With such a broad range of women included, it is a mystery why the author choose to present them in almost alphabetical order without a table of contents, never mind utilizing the power of electronic publishing to provide a show more working table of contents. The qualification of almost alphabetical comes from a chapter entitled "Women of the Special Operations Executive" coming after Ruth Ellis and before Salome and Sophie Scholl.

As brief snapshots of women of history this is obviously not a book to read in a single reading session; the current presentation makes the book a chore to get through if you are looking for a particular character who intrigues you or trying to avoid one whose story is particularly gruesome.

While not exceedingly numerous, the egregious spelling errors call into question the care taken in preparing the book for publication. There are numerous photographs and images in the work which definitely enhance the stories.

Generally a frustrating reading experience. It has potential for being very good and shows a great deal of research but as it is, it is not enjoyable. This does not make pretentions of being a scholarly work as no references are given but since the figures are generally known and the stories are told informally I did not deduct for that.

If the author makes corrections in formatting and spelling, I would be willing to revisit this review. show less