August Non-Fiction: History

In August, we explore the vast field of history.
History is the study of the past. This is a moving wall, as time and our lives march on. Usually everything that has happened before we consciously took note of the world surrounding us is “history” to us. I vividly remember the night the Berlin Wall opened – to anyone attending school today it is a subject to study in their history classes.
Historians are the people who tell us about the past of humanity and they rely on three types of sources of historical knowledge: what is written, what is said, and what is physically preserved. Archaeology is the study of the physical remains, and modern technology has advanced our knowledge of the distant past in leaps and bounds. But what we most associate with history and historiography depends on writing: people making notes and lists of events and people. Later, people collected this information and turned it into a narrative, analysing and interpreting it according to their own world view.
The ancient Greeks were the first to write history in this sense which is why Klio, the muse of historiography, graces my post with her image


(courtesy of the gallery of old masters at Schloss Wilhelmshöhe https://altemeister.museum-kassel.de/30069/)

History encompasses many themes: from the very large as in global history to the very small as in microhistory, national history, social history, women’s history, economic history. You could read about an historical era (Renaissance, Antiquity, the Cold War…), about the history of a city, region, country or empire. You could read a classic of the genre or something brand-new. The following titles are picked at random from my own shelves:

The fate of Rome
These truths
How to hide an empire
The house of the dead
The pursuit of power
Fröhliche Scholastik
Le dimanche de Bouvines
Die Geschichte des Alten China
Restless Empire
The Cold War A World History

Go ahead and choose your own. Tell us about it and please remember the wiki: https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/2020_Non-fiction_CAT#August:_History

Golly, there's a lot of scope on my shelves for this one.

Lots of choices for this one, but I am particularly looking at:

If Walls Could Talk by Lucy Worsley - a history of domestic interiors

The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan - a history of the world centred on Central Asia

The Roman Empire and the Indian Ocean by Raoul McLaughlin - a history of trade across the Indian Ocean in ancient times.

I am expecting lots of BBs from this month, more than I can ever hope to read. I've got The silk roads on my TBR, but the McLaughlin book also looks fascinating. And my library has it!

I have The Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron in my TBR. It has a tag of history, but it's Dewey classification is Geography so I'm not sure if I'll read it or not.

Great minds think alike, I was thinking of reading The Silk Roads as well!

>5 dudes22: I think The Shadow of the Silk Road is more a contemporary travel book rather than history per se. I love Colin Thubron's writing though, and would love to read this one some time, just not this month!

I think I'm going to read Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers Who Helped Win World War II by Liza Mundy.

>7 Jackie_K: - I was thinking that too. Oh well, I'm sure I have something that will work.

Haven't figured out yet what I'll read but this will be super-easy for me. It's likely I'll be reading something (maybe multiple somethings) that will fit, anyway!

I've earmarked Blitzkrieg: From the Rise of Hitler to the Fall of Dunkirk, by Len Deighton, for this challenge, but I have several other books that could fit the category as well.

I have several books that would work:

Century of Struggle
Dancing in Combat Boots
Founding Mothers and Fathers
Hallowed Ground: A Walk at Gettysburg
Jefferson's Daughters
The Woman's Hour

>9 dudes22: You could always read it for August's TravelKIT, it would fit perfectly there!

Would a biography work?

I'm planning on Stalingrad by Anthony Beevor. Earlier this year I read Vasily Grossman's book, so it will be interesting to read another perspective.

>14 fuzzi: I was wondering that, but we did have biography as our March category so I'm assuming not.

>14 fuzzi:, >16 Robertgreaves: Some biographies could be more historical than others e.g. Catherine the Great might be classified as history, but Jean Rhys, a literary biography, might not be.

>14 fuzzi: >16 Robertgreaves: >17 pamelad: I don't see any reason to exclude biography if it's about a real historical person.

>18 MissWatson: That's how I'd interpret it too.

>14 fuzzi:, >16 Robertgreaves:, >17 pamelad:, >18 MissWatson:, >19 Jackie_K:. There is considerable overlap among the categories of the Non-fictionCAT. People have read about history in several of the other months in addition to the biography month in March. For example, society in June included civil rights, and at least a couple of people read about the history of civil rights, particularly in the 1960s. In the law and order month, a number of us read about historic trials, etc. At least one person read about the history of science in the science month. As MissWatson mentioned in >1 MissWatson:, history is very broad. Jefferson's Daughters could be considered a collective biography but it includes a lot of history, and deals with historiography near the end when the author describes her way of trying to find more information about Jefferson's daughter by Sally Hemings.

I planning to read the classic, A Night to Remember by Walter Lord about the Titanic, and also an autobiography, Titanic Survivor by Violet Jessop who was a stewardess on both the Titanic and her sister ship, the Britannic, when they wrecked.
If time permits, I would also like to read Citizen Reporters which is a history of McClure's (magazine) and the beginning of investigative journalism with particular attention to S. S. McClure and Ida Tarbell -- which would have logically been read in the journalism month of January but was not published until February.

I have two that I'm reading, anyway, that will fit here. I have so many on the tbr that fit this...

- The Band that Played On / Steven Turner
- In the Devil's Snare / Mary Beth Norton

>20 sallylou61: I was originally planning to read Titanic Survivor. Previously, all the times I looked at my library ebook wishlist, it was always available. Of course, now, there's a some-number week wait, so I'll be reading a different Titanic one, instead!

>20 sallylou61: oh, A Night to Remember is fantastic!

I have two possibilities for this month, one is a biography of Conrad Richter that I've had on the shelves for a few years.

>23 fuzzi: I may have read it as a teenager; I know that I watched the 1958 movie, which I found very moving back then. I would also like to watch that old movie again. This summer, I took a 5-week zoom adult education class on the Titanic, which really whetted to read some more books about it.

Ooh! I just picked up The Worst Hard Time (by Timothy Egan) and though I intuitively thought it would work, I double-checked the Melville Dewy Decimal System that LT uses--- and it absolutely does! I also discovered the interactive MDS page on LT and have been playing with that a bit, discovering a whole new way to find books that fit. I wonder how long that's been in place! :-D

https://www.librarything.com/mds/0

https://www.librarything.com/mds/978.03

(OK, still trying to figure out how to get from the first link to the second one above... And what the heck id=s this "Dewmoji thing?! It's cute, but is it useful? Hmmm, maybe I'll try to work it into my categories for next year.)

EDIT: OK, I got it! You can keep fine tuning the parameters level-by-level/line-by-line which narrows the book list from general to incraesingly specific! Still don't know what to make of Dewmojis though! :-D

>25 Tanya-dogearedcopy: Thanks for sharing this link! I had some fun playing with it too.

The Ghost Map / Steven Johnson
3.75 stars

In the mid-19th century, London was hit (a couple of times, a few years apart) by a cholera epidemic. It hit quickly and in a small area within London. While many went with the prevailing theory of miasma (something in the air) of spreading it, Dr. John Snow did additional research and found that it was something in the water. He was able to convince one doubter, a reverend who knew and visited many of the sick. Together, they continued to promote their theory.

I really liked this investigation and the medical history in this book. There is an additional chapter or two at the end that talks more about cities (I think it’s mentioned in the extended version of the title), and the pros (environmental – yup) and cons (spread of epidemics/pandemics) of having such a huge majority of the world’s population living in cities. This was the part that wasn’t quite as interesting to me and where I took off a quarter star.

I have just bought Joseph Roth's The Hotel Years, a collection of writing about his travels around Europe in the twenties and thirties. I've read two other of his collections from this time, What I Saw: Reports from Berlin and Report from a Parisian Paradise. Both excellent, particularly the Berlin one.

I have put Stalingrad aside for now. A bit too heavy for lock down reading.

I am reading The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett now.

I just finished She Came to Slay: the Life and Times of Harriet Tubman by Erica Armstrong Dunbar. Although it's not tagged here on LT as YA, it would probably work on the junior/senior high level.It was quite good and I learned a lot. I'm curious to read other African American biographies by this author.

I've also been reading White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America. I'll try to finish it up this month, although it's been a slow read for me.

>30 streamsong: I'll be interested to see what you think about White Trash - it's on my TBR, although goodness only knows when I'll get to it!

I have finished Die Geschichte des Alten China which was short but still very instructive about the history of the Chinese Empire from the first mythical emperors to the Qin dynasty. Now I'm prepped for more.

>31 Jackie_K: Jackie, I'm enjoying White Trash and learning so much about the various class systems that existed in the colonial era. It's just a little more serious than is comfortable for me right now. So my goal is to read ten pages a day. It's quite do-able as it's a shorter book than it seems. The last 150 pages are notes, references, indices, etc.

In the Devil's Snare / Mary Beth Norton
2.5 stars

In addition to looking at the accusations and trials of the “witches” in the Salem, Mass. area in the late 17th century, this author looks at other things happening in the area at the time to see if there is a connection. Specifically, the First and Second Indian Wars happened in the years leading up to the witch accusations and trials.

I do find the Salem witches an interesting topic, but a number of nonfiction books I’ve read about it (including this one) have not held my interest. I do find it hard, sometimes, to read books with a lot of quotations from other sources, and this one (and other books on this topic) has a lot of that.

>24 sallylou61: Walter Lord gives you enough information to get you interested, but not so much to bore you.

I've been listening to With Wings Like Eagles: A History of the Battle of Britain by Michael Korda with excellent narration by John Lee. I'm enjoying it a lot. Since I read one of Churchill's books recently that covered the same time frame, it's been an interesting comparison of viewpoints.

The Band that Played On / Steve Turner
3.25 stars

This book tells the biographies of the eight musicians on the Titanic. They were split into two groups on board, playing in different areas of the ship, but it seems that they joined together to play on deck as the ship sank.

I usually like biographies, but this one had eight. That’s a lot, and it was a small amount of information on each one, so as we continued on in the book, it was easy to forget who was who. It was more interesting once they boarded the ship to read about that. Much is speculation, including what songs were played, but that part was still more interesting to me.

The book continued on after they died with some information on their families, regaining any items found (though only three of the musicians’ bodies were recovered), and stories of (in one case) the father not acknowledging an illegitimate child (and therefore any compensation money should come to him, not to his son’s girlfriend and child); I can’t remember now if it was the same family (I think it was), but a sister who was mentally unstable and played a nasty “joke” on the rest of her family (that was one I believe I’d already heard about).

Overall, I’m rating it between ok (the biographies) and good (the disaster and aftermath).

I just finished The Silk Roads and learnt loads - definitely recommended! A recentering of world history away from a US/Eurocentric viewpoint.

I read Sinking the Sultana: A Civil War Story of Imprisonment, Greed, and a Doomed Journey Home by Sally M. Walker. This is actually a young adult nonfiction book, but it contains a lot of interesting information. The main reason that I chose it was because it did not first describe the battles that the soldiers on board the Sultana had been in. From watching a short movie a few years ago, I knew that the steamboat was grossly overloaded with former Union prisoners of war from the notorious Anderson Confederate Prison Camp in Georgia and the Cahaba Confederate Prison Camp in Alabama; however, I was not aware of what states these camps were in and how far the men had to travel to get to the Mississippi River where they were traveling from Also, I was not aware that in addition to the soldiers, civilian families were also on board, and had the nicest accommodations for the passengers. Moreover, some animals (horses and at least one cow) were also on board. The steamboat was supposed to hold no more than 376 passengers; although the number of soldiers is not known, there were probably over 2100 people on board, and although the number of deaths is not known, the official number (from the Customs Service) was 1537 (p.139). The sinking was probably caused by the bursting of three boilers, one of which had been repaired (patched instead of a more extensive repair) while the soldiers were being boarded. The gross overload of passengers was caused by greed: the more soldiers on board the more money to a few people.

The book describes the stories of a few of the passengers (including soldiers), the accident and how people in other boats and those living along the shore aided in rescuing people, the investigations of the disaster in which a few men were determined to be responsible but nobody was ever punished, and the reunions of the survivors. Although this was the worst marine disaster in American history, it did not get the attention that the Titanic did probably because it occurred in the midwest and involved mainly midwesterners, it occurred right after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the killing of John Wilkes Booth, and at the end of the Civil War in which numerous men died.

I selected A History of Modern France. Vol. 1, 1715-1799 by Alfred Cobban, which is exactly what the title sounds like. I did find it pitched a bit over my level of knowledge of French history, but it held my interest.

I chose a book about World War I for this challenge and discovered how little I knew of that conflict.


The United States in World War 1: The Story of General John J. Pershing and the American Expeditionary Forces by Don Lawson

This author provides the reader with an overview of events that led to and included the first world war. He starts the narrative with what happened prior to the United States getting involved, then a slightly more detailed account of the battles that followed in 1918, and the Americans change in fighting methods and strategies. Throughout this book were short but interesting biographies of major and noted people involved and descriptions of the final few campaigns. It was never boring, with enough details to let us know what happened without being graphic.

I read The Coldest War by David Halberstam which covers the American engagement in War shortly after WWII during the cold war years. The book covers presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, JFK, Johnson years.

>5 dudes22: late to this, but anything Thubron is worth the read. It is a cross between history, geography and travel

>41 fuzzi: For more about WWI, read Barbara Tuchman's Guns of August

are we including historic fiction here?

Speaking of Tuchman, I decided that The Proud Tower was worth a reread, about the decades before WWI

>44 cindydavid4: This is the Non-fiction CAT, so historic fiction isn't included.

I also enjoyed the two Barbara Tuchman books you mention.

Thought so, I have a ton of non fiction history so np

One of my fav histories/memoirs is Wild Swans, telling the story of her grandmother, mother and her own struggles in china. Very well written deftly weaving personal history with the events around them. Didn't know anything about the Cultrual Revolution or the Hundred Flowers campaign, and this one not only opened my eyes but sent me craving more history.

Finished a memoir, nonfiction book In My Hands by Irene Gut Opdyke, story of a Polish girl/young lady who helped the rescue of Jews.

>47 Kristelh: I read In My Hands years ago! You are the first person besides my sister whom I have encountered as a reader of that title.

>>44 cindydavid4: thanks for the recommendation!

>48 LadyoftheLodge:, it was a free audio sync file download. They do a summer program to encourage young people to read. In My Hands is an ALA recommended book.

I've finished The Hotel Years: Wanderings in Europe Between the Wars by Joseph Roth. It's a collection of his newspaper articles, written in the twenties and thirties.

Ive read that and just happened upon Sailing Across Europe hidden on one of my TBR shelves. Written in 1926, Im hoping its just as good. BTW if you are interested in European travels from pre wwII Europe, Time of Gifts and Between Woods and Water tells the journey of the author at 19, walking his way from holland to istanbul in 1936; lots of history here as well as travels. The last part of his journey was written after he died a few years back. Broken Road

Starting Ten Caesars by Barry Strauss

I'm reading The Century Girls the life stories of 6 different women who were born in or before 1918, when women first got the vote and had lived to 100 years old.

I've read another history nonfiction book, the recently published* Me & Patsy by Loretta Lynn in which Loretta Lynn describes her friendship with Patsy Cline. Although they only had about two years together, they became close friends and helped each other with their careers. Patsy was a mentor for Loretta. The book gets a bit repetitious at times, but describes a valuable friendship and a lot about the country music industry, especially in the 1960s. Loretta's descriptions of Patsy singing her well-known songs are especially enjoyable. Loretta mentions many other people involved in country music including musicians, music recorders, producers, etc. Men pretty much ran the industry; Patsy and Loretta through their careers stood up to the men instead of always doing what they were told.

*April 7, 2020

I read Polio: An American Story I chose this book this month because of my age. I have clear memories of receiving the first Salk vaccine in 1955 and then the Sabin oral vaccine in what we called then, junior high school. I had a family member who contracted polio in the 1920's and friends who contracted the disease in the 1950's. My older sister told me she recalled the tremendous relief when the Salk vaccine was available. All of these memories became factual when I read this book. I value non-fiction that does that job for me.

I am also reading Impounded a photographic history of the Japanese American interment in the 1940's. The text adds a lot of biographic information about Dorothea Lange, but the photos are the best translator of that event.

I read Questions sur la deuxième guerre mondiale (Questions about WW2) by Marc Ferro.
This was interesting because it dealt with interesting topics but overall I didn't like this book. I felt that the author either assumed that the reader was knowledgeable about every detail of WW2, or that he failed to talk about the point he was raising.
This book is aptly named Questions about WW2 because I didn't find many answers to these questions.

A day or two late, I read the Century Girls which takes 6 women born in or before 1918, the year in which the franchise was extended to (some) women, and tells their stories in the context of a wider history. They were a varied bunch.