Current Reading: March 2025

First up.

Finished A Contest of Civilizations, which tries to get into the 19th-century headspace of what American Exceptionalism meant in practice. Short version: Unspoken understandings and rhetorical flourishes don't stand up to outright aggression. It was okay, but just okay; basically a textbook.

Finished Die Beduinen in der Vorgeschichte Tunesiens. It’s a dissertation that tries to investigate just how disastrous, or not, the invasion of Tunisia by the Hilalian Bedouin in the eleventh century was. According to some modern writers it was nothing less than a civilizational catastrophe - Schuster thinks that’s way overstated, if in part because pre-Hilalian Tunisia was already a unstable, violent place.

Recent reading includes Palestine 1936, an excellent examination of the Great Palestinian Revolt, how it undermined the long-term prospect for Palestinian independence, and how the David Ben-Gurion made lemonade out of lemons. Also knocked off Ancient Worlds, a decent popular update of the concept of the "Axial Age."

Finished Boeing 737: The World's Most Controversial Commercial Jetliner by Graham M. Simons. A good history of the aircraft type, including the travails of the 737MAX8 crisis. The book was published during that crisis so it doesn't include the eventual resolution and return to service. Overall however, a nice detailed study.

I just finished Christopher Browning, "The Origins of the Final Solution." This is an extraordinarily detailed exploration of the slow change in Nazi policy toward the Jews from dehumanizing them to expulsion from Germany to various forms of extermination until finally settling on mass gassing. It is a sobering and gruesome read, and one must steel oneself to get through some parts of it.

Finished reading Burn, Bomb, Destroy: The German Sabotage Campaign in North America, 1914–1917 by Michael Digby. I was initially enthused with this book but found it relied too much on anecdotes rather than analysis. Also the author had a habit of starting off chapters with the final event and then using the rest of the chapter as a flashback, which I found off-putting. Still, overall it was interesting.

>6 jztemple: I've come across this writing technique before: chapter opening has the stunning final event, then the rest of the chapter is that "flashback" approach. I find this style out of place when one is writing serious history. Safe that for "historical fiction."

I finished Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson. The book was rather lengthy, but definitely worth the time spent reading it. It covered much of the lead up to the American Civil War, such as the political, social, cultural, and economic forces that led to the conflict. It also covered many of the campaigns and major battles. While not all of the individual battles are covered in extreme detail, McPherson does an excellent job at connecting them to the broader conflict and how they affected both the North and Confederacy.

Just finished The Rise of the Hyksos by Anna-Latifa Mourad. It's basically a thorough review of evidence for Egyptian-Levantine contacts and Levantines resident in Egypt from the Twelfth to early Fifteenth dynasty. Mourad then tentatively concludes that the rise Fifteenth, or Hyksos, dynasty occured when leaders of Levantines long resident in the eastern Delta made themselves independent of the weakening Thirteenth dynasty, a development that may not have have been entirely peaceful but does not seem to have involved widespread destruction.

(This actually half agrees with Manetho, whose Hyksos invaders seize the country "without striking a blow".)

Finished The Hyksos Ruler Khyan and the Early Second Intermediate Period in Egypt today (well, I skimmed bits like the deeper dives into ceramic seriation). I'm on a bit of a Second Intermediate Period kick, as you can tell.

>8 Rome753: If you enjoyed that you might want to read "For Cause and Country" by McPherson. He is one of the foremost modern day historians of the era.

Finished reading The War of Jenkins' Ear: The Forgotten Struggle for North and South America: 1739-1742 by Robert Gaudi. I approached this book with some trepidation due to mentions of the author's snarky tone at times, but was happy to find that the sarcasm was pretty limited, with the rest of the book an excellent and interesting story. There is a biography but no endnotes, so the reader must assess for themselves how much of the book to take on faith. Overall however I can highly recommend it.

Done with Too Much to Know, basically the deep history of the reference book and its late-medieval origins.

Finished from the library: The Eagle and the Hart by Helen Castor
Biography of Richard II as well as his cousin and successor Henry IV.

Finished with Stagecoach: Wells Fargo and the American West by Philip L. Fradkin. Not a bad book, but it tries to cover so much of the Wells Fargo history it has to skim or ignore certain areas. The book is more of an anecdotal history so it is a fairly easy read but it feels a bit unsatisfying.

>11 Blythewood: Thanks for the recommendation. I'll definitely have to check it out.

Finished The Ghost Army: Conning the Third Reich by Gerry Souter. A narrative about the use of deception in WW2 by the British and US forces. It is rather limited in scope but does have a nice sampling of activities throughout the war. The latter part of the book focuses on the US Army's 23rd Headquarters, Special Troops, a bogus designation for an 1100 man unit who was tasked with various acts of deception, such as simulating the existence of a real unit in one location while the real unit moved to another location or actually pretending to be a completely non-existent unit. The activities of the 23rd are covered in more complete detail and could be considered the main subject of the book.

The Life of Charlotte Bronte by Elizabeth Gaskell
I'm reading the Penguin Classics edition with an intro by Elisabeth Jay, copyright printing 1998. Oxford World's Classics issued its own edition in 2009.

A couple days ago I finished Destruction was My Beatrice, a close examination of the social links within the movement.

Finished 67 Shots, a close examination of the course of events that led to the disaster of the Kent State shootings.

And I completed The Red Atlas: How the Soviet Union Secretly Mapped the World by John Davies and Alexander J. Kent. This is the fascinating story of how the Soviets spent untold rubles and hours compiling maps of the entire world. The project started just after WW2 and was intended as providing intelligence for countries that might fall under Communist rule, or might need a little help doing so. The maps were of a variety of scales, depending on the location, but all used essentially the same symbology and structure so that the Soviet military could use them quickly. There were also projects to develop maps for civilian use, including tourism, but these maps were purpose filled with distortions and errors so that foreign military officers would be mislead by them. I read the book on Kindle and it contained map full color maps which made the book even better.

I'm about halfway through George V: Never a Dull Moment which is a remarkably readable and lively biography of the King. Quite interesting and seemingly well-balanced in assessing the man and the difficulties of his reign.

Just finished Civil War Acoustic Shadows by Charles D. Ross. This is a very interesting and unusual look at the American Civil War, specifically how acoustic shadows and other auditory phenomenon affected the outcome of battles. The author starts off with a discussion of the battle of Gaine's Mill, probably the best know example of acoustic shadows. He then has a chapter that explains the science behind acoustics in air, explained in layman terms and focusing on the effects of atmospheric conditions on cannon and musketry fire. The next chapter discusses how leaders on a battlefield communicated with their troops and how the sounds of battle were important for those leaders to discern how a battle was going. Finally there are six more chapters, each on a Civil War battle where acoustic phenomena may have played a significant role. Overall it is an excellent book and will be a great asset to those who have an interest in the Civil War.