Non-Fiction Titles – History

Ackroyd, Peter                                                Thames – Sacred River

               The History of England – V1 Foundation

                London

Beard, Mary                                                     SPQR

Clarke, Stephen                                             1000 Years of Annoying the French

Cooper, John                                                   The Queen’s Agent

Downing, David                                              Sealing their Fate

Fernandez-Armesto, Felipe                         1492

Frankopan, Peter                                            The Silk Roads

Goldsworthy, Adrian                                     In the Name of Rome

Goodwin, George                                            Fatal Colours

Harari, Yuval Noah                                        Sapiens – a Brief History of Humankind

Hindley, Geoffrey                                           The Anglo-Saxons

Hobsbawm, Eric                                             The Age of Revolution

Holland, Tom                                                  In the Shadow of the Sword

          Dynasty – House of Caesar

                                                                            Dominion

Hunt, Tristam                                                Ten Cities That Made and Empire

Miles, David                                                    The Tribes of Britain

Paxman, Jeremy                                            The English

Punke, Michael                                              The Revenant

Pye, Michael                                                    The Edge of the World

Robb, Graham                                                 Parisians

Snow, Peter                                                      To War with Wellington

Stothard, Peter                                                On the Spartacus Road

Sykes, Bryan                                                   The Seven Daughters of Eve

Tremlett, Giles                                                Ghosts of Spain

Urban, Mark                                                    Tank War

1492 – Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

An early map of the world – C12

1492 was sourced cheaply, as always, being part of a 4 for £10 deal in the Totnes remaindered bookshop – and well worth the punt.

Narrative history is a genre that I really like.  There is the excuse of its educational value: the benefits of vicarious travel, with the convenience of a cup of tea and a toasted teacake.

1492 is disingenuous title for a book that covers a longer historical period around that time, but the concise title is a good way in, and the case for this period as a significant point of global change is interesting.  Broadly the writer argues that the major political blocs that dominate the modern world were formed or consolidated around this time – the beginnings of the Russian empire, the final conversion or expulsion of non-Christians from Spain, the division of Africa into spheres of either Islamic or Christian influence, the consolidation of an inward looking China.  And that’s not even to mention Columbus.  The chapter on the discovery of the New World was one of the most interesting, with much information, new to me, about that as an extension of Spanish incursions into the Canary Islands.

Fernandez-Armesto is well informed and the book full of the small details of character and culture that bring history to life.  It has a global reach and an interesting conclusion on the course of history, and the limitations placed on its development by culture and geography.

All in all a great read.