I tend to read books fairly quickly, so if it isn't a deep science book and it takes me ca. 3 months to finish, this is an indicator, that I didn't find the book a hugely interesting read.I like detailed histories about people and nations and this one was about parts of history you generally don'...
It has amazed me in my further educating myself about all things Polish that so much of the history of the Poles in (and post) World War II has been suppressed and/or distorted. The Katyn massacres were only finally acknowledged over a half century after they occurred. The whole "big politics" pi...
Here is a masterpiece of historical narrative that stretches from the Ice Age to the Atomic Age, as it tells the story of Europe, East and West. Norman Davies captures it all-the rise and fall of Rome, the sweeping invasions of Alaric and Atilla, the Norman Conquests, the Papal struggles for powe...
Together with its paramilitary wing, the Iron Guard, it grew into one of Europe’s more violent Fascist movements. In 1937 it secured a substantial share of a large right-radical vote, and in 1940–1, in alliance with General Antonescu’s army, it briefly commanded Romania’s ‘National Legionary Stat...
The ‘Byzantine Empire’, in contrast, is no more than an intellectual construct, an abstraction, some might say, that never really existed. Promoted by the philosophes of the Enlightenment – the Byzantines themselves continued to call their territories the ‘Roman Empire’ – it is a label of conveni...