Best to have an admirer for a quality read you've written than be assumed you wrote something like that scandalous book a few years ago. Did you get the coffee book I recommended to you or had you read it before? If you liked King Power, you may very well enjoy Guess Who's Back. Actually, if I may make a broader suggestion, I recommend signing up for Bookbub deal alerts. It's a once a day or once a week deals email for books. Much better than slogging through the daily deals on Amazon or other retailers.
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Spoilers What Book Are You Reading?
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Actually, I bought King Power because it had been recommended - very highly - by an excellent (female) journalist on the Guardian, Marina Hyde; I am not someone to be swayed by Amazon book deals.
However, I did look up the coffee book, and read some of the reviews posted online. And no, I haven't read it, but it does look quite interesting, and rather beautifully produced. I will admit that I am sufficiently intrigued to be contemplating ordering it, so thanks for the recommendation.
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To Hell and Back by Ian Kershaw. Can anyone tell me how small the size of the text is in this? Not sure if to read on my kindle or not.
To Hell and Back: Europe, 1914-1949 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0713990899/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_.kGtxbWYRFM8G
To Hell and Back: Europe, 1914-1949 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0713990899/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_.kGtxbWYRFM8G
No idea of the size of the text, but I do know that Ian Kershaw is a very fine historian, - his biography of Hitler was first rate - and is well worth reading almost no mater what he writes.
Thanks. I don't wear glasses (yet) I believe that one's longsightedness begins to deteriorate from your mid 40's (I'm 52) but with me I find as long as I have good light I'm ok. It's this "brightness/light" thing that is beginning to affect me. For this particular book I'd prefer the hardback version ( I like to flick back and forth with non fiction and find it too cumbersome and time consuming on my kindle) hence my initial question. I suppose I could always buy and return via Amazon should the text be too small.
Well, I wear glasses - and have since I was a small child, but, ironically I have never needed them for reading. However, since I turned 40, I have noticed that - without realising it - I remove my glasses while reading.
Personally, I am not a fan of Kindles - I never 'got' them, though that may change. As it is, I spend enough of my life in front of a screen.
Nevertheless, I would draw a distinction between fiction, fact, and 'serious' fact. For fiction, I have no quarrel with paperbacks (and indeed, with a Kindle).
However, for a serious, and weighty history book, I would recommend the hard back copy; this is because the production values - quality of paper, size of print, attention to detail - will be a lot better than would be the case in a paperback edition (or, possibly a Kindle, though I cannot speak, or write, with any authority on that). Taken together, that should make it easier, and more enjoyable, to read. Easier, too, to flick back and forth - which I also do, when reading history.
Utter bollocks!
The books? The man? The prose? The topic?
(And, also, do, please, bear in mind that if we are discussing books, history books, and literature, - that a degree of literary criticism that surpasses 'utter bollocks' for profound insight and critical analysis is........more attractive and appealing and interesting to read. By me, at any rate.)
As Scepticalscribe said, Kershaw has a very fine reputation as a historian, but I must admit that I believe I have only read some essays from him. I will definitely put this book on my reading list. Penguin paperbacks tend to use quite small fonts, so maybe you should consider the eBook.
If you haven't read yet, I would also recommend Timothy Snyder's 'Bloodlands', mainly because Snyder tries to chronicle the less widely known suffering in Eastern Europe in that period also outside the terrors of the concentration camps.
he he he. you know i was kidding right?
also, i loved that series and the man.
he he he. you know i was kidding right?
also, i loved that series and the man.
Well, it is actually a very interesting example to take. For what it is worth, Churchill himself famously said that "History will be kind to me for I intend to write it".
Moreover, not only did he do that - he was a pretty prolific writer all his life - in fact, he really had serious literary talent, as a journalist, writer and historian. (A talent - for both historical research and writing - that seemed to have been inherited by his youngest child, Mary Soames, who also had an elegant turn of phrase and an eye for what worked on paper).
Moreover, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953, which, when you read his works, is not entirely fanciful. The man could write. Now, whether it was an entirely objective account, or, whether all of the relevant material facts have been interrogated and given their necessary weight, is another matter entirely.
Personally, I prefer Churchill writing when he didn't 'have a dog in the fight', in other words, when he (or his family) are not the topics under discussion. For example he wrote a short - but very engaging - account of the American Civil War, which I recall reading as a child.
And - also famously - he was spot on about Hitler in the 30s, when a great many others (not least from his own social class, the aristocracy he had been born into) were not.
Utter bollocks!
OMG.....we had that set when I was a kid.......I remember reading them.
Yes. If you start with the one on the left you will end up reading them in order as written...
I'm quite cautious of reading first-hand experiences of history. You have individuals like Wiesel who's been admonished by other survivors because he lied or made his words seem more grand than they were. Not discounting Nazi atrocities towards Jews and other ethnic and religious minorities of course. Though I'm sure Defonseca was about the worst offender I'd come across. Rosenblat is right up there on my list of "word that starts with "t" and ends with "t" and is quite offense." There's something incredibly screwy with an individuals mind when they decide to profit off of something like the Holocaust.
Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear.
While there is a point worth noting in the post - the possible perils of first hand history (that it may be biased, partisan, lacking in objectivity, overlooking some salient inconvenient facts, or the contributions of inconvenient or disliked people, or, the obvious one, giving the author a larger role in events than a passing acquaintance with the truth might suggest)- there is also, for the historian, (and yes, I am one) something invaluable about the immediacy of first hand sources.
While we can question, interrogate, and occasionally dispute their - those who write first hand accounts - accounts and motives, we cannot discount them entirely. After all, they were 'there' and we weren't, and we can't gainsay that.
Nor can we discount what they say are their motivations entirely, - after all, do we live in their head? - though we may - from other sources or intelligent extrapolation - be able to add depth and nuance to how we might understand what they claim was their prime motivation.
For verification, you often use an approach roughly equivalent to intellectual triangulation: You check as many contemporary sources of the one event, or meeting, or thing, as possible, and try to get an 'overview' of what happened from that; sometimes, these sources will corroborate one another, sometimes they may even contradict one another, or one or two may mention or highlight something overlooked by the original source.
Re Churchill, he came from the minor branch of an old aristocratic family, and so had to make his own way in the world financially. Apart from his time in office, (and he served in the prewar and early WW1 Liberal administration of Campbell-Bannerman and Asquith), before later serving with the Conservatives in a number of administrations in the 20s, he mostly made his living from writing.
Actually, he was a prolific, and excellent writer, with a romantic's view of the British Empire, and a keen nose for history, and a genuine talent with the spoken and written word in English. Of course he had a considerable ego; he was a gifted man. And, he famously said that history would treat him kindly for he intended to write it himself.
Having said that, this is no reason not to read his work, even on matters where he played a major role (WW2); it is just that one might treat some of the perspectives and interpretations with a slight caution.
As a military leader, he was an unmitigated disaster - but loved the drama and romance of war.
However, as a political leader at a time of enormous peril, he was without equal, and his character - that obdurate mix of high intelligence, astonishing and awesome rhetoric, romantic but realistic optimism, and genuine courage allied to an undoubted capacity for doing the right thing as a leader, meant that 1940 was his finest hour, and he has been rightly lauded for that.
Again. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear.
What a breathtakingly limited view of things.
Is profit the only possible governing motive for human activity? Seriously?
Now, I know that rabid free marketeers think that it is, - that nothing else animates or motivates any possible human action, but I beg to differ.
What about Primo Levi? Is profit the only possible motive for a Holocaust survivor to want to write about, or try to make sense of, what happened, how it happened, why it happened, and why it happened to them.
I have read a lot about WW2, (and WW1, for that matter).
Most who wrote first hand accounts were bearing witness to what happened, and were animated by a profound sense of duty. Others felt an obligation to tell the tales of those who had not survived. Some sought to try to make sense of what had happened. Yet others, (yes, this happens too, we are human) sought to influence how these matters are perceived in the public mind and wrote for history. While yet others sought to justify themselves.
But few were animated, or motivated, strictly by the desire to make money from what were - for some - appalling memories that they would never be rid of.
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What am I meant to do? Blush becomingly?
Outstanding!
[doublepost=1465568573][/doublepost]Currently reading:
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You have to be cautious reading everything. You can't take anything at face value. First hand experiences can be no more, or no less, biased than history books written generations after the event. For example, nowadays we have holocaust deniers. WE have idiots that believe that the Apollo missions were faked. And they write books about it. Are they more reliable than Churchill or Gene Krantz? I doubt so.
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I thought The Bonfire of the Vanities an excellent modern novel from the US, very well written and thought provoking and intelligently treating of some serious themes, too.
he he he.
seriously, if you wrote this one, well done indeed! it is one of my all time faves.
typo. oops!
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