I Read Many Things

Tag: History

All Hell Let Loose : The World at War 1939-1945, by Max Hastings

There’s an expression in French where we describe a relatively small but thick and dense book as a “pavé”, a word that could be translated to “paving stone” or “slab”. That was exactly the word my wife used when she saw me reading this. It’s quite a massive book, but it’s absolutely worth it if…

December 9, 2024
Origins : How Earth’s History Shaped Human History, by Lewis Dartnell

It’s easy to look at the title of that book and think “Well that seems like a rather obvious statement of fact” and go on your way. In some respect, it is. No sane person will disagree that our planet and its physical characteristics have influenced humans in many ways. A quick look at a…

May 12, 2024
Team of Rivals : The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, by Doris Kearns Goodwin

This book was had been in my bookshelf for over a decade. I bought it in 2012, when it was re-released as a movie tie-in when Lincoln came to theaters, as you can see from the picture above. Yet I’ve never read it before this year. Maybe I was just swept by the marketing behind…

March 13, 2024
Origin Story : A Big History of Everything, by David Christian

I was introduced to historian David Christian back when I was started my training to become a Montessori teacher, more than seven years ago. We watched his TED talk, as our trainer told us his approach to history was similar to what we promote in the Montessori pedagogy. Indeed, the author is a figurehead of…

January 3, 2024
Prisoners of Geography, by Tim Marshall

Geography is somewhat of a weird subject. It’s not exactly what you would consider “hard” science, like chemistry or physics, and yet I think it would be wrong to call it a purely social science. It straddles the line between both because it’s such an all-encompassing field. When you describe the chemical composition of our…

September 15, 2023