Category

Books to read

• 02.03.10
  For the Soul of France
  Books to read (0)

  Here is something to read as soon as our university library gets it, or I can snag a cheap used copy. 19th century France is definitely a missing period in my historical understanding. It's not that my college history classes didn't cover it, or that I haven't read accounts of, say, the Paris Commune. But this might help me make better sense of it: For the Soul of France, by Frederick Brown. Knopf, 304 pages, $28.95 Here is some of what Michael Gurfinkiel, the WSJ reviewer, said: Mr. Brown does not omit a single episode in this narrative, ...
  
  
• 11.24.09
  Piano
  Books to read, History (0)

  This sounds interesting, especially since I am now engaged in the sad task of taking apart/destroying an old upright piano made a hundred years ago. It has a cracked soundboard as well as other defects, so there wasn't a lot that could be done with it. But I'm learning a little about how those things were put together. "Mr. Langshaw's Square Piano" by Madeline Goold. Reviewed by Alexandra Mullen ???Ÿ?Ÿ?
  
  
• 11.09.09
  Love to hate overnight
  Bash the Messenger, Books to read, History (0)

  This sounds like an interesting book: "The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt" (2009) by T.J. Stiles. It's about one of my favorite decades, the 1830s. And I've been wanting to read more about the rise of industrial corporations. I'm especially interested in the adjustments that people had to make in their lives and outlooks in order to become cogs in the industrial machinery. But a book about one of the industrial tycoons could be interesting, too. I learned about the book from an article in the weekend Wall Street Journal ...
  
  
• 10.08.09
  Snapshots
  Books to read, History (0)

  This book looks like it would be fun to read: "Histories Grecques : Snapshots from Antiquity" by Maurice Sartre, translated by Catherine Porter. I learned about it from David Wharton's review in The Weekly Standard. Here is the part that sold me: Sartre proceeds more or less chronologically, but the subjects he chooses to explore at first seem random--for example, some Lydian coins, or a graffito on the leg of an Egyptian statue, or a fragmentary inscription from a jerkwater Macedonian town, regulating who can and can't use the local gymnasium. The suspicion arises that Sartre is just taking us ...