Tag: history

Review – Ancestors

Posted July 14, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Ancestors: A Prehistory of Britain in Seven Burials, Alice Roberts

To get my nitpicking out of the way, the subtitle is really inaccurate. There are a lot (a lot) more than seven burials discussed here: I wouldn’t be surprised if it managed to get up to seven burials per chapter, though I wasn’t counting. It makes sense, in a way: many prehistoric remains are fragmentary, and they can tell us more in aggregate — which does lead me to my other peeve with this book, which is that many of the examples were actually not even British. Sure, each chapter discussed British remains as well, but there’s inevitably a lot of discussion of other burials, including quite a bit of detail about places like Shanidar.

I guess what I had hoped for was a book that really focused in on seven specific exemplary burials, and was quite exhaustive about those, discussing all the different factors we know about that specific individual, that specific grave. At least, that’s what I expected with the subtitle, at least. So, it isn’t that. There is quite a bit of detail about some of the burials, including some fascinating ones I didn’t know about, but it is really much more of a general survey of prehistoric burials, mostly in Britain, but using burials in Europe and further afield to help contextualise them. Which also makes sense, but is not how the title sounded.

Despite those peeves taking up a lot of my writing space so far, I did really enjoy the book. There are some burials here which really intrigue me, like the full chariot burials, complete with horses. Roberts mentions some ideas that really fascinate me, like the idea that maybe offerings to the water were actually funerary offerings, not offerings to abstract deities. She suggests that some of the “missing” dead (we would expect to find more prehistoric remains than we do) could have been cremated and scattered on water, with offerings thrown in after them — or even that bodies could have been placed on rafts with their belongings, and then the offerings ended up in the water when the rafts deteriorated.

It’s an interesting idea, at least, and the book had a few such titbits. Although I knew a little about most of the burials she discusses, if not all, there was definitely some new material in here and stuff that surprised and fascinated me. Worth the read!

Oh, and I’ll just bet the section on interpreting sex/gender in burials reaaaally chapped some people’s hide. Ahaha.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: Alice Roberts, book reviews, books, history, non-fiction

Review – The Map of Knowledge

Posted July 5, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

The Map of Knowledge, Violet Moller

I didn’t really expect to enjoy this as much as I did, because this isn’t really my area of history and it started out kind of dry. Somehow, though, I did get sucked in by the author’s enthusiasm for the subject and the slightly gossipy tales about some of the ways these texts survived and how they influenced societies — and how societies influenced their transmission, of course.

It’s quite a narrow book in the sense that it focuses on seven specific cities where manuscripts survived. It does peek around at the world and how outside events affected things, of course, but it narrows the scope of what could be a huge topic by focusing in on those cities.

In the end, it was a little slow/dry in places, but I found myself picking it up whenever I had a spare minute. It’s a good potted history of the survival of some of the pre-Christian texts that were so influential, and it’s definitely worth it, in my view. It’s not my subject, so I can’t speak to the quality of the research, but where it did intersect my other interests, it matched up. There are plenty of references, too, so that’s reassuring.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, history, non-fiction, Violet Moller

Review – White Bread

Posted June 15, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

White Bread, Aaron Bobrow-Strain

I wasn’t sure how interesting a book on store-bought white bread could be, but someone recommended it to me and I wanted to give it a chance… and it was everything I could want from the kind of book which takes an everyday part of life and digs into its history and social meaning. Bobrow-Strain lays bare all kinds of things about the US which you wouldn’t necessarily link to white bread. Or maybe, knowing the US you would — wealth, health, religion, race.

It ended up being really fascinating: rather densely written — for 200 pages, it took me a while — but in a good way, informative and considerate. Unlike another recent book on food I read, Reinventing the Wheel, it managed not to sound like it was judging everyone in the world’s bad food choices for causing problems. Instead it really dug into why white bread seemed (and seems) so desirable, and what powerful motivations lie behind the choice.

I’d really love to know more about this whole subject as relates to the UK as well, and I’m eager to explore the references for more books on food, since I’ve been finding them fascinating lately.

Rating: 5/5

Tags: Aaron Bobrow-Strain, book reviews, books, history, non-fiction

Review – Kindred

Posted March 29, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 1 Comment

Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art, Rebecca Wragg Sykes

That’s a pretty big title, particularly as it includes concepts that people doubt applied to Neanderthals (like love and art). Nonetheless, Wragg Sykes lives up to it, painting a picture of the current state of the art in understanding Neanderthals, their lives, their relationships to each other… and their relationships to us. I lost count of the number of times I just had to share a snippet or an image from this book with my wife, because it’s just so cool what we can know about these people, from the way they ate to their technology level.

One example: their technology level, since we’re speaking of that, was higher than you’d think — for example, they were creating a sort of glue from resin. Pine resin was the best, but other resin when mixed with beeswax gained similar properties, and they knew that and used it! There are multiple levels of technology there, from getting the resin out of the bark (which required a low-oxygen fire) to mixing it to applying it to attaching spearheads to hafts, etc.

I knew some of the things mentioned in this book, of course, particularly when it comes to how Neanderthals are related to us. But much of it was new, or more detailed than I thought, and Wragg Sykes’ interpretation of the evidence is fascinating. Even if you don’t go all the way with her in attributing complex thought and planning to Neanderthals (though I think the evidence tends in her direction), the evidence is astounding enough to keep your attention.

This is actually that rarest of things: a popular science book which I will keep, even though I probably won’t read it again, because I enjoyed it so much and I would like to have it to hand to refer to in the future.

Rating: 5/5

Tags: book reviews, books, history, non-fiction, Rebecca Wragg Sykes, science

Review – The Restaurant

Posted March 21, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

The Restaurant: A History of Eating Out, William Sitwell

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this survey of eating out through the ages covers Britain most heavily, especially toward the end of the book. Which somewhat makes sense as a strategy, given the scope of the theme “eating out”, but the subtitle doesn’t really make that clear. In the end, I don’t know a lot about food, so I can’t say much about the accuracy of the actual information, but Sitwell writes clearly (if not always with sparkling prose) and introduces the important points well, developing his theme about the fact that British food isn’t really that bad after all, and that we have our own food-wizards.

Like I said, though, it’s not always sparkling prose, and I did drift off a bit. It’s actually a nice source for a story I want to write, so it served its purpose, but… to put it another way, it’s not the kind of non-fiction where I turned to my wife to ask “did you know? did you know?” — nor the kind of non-fiction I read compulsively, eagerly, regardless of the topic. (And there are certainly books that fascinate me about topics that don’t; Richard Fortey can make me enthused about geology, for goodness’ sake.)

So, interesting, but not special, I guess would be my summary.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, history, non-fiction, William Sitwell

Review – The Pocket

Posted February 28, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

The Pocket: A Hidden History of Women’s Lives, Barbara Burman, Ariane Fennetaux

Focusing on 1660 to 1900 (a very precise time range!), this book uses the tie-on pocket as an ‘in’ to dig into women’s lives via the historical records, including the physical records (pockets which have ended up in collections and museums), writing and court records. It’s a fairly academic book — lots of “meaning resides in the blahblahblah” type language — and also serves as a pretty comprehensive repository for photographs of extant pockets and their details, but it’s accessible enough if you have enough of an interest, and there’s a lot of fascinating detail.

What really surprised me was how long the tie-on pocket lasted, and the wealth of evidence the authors were actually able to show about how they were used, made, obtained, bought, bartered, pawned and gifted. They really do make a good entrée for the history of women’s lives; I thought one of the most interesting parts were the court records, giving us a glimpse into what women carried in their pockets and why.

Not the most riveting read, even for non-fiction, but the photographs are beautifully done and in full colour, and the subject is fascinating enough that I found it well worth the slightly dry and academic approach.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, history, non-fiction

Review – A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

Posted February 28, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Emma Southon

I worried from the title and first few pages that this might prove too flippant and shallow from me, but I was wrong to worry. I quickly settled into it, and it’s obvious that Southon knows her stuff, takes deep joy in it, and knows where she can skimp on explanations a bit in order to get to the meat of things. She gives a lot of context without getting too bogged down in it, while telegraphing that the point is coming; if you really hate comments like “bear with me, we’re getting to the good stuff”, then it won’t work for you… but mostly, I thought she did a really good job.

The idea of a book about murder in Rome gave me a bit of pause, since I didn’t think they really had such a concept… and indeed, I was right, and Southon acknowledges that it’s a very modern way to interrogate these sources, and that in many of the cases described, no one batted an eyelid (the murder of slaves, particularly). As she says, though, the deaths and the attitudes to those deaths still tell us a lot about Roman society and the place of various people within it.

I was intrigued by the topic, but didn’t expect to find it a pageturner; that it was says something about how engaging Southon’s writing was. I found it deeply enjoyable — particularly as it was one of those books that had me turning to my wife to delightedly ask ‘did you know?’ and read bits out or wave my hands excitedly as I connected up bits and shared the fun.

Rating: 5/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Emma Southon, history, non-fiction

Review – A Cheesemonger’s History of the British Isles

Posted February 27, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

A Cheesemonger’s History of the British Isles, Ned Palmer

This one is exactly what it says on the tin: a history of the British Isles which follows the lot of cheese, cheesemakers, affineurs and cheesemongers. It touches on a surprising amount of history, getting further into things that you might expect. Armies march on their stomachs, which are partly full of cheese, for a start.

It isn’t, of course, just pure history: there’s also a lot of speculation, from what ancient cheeses might have tasted like to who might have made them and why, and I wouldn’t exactly cite it as a source for something because it’s chatty and speculative, using experience to pry into parts of history we just can’t see. For example, he mentions at one point that the monks in a monastery can’t have been the ones to make the cheese, because they couldn’t leave the grounds and the herds would have been elsewhere… and you need to start the process right away. He speculates that they probably acted as affineurs, aging and storing the cheeses once made.

I don’t always love history when it’s speculative, but Palmer’s expertise about cheese is obvious — and he gets onto more solid ground with sources to refer to as well, with the later parts of the book. I love eating cheese, but it’s obvious I need to try more different kinds of cheese… and I had no idea of most of the details of how cheese is made, how different cheeses are ripened and different effects are produced. Palmer’s enthusiasm makes all of that interesting, and his book is riveting.

Rating: 5/5

Tags: book reviews, books, history, Ned Palmer, non-fiction

Review – How To Read A Dress

Posted February 24, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

How To Read A Dress, Lydia Edwards

This book is a handy survey of women’s fashion (mostly of dresses, but occasionally including titbits about other aspects of dress and accessorising, like necklaces and shoes) from the 16th to the 20th century. It features full-colour photographs, carefully annotated with useful pointers as to what to notice, and introductory essays explaining the trends of each period.

The annotation is very good, but the introductory paragraphs for each section are a bit less organised. It doesn’t refer to specific examples of dresses in that chapter, but stays totally general… meaning it’s hard for me — a not especially visual person — to link the dresses up with the trends they illustrate. Sometimes I’d look through the dresses for a specific feature, but not really see anything that seemed to match. In addition, sometimes the text would mention a specific photograph or illustration, but it wasn’t next to the text, and there was no helpful “(figure 3)” or anything; instead it would say something like “this photograph of a gentleman…” Which photograph of a gentleman? What page it is on?!

Anyway, I found it really interesting, and useful, with a few flaws. It would probably work better for someone with a visual memory!

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, history, Lydia Edwards, non-fiction

Review – A World Beneath the Sands

Posted February 7, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

A World Beneath the Sands, Toby Wilkinson

A World Beneath the Sands is a book not about Egyptology, for the most part, but about Egyptologists — and not just the highlights (Champollion, Petrie, Howard Carter) but some of the less-known names as well, including some of the women who facilitated the study of Ancient Egypt. Broadly speaking, it should have been my thing, but in execution, it just… wasn’t. It was rather slow, and just… not very exciting.

It was mostly about political manoeuvring and the various European countries that jockeyed over control of Egypt, and the doing of archaeology a distant second. The details of digs and finds were barely described, mostly just listed off before moving onto the next list of finds.

In principle, a history of the archaeologists, scholars and looters who shaped our understanding of the history of Ancient Egypt really should have been fascinating, but I found it really dry and unnecessarily verbose. I’m hoping it’s just because I didn’t enjoy the topic as much as expected, because I have another of Wilkinson’s books (The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt), and I’m hoping to enjoy that a lot!

Rating: 2/5

Tags: book reviews, books, history, non-fiction, Toby Wilkinson