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 AP European History BOOK REVIEW Assignment 

How to Write a Book Review

 SAMPLE BOOK REVIEW

Reading List AP Euro:  MR. Kay

 

Listed below is a selection of texts for students enrolled in AP European History for the 2013-2014 school year.  Students will read one book by the end of October .   The teacher must be informed as soon as a book is purchased or taken out of the library.  Make your choices quickly as only 2 students per book will be allowed.  Students will be formally assessed on their critical review of the book and its author. 

	A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance Portrait of an Age by William Manchester    One of the most volatile periods of western history witnessed the passing of the Dark Ages and the dawning of the Renaissance, illuminated by magnificent scientific and artistic achievements and spectacular leaps of thought and imagination. Manchester's narrative weaves together extraordinary figures, varied elements and accomplishments of the period.
	Candide by Francois-Arouet Voltaire Candide is the story of a gentle man who, though pummeled and slapped in every direction by fate, clings desperately to the belief that he lives in "the best of all possible worlds." On the surface a witty, bantering tale, this eighteenth-century classic is actually a savage, satiric thrust at the philosophical optimism that proclaims that all disaster and human suffering is part of a benevolent cosmic plan.
	Coming Up for Air  by George Orwell Insurance salesman George "Fatty" Bowling lives with his humorless wife and their two irritating children in a dull house in a tract development in the historyless London suburb of West Bletchley. The year is 1938; doomsayers are declaring that England will be at war again by 1941. . . .  a chance encounter with a poster in Charing Cross sets him off on a tremendous journey into his own memories--memories, especially, of a boyhood spent in Lower Binfield, the country village where he grew up. His recollections are pungent and detailed. Touch by touch, he paints for us a whole world that is already nearly lost: a world not yet ruled by the fear of war and not yet blighted by war's aftermath.
	One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich    by AlexanderSolzhenitsyn A masterpiece of modern Russian fiction, this novel is one of the most significant and outspoken literary documents ever to come out of Soviet Russia. A brutal depiction of life in a Stalinist camp and a moving tribute to man's triumph of will over relentless dehumanization, this is Solzhenitsyn's first novel to win international acclaim.
	Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century by Jonathan Glover This important book confronts the brutal history of the twentieth century to unravel the psychological mystery of why so many atrocities occurred--the Holocaust, Hiroshima, the Gulag, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and others--and how we can prevent their recurrence. Jonathan Glover finds disturbing similarities in the psychology of those involved with atrocities, yet offers hope that the development of a political and personal moral imagination can empower us to resist all acts of cruelty.
	Utopia  by Thomas More First published in 1516, Saint Thomas More's Utopia is one of the most important works of European humanism. Through the voice of the mysterious traveler Raphael Hythloday, More describes a pagan, communist city-state governed by reason. Addressing such issues as religious pluralism, women's rights, state-sponsored education, colonialism, and justified warfare, Utopia seems remarkably contemporary nearly five centuries after it was written, and it remains a foundational text in philosophy and political theory.
	The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman "More dramtatic than fiction...THE GUNS OF AUGUST is a magnificent narrative--beautifully organized, elegantly phrased, skillfully paced and sustained....The product of painstaking and sophisticated research." CHICAGO TRIBUNE Historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Barbara Tuchman has brought to life again the people and events that led up to Worl War I. With attention to fascinating detail, and an intense knowledge of her subject and its characters, Ms. Tuchman reveals, for the first time, just how the war started, why, and why it could have been stopped but wasn't. A classic historical survey of a time and a people we all need to know more about, THE GUNS OF AUGUST will not be forgotten.
	Arms of Krupp by William Manchester This is an excellent and erudite study of the Krupp family from the first Krupp in the 16th century to the last in the 1960s. A brilliantly researched and marvelously told story of a family whose fortunes mirrored the rise and fall of Germany from 1850 onwards. Krupp armaments played an important role in the defeat of France under Napoleon III and in the arming of the Second Reich leading to World War One. Their role in the Third Reich is examined minutely and it is quite clear that the company was vitally important in rearming Germany after Versailles and by supporting Hitler from an early stage played an odious part in the Wermacht's wars of conquest.
	The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels   The complete The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in the 1888 English version edited by Engels himself. One of the most influential political treatises of all time, The Communist Manifesto is essential reading for every student of politics and history.
	The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers    by  Paul Kennedy Yale historian Kennedy surveys the ebb and flow of power among the major states of Europe from the 16th centurywhen Europe's preeminence first took shapethrough and beyond the present erawhen great power status is devolving again upon the extra-European states. Stressing the interrelationships among economic wealth, technological innovation, and the ability of states efficiently to tap their resources for prolonged military preparedness and warmaking, he notes that those states with the relatively greater ability to maintain a balance of military and economic strength assumed the lead. Kennedy never reduces the analysis to crude materialism or empty tautology. Stimulating, erudite, carefully crafted, and readable; for public and academic libraries.
	Emile, or On Education  by Jean-Jacques Rousseau Two hundred years before Jean Piaget did a twenty year longitudinal study of his children, Rousseau did this longitudinal study of an imaginary child. This novel is a story of how Rousseau would have raised such a child placed in his charge. As full-time governor of Emile, Rousseau begins his study, not with the intent of discovering how the boy would grow into manhood, but with the conscious intent of shaping and controlling Emile's maturation.
	Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism  by Vladimir Ilich Lenin (Author) Ihis pamphlet by Lenin was first published 90 years ago in the midst of World War I and on the eve of the Russian revolution.  In this work Lenin sets out to achieve two things; first, to give a concise and scientific explanation of the nature of Imperialism and, secondly, to debate the ideas of influential and long time German Social Democratic Party leader Karl Kautsky who, under the pressure of war helped to lead the capitulation of the majority of his party to the side of the German ruling class. Advocates for social change familiar with arguments on the "left" blaming the cause of today's ills on various forms of globalisation, - which is meant to represent a more aggressive and rapacious form of imperialism - will find Lenin's work invaluable.  Lenin presents a more than convincing case that what we see today is no more than the normal workings of imperialism and therein lays the source of the problem

 

The Prince   by Niccolo Machiavelli Machiavelli's The Prince defined modern politics - and is still an excellent guide to everyone who lives among other humans and tries to influence them, from high public office to office politics. This excellent translation by W.K. Marriott offers all of Machiavelli's cynical and often controversial advice on betrayal, shifting allegiances, warfare and the role of the citizenry, as well as how to handle annexing your neighbors, bad press, bad advisers, flatterers, and taxation.

Other Suggestions:

The Last Lion by William Manchester:  

(the life of WInston Churchill)

 

 

 

The Romanovs by W. Bruce Lincoln

(A HUGE book on the entire Dynasty)

 

Hitler by Joachim C. Fest

 

 

 

Winston Churchill's books on World War  II:

(This is a six volume set, choose any of the volumes)

 

 

 

 

Citizens:  A Chronicle on the French Revolution by  Simon Schama

The ultimate book on the most famous revolt ever! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Third Reich by Albert Speer:

(The Ultimate Authority on the Third Reich by Hitler's minister of weapons) 

 

Alternate Reading List

 

 

 

 

How to Write a Book Review

 

 A book review is a description, critical analysis, and an evaluation on the quality, meaning, and significance of a book, not a retelling. It should focus on the book's purpose, content, and authority. A critical book review is not a book report or a summary. It is a reaction paper in which strengths and weaknesses of the material are analyzed. It should include a statement of what the author has tried to do, evaluates how well (in the opinion of the reviewer) the author has succeeded, and presents evidence to support this evaluation.  There is no right way to write a book review. Book reviews are highly personal and reflect the opinions of the reviewer. A review can be as short as 50-100 words, or as long as 1500 words, depending on the purpose of the review.

 

The following are standard procedures for writing book reviews; they are suggestions, not formulae that must be used.

 

1. Write a statement giving essential information about the book: title, author, first copyright date, type of book, general subject matter, special features (maps, color plates, etc.), price and ISBN.

2. State the author’s purpose in writing the book. Sometimes authors state their purpose in the preface or the first chapter. When they do not, you may arrive at an understanding of the book’s purpose by asking yourself these questions:

 

a. Why did the author write on this subject rather than on some other subject?

b. From what point of view is the work written?

c. Was the author trying to give information, to explain something technical, to convince the reader of a belief’s validity by dramatizing it in action?

d. What is the general field or genre, and how does the book fit into it? (Use outside sources to familiarize yourself with the field, if necessary.) Knowledge of the genre means understanding the art form. and how it functions.

e. Who is the intended audience?

f. What is the author's style? Is it formal or informal? Evaluate the quality of the writing style by using some of the following standards: coherence, clarity, originality, forcefulness, correct use of technical words, conciseness, fullness of development, fluidity. Does it suit the intended audience?

g. Scan the Table of Contents, it can help understand how the book is organized and will aid in determining the author's main ideas and how they are developed - chronologically, topically, etc.

h. How did the book affect you? Were any previous ideas you had on the subject changed, abandoned, or reinforced due to this book? How is the book related to your own course or personal agenda? What personal experiences you've had relate to the subject?

i. How well has the book achieved its goal?

j. Would you recommend this book or article to others? Why?

 

3. State the theme and the thesis of the book.

 

a. Theme: The theme is the subject or topic. It is not necessarily the title, and it is usually not expressed in a complete sentence. It expresses a specific phase of the general subject matter.

 

b. Thesis: The thesis is an author’s generalization about the theme, the author’s beliefs about something important, the book’s philosophical conclusion, or the proposition the author means to prove. Express it without metaphor or other figurative language, in one declarative sentence.

 

4. Explain the method of development-the way the author supports the thesis. Illustrate your remarks with specific references and quotations. In general, authors tend to use the following methods, exclusively or in combination.

 

a. Description: The author presents word-pictures of scenes and events by giving specific details that appeal to the five senses, or to the reader’s imagination. Description presents background and setting. Its primary purpose is to help the reader realize, through as many sensuous details as possible, the way things (and people) are, in the episodes being described.

 

b. Narration: The author tells the story of a series of events, usually presented in chronological order. In a novel however, chronological order may be violated for the sake of the plot. The emphasis in narration, in both fiction and non-fiction, is on the events. Narration tells what has happened. Its primary purpose is to tell a story.

c. Exposition: The author uses explanation and analysis to present a subject or to clarify an idea. Exposition presents the facts about a subject or an issue as clearly and impartially as possible. Its primary purpose is to explain.

d. Argument: The author uses the techniques of persuasion to establish the truth of a statement or to convince the reader of its falsity. The purpose is to persuade the reader to believe something and perhaps to act on that belief. Argument takes sides on an issue. Its primary purpose is to convince.

 

5. Evaluate the book for interest, accuracy, objectivity, importance, thoroughness, and usefulness to its intended audience. Show whether the author's main arguments are true. Respond to the author's opinions. What do you agree or disagree with? And why? Illustrate whether or not any conclusions drawn are derived logically from the evidence. Explore issues the book raises. What possibilities does the book suggest? What has the author omitted or what problems were left unsolved? What specific points are not convincing? Compare it with other books on similar subjects or other books by the same as well as different authors. Is it only a reworking of earlier books; a refutation of previous positions? Have newly uncovered sources justified a new approach by the author? Comment on parts of particular interest, and point out anything that seems to give the book literary merit. Relate the book to larger issues.

 

 

6. Try to find further information about the author - reputation, qualifications, influences, biographical, etc. - any information that is relevant to the book being reviewed and that would help to establish the author's authority. Can you discern any connections between the author's philosophy, life experience and the reviewed book?

 

7. If relevant, make note of the book's format - layout, binding, typography, etc. Are there maps, illustrations? Do they aid understanding?

 

8. Check the back matter. Is the index accurate? Check any end notes or footnotes as you read from chapter to chapter. Do they provide important additional information? Do they clarify or extend points made in the body of the text? Check any bibliography the author may provide. What kinds of sources, primary or secondary, appear in the bibliography? How does the author make use of them? Make note of important omissions.

 

9. Summarize (briefly), analyze, and comment on the book’s content. State your general conclusions. Pay particular attention to the author's concluding chapter. Is the summary convincing? List the principal topics, and briefly summarize the author’s ideas about these topics, main points, and conclusions. Use specific references and quotations to support your statements. If your thesis has been well argued, the conclusion should follow naturally. It can include a final assessment or simply restate your thesis. Do not introduce new material at this point.

 

Some Considerations When Reviewing  History and other Nonfiction:

 

1.With what particular subject or period does the book deal?

2.How thorough is the treatment?

3.What were the sources used?

4.Is the account given in broad outline or in detail?

5.Is the style that of reportorial writing, or is there an effort at interpretive writing?

6.What is the point of view or thesis of the author?

7.Is the treatment superficial or profound?

8.For what group is the book intended (textbook, popular, scholarly, etc.)?

9.What part does biographical writing play in the book?

10.Is social history or political history emphasized?

11.Are dates used extensively, and if so, are they used intelligently?

12.Is the book a revision? How does it compare with earlier editions?

13.Are maps, illustrations, charts, etc. used and how are these to be evaluated?

 

 SAMPLE BOOK REVIEW

'Blood of Victory': A Novelist Continues His Exploration of Wartime Europe

By NEIL GORDON

All of Alan Furst's characters are intimate with tragedy. Their lives, in the Europe of the late 1930's and early 1940's, have been taken away by revolution and war; they have lost families, homes and the rich familiarity of their past. Now they are trying to figure out not just how to live with the daily horror all around them but -- even more difficult -- why. The first question will take them deep into the clandestine fight against fascism. The second is never answered.

''Blood of Victory'' is the seventh of Furst's series of novels set within the shifts of European geopolitics that took place roughly between the Spanish Civil War and the summer of 1941. His particular focus is the first two years of World War II, with ''half of France . . . occupied by Germany, Poland enslaved, London in flames.'' These are the years in which the world awaited declarations of war from Russia and America, when Germany's defeat at the sole hands of the British was impossible to imagine and the likely outcome of the conflict was ''a brutal peace, punctuated by the oppression of the Jews.''

Like Furst's previous volumes, ''Blood of Victory'' is populated by an ''army of the lost and forgotten'' -- the Russians, Poles, Hungarians, French, Germans, Bulgarians, Romanians and Spaniards who became the foot soldiers of resistance, guided from afar by the intelligence agencies of London and Moscow. They conduct their lives in Furst's signature duotone palette, a cinematic noir vision of handsome men and women wearing trench coats, smoking Balkan Sobranie cigarettes, listening to Stephane Grapelli and Django Reinhardt and inhabiting nighttime streets in cities from Istanbul to occupied Paris, Furst's fictional home.

True to form, the central figure in ''Blood of Victory'' is Ilya Serebin, an emigre, ''half Russian aristocrat, half Bolshevik Jew,'' who escaped from Stalin's purges after serving in the Red Army. Why has he been forced to live in Paris, maintaining a household in Istanbul and running a sad and touching organization for exiles? ''Why not?'' asks a friend. ''Until a better two-word history of the U.S.S.R. came along,'' Serebin observes, ''it would do.''

Serebin's lover, a beautiful Frenchwoman named Marie-Galante Labonniere, recruits him into the network of Count Janos Polanyi, a Hungarian spymaster who went underground in Furst's last novel and is now working for London out of Istanbul. The job at hand is Polanyi's effort to deny the Wehrmacht access to the ''blood of victory,'' crucial supplies from Romania's Ploesti oil fields -- a key sabotage effort, visited previously by Furst, that also forms the basis of Eric Ambler's ''Background to Danger.''

And so Serebin sets out on his first foray into the world of wartime European espionage. It's familiar fictional territory, but it has never received treatment like this. Furst expresses the singular acuity of his historical vision in an exact, nearly telegraphic prose that relies heavily on sentence fragments and rapid-fire sequences of images to capture the extraordinary complexity of his characters' political and personal reality. His writing is eloquent in its factual, fatigued simplicity:

''Earlier that day there'd been fighting at the waterfront. . . . So said the barman at the dockside tavern. Intense volleys of small arms fire, a few hand grenades, machine guns, then silence. Serebin listened carefully, calculated the distance, ordered a glass of beer, stayed where he was. Safe enough. Serebin was 42, this was his fifth war, he considered himself expert in the matter of running, hiding or not caring.''

Serebin's tour of Istanbul is portrayed with a master's hand. Furst's vision of the city's European neighborhoods, their seedy and beautiful shabbiness tinged with Ottoman and Byzantine kitsch, is virtually flawless. As Serebin stares out a taxi window, he sees ''melon rinds with clouds of flies, a thousand cats, rust stains on porphyry columns, strange light, strange shadows in a haze of smoke and dust, a street where blind men sold nightingales.''

The characters -- world-weary, brooding, hard boiled and beautiful -- are as expertly drawn as their surroundings, but they are a bit less believable. Each of Furst's novels has a similar 40-something male as a main character: a good person, worldly and lucky at love, unmarried and without children. Serebin, like most of the others, lives on the edge of some fairly select European society. His interior life is large and he has an independent income.

Like all of Furst's protagonists, however, ''Serebin is to some degree limited by his own cinematic qualities, with just an edge more fantasy than fiction in his hard-boiled realization: Serebin was a man who had love affairs, one followed another. It was his fate, he believed, that life smacked him in the head every chance it got, then paid him back in women.'' A limitation? But then, consider -- as Furst's characters might say, a worldly sigh implicit in their clipped language -- the market. This is commercial fiction, which means that it is (no less legitimately than a movie) a performance for a paying audience.

At the same time, though, Furst's vision is intellectually complex and artistically rewarding. More than anything else, he is interested in the subjective experience of individuals in the countries that were occupied, attacked or threatened by Hitler. ''Blood of Victory,'' like his other books, is infused with a global perspective on the march of history that allowed the rise of the Third Reich, an awareness of the vast collaboration it required on the part of the governments and citizens of Europe. The frequent passages of historical analysis in ''Blood of Victory'' -- as in all of Furst's books -- are inspired, exemplifying the power of fiction to capture what formal histories often can't.

Paris, we are told early on, ''had died under the German occupation, the French heartbroken, grieving, silent.'' Later, in Bucharest, a former Romanian bureaucrat, a Jew, ponders the fate of his library of ''well-used editions of Balzac and Proust, a Latin dictionary, a set of German encyclopedias.'' ''If I have to leave here,'' he remarks to Serebin, ''I suppose I will lose the library. It's not the kind of thing you can take to, to wherever it might be.''

Furst captures the feel of these fragile days with uncanny subtlety and detail, conveying not just smells and tastes, the look of cars, the tone of political arguments but also the many-faceted daily compromises that start with little indignities and privations and reach their zenith in horrifying brutality. And he makes us understand clearly how it all came to be: the tiny steps forward of racism and oppression, the small failings of good people helplessly accommodating themselves to necessity at a time when the Final Solution was still far beyond their imagination.

As Serebin plans for his sabotage of German oil supplies, we are entirely carried along by the plot. Furst can -and does -- write action sequences with the same vividness as he describes a city like Istanbul. But at the heart of all of his thrillers is nothing less than a dramatic rendering of what it was like to live under Nazism as crimes against humanity became standard operating procedure. Evelyn Waugh wrote of P. G. Wodehouse that his ''idyllic world can never stale. . . . He has made a world for us to live in and delight in.'' Furst's accomplishment is precisely the opposite: he has created a world that can never lose its horror, a world where we witness, understand and mourn, over and over again, the horrors of Nazism.

So, then, the question. How good is Alan Furst? Is he like Eric Ambler -- writing genre fiction with ambitions to art -- or more like Graham Greene, generally seen as an artist who nods to genre? The future will decide whether Furst's flaws of romantic and repetitious characterization are defining or whether they will come to be viewed, like the faults of all classic novelists, as necessary adjuncts of their talent. In my view, it's the latter: Furst's achievement is a moral one, producing a powerful testament to fiction's ability to recreate the experience of others, and why it is so deeply important to do so.

Perhaps the Mexican novelist Paco Ignacio Taibo 2nd put it best: ''Being for 15 hours a Jewish Dutch teenager -- reading Anne Frank's diary -- can be one of the most subversive experiences in your life.'' We leave ''Blood of Victory'' moved, enriched and acutely aware of Furst's conviction that it is not only for the epic evil of the Final Solution but also for the quotidian suffering of Serbs, Russians, Hungarians, Parisians, Romanians and British, to name just a few of Hitler's victims, that Nazism must never be forgotten or its perpetrators ever be forgiven.

Neil Gordon is literary editor of Boston Review. His third novel, ''The Sea of Green,'' will be published next year.

Alternate Reading List

WARNING!!!  These books have not been

 previewed!  Before you choose one, you

 must research it and bring

 that research to Mr. Kay before approval.

AP European History

Meier, Christian. Caesar: A Biography.

Rawcliffe, Carole. Medicine and Society in Later Medieval England.

Reeves, Compton. Pleasures and Pastimes in Medieval England.

Evans, H.T. Wales and the Wars of the Roses.

Ziegler, Philip. The Black Death.

Smyth, Alfred P. King Alfred the Great.

Kluger, Richard. The Sheriff Of Nottingham.

Llywelyn, Morgan. The Last Prince of Ireland.

Cantor, Norman F. The Medieval Reader.

Power, Eileen. Medieval People.

Gies, Frances. The Knight in History.

Lee, Christopher. This Sceptered Isle: The Dynasties, Britain’s Most Powerful Families.

Sumpton, Jonathan. The Age of Pilgrimage: The Medieval Journey to God.

Walsh, Michael. The Conclave: A Sometimes Secret and Occasionally Bloody History of Papal Elections.

Ennis, Micheal. Duchess of Milan: A Novel of the Renaissance.

Symonds, John Addington. Benvenuto Cellini.

Hale, John. The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance.

Ruggiero, Guido. Binding Passions: Tales of Magic, Marriage, and Power at the End of the Renaissance.

Mattingly, Garrett. Catherine of Aragon.

Jones, Norman. The Birth of the Elizabethan Age: England in the 1560s.

Maccaffrey, Wallace. Elizabeth I.

Martines, Lauro. April Blood: Florence and the Plot Against the Medici.

Hibbert, Christopher. The Virgin Queen: Elizabeth I, Genius of the Golden Age.

Cowell, Stephanie. Nicholas Cooke: Actor , Soldier, Physician, Priest.

Turner, Richard. Inventing Leonardo.

Weir, Alison. The Princes in the Tower.

Warnicke, Retha M. The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn.

Finney, Patricia. Firedrake’s Eye.

Allmand, Christopher. Henry V.

Weir, Alison. The Six Wives of Henry VIII.

Fraser, Antonia. The Wives of Henry VIII.

Dann, Jack. The Memory Cathedral: A Secret History of Leonardo da Vinci.

Cowan, James. A Mapmaker’s Dream.

Jardine, Lisa. Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance.

Hibbert, Christopher. Cavaliers and Roundheads: The English Civil War 1642-1649.

Underdown, David. A Freeborn People: Politics and the Nation in Seventeenth-Century England.

Kamen, Henry. Philip of Spain.

Wedgwood, C.V. The Thirty Years War.

Weir, Alison. Mary, Queen of Scots and the Murder of Lord Darnley.

Fischer, David Hackett. The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rythm of History.

Elton, Geoffrey. The English.

Lewis, W. H. The Splendid Century: Life in the France of Louis XIV.

Colley, Linda. Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837.

Hibbert, Christopher. Cavaliers and Roundheads: The English Civil War 1642-1649.

Elton, Geoffrey. The English.

Fraser, Antonia. Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot.

Nicholls, Mark. Investigating the Gunpowder Plot.

Underdown, David. A Freeborn People: Politics and the Nation in Seventeenth-Century England.

Hutton, Ronald. Charles II: King of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

Ritter, Gerhard. Frederick the Great.

Wawro, Geoffrey. The Franco-Prussian War.

Wedgwood, C.V. Montrose.

Wheatcroft, Andrew. The Habsburgs: Embodying Empire.

Gay, Peter. The Enlightenment.

Holmes, Richard. Dr. Jonson and Mr. Savage.

Muller, Jerry Z. Adam Smith in His Time and Ours: Designing the Decent Society.

Ritter, Gerhard. Frederick the Great.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract and Discourses.

Clausewitz, Karl. On War.

Chandler, David. Napoleon and His Marshals.

Cornwell, David. Sharpe’s Eagle.

Cornwell, David. Sharpe’s Regiment.

Cornwell, David. Waterloo.

Cornwell. David. Sharpe’s Devil.

Kent, Alexander. With All Dispatch.

____________ . Signal-Close Action.

____________. Sloop of War.

Longford, Elizabeth. Wellington: The Years of the Sword.

Rude, George. The Crowd in the French Revolution.

Artz, Frederick. Reaction and Revolution.

Briggs, Asa. Victorian Cities.

________. Victorian People.

Hobsbawm, E.J. The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848.

Kinealy, Christine. This Great Calamity: The Irish Famine, 1845-52.

Kissinger, Henry. A World Restored.

Percival, John. The Great Famine: Ireland’s Potato Famine 1845-51.

Pinckney, David H. Napoleon III and the Reconstruction of Paris.

Porch, Douglas. The French Foreign Legion: A Complete History of the Legendary Fighting Force.

Woodham-Smith, Cecil.The Reason Why.

Weintraub, Stanley. Disraeli: A Biography.

Williams, Roger L. Gaslight and Shadow: The World of Napoleon III.

Zeldin, Theodore. France, 1848-1945: Ambition, Love and Politics.

Crankshaw, Edward. Bismarck.

Eyck, Erich. Bismarck andthe German Empire.

Horne, Alistair. The Fall of Paris.

Howard, Michael. The Franco-Prussian War.

Pflanze, Otto. Bismarck and the Development of Germany.

Smith, Denis Mack. Mazzini.

Smith, Denis Mack. Garibaldi.

Taylor, A.J.P. Bismarck.

Thompson, J.L. Louis Napoleon and the Second Empire.

Erickson, Carolly. Her Little Majesty: The Life of Queen Victoria.

Weber, Eugene. France: Fin de Siecle.

Horne, Alistair. Harold Macmillan: Volume I 1894-1956.

Cannadine, David. The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy.

Desmond, Adrian and James Moore. Darwin.

Ralston, David B. The Army of the Republic: 1871-1914.

Schorske, Carl. Fin De Siecle Vienna.

Smith, Martin Cruz. The Rose.

Strachey, Lytton. Eminent Victorians.

Weintraub, Stanley. Disraeli: A Biography.

Blake, Robert. Disraeli.

Jenkins, Roy. Gladstone: A Biography.

Tuchman, Barbara. The Proud Tower.

Tuchman, Barbara. The Guns of August.

Porch, Douglas. The French Foreign Legion: A Complete History of the Legendary Fighting Force.

James, Lawrence. The Rise and Fall of the British Empire.

Falls, Cyril. The Great War.

Faulks, Sebastian. Birdsong.

Fischer, Fritz. Germany’s Aims in the First World War.

LaFore, Laurence. The Long Fuse.

Macdonald, Lyn. 1915.

Massie, Robert K. Dreadnought..

Massie, Robert K. Nicholas and Alexandra.

Tuchman, Barbara. The Proud Tower.

Tuchman, Barbara. The Guns of August.

Tuchman, Barbara. The Zimmerman Telegram.

Wohl, Robert. The Generation of 1914.

Bullock, Alan. Hitler: A Study in Tyranny.

Carsten, F.L. The Reichswehr and Poltics, 1918 to 1933.

Churchill, Winston. The Gathering Storm.

Dorpalen, A. Hindenburg and the Weimar Republic.

Eyck, Erich. A History of the Weimar Republic.

Fest, Joachim. Hitler.

Gay, Peter. Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider.

Gatzke, H.W. Stresemann and Rearmament of Germany.

Halperin, S. W. Germany Tried Democracy: A Political History from 1918 to 1933.

Laqueur, Walter. Fascism: Past, Present, Future.

_________. Weimar: A Cultural History.

MacMillan, Margaret. Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World.

Mosse, G. L. The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich.

Nichols, A.J. Weimar and the Rise of Hitler.

Preston, Paul. Franco: A Biography.

Rowse, A. L. Why Appeasement?

Smith, Denis Mack. Mussolini.

Spielvogel, Jackson J. Hitler and Nazi Germany: A History.

Turner. H.A. Stresemann and the Politics of the Weimar Republic.

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