History Archives - Brooke's Reviews and Sweeps

Fallen Glory

By Brookelorren on April 22, 2020April 21, 2020Leave a Comment

I have recently been trying to read more nonfiction. The real world is so interesting and it’s fun to find out more. Fallen Glory wouldn’t have been my first choice of nonfiction books though: the lives and deaths of history’s greatest buildings. I don’t know a lot about architecture. However, when I went to the Penguin Teen Tour in March, Marie Lu said she was reading this book, and the way she described it made it seem amazing (she was right).

Fallen Glory is not just a book about a bunch of destroyed buildings. It tells the story of the people that created the buildings and the people that destroyed the buildings. At times, it is a sad reminder of our lost history. For example, the first chapter is the story of the Tower of Babel. While we don’t know exactly where the exact site for the tower was, this book tells about some of the possibilities. It also tells the story of many of the artifacts of the time that were lost during the Iraq War, when thieves broke into an area museum and ransacked it.

It’s the story of buildings lost in both ancient and modern times, from Asia to America, with stops in the Middle East and Europe. With this as a backdrop, the author, James Crawford, weaves a compelling story. Chapter eight, for example, tells the story of the Nika riots in Constantinople. While you may or may not have heard of them before, Crawford gives all the background information you need to know for this to be an interesting story. Even if you’ve never heard of the Emperor Justinian and his wife Theodora before.

The book tells stories of the obscure, such as Vilcabamba, to the well-known, like the Bastille. Not knowing about the former didn’t make it less interesting than the latter. Crawford is a great storyteller.

I thought one of the most interesting stories was the chapter on GeoCities, which wasn’t even a real city in the first place. Crawford tells how it was developed and later became popular. Eventually it was bought out by Yahoo! I could write a lot about Yahoo! I remember when they were so small that they still added their entries by hand. Yahoo! eventually closed down GeoCities, and in that one moment, years of early Internet history was erased (although some people were able to archive a lot of the site).

Conclusion

I really liked Fallen Glory. It’s not just a book about buildings: it’s a book about the societies that built the buildings, lived with the buildings, and watched its destruction. The stories it told were interesting. Some buildings I had heard of before, but others were new. Whether they were new to me or not, the stories brought a fresh perspective to the locations. If you’re interested in history ranging from the Tower of Babel to the 21st century, you may enjoy this book.

Satellite Bible Atlas

By Brookelorren on August 28, 2019September 2, 2019Leave a Comment

I recently finished reading the Satellite Bible Atlas by William Schlegel. This is the best book of Bible maps I’ve ever seen. If you have a Bible, you probably have a few maps in the back of your book… but none of them are likely to compare with the vast variety of maps assembled here.

After a few general maps of the Levant, the Satellite Bible Atlas is arranged in chronological order. It starts with Abraham and moves all the way through the years of early Jewish rebellion in the Roman world. As the settlement names change over time, the adjoining maps also change. Each map is accompanied by a page of explanation. Often, the explaining page will include quotes from the Bible or even archaeological tablets that have been found discussing the events from that time period.

Sometimes when I read the Bible, my eyes glaze over at all the place names I don’t recognize. Maybe it’s just me, but probably not. This book helps me visualize where most of these places are. It’s certainly not a book that you’ll want to read in a day. It’s not meant to be a page-turner like a lot of books I review here. However, this is a book that you can use as a reference book. Even though I’ve finished reading the book, I’ll probably refer back to many of these maps again at some point in the future.

I’d recommend the Satellite Bible Atlas to several types of people. If you’re interested in ancient maps, if you want to know where all those little towns in the Bible are, or if you’re interested in ancient history, you might like this book. Otherwise, you probably won’t find this book to be very interesting. But if you are, then this is the best collection of Biblical-era maps I have seen.

Killing Kennedy

By Brookelorren on June 27, 2019June 6, 20192 Comments

Recently, I’ve started to put more audiobooks into my life. I haven’t been reading as many non-fiction books as I would like, so I decided to read Bill O’Reilly’s Killing Kennedy as an audiobook. It was really good and I learned a lot.

If you’re not familiar with O’Reilly’s Killing series, he takes a topic and writes all about the events that lead to the person’s death. The books are written in a narrative style, so they’re fairly entertaining. In the past, I’ve read Killing Lincoln, Killing Reagan, and Killing the Rising Sun.

Killing Kennedy starts off during World War II, where Kennedy is first tested as a leader. After his boat sinks, he saves the people on his crew through quick thinking, a lot of swimming, and a little bit of luck. If it wasn’t for this incident (and the death of his older brother), we might not have ever heard much from the Kennedys.

Most of the book focuses on the time when Kennedy was president. O’Reilly discusses some of the major events of his time in office, such as the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile crisis. The book also discusses Kennedy’s personal life, including his dalliances outside of his marriage to Jackie, the loss of his child Patrick, and his love for his children. It also covers some of the major social movements of the time, such as the civil rights movement.

Of course, since this is a Killing book, Kennedy has to die sometime. We’re introduced to the character of Lee Harvey Oswald long before he makes his fateful shots. Killing Kennedy follows Oswald from his days in the Soviet Union, where he meets his wife Marina, all the way through his death at the hands of Jack Ruby.

Although there are conspiracy theories surrounding Kennedy’s death, O’Reilly makes no judgement about them one way or another. Just as he does in Killing Lincoln, O’Reilly states the facts and lets you come to your own conclusions. He goes into a lot of detail about what happened that morning, including Jackie’s reaction and what some people noticed prior to the shooting.

If you’ve ever wondered about Kennedy’s time in office or about his assassination, Killing Kennedy is a great book. I highly recommend it and will be reading more books in the Killing series in the future.

Book Places I Don’t Want to Visit

By Brookelorren on February 26, 2019February 25, 201930 Comments

Today is Top Ten Tuesday, and the topic is supposed to be “Places Mentioned in Books That I’d Like to Visit” but I actually did that topic in October, and I’m not sure too much has changed since then. So I’m going to go the opposite direction and do places I DON’T want to visit. Some of the places I wouldn’t want to visit are dependent on the time frame too. If that’s the case, I’ll mention that.

I suppose if they do the topic of “Bookish Places I Don’t Want to Visit” as an official topic in a few months, maybe I’ll have more places I do want to visit by then. Anyway, as always, TTT is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl.

The setting of Red Queen – Nope. It might be an okay place ten years after the conclusion of War Storm, but during the series, I don’t think so. There’s a war going on, and it doesn’t really matter if you’re a red or a silver, it’s not really an appealing place. I think I’ll skip a vacation here.

Pre-Revolutionary War France (Enchantée) – There are a lot of historical places I’d like to visit, but if I were to visit the time period of Enchantée, I’d want to do it as an observer only. This would have been a nightmare of a place. First, if you’re poor, you’re probably starving. The crops had been terrible and there really wasn’t enough food for everybody. If you were rich, you were expected to be the king’s lapdog. No thanks. I wouldn’t mind seeing this place in a holodeck as a ghost where nobody could see me, but I don’t really want to live here.

Ukraine during the Holodomor (Red Famine). Another real place and real time period I wouldn’t want to visit, except as one of those ghosts that couldn’t interact or be seen by anybody else. The Holodomor was a time period in the last century where Stalin tried to starve the Ukrainians because they wouldn’t go along with his farm collectivization program. I haven’t read this book yet, but I know enough about this ugly little period of history that I don’t want to go there.

Several locations in The Last Year of the War. I would not have wanted to be set to one of the Japanese/German internment camps that the United States set up during World War II, despite the propaganda videos that show how happy the people were in them (I’m sure they weren’t). Then, I wouldn’t want to be in Germany or Japan during the end of World War II or right afterwards. I have a German textbook that was printed in the 1970s and even then, local calls were still expensive to make and most people didn’t have phones. That was 30 years after the war ended! So no, I think I’ll avoid taking a trip to this location.

Australia of A Thousand Perfect Notes. I absolutely adore Australia. I spent five weeks there many years ago, and it was wonderful. I spent time in Sydney, Cairns, Brisbane, even went to Canberra… and I loved it. But the people in A Thousand Perfect Notes have really rough lives. I’d love to visit Australia again someday, bu I’ll skip this particular neighborhood, if at all possible.

Weep of Strange the Dreamer. I’d love to visit Lazlo’s library, but Weep would have been a terribly depressing place. There’s this big monstrous metal structure hanging over the city, casting a shadow over the whole place, the whole town has recent memories of how the gods used to steal the people away, no thanks. I might want to visit the setting of this series after the conclusion of Muse of Nightmares, but not before.

Thule, Queen of Air and Darkness. I love the Los Angeles setting of The Dark Artifices, but I wouldn’t want to live in Thule, which is an alternate world that split off when… well, I wont give spoilers, but something bad happened during The Dark War in Thule. We’ll see more of Thule in The Wicked Powers, which I’m glad about, but I don’t want to visit Thule, even if I want to read about it.

The world of An Ember in the Ashes. I doubt it matters whether you are in a powerful position or not in this world, it seems like a terrible place to live. You’d always live in fear, and war comes to the land. Maybe this place won’t be so bad after Ember 4 (I don’t know), but as it stands now, I’ll stay away.

Brazil of Never Stop Walking. There are probably a lot of wonderful places to visit in Brazil. I wouldn’t pass up a trip there if offered. However, the particular locations that Christina Rickardsson talks about in her memoir… I’ll stay very far away from. Places where corrupt police shoot children, where kids live on the street and are vulnerable to exploitation or might have to kill to live… I’ll stay away from there.

Germany before World War II (Defying Hitler). Maybe Germany would be a good place to avoid entirely between say… 1900 and 1960? But I would’t want to spend too much time there in the days leading up to World War II, when people were trying to live with runaway inflation. After inflation was under control, they had to live with Adolph Hitler’s rise to power. No thanks.

So there you have it. Ten places mentioned in books that I wouldn’t want to visit. I look forward to seeing the places that you would like to visit, or maybe you went another direction like I did.

Back to School with Nonfiction: Top Ten Tuesday

By Brookelorren on August 28, 2018August 13, 201825 Comments

So it’s time for the kids to go back to school. My daughter started public school for the first time about two weeks ago, my boy started his homeschool coop last week, and our “Lastname Christian Academy” officially starts the Monday after Labor Day. For today’s Top Ten Tuesday Topic (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) we are doing a back to school edition. This week, I will be posting some of my favorite nonfiction books. They’re in no particular order.

The Fourth Turning has got to be one of my favorite nonfiction books. It was my favorite book that I read for the first time in 2016. It came out in 2007, but it’s very relevant today. I just love how this book describes how history runs in cycles, and it is so amazing how this book is laid out. If you like this book, Pendulum is also a good book with the same idea, but I liked this one immensely better, even though this one is older.

I first read The Discoverers by Daniel J. Boorstin in college, and not for an assignment; it just looked interesting. The book details the history of discovery, from things as simple as the clock and the calendar to more modern inventions, like navigation. I’ve read this book twice, but it’s been a while since I’ve read it last. I’ve also read a few of his other books; they’re also outstanding. A couple of years ago I was able to find a copy of The Creators in hardback at a library book sale and I had to get that one too, even though I had already read it.

If you are a homeschooler, then you are probably familiar with Susan Wise Bauer’s Story of the World series (they’re very popular). She also has written a set of history books for adults: The History of the _______ World (she has books for the Ancient World, Medieval World, and Renaissance World). They’re all great. If you think you know history because you studied it in high school, you probably are missing a lot. Some of the stories in these books are quite brutal, and I don’t think that they’d get taught in high school just for the brutality factor alone (history can be pretty nasty at times). These are really thick books, and you probably won’t finish it in a day or two like you can with most novels, but you can learn a lot from them.

One of my favorite history books is A History of Modern Europe by John Merriman. I bought the third edition (pictured in the photo here) because if you buy the brand new edition, it’s really expensive. There’s over 1400 pages of text here, so you won’t get this one read in one sitting either, but the book is very readable.

After the Flood by Bill Cooper is a lot shorter and a lot less academic, but I found it to be really interesting nonetheless. I think it’s fairly typical for people living today to think of the ancient world being full of unintelligent people who didn’t know much, but I’m pretty sure that was not the case. This book talks about some of the ancient records that shows that more than likely, ancient people in places like modern-day Britain already had knowledge of the Judeo-Christian God before the arrival of the Roman missionaries that started showing up there after the time of Jesus. I found the ancient geneological records to be fascinating.

I read The History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours in college, but I also reread it once after that. The stories here are pretty fascinating. It’s hard to tell at times what in this book is real and what was exaggeration. Whether some of the tales are made up or not, what is apparent is that there was corruption in the early medieval period just as much as there is now.

If you’re looking for a reading challenge, then you might want to try tackling Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (unabridged edition). My Kindle says that I still have about 75 hours left in this book, and I’m 2 % of the way through (probably part of that is chapter indexes though). I read the abridged edition years ago, but I’d like to one day read the entire thing, because there’s some fairly interesting stories here (although the reading is not the easiest).

There are several different Kindle editions of this book floating around, some free, some you have to pay for, but I’ve found that this particular edition is the best, because 1) the footnotes are all there and linked, and 2) all six volumes of this book are all together. I’ve downloaded a few copies of this book and have decided on reading this particular edition because it seems to have the best formatting.

I love 1421: The Year China Discovered America, because there is so much about the ancient and even medieval world that we don’t understand. If you like the History Channel shows where they go look at unexplained evidence and try to figure out what it all means, then you might be interested in reading this book too. I’ve always wanted to read his other book, 1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance, but I could never remember the title, but I finally found it. Now that it’s on my Goodreads TBR, I’m more likely to read it.

So far, all the books I’ve put on this list have been history books, which is most of the nonfiction that I read (well, that and political fiction) but I do read whatever nonfiction looks interesting. Freakonomics is a thought-provoking non-history nonfiction book. It explores the economic factors behind things like drug dealing, danger, abortion, and other subjects, but not in a boring way. I haven’t read this book in a long time, but now that I’m talking about it here, I want to read it again.

Wildcard seems to be one of the most anticipated books of the year, and if you’ve read Warcross already, then you probably remember that there’s a place that Emika goes to that is the dark side of Warcross. It’s actually based on a real thing called The Dark Net. While I was reading Warcross, I was reminded about the things that I read about in this book, including the Assassination Market (which is a real thing). If you find those sorts of dark things interesting, you might be curious to read this book. It’s a fairly easy and enjoyable read.

So that’s this week’s Back to School edition of Top Ten Tuesday. Stay tuned for next week where I talk about books that that were made into movies, and which one was better (because I don’t really watch too many movies or TV shows and I’m certain that most of you aren’t interested in watching something like Кухня, so I’m straying off topic a little).

George Whitefield: Evangelist for God and Empire Paints a Realistic Portrait

By Brookelorren on August 13, 2018August 12, 20182 Comments

I recently was given a copy of George Whitefield: Evangelist for God and Empire, written by Peter Y. Choi. Like a lot of people who know a lot about the history of the American colonies or of religious history, I knew who George Whitefield (pronounce WIT-field) was. Whitefield is often portrayed as a preacher who played a huge part in the Great Awakening. He’s often painted as a saint. This book seems to paint a more balanced portrait of the preacher.

George Whitefield: Evangelist for God and Empire tells of the life of Whitefield, not just as a preacher, but as someone who also was a flawed individual, like all of us. Yes, he preached to the masses during the Great Awakening, but he also owned slaves, had questionable practices with regards to his orphanage, tried to found a college, and involved himself in politics during the War of 1812.

Even though I knew some things about Whitefield before reading this book, there was a lot more to this book that I didn’t know. Although a lot of things in this book (looking from a 21st century perspective) were not good, like pushing for slavery in Georgia, it was good to learn about these other aspects of his life as well.

The book was a fairly scholarly book, so it wasn’t one that I could read straight through. It wasn’t a book that I couldn’t put down, and I did read a few other books while I was working on this one, but the information in this book was interesting. The book is worth reading if you want to learn more about this preacher.

I realize that there have been several non-YA book reviews over the last week and a half, and unfortunately, that’s just how it worked out… I really couldn’t move the dates of my reviews because I wanted the ARCs to get out in a timely manner, and I also wanted to keep my upcoming Throne of Glass and Red Queen reviews together. On Thursday, we will resume our normal YA reviews with Strange the Dreamer.

1,000 Years, 1,000 People, and 18 Years Late

By Brookelorren on July 27, 2018July 23, 20186 Comments

1,000 Years, 1,000 People is a book that ranks the 1,000 most influential people of the last millennium. I just finished reading the book this week; you might be thinking “aren’t we 18 years into the new millennium?” Well, we are, but I finally got around to reading this book.

This isn’t a book that you really sit down and read all in one sitting, like a lot of the books that I’ve reviewed here. Even though I bought this book years ago, it was misplaced until just recently. I decided to start reading it earlier this year. I typically would only read about ten entries a day.

This book ranks the people who had the most lasting influence over the last millennium. Since it’s hard to judge people’s lasting influence if they’re still alive, there are some people that were really influential in the 1900s that didn’t make the book (still, 136 people did). There are people represented in this book from every century, although 417 people that lived in the 1800s made the list, so it’s still fairly skewed towards people that lived more recently.

Even though 1,000 Years, 1,000 People does represent worldwide influence, the book is still fairly heavily skewed towards the United States (267 of the people in the book lived there). Then again, the US has been the most influential country in the world since about World War II. This book was published in 1998, which was right after the Cold War had seemingly ended and was before 9/11. It was a time when the United States seemed to have an unprecedented influence over the world.

Each entry has the person’s name, the years they lived, a short caption about them, and an approximately 150 word blurb about what they’ve done. The only exception is Fernão Lopes, who was ranked 780. Instead of a caption saying why he was important, there is a footnote notation after his name. The footnote reads “1. father of the footnote”. Each entry is fairly witty like this, as well as being informative.

With 1,000 people on the list, there’s bound to be some people that you don’t recognize. The highest ranked people are bound to be people that you recognize: Johannes Gutenberg, Martin Luther, William Shakespeare, etc. At the bottom of the list, there were a lot of people that I had never heard of, like Bernard Cornfield and Joseph Bramah. Even at the bottom of the list, almost everybody did something that you’ll be familiar with, like inventing the stethoscope or disposable diapers.

All sorts of people are represented in this book. There are artists, inventors, politicians, and even some sports heroes. It seemed to be a nice balance.

1,000 Years, 1,000 People is a book that you can read and learn something interesting from. If you’re interested in learning about a wide variety of historical figures, but don’t want to read a ton of biographies or peruse dry entries in Wikipedia, you might find this book worth reading.

Indianapolis is a Harrowing Tale of Lost History

By Brookelorren on June 11, 2018June 3, 2018Leave a Comment

Indianapolis: The True Story of the Worst Sea Disaster in U.S. Naval History and the Fifty-Year Fight to Exonerate an Innocent Man (that title is a mouthful) by Lynn Vincent is an excellent story of a World War II naval disaster that you may never have heard of. If you are a fan of World War II history, or military history in general, I highly recommend it.

The Indianapolis was the ship that was chosen to deliver the nuclear weapons that were used to help end World War II to Japan. After the ship made its top secret delivery, it was sunk by an enemy submarine. The captain was court-martialed, his career was destroyed, and the survivors felt that the whole situation was unjust. The captain was finally exonerated about 75 years later, after most of the survivors had already passed away. Indianapolis is the story of the delivery, the sinking, the destruction of Captain Charles McVay, and finally, his redemption.

I first heard of the Indianapolis last year, when I read Bill O’Reilly’s Killing the Rising Sun, which is another excellent book on World War II. Although that book focused on the war in Japan in general, I remember reading about the fate of the Indianapolis (and its captain) and thought that it was really sad. When I had the opportunity to read Lynn Vincent’s book on this ship in exchange for an honest review, I jumped at the chance.

Indianapolis tells the story of the ship from before the delivery of the atomic weapons to Captain McVay’s absolution. It tells about how the crew dealt with the sinking ship. It tells about how the crew fought off sharks, dealt with dehydration and hunger, and tried to keep from going insane. It tells about the incompetence of the Navy in even recognizing that such an important ship was lost in the first place. It describes what could potentially be thought of as corruption during McVay’s court martial, and the bureaucracy that prevented him from receiving justice for well over half a century.

The story was exciting. Vincent helps us get to know many of the sailors over the course of the book, which helped me care about what happened. The descriptions of the ship’s sinking and the sharks in the water were page turners, almost as if you were reading fiction. You feel for the captain as he realizes that his career was sunk. I cried tears of joy at the end when he was finally cleared of all charges, even though he had committed suicide years before.

One of the problems that I have with some military books is that they sometimes tend to use a lot of military terminology without adequately defining them. As a former military officer, I’m familiar with terms like 1MC, forecastle, gunwale, bulkhead, and the like, but if you’re not familiar with shipboard terms, don’t worry with this book. Vincent doesn’t introduce naval terminology without defining it for you, and she often even tells you how to pronounce it. If you’re new to military books, this can be a great help.

If you like to read history and are familiar with the US fight against Japan in World War II, I highly recommend this book (if you need a refresher on the US fight against Japan, Killing the Rising Sun might be a good place to start). Indianapolis is a good book if you want to delve more deeply into the war and want to read a good story of shipwreck and survival.

Indianapolis won’t be released until July 10th, but you can pre-order it now.