As their dates of publication recede into the past, books of history increasingly become artifacts of what they chronicle. They illuminate two periods: the one about which they are written, and the one in which they are written. With academic or more specialist works, this process is faster and more conscious; monographs are written in …
Category: Germany
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/05/05/the-thirty-years-war-by-c-v-wedgwood/
Dec 20 2015
From Bauhaus to Our House by Tom Wolfe
For those of us in love with the history of Architecture, there are a myriad of scholarly works, photo essays, and the like, many of which are unexceptional reading. But, if there was a book that introduced “out of the box” thinking to 20th century architectural concepts, this is probably it. A classic from 1981, I imagine most …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/12/20/from-bauhaus-to-our-house-by-tom-wolfe/
Nov 06 2015
Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
So you get to the one part in the book (and anyone who’s read it will know what I’m talking about) and you stop, stunned. And you go back and you read the last part over again. And if you’re me, and essentially a British schoolgirl at your core, like Maddy you burst into uncontrollable …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/11/06/code-name-verity-by-elizabeth-wein/
Jul 27 2015
Simple Storys by Ingo Schulze
Writing in the mid-1990s in post-Communist Poland, Andrzej Sapkowski produced The Time of Contempt. Writing in the mid-1990s in post-Communist eastern Germany, Ingo Schulze produced Simple Storys (the plural is not correct in German either; it’s symptomatic of the anglicisms and pseudo-anglicisms that entered the language at that time). The two books could hardly be …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/07/27/simple-storys-by-ingo-schulze/
Jun 10 2015
Viva Polonia by Steffen Möller
In the mid-1990s, Steffen Möller went against the usual tide of migration and moved from Germany to Poland. He started with a two-week language course in Krakow, which he found out about from a poster hung in his university’s cafeteria. From such a simple starting point, his whole career grew: first as a student of …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/06/10/viva-polonia-by-steffen-moller/
Jun 04 2015
Europe in Autumn by Dave Hutchinson
Reading Europe In Autumn was more disorienting than usual for an alternate history. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the protagonist of this story set in a slightly-alt near-future Europe could easily have been a slightly-alt me, and not just in the sense that the author had created a sympathetic figure …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/06/04/europe-in-autumn-by-dave-hutchinson/
Dec 08 2014
Finding Poland by Matthew Kelly
Did you know there was an Association of Poles in India? Did you even have the faintest idea that there had been Poles by the thousand in India during the Second World War and in the first few years afterward? I certainly didn’t, and I know a thing or two about Poles and Poland. Which …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/12/08/finding-poland-by-matthew-kelly/
Sep 18 2013
The Fall of Berlin 1945 by Antony Beevor
The writing and the research of this book is first rate, but still, reading endless accounts of the orgy of mass rape committed by the Red Army in 1945 is quite disheartening. Stalin from the beginning intended that the Soviet army would reach Berlin before the Western Allies, but he deliberately misled Churchill and Eisenhower …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2013/09/18/the-fall-of-berlin-1945-by-antony-beevor/
Apr 22 2011
Infantry Attacks by Erwin Rommel
This book reads like a series of military field reports, which is basically what it is. Rommel displays his flair for aggressive command of infantry under extremely challenging circumstances in the First World War, and I suppose many might find his accounts of courage and resourcefulness under fire very inspiring. But reading this memoir gives …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2011/04/22/infantry-attacks-by-erwin-rommel/
Jul 08 2009
Gold and Iron, by Fritz Stern
“This is a book about Germans and Jews, about power and money. It is a book focused on Bismarck and Bleichröder, Junker and Jew, statesman and banker, collaborators for over thirty years. The setting is that of a Germany where two worlds clashed: the new world of capitalism and an earlier world with its ancient …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2009/07/08/gold-and-iron-by-fritz-stern/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire