Oct 05 2016
At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, the guns fell silent, ending more than four years of terrible war in Europe. First as Armistice Day and later as Remembrance Day, European (and Commonwealth) countries even now commemorate the end of the First World War nearly a century after …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/10/05/the-vanquished-by-robert-gerwarth/
Sep 18 2016
I’m not sure how I feel about this book. On the one hand, it’s an entertaining tale of Dark Ages Britain, with some really cool Roman/Byzantine/Middle Eastern history and politics thrown in. On the other, it’s a re-imagining of Arthurian lore which plays super fast and loose with established canon, and while it’s good reading, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/09/18/the-return-of-sir-percival-guineveres-prayer-by-s-alexander-okeefe/
Aug 12 2016
Moscow in Movement examines how citizens and state power interact in post-Soviet Russia. Samuel A. Greene, director of the Russia Institute at King’s College London, looks at the lived experiences of Russians and considers several case studies carefully to show how individual Russians, elements of Russian society, and representatives of the Russian state form their …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/08/12/moscow-in-movement-by-samuel-a-greene/
Jun 20 2016
Hamilton: The Revolution by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter is three hundred pages of wonderful, unadulterated squee. It’s a companion to the musical that I’ve been listening to nearly non-stop since last September, a documentation of the development of a show that’s clearly going into the canon of American theater and has already burst the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/06/20/hamilton-the-revolution-by-lin-manuel-miranda-and-jeremy-mccarter/
May 26 2016
Czeslaw Milosz was born in 1911 on a farm in what was then part of the Russian Empire and is now near the center of independent Lithuania. He died in 2004 in Krakow, Poland’s old capital, which had been under Habsburg rule when he was born, but which was one of several second cities in …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/05/26/the-history-of-polish-literature-by-czeslaw-milosz-the-twentieth-century/
May 12 2016
In The Collapse, Mary Elise Sarotte engages in a very close examination of the events in East Germany that led up to the opening of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, and a nearly minute-by-minute analysis of the day itself. Not quite an eyewitness to the events herself, though she is of an age …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/05/12/the-collapse-by-mary-elise-sarotte/
May 10 2016
“Modern Polish literature,” writes Milosz, “begins with the generation that emerged from adolescence around 1890.” (p. 322) If Romanticism is the first literary movement with which Milosz and his contemporaries were in dialogue, this generation, called “Young Poland” (Młoda Polska) after 1899, are his immediate forbears, the literary uncles (and much more rarely aunts) who …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/05/10/young-poland-the-history-of-polish-literature-by-czeslaw-milosz/
May 09 2016
As part of a series published by the Modern Library, Mark Mazower wrote a 200-page history of The Balkans, and it appeared back in 2000. It’s a handy little book, and it makes me want to take a look at the rest of the series, which feature well-known and opinionated authors writing about subjects on …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/05/09/the-balkans-by-mark-mazower/
May 05 2016
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 …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/05/05/the-thirty-years-war-by-c-v-wedgwood/
May 01 2016
I love historical fiction. I don’t often read it (and too often fall into the trap of reading historical fantasy, which I’ve found to be an extremely problematic genre,) but I’m usually pleasantly surprised by how good historical fiction is. Perhaps that has to do as much with the nature of the author who goes …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/05/01/the-last-kingdom-by-bernard-cornwell/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire