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/
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/
Jul 27 2016
In Authoritarian Russia Vladimir Gel’man answers a question that is extremely important for contemporary international relations: Why is post-Soviet Russia the way that it is? Or, framed slightly differently, how did post-Soviet Russia get to be the way that it is? Gel’man, who is a friend of a friend, presents his answers in 150 carefully …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/07/27/authoritarian-russia-by-vladimir-gelman/
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 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 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/
Dec 27 2015
In which I read a book simply because it has won the 2015 Man Booker prize, and am somewhat disappointed. I read just about everything on the 2015 Man Booker short list because I wanted to. This was one of the ones I didn’t read, and now I’m regretting a bit that it won, because …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/12/27/a-brief-history-of-seven-killings-by-marlon-james-2/
Oct 31 2015
I had been thinking how terribly young the soldiers were that Ryszard Kapuściński wrote about in Another Day of Life when he brought me up short by noting that they were the same age as many of the fighters in the Warsaw Uprising at the end of World War II. Alexander Hamilton raised an artillery …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/10/31/another-day-of-life-by-ryszard-kapuscinski/
Oct 28 2015
Between the time when Ryszard Kapuściński saw the revolution in Iran in 1979 and when Shah of Shahs, his book on the subject, was published in 1982, his home country of Poland lived through its own revolution, one that started with strikes at a shipyard in the northern port of Gdańsk but collapsed as the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/10/28/shah-of-shahs-by-ryszard-kapuscinski/
Jul 27 2015
I had so many problem with this book! And so many compliments for it, too! First, the good bits: G Willow Wilson’s politics are solid and smart and she clearly knows what she’s talking about regarding the Middle East and class and social distinctions. I also really liked her ventures into metaphysics, theology and, with …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/07/27/alif-the-unseen-by-g-willow-wilson/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire