C. Adiche, Americanah (2014)
R. Beaton, Greece: biography of a modern nation (2019)
S. Biddulph, Raising boys in the 21st Century (2018)
R. Bregman, Humankind (2020)
A. Ghosh, The Glass palace (2000)
A. Hirsch, Brit(ish) (2018)
B. Pym, Less than angels (1955)
A. Trollope, The West Indies and the Spanish main (1858)
P.G. Wodehouse, The
little nugget (1913)
All about the historians this month. They avoided the trap that Bregman falls into of just knitting your theory together with anecdote and actually did analysis. I read Beaton on the way to Greece and it was an engaging and helpful companion to our holiday and to a history where I knew bits, but had never joined them up. It's worth reading even if you're not about the visit. The best though was Linda Colley. I don't necessarily think the central thesis - that constitutions (the title is slightly misleading) enabled a lot of the emergence of the modern world - is completely true. However, there is a lot there and it's a fresh spin on the period. I was very pleased to see the prominence of global, connected, warfare as a driver of change. And I am convinced from this that constitutions mattered - as well as surprised by how many there were. She's very good on Britain and its constitutional status - something most people get wrong - and I very much enjoyed the Polynesian sidebar. I'm making it sound quirkier than it is. At its heart it is a book about how the big forces that shifted the world in the late eighteenth and nineteenth century happened, and it's a fascinating lens to look at it. The case is also very well put, and I think people underrate the importance of doing that.
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